Chapter 21

I walked into the Day Room carrying my things and was motioned by a guard at the far end of the room to sit at a table with another inmate. His name was Anthony. He was going to Work Furlough, too, and we were both excited.

“You’ve only been here a day?” Anthony said. “Wow, dude, I’ve been here for three weeks. You’re one lucky Wood.”

“I know,” I said. “What are you here for?”

“Probation violation. And you?”

“Car accident.”

“Anybody die?”

“No, it’s kind of complicated. Nobody was seriously hurt.”

“Man, I’m sick of being cold. I’ve never been so cold in my life,” Anthony said.

“I would’ve died last night if the other inmates hadn’t saved my life,” I told him. “I had no idea this place was like this. I’m surprised that people aren’t dying every day.”

“They are, man. They move them to the infirmary first, and then the chain gangs bury the evidence. People die in this place all the time. It’s only the ones who have family with money who make the news. If a lawyer thinks he can pick over the bones and make some money, then it’s all over the front page of the Republic; otherwise, they go into a hole in the ground. No fuss, no muss, no evidence. Convenient ain’t it?”

“I never thought about that. Do you really believe that?”

“It’s true, man. This is the land of lawyers and opportunists. The politicians who get elected in this state know how to break laws the right way. Hell, the residents of this county even admire them for it. Quiet, here comes a guard.”

The DO swaggered past, giving us a glance, but otherwie he was uninterested. I was studying the picture on the wall of the soldiers in Iraq. Comparing America’s deployed Army as having it worse than the prisoners in Tent City was one of the sheriff’s favorite props with the media. I’d seen these pictures on television, and now I had a chance to examine them up close. Standing up from the table, I walked over to the wall to get a closer look. There was one photo of six or eight men laying in shallow, body-length foxholes dressed in full battle gear. This photo was obviously taken in winter, I thought. These men would have died from heat stroke dressed like that any other time of year in the Middle East. I also looked at the tents. They weren’t Korean War surplus like ours. They had doors, air conditioners, and heaters. We had none of those. The Sheriff’s Office didn’t provide survival gear to inmates. The warm clothing went to the guards.

“You know, Anthony,” I said, “these pictures were taken in winter. And these guys have all sorts of amenities. We get six paper-thin cotton blankets, some ragged cotton thermals, and some short-sleeved striped pajamas.”

“Yeah,” Anthony said, “and they only started handing out the six blankets after the media got all over Sheriff Joe’s ass. Three weeks ago, we only had two.”

Four more inmates showed up, and an hour later, the six of us were marched from the Day Room back to the closet-sized holding cell that I had been in the day before. We were the only ones in the cell this time, and the wait wasn’t more than an hour. When the door opened, we were lined up against the wall to receive handcuffs and leg irons. A windowless, black dogcatcher van arrived, and we filed out of the building and went into its dark interior. Our status as human chattel was always punctuated with the sheriff’s transportation.

The van driver turned corners unusually fast, apparently having great fun as we slid across the steel platform used for a seat and piled all over one another in the back. The driver played the van’s stereo so loud it was deafening. He seemed to be telling us that for all practical purposes, there were no other human beings in the van besides him. Whatever the sheriff’s employees could do to take out life’s frustrations on inmates was the order of the day for some of them, particularly the female and the younger, more violence-prone, male detention officers.

We arrived at LBJ bruised but otherwise unhurt. LBJ is, among other things, the central processing point for inmate transfers and inmate releases. We were escorted to a large room inside the building and ordered to stand in single file against the wall and be silent. Our leg irons and handcuffs were removed, then we waited. The elation about going to Work Furlough was more than enough to ward off efforts of intimidation by my captors. Half an hour later, a female guard appeared from a doorway across the room. She called my name and two other names, motioning for us to walk forward and form another line where we were once again handcuffed. Anthony was not one of the other two prisoners.

I looked back at him as I was being led into the innards of LBJ for the second time. We stopped at the same cold holding cell I had been in twice in the past four days. What’s happening? I wondered. Was Anthony not going to the Work Furlough tents? Why put us in a holding cell in LBJ again? Why not take us directly to the tents? This isn’t making any sense. The door to the cell rolled aside and stopped with the now familiar clang of heavy steel. The guard removed my handcuffs and I stepped inside. The door clanged shut behind me.

I stayed in the holding cell for about six hours, although it was difficult to tell time. Suffering from hypothermia and sleep deprivation distorted time. Finally, the sound of the familiar clack and grind of the steel door opening captured my attention.

“Rodriguez, Boyd, Grimsby, Horne,” the young female DO said. She was a pretty Latino woman, the first distinctly pretty female I had seen at the jail. Seeing her standing in the doorway, every man in the room perked up like a dog expecting a treat.

My joints ached. I stood up with some difficulty and limped past her and out of the cell, ignoring her feminine attributes. I followed the other prisoners. Another guard told us to line up against the wall in single file. We were handcuffed in pairs, my left wrist to Boyd’s right wrist.

I hadn’t thought about Becky for the last few hours. Seeing that young female DO reminded me that I had a loving wife and family grieving over my loss. How could I have let that out of my mind even for a minute? I was exhausted, freezing, despondent, in pain, and had become indifferent to everything around me except the next step forward. I imagined it was similar for prisoners of war or political prisoners in Third World countries, with no hope, a feeling of helplessness, alone, and adrift in a sea of people of whom I knew no one. The people who were supposed to help me were the ones most likely to hurt me. The people I thought would harm me had saved my life.

Maricopa County’s jail was a strange and dangerous place, but not for any of the reasons I would have guessed before I experienced it. I wanted an escape from the dreary fatigue I felt as I stood against the cold wall, so thoughts of Becky and the children flooded my mind. It really helped to let my mind wander, particularly to how much I loved my family.

“Follow me,” a Black female guard said. The sudden tug of the handcuff chained to my right wrist snapped me out of my thoughts. This woman was large, much too large for the skintight uniform she wore. Her breasts pulled at the buttons of the starched shirt. The seams of her pants, fitting more like pantyhose than slacks, strained for relief. She waddled slowly ahead of us, arms spread like a duck ready to fight over her piece of the pond. We turned the corner and began walking down the long hallway back toward the elevators to the third-floor warehouse units I had been in a couple of days earlier. On my right were windows looking into a dormitory. The rooms were filled with women, and they were very interested in the four men walking past. Funny I hadn’t noticed this before, I thought.

“First one of you cons I see looking to the right is go’n to the hole! Do I make myself clear, gentlemen?” The guard’s raised voice echoed down the empty hallway, as we shuffled slowly past the windows filled with gawking, giggling women in stripes. I kept my eyes forward. I wasn’t going to give this woman even the slightest reason to make my life more miserable than it already had become.

We stopped in front of a large steel door before we got to the elevators that led to the warehouse unit. The door began to rumble and slide open, then it closed behind us as we passed through it into another passageway. A few feet ahead was a round desk that reminded me of a workstation for nurses at the hospital. It was at the center hub of four hallways, one of which we were walking down. Several male guards were leaning on the countertop talking to each other, and another was flirting with one of the two female guards behind the circular counter.

“Stand against the wall,” the guard said. She removed our handcuffs and gave the small four-by-eight-inch booking cards to a DO who walked over from the guard station. He motioned us toward a tiny holding cell and opened the door. “Okay, you four — in here,” he said.

The room was small, no more than four feet wide by seven feet long. Boyd lay on the floor immediately. I sat alone on the back bench and was able to turn sideways, pushing my back against one wall and my feet against the other. I tried to sleep, but I couldn’t find a position that didn’t hurt. I ended up lying on my back with my feet running up the far wall and my hands under my head. Boyd was a young Black man, probably 22 years old. He appeared to be an intelligent young man. Boyd was restless. He stood up and walked to the door, looking out of the door’s small window at the activity of the night shift.
Suddenly, one of the male guards appeared at the door.

“Get away from the door,” he said to Boyd in a harsh tone. “If I see another man standing at this door, I’ll leave you cons in here all night. Now sit down!”

Boyd quietly stepped backwards and lay down on the floor once more. The guard stood at the window for a few seconds to make sure we all got the message, staring at each of us intensely before leaving. No one spoke about the incident. I was too tired to talk, and I suppose the other three men were also. I hadn’t had much sleep in a week, having spent more time in holding cells than in a bed, and I was exhausted. I was staring blankly at the ceiling when a wave of dizziness came over me, and I thought I was going to faint while lying down. My eyes fluttered until I closed them. I felt myself on the edge of losing consciousness, and then, as suddenly as it had come, it began to fade. The dizziness subsided after a few seconds and I sat up, my head still spinning, too see if the change in position would help.

A couple of more hours passed. I’m not sure how long really; it was a short time by holding-cell standards. The door opened and a voice called, “Horne, step out.” I wasn’t moving fast enough, but I was moving as fast as I could. “Horne! Get out here, now!” the voice demanded again, as I hobbled outside the dimly lit cell into the light at the guard station.

It was a young male guard who had called my name, a different one than had been there earlier. He told me to stand with my back against the wall and with my arms out to receive handcuffs. I complied. Where I was going, I had no idea. Everything I had experienced since leaving In-yard had made no sense to me. I was too tired and too depressed to guess what was going to happen next.

“Prisoner, strip off those thermals. You won’t be needing them in here,” he said.

Quietly, I removed the thin, striped uniform and then the thermals, standing in the hallway clothed only in my boxers and socks. The female guards a few feet away glanced at me as I disrobed but seemed more interested in the young male guard leaning on the counter than in me. I donned the pajama stripes again and slowly extended my arms for the waiting pink handcuffs the DO held.

He led me past the circular guard station and down the corridor opposite the one we had entered. A short distance later, maybe ten yards, we stopped in front of a metal door. It rumbled open and the guard motioned me inside. I peered into the dimly-lit interior of a large, empty room with three stainless steel picnic tables in a single row. As my eyes adjusted to the low light, I saw that the room was ringed with two rows of cell doors, one atop the other, with an expanded steel metal grate catwalk along the top row.

“Why are you taking me here?” I asked. “I’m supposed to go to Work Furlough. What is this place?”

“I don’t know anything about Work Furlough,” the guard said. “This is the Medical Pod. My orders say that you’re here on a medical hold. That’s all I know. Now walk to that staircase.”

I did as I was told. When we neared the stairway, a chain rumbled at the top of the staircase and a cell door slid open. A man who looked like he lived on the streets stepped out of the dark room smiling from ear to ear. His eyes were wide, and he looked insane to me. But maybe, I thought in a moment of humor, he is just really, really happy.

“You ready, Cooper?” asked the guard.

“What time is it?” asked Cooper.

“It’s one in the morning,” answered the guard. “Why do you care?”

“Because I’m leaving this stinking hole, and I don’t want to be let out at night,” replied Cooper as he walked down the staircase. “I’m ready if he’s ready.” He was laughing, an odd crazy sort of chuckle.

When Cooper reached the bottom of the stairs, the guard removed the handcuffs from my wrists and placed them on Cooper’s. “Go ahead,” the guard motioned to me. “You’re in the top bunk.”

“Wait a minute,” I said. “How long am I going to be in this place?”

“It’s hard to say. Your papers say two weeks, so it will be for at least that long. Now move.”

I climbed the steel stairs slowly, each step a scuffing echo in the dark room. After I reached the top of the catwalk and looked into the dark hole of the cell in front of me, I heard the door to the cell block open and close in the distance behind me. I took two steps inside the black hole and vaguely saw motion from the bottom bunk. Someone looked at me, turned his back, and pulled the blanket over his head. The door rumbled shut with a clang and a click six inches behind me. I stood there, looking at my surroundings. The room was small, maybe six by twelve feet.

The top bunk was a sheet of one-quarter-inch-thick steel. It was bolted to the concrete wall with thick angle irons welded at each end. The standard two-inch thick foam pad lay on it as a mattress. The bottom bunk would have been a concrete bench in one of the holding cells, but in here it was a bed. The upper bunk was five feet from the concrete floor, with the mattress just above shoulder level. It was too high to jump up and there was nothing to grab, no handholds, steps, or ladder that I could see. A small window one foot wide by four feet long ran vertically on the same wall as the door. It existed for the guards to see into the room from their tower at the far end of the block of cells. This way, prisoners were visible at all times. The window was recessed to the outer skin of the six-inch-thick concrete wall and had a small ledge at the bottom.

I put one foot on the corner of the concrete slab that formed the bottom bunk. Then I wedged my elbow into the recess of the window, hoisting myself up into the top bunk with the grace of a whale climbing a cliff. My left shoulder felt like it would tear from its socket as I heaved myself onto the bunk, crushing the thin foam mat flat into the cold rigid frame. I was too overweight and too out of shape for this sort of thing. How would I sleep? There was no safety rail. If I fell the distance to the floor and landed on the concrete, it would seriously injure me. If my head hit the stainless steel toilet, I probably wouldn’t survive.

I lay on my back and explored the ceiling. Lifting my leg, I flattened my foot against it without being able to straighten my knee. Cold air was blowing on my chest from somewhere. I saw an air vent midway down the bunk’s length and two feet from the side of the bunk. Even in the dimness of the room, I could see the strings of lint streaming out of it. The air was filthy, and the floating particles choked me. I could feel them entering my lungs as I breathed, feel them brushing my skin and clinging to my eyelids. I turned away from the filthy air. Rolling onto my side, I pressed my back against the concrete wall to get as far away from the precipitous drop to the floor as possible. I peered out of the small window, examining the deserted common area below. I was locked in a hole where no one would find me and where no one cared if I lived or died. I was considered refuse to society and had been thrown away. I felt unwanted and helpless in a world filled with bullies and prisoners.

Anxiety filled me in a wave of panic that swept me away. Fear engulfed me like a wall of water racing down a canyon from a collapsed dam. I couldn’t breathe. I began to hyperventilate, gasping for oxygen in the choking air. I wanted to scream, to scratch my way through the concrete wall and out of that room. In the span of a thought, I had gone from being tired, aching, and depressed to a raving lunatic. Yet I hadn’t made a sound.

Just enough sanity remained for me to know that I needed to calm my racing mind, but even that thought was quickly swept away by the swift current of fear within me. I pressed my face to the window and stared intently at one of the steel picnic tables below. This feeling of terror, it was old but distantly familiar.

I struggled to find the time, the place, and the memory. How had I dealt with it then? I pushed my mind far back into the past. The wind blowing on me made my sore hip joints ache worse. The cold steel bed stole heat from my body. The fibers of lint floating in the air choked my gasping lungs. Then a friendly face appeared in my mind’s eye to look down at me. It was a doctor. I was eight years old, lying on the couch in the living room and gasping for air.

“It’s all right,” his voice was calm and reassuring. “Just breathe slowly. You’ll be fine. Take slow, deep breaths. I will help you with my hands until it stops. Slowly now, that’s it.”

My eyes stared into his, wide with the panic only a small child knows, his kind, reassuring gaze looking back at me. My eyes fixed on him and only him. I ignored my parents, the room I was in, the couch, everything else but him. Now I looked into those eyes again, almost fifty years later, as I stared out the small window of my cell into the dimly lit room.

“It’s all right,” I whispered. “Focus on something. It won’t be long until morning, and then they’ll open the door. It’s all right. Take slow, deep breaths. Put the towel over your mouth so you can breathe. That’s it. You’re all right; you’ll be fine.”

I spent the rest of the night talking myself through the worst anxiety attack of my life by holding onto the memory of that kind doctor. It was a single branch of sanity to cling to in a raging current of emotions trying to pull me beneath the surface into pure terror. I kept my eyes frozen on the table outside my cell, never daring to look into the darkness behind me.

The guard made his rounds before ending the shift. He stopped to look at me for a moment. I looked through his rotund frame still focused on the table that his body blocked from view. Then he walked around the catwalk, each step a clanging echo in the silent room, until he exited down the far stairway, the door rambling open for him to exit and then clanging closed again. It was after four in the morning when I finally fell asleep.

I woke with a start as the chain to the door of my room rumbled and the door slid open. It was light outside, and the fluorescent tubes on the ceiling just above my head were fully lit.

Proceed to Chapter 25.