“What you got for me, then?” said the man. “Don’t give me no boring stuff.”
On the cart, Anna found something by Nora Roberts, a prolific, popular novelist who typically generated good feedback, and gave it to the man. She began to log the details of the inmate and the novel.
“I read one of hers before,” said the man, inspecting the jacket. “She’s cool. That’ll work.”
As he drifted, the next man came up to the table. He was tall, with a full beard and close-cut hair. Anna knew little about him except for his reading habits. He was nice-looking, had a lean build, and spoke with soft confidence. His name was Michael Hudson.
“Mr. Hudson.”
“What do you have for me today, Miss Anna?”
She handed him two books that she had chosen for him when she had staged her cart the previous afternoon. One was a story collection called Kentucky Straight. The other was a single volume with two Elmore Leonard Western novels, written early in his career.
Inmates could check out two books a week. She often gave Michael longish books or volumes containing multiple novels because he tended to run through the material very quickly. In the past year, since he had first been incarcerated, he had become a voracious reader. His tastes ran to stories occurring outside of East Coast cities. He liked to read books about the kinds of people he’d not met growing up in Washington, set in places he’d never visited. Nothing too difficult or dense. He preferred stories that were clearly written and simply told. He read for entertainment. Michael was new to this. He wasn’t trying to impress anyone. But his tastes were evolving. He was learning.
He studied the jackets, glanced at the inner flap of Kentucky Straight.
“The stories in that book are set mainly in Appalachia,” said Anna.
“Like, mountain folk,” said Michael.
“Uh-huh. The author grew up there. I think you’ll like the Westerns too.”
“Yeah, Leonard. That dude’s real.”
“You read Swag. One of his crime novels.”
“I remember.” Michael looked her in the eye. “Thank you, Miss Anna.”
“Just doing my job.”
“So, tell me a couple more titles. For later.”
As Michael had gotten more into reading, he had asked Anna to recommend some books for him to read in the future, either upon his release or when he transitioned to prison. Novels that were not in her inventory or were deemed inappropriate for the inmates. Books she thought he might like. She gave him the titles verbally. He’d write them down later, tell them to his mother when she came to visit. His mother had been surprised, and pleased, that he had developed an interest in books.
“Hard Rain Falling,” she said. “By Don Carpenter. And a short-story collection called The Things They Carried, by Tim O’Brien. It’s set in Vietnam, during the war.”
“Hard Rain Falling, Carpenter,” repeated Michael. “Things They Carried.”
“Tim O’Brien.”
“Got it.” He stood there, as if waiting.
The man behind him said, “Shit. My hair about to go gray.”
“Is there something else?” said Anna.
“Just want to say... I never read a book in my life before I came in here. You know that, right? This pleasure I got now, it’s because of you.”
“The DCPL put a branch in here a couple of years ago. That’s why you get to read books. But I’m glad you’re taking advantage of the opportunity. I hope you like those.”
“I’ll let you know.”
“You’re coming to book club next week, right?”
“You know I am,” said Michael.
“I’ll see you in the chapel.”
“Right.”
She watched him walk toward his cell. He was rubbing the cover of one of the books as if he were polishing something precious in his hands.
There was a law library in the detention facility that the inmates used to research their cases. Anna had worked there when she’d first come to the jail.
The law library was available to members of each housing unit for two hours per week and to inmates who were in Restricted Housing by request. A civilian law librarian ran the operation and was assisted by a legal clerk who was an inmate, a desirable, soft-labor position in the jail. Inmates had access to reading materials and to LexisNexis programs on computers but had no access to e-mail services or the internet. In addition to research, the law library’s space was used for voting, which was available to non-felons only, and for SAT and GED testing.
Though the D.C. Jail’s library was an official branch of the DCPL, it was not a traditional library in that inmates could not enter a room and browse through the stacks. An actual library was to open soon, but for now, books were delivered to the inmates on a cart.
There were fifteen units at the jail. The mobile librarian visited three units per day, so every unit received her services once a week. Among the units were GED, General Population, Fifty and Older, Mental Health, Juvenile, and Restricted Housing. Each unit had its own characteristics and needs. It was part of Anna’s job to anticipate those needs when she staged her carts and chose titles from the over three thousand books housed in the workroom. The library stocked paperbacks only.
Four thirty was her quitting time. Anna was in the workroom and had been staging her cart for the Fifty and Older unit, which she was scheduled to visit the following morning. That particular unit housed mostly repeat offenders, parole violators, and drug addicts. She chose a couple of Gillian Flynn novels, popular among inmates, and some early Stephen Kings. Anything by King was in heavy play. The Harry Potter books were wildly popular as well.
Anna’s assistant, Carmia, a recent graduate of UDC who had come up in public housing in Southeast, stood nearby, inspecting each book that had been returned, fanning through pages, checking for notes and contraband. For security reasons, books could not be passed from inmate to inmate. Each book was inspected between rentals.
“You almost ready, Anna?”
“Yes.”
“We can walk out together. I got to get my boy out of day care.”
“I’m nearly done.”
Anna had been at the D.C. Jail for several years but not always in her current position. After her undergrad studies at Emerson, in Boston, she accompanied her husband, who had been hired as a junior attorney in a District law firm, to Washington, where she obtained her master’s in library science at Catholic University. Her first job in town was as a law librarian in a firm on H Street. This bored her silly, so when she saw an ad posted by the Corrections Corporation of America for the position of law librarian of the D.C. Central Detention Facility, she applied. To her surprise, she was quickly hired.
Running the law library of the jail was her first encounter with lockup. Initially, the experience was troubling, especially the daily security process and the ominous finality of doors closing, locks turning, and gates clanging shut. But these procedures and sounds soon became part of her routine, and quickly she found that she preferred dealing with inmates to dealing with attorneys. Interacting one-on-one with men who were incarcerated was not problematic. She was there to help them, and they knew it. It unsettled her, sometimes, to sit with a man charged with rape or pedophilia and direct him toward informational avenues of appeal. But she never felt threatened. Rather, she was unfulfilled. It wasn’t a creative or particularly rewarding way to spend one’s day. Also, she had a deep love of fiction, and she thought it would be cool to promote literature and literacy. So when the DCPL opened a library branch in the jail in the spring of 2015, she applied for the position of librarian and got the job.