Jail Stories
Cap Eraser
I was proud of many things I did and was and endured in jail. Most of them I don't expect any human to understand. But one proud defiance had an audience: was appreciated, talked about. The grape vine carried the story within hours. To wit: I smuggled something from Palm Beach into the Miami detention center!
When I was arrested the FBI / sheriff / goon team handcuffed me behind my back. The jail took everything I was wearing down to my briefs, gave me thin jail duds, and refrigerated me in a succession of pens, cells, jails. They laid a ton of paper work on me, copies of all their legalisms for violating the Constitution: I hadn't "done" anything; I'd written something — which they didn't know how to read: and didn't want me teaching them. Eventually I found a sort of a new home when they moved me into their old man's dorm in the Palm Beach jail. Ah, nice humans were among the oafs and gorillas, some smart people: accused murderers, DUIs, gun runners, shoplifters ... and who knew how many philosophers, writers, revolutionaries, anarchists. (Not many I don't think, but I doubt I was the only one.) My new roomies initiated me back to the good side of civilization: I was loaned books, good books. I was treated to cups of actual instant coffee: the jails served a hot beverage but it sure wasn't coffee. Bob, my bunk mate (he had seniority for the upper bunk: fine by me) introduced me to Sudoku. He gave me whole books of puzzles, 90% still to be solved. He had a pencil to lean me, and even had an extra cap eraser!
Pencils and cap erasers were available through the commissary: to those who had money on account. Actually receiving anything there was an ordeal, the order form was a Procrustean computer affair, like learning Chinese to be able to fill out so you'd actually get what you wanted and not just forfeit your precious commissary balance. (The commissary stole 80% of my money once I did have an account.)
Finally I was moved to the Miami Detention Center. I'd looked forward to it. A veteran Miami con couldn't wait to get out of Palm Beach and get back to Miami. He said everything was better, the food, the cells: and Miami was less refrigerated than Palm Beach. All true, I discovered. But: Miami's commissary didn't carry cap erasers. Cap erasers were not allowed in Miami. Time was passing. I'd been a jail for months. I'd become addicted to Sudoku. I'd managed to find pencils and Miami even had a pencil sharpener: you don't take any such things for granted once the government decides that you haven't had enough interference between school and taxes and the military. If the jail doesn't manage to kill you in the first days, and believe me, they try, you may just live: on and on. Trust me: a cap eraser is the difference between Sudoku torture and pleasure.
Back in Palm Beach for a few days, Bob gave me an extra cap eraser of his. How could I smuggle back to Miami with me? I figured I could swallow it, then try to poke through my shit over the next several days, hoping to fish it back out, clean it off, and use it. But I thought of another possibility: all that paper work they were forever dumping on me, telling the world I was a terrorist, a mass murderer, a danger to society, the federal marshalls had to carry your paper work for you. You took your legal papers from your cell to the holding cell, then from the holding cell to the process in and out area. There the legal papers were taken from you. You were told you'd get it back. Sure enough, the first few times they did give my paper work back to me, once back in the jail at the other end of the loop: until Palm Beach finally stole all my legal papers on one of my many trips to see the judge in Fort Pierce, Palm Beach providing the local motel. So: I stuck my cap eraser in amidst my legal papers, hoping it would still be there, accessible to me, at the other end.
Sure enough. Palm Beach strips me, searches me, looks up my ass, in my hair, in my mouth, under my teeth ... but I'd already passed the eraser in with the papers. The papers get handed by the jail to the marshals. Back in Miami the marshals hand my papers to the Miami jailors. I stripped again, searched again, issued new Miami duds, shoved back in the holding cell. Ah. The guards bring our "property" to return to us. I recognize my bag. It's got my novels in it, my Sudoku, my pencils, a candy bar ... I wait and grab it when allowed. Out comes my Sudoku, out comes my pencil, I eat the candy bar. Then I see my manilla envelop on the counter. Next time out of the holding cell I ask if I can take back my legal papers now. I pat the package down. I feel no trace of a cap eraser. Oh, well. It was a good idea, a good try. But they found it, confiscated it. Who knows how they'll punish me now. But back in the holding cell with my property bag and my legal papers, I go through the papers carefully. There it is. Exactly where I put it!
I insert the cap eraser over the pencil end. I proceed with my Sudoku. Within minutes, I'm noticed. "Where's he get that cap eraser?" "How'd he do that?" The guard heard the murmurs, looked up. The guard saw my cap eraser immediately. "How'd he get that?" The guard shook his head. But smiled. He wasn't going to confiscate it even though he saw it. He was going to allow me that point.
One of the guys in the holding cell was a Rasta-man I recognized from my floor: 7 Charlie West or some such designation. He was looking at my cap eraser and shaking his head in awe.
Weeks later, he still say as he saw me coming, "You Hannibal Lecter, man. You a genius!"
Wonderful. How I love that Rasta-man for his admiration, and his particular expression of it. I identify with Jesus. I identify with Galileo. And I very much identify with Hannibal Lecter (and also with his creator, Thomas Harris. Lecter is smarter than all the fascists put together. They make him suffer but he knows joys they cannot be informed of. And when we get to know him a bit, Harris introduces sympathies for his "monster" we wouldn't have believed possible. As with Puzo's Godfather, Don Corleone is more moral than the cops and lawyers who call him a crook. He doesn't well in his world in his way.
I don't do well in the world, but I do do what I do in my way. Perfectly reasonable responses, if only facts are allowed. But society never admits facts, except facts of the kleptocrats' own choosing.
Bob, my bunk mate in Palm Beach, Bob Heartsong, was charged with killing his wife. Some guys in our wing had a deck of cards where each card referred to some famous murder. Don't you know Bob was right there! It was his new Mrs. who kept him supplied in Sudoku puzzles and Bernard Cornwell novels, all of which got passed to me. Poor Bob loaned me a sweat shirt in S8C for which I'll be forever thankful, but of course the jail stole it from me before I could return it to him. There's a good reminder: I owe him a letter as well as a sweat shirt and another thank you.
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