But then I stopped thinking because Kincaid gave me a radio.
He pointed to a red button on the top of it and said, “Now if anyone’s ever attacking you, just hit this red button and it will probably save your life.”
But then he just laughed and said, “Unfortunately this one is broken, so the red button doesn’t work, but I’ll try to get one for you next week. So if anybody tries to kill you this week, we’re screwed.”
Was this a joke?
And then we both just laughed, nervous.
Was this joking?
We started walking again.
We walked through a locked door and then another and then another.
But once I got inside the prison’s education department, which only consisted of about one hundred Bibles dropped off by local churches, everything was fine.
I did make the mistake of introducing myself to the guys as Scott. When Kincaid walked by the room and heard them calling me this, he knocked on the glass and stuck his head inside the door shouting like an asshole cop, “Hey guys, you call him Mr. McClanahan.”
I apologized, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, and then he left, but not before making one of the prisoners remove a fro pick.
I heard one of the guys saying, “Damn that guy is wound about two wounds too tight.” And then another guy said, “You have to be a sick motherfucker to make the choice to come inside a prison.”
Then someone else said, “At least he gets paid to be here — about $65,000 from what I hear.”
Then another guy said, “Yeah $65,000 of hell.”
I reminded them I was choosing to be here and I was only a volunteer from a local community college.
Everybody laughed like that was the sickest joke of all.
I was a dumb bastard all right.
I calmed everybody down and started taking roll by the list of prisoners provided by the prison. I read the list of students on my list of inmates (no first names), but just Inmate 1118046 D. Johnson.
Inmate 1190647 E. Johnson.
Inmate 1117843 T. Johnson.
I tried to make a joke, saying, “Man the world’s been rough on you Johnson boys this year.”
Nobody laughed.
I had them go around and introduce themselves — inmate 118046 D. Johnson. “Man I just want to get my life together. I’ve made some mistakes and I just want to get out and become a better member of society.”
Inmate 119847 E. Johnson. “Man I just want to get my life together. I’ve made some mistakes and I just want to get out and become a better member of society.”
Inmate 1117843. “Man I just want to…”
You get the point.
It was like this story after story until all the way down at the end of the list was inmate 117486 R. Rodriguez.
I knew before he even spoke — he was different.
He was different because there was laughter and life inside his eyes.
He said, “Man y’all a bunch of fools.”
He said, “When I get out I just want to get me some motherfucking ho’s and some motherfucking weed. And I’m not gonna do anything except sit around all day and smoke sweet weed and fuck pussy.”
And so everybody laughed and then one of them said, “You going back to selling?”
Rodriguez said, “Hell yes. I’ll know how much I can carry on me without it being a felony now.”
Everybody laughed some more. I knew he was different.
I knew he was different because he wasn’t like the rest of us. Rodriguez was a rare breed. Rodriguez was a truth teller.
I knew he was different that next week after I had them read an essay by George Orwell called “Shooting an Elephant.”
I asked whether or not Orwell was right in shooting the elephant.
One of the guys named Smoot, who was this big, muscular, skinhead guy said, “I think that Orwell’s nothing but a punk-ass bitch. He reminds me of some of them snitch bitches around here. I’ve been in gladiator schools and he wouldn’t last in gladiator schools.”
By then Rodriguez just smiled at me and he started to calm Smoot down. It’s all right. It’s all right.
And then Rodriguez smiled some more and started talking about the difference between free will and whether we’re conditioned to behave in a certain way. He talked about how we really don’t know one another — especially ourselves. He talked about how Orwell’s decision was made decades before. It was Orwell’s decision but he was conditioned to make a decision.
I said, “But isn’t that a contradiction?”
He smiled and said, “Exactly. That’s prison. Most people live their lives in absolutes, but not us.”
He quoted, “Only intelligent people contradict themselves, motherfucker.”
That was Wilde — sort of.
And then, later on, he talked about how his mother crossed rivers to sneak into this country from Mexico — and how he was the child of a black father and a Mexican mother. He talked about how his father was murdered before he was born and how he grew up watching his mother smoke crack. And then he said how this had to have influenced the decisions he later made on the streets. Then one of the guys asked him if his mother was still alive.
He told us he didn’t know. But he was counting the days until he got out of here. He only had five years left. He was going to try and find her when he got out and take care of her.
Even though he had been making fun of this just a few minutes before, he was so sincere about it and everyone grew quiet.
So over the next couple of months I got to know the guys better and I kept thinking about Rodriguez. I kept thinking, “I can’t believe this guy. I mean most of these prison guys were guys just wanting to get back in here even after they got out. Most of them had the minds of accountants. They were like most of us on the outside — the next score, moving somewhere and changing your life, that sort of thinking. But here was someone who was different. Here was someone whose mind went sideways instead of up and down.”
Over the next couple of classes I listened to Rodriguez quote, “Nothing human is alien to me.”
One night he made the argument that at the core of every technological innovation was a new mind altering chemical of some kind — whether it be Egyptian, Greek, Roman, Christian, or Silicon Valley even.
I read one of his essays about finding his mother, about his hope of finding her after he got out in five years.
So one night walking out of the prison yard after lockdown, the prison guard Kincaid looked over at me and said, “You don’t let them niggers write in Ebonics just like they speak do you?”
I was shocked hearing it.
I didn’t know what to say.
I gathered my thoughts, thinking of how to respond, “Well writing is more than spelling.”
He said, “Yeah, well these guys are smart. But you can’t trust any of them. These guys all made their choices, but they just made bad choices.”
But going home that night I wanted to tell him about Rodriguez.
I wanted to tell him about Rodriguez and how beautiful he wrote.
I wanted to tell him how wrong he was.
I wanted to tell him about Rodriguez’s murdered father.
And I wanted to tell him about Rodriguez’s mother and how he didn’t know where she was, but Rodriguez was counting the days until his release.
Five years. Five years.
It wasn’t a long time when you really thought about it.
And he was going to try and find her.
But what did it matter?
I figured it was best to encourage Rodriguez because there were just a couple of weeks left of class anyway. So one night I listened to Rodriguez joke with me about it being my birthday and what kind of crazy guy chooses to spend his birthday in prison.