Two Men and a Toilet

Two Men and a Toilet

“To live without hope is to cease to live. Hell is hopelessness. It is no accident that abovethe entrance to Dante’s hell is the inscription: Leave behind all hope you who enter here.”

-Fyodor Dostoevsky

“Walter, where do you think they get the air they put in here?”

“Oh, I don’t know, Frank. I think it comes from a morgue or a funeral home. They bag it and bring it here. Or maybe they collect all the socks from the players after a double-overtime NBA game and put them in here and let them ferment for a while. What do you think?”

“Maybe it’s just air that’s been here for so long. There’s no in or out, so it gets stale.”

“Yeah, just like us, Frank, sit in here and get stale.”

Frank lowered his eyes and considered the prospect. He didn’t want that to be his future, but the sad reality was that it had become his life. He remembered throwing a football to his son in the backyard, fishing from the riverbank with his daughter, studying the stars on a clear night, and pushing a cart through Walmart. It was all gone.

There are 197 square miles on the surface of this planet. Frank’s life was now confined to 80 square feet of that total area. It was a tough adjustment, especially since it hit him in the blink of an eye. The loud bang of iron meeting iron as the heavy cell door slammed shut didn’t just lock his body in; it crushed his mind and spirit. The moment overwhelmed him as he realized he no longer had control over anything. Helpless and hopeless, he figured he could die in this sad place. He didn’t know how he would die; he just didn’t think he could live through it.

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They were the odd couple, a rather unusual duo of cellies- Walter, a large black guy in his 30’s; and Frank, an elderly, short white man. They sat together on the bus from Wisconsin and would now be paired at the federal holdover facility at Terre Haute, Indiana, where they would share their lives in a box for a wretched 17 days.

“I’m surprised they put us together.”

“Why is that, Walter?”

“They try not to mix the races… fewer problems that way.”

Walter was an alumnus of the BOP, having served 4 years for selling drugs. He was back again… for selling drugs.

“I was never addicted to drugs; I was addicted to the money.”

It was a family business. His niece drove the product up from Texas as she would be less apt to draw attention on the road. Walter took a flight to Milwaukee.

“I couldn’t believe it. They nabbed us as soon as we checked into the hotel. They took my niece into another room, and she threw me under the bus before they even asked her a question.”

Walter managed a muffled laugh.

“I guess I can’t blame her. I wish I knew who set me up. I’d pay them a visit the day I got out of here.”

“Jesus, Walter, don’t be doing anything to put yourself back in.”

Friendships can be born out of shared experiences, especially miserable ones. Over the next 17 days, Frank and Walter became friends.

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The chains around their ankles were removed before they entered the cell. Once inside, they stuck their hands through a slot in the iron door to have the handcuffs removed. The BOP doesn’t take chances.

Frank massaged his wrists. Nine hours of steel pressing against skin had taken its toll.

“I can’t feel my hands, Walter. God, those things hurt.”

The relief of having his shackles and handcuffs removed was short-lived as Frank was confronted with the harsh reality of his new accommodations- an 8’ by 10’ concrete block room, no window to the outside, a bunk bed along the far wall, a heavy steel door with a trap door slot for meals and a small viewing window for the COs to check on the occupants, a stainless steel sink, and… a toilet… just two feet from the bunkbed. For Frank, this was the most dehumanizing aspect of the prison experience, sitting on the toilet just feet from his roommate, or conversely, lying in bed with a pillow over his head pretending to be somewhere else while his cellie was sitting on the toilet. The sounds and smells pushed Frank several rungs down on the evolutionary ladder.

“Don’t worry about it, Frank. We’re all men here.”

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“Walter, after you’ve had a taste of this, how could you possibly go back to selling?”

“Like I said, the money. I had another business… legit… but it just wasn’t bringing in the money I was used to.”

“What was that?”

“Credit repair.”

Walter didn’t seem like a credit repair kind of guy.

“I’ve heard of it, but I never quite knew how it worked. Do you put people on a budget, negotiate with their creditors, or what?”

Another Walter laugh.

“It’s not that complicated.”

“So how does it work?”

“It’s pretty simple. We have someone on the inside.”

“Huh?”

“We have a … let’s say a contact… that works at the credit bureau. We give him a piece, he pushes a few buttons, and…Wala!... the credit rating goes up.”

“You’ve got to be kidding me.”

“Nope, the debt doesn’t go away, but the credit report looks good.”

“Walter, that doesn’t exactly sound legit.”

“No harm, no foul.”

Despite the surroundings, they both smiled at Walter’s ability to stretch the truth of the matter. Walter was a godsend for Frank. His dry sense of humor provided the occasional distraction Frank needed to survive.

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Frank learned. The resulting soul-searching was painful.

Frank grew up in an upper-middle-class suburb of St. Louis; Walter grew up in Detroit’s inner city. Frank had an involved mom and dad; Walter was raised by his grandmother along with his six brothers and sisters. Frank did his homework and was in bed by nine; Walter was at the playground at midnight with his friends when he was nine. Frank bagged groceries after high school; Walter helped his uncle transport prostitutes to big city conventions when he was 14. Frank’s parents put him through college; Walter was fending for himself when he was 13. Walter’s life of crime was born of need; Frank’s transgressions were a child of greed.

Frank could understand how Walter got there. He could not comprehend his path to this concrete block hellhole. He had no excuses. He didn’t need to steal company money, and he readily acknowledged he deserved his plight. He felt sorry for Walter; he felt no sympathy for himself.

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"Walter, I need to ...use the bathroom."

Frank hated those times that "he needed to use the bathroom". With another man lying in bed so close to him, it seemed to suck the last vestige of humanity out of him. The words "privacy" and "dignity" didn't make it into the BOP lexicon.

Hard time is not busting up rocks with a sledgehammer under a burning sun. Hard time is being confined to a small enclosure with nothing to do, 24 hours a day. It tests the mind and tortures the soul.

Prisoners in transit were put in SEG at Terre Haute… SEG, the Segregation Unit, aka the Hole, the SHU, aka the Box. Men who went to prison for misbehaving in the real world are sent to SEG for misbehaving once they get there. SEG is far worse than regular prison.

“What the hell, Walter, we don’t deserve to be in SEG.”

“It is what it is, Frank.”

Pain and pleasure come and go. Nothingness seeps in, takes hold, and smothers the spirit. By virtue of his age and medical condition, Frank had the coveted lower bunk. At first, he would lie in bed and beat himself up for what he had done. Then he would miss his family, his dog, and the simple things we all take for granted. Most of the time he would just lie there. He remembered a picture his Uncle Jim had hanging in his office. It was an old man sitting on a log with the caption, “Sometimes me sits here and thinks, and sometimes me just sits here.” Frank had become the old man in the picture, doing nothing hour after hour but lying on his bed.

He dreaded the waste of time. He should be home mowing the lawn or repairing that loose railing he never got around to fixing. His grandson probably wanted him at a soccer or baseball game this weekend. Mostly, he knew he should have been there for his wife.

He tried to remember who he once was. Flashes of a good student at St. Mary’s, a decent running back at Jefferson High, and a hard worker with a lot of friends floated around in his head. He had betrayed everyone and wiped it all away.

Early in the process, in County, another inmate told him he had to stop punishing himself.

“You’ve got some hard years ahead. You have to forgive yourself. You can’t be thinking about the outside world if you want to survive.”

Good advice, but Frank was having a hard time getting there.

He never knew if it was day or night. Time in SEG is kept by the meal slot slamming open, and a gruff CO shoving a couple of heavy plastic trays through the opening. Breakfast, lunch, and dinner were like a freaking cuckoo bird popping in to let him know it was morning, noon, or night. Meals were the only thing that happened in Frank's world, and he could only sleep so many hours a day. The rest of the time he was drowning in boredom.

He pitied Walter up there in his upper bunk. Walter had to be 6’4” and weigh at least 280 lbs. Walter didn’t think he had a mattress when they checked in. He shoved a torn-up 2-inch-thick piece of spongy material through the meal slot along with all the soiled linen that was on the beds when they arrived, and flagged down a CO.

“Hey! We need a mattress in here.”

The bundled-up spongy thing came back through the slot.

“This is your mattress.”

Walter and his 280 lbs. on a thin spongy thing over steel springs. Frank didn’t understand why they wouldn’t give the poor guy a mattress, but Walter knew.

“It’s not complicated, Frank. They don’t care.”

Frank accepted it. Why should they care? Acceptance of his reality helped.

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Water in SEG came straight up out of the sink. There were no handles that inmates could use to wrap material around to hang themselves. This made no sense to Frank as the structure of the bunk beds presented a perfectly suitable apparatus for such a purpose. It also seemed unnecessary because of the screening process new residents go through upon arrival. Frank and Walter had both been interviewed by trained professionals.

“Are you thinking of offing yourself?”

“No.”

“Have you thought about offing yourself in the past?”

“No.”

“Do you think you might think about offing yourself in the future?”

“No.”

“You’re good to go.”

That 10-minute trip to Medical would be the only moments Frank would be out of his cell for 17 excruciating days.

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Frank and Walter needed cups for water as the water source was akin to a water fountain. They tried to flag down a CO every time one passed, but it took 3 days to get 2 small paper cups. Paper, envelopes and suicide-proof flexible pens arrived after 6 days.

“Who are you writing to, Walter?”

“My wife.”

“She’s sticking by you?”

“Oh yeah. I just have to let her know where I am so she can put some money on my books for commissary.”

“Who are you writing to now, Walter?”

“My girlfriend. I have to let her know where I am so she can put some money on my books for commissary.”

“Walter…”

“A man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do.”

Walter crawled down from his punishing perch and stuck two envelopes between the door and the door jamb. He climbed back up to his spongy piece of whatever it was, but a minute later, he came back down and retrieved one of the envelopes.

“What’s the problem, Walter?”

“Well, since we can’t seal our outgoing mail, those bastard COs could switch the letters on me just for laughs. It wouldn’t be good for my wife to get my girlfriend’s letter.”

“I can see where that would be a problem.”

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A loud voice at the door yelled, “Rec!”

“Walter, we can go to rec?”

“Yep, but you don’t want to go.”

“Why’s that?”

“Frank, Terre Haute is high security. That means there are some pretty mean, nasty guys here. The guys who get thrown into SEG are at the top of the mean and nasty scale. You don’t want to be locked in a crappy little rec room with those guys.”

“Good advice. Thanks, Walter.”

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Frank wasn’t living in a Mr. Rogers-like neighborhood. His neighbors were… interesting, to say the least. The regular SEG Unit was closed for cleaning up some kind of mold, so Frank and Walter were stashed in the old SEG building, one floor below the poor souls on Death Row. Walter had gleaned some information on the upstairs living conditions from a previous brief stay at Terre Haute.

“You know, Frank, aside from the fact they’re slated for execution, those guys have it pretty good up there.”

“What?!”

“Yeah, they have a TV in their room.”

“Oh wow, Walter, I guess that would sure make the experience worthwhile.”

It was unsettling for Frank to hear the voices of the condemned through the vents. One guy in particular had a disturbing message. Every so often, he’d be up there rapping. Most of the lyrics couldn’t be discerned, but the refrain came through loud and clear.

“They’re gonna stick a needle in me, they’re gonna stick a needle in me.”

“Holy shit, Frank, did you hear that?”

“I did, Walter. Unfortunately, I did.”

One night, Frank and Walter were awakened by a loud commotion just a few cells down the hall… lots of banging and yelling for a minute, and then an eerie silence. This was followed by several CO’s running down the hall. Walter and Frank took turns peering out the small window in an effort to learn what was going on.

“Holy shit, Frank, they’re taking stretchers down the hall.”

“Must have been quite a fight.”

Steve saw a man, groaning and with blood on his face, handcuffed and shackled, being carried down the hall on a stretcher. And then silence. Ten minutes… men in civilian clothes arrived…thirty minutes… an hour.

“What the hell is going on down there, Walter?”

“Dunno.”

Finally, another man was carried down the hall on a stretcher. He wasn’t moving, and there was a small trickle of blood at the corner of his mouth.

“Holy shit, Frank. The guy’s dead.”

An alarmed Frank took a look.

“I think you’re right, Walter. And he’s handcuffed and shackled.”

The BOP doesn’t take chances.

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The event caused Frank to again undergo the painful exercise of reflection. The incarcerated try to avoid it as it hurts, and there’s no real point to it, but there were times Frank couldn’t keep the thoughts of the real world at bay. He had a family, a nice house in the country, and a small fishing boat. Now he had prison-issue clothes and a small paper cup… and a toothbrush, and he lived in a place where his neighbors were killing each other or were slated for execution.

None of it seemed possible. How could he have taken himself to this God-awful place? He felt too empty inside to cry.

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Day 17, 5 AM.

“Pack up, guys, you’re movin’ today.”

Moving day is tough for federal inmates- the handcuffs and shackles, herded up like cattle, standing in a room with 50 other men for hours waiting for something to happen, long bus rides and maybe a flight on Con Air, a peanut butter and jelly sandwich served with a bag of water. It was depressing for Frank to realize he could pack up all of his belongings in less than 5 minutes.

Frank was headed for the low-security prison in Milan, Michigan.

“You’re going to Milan, Frank? That prison is sweet.”

Frank tried to grasp how Walter could place “prison” and “sweet” in such close proximity.

“You’ve been a good cellie, Frank. You helped me make it through this.”

“Same here, Walter. Take care.”

There was no point in talking about future contact. Inmates may say they’ll communicate with each other out in the real world, but they never do. They want to leave it all behind.

Frank was surprised that his bus didn’t head straight north to Michigan, but instead took him to the Terre Haute Regional Airport. He would be taken to the holdover facility in Oklahoma City on his way from Indiana to Michigan… taxpayer dollars at work.

The prison inmate’s mantra is, “Things could always be worse.” Frank couldn’t think of anything worse than his 17 days in SEG at Terre Haute. Well, maybe he could have been one floor up with the guys on Death Row. But then he would have had a TV… mmm? He’d have to think about that. God knows he had the time.