“Hey, youngster, what the hell is wrong with you?”
“Huh?”
“Don’t talk to your people like that! Who were you talking to anyway? If you say your Mom I’m liable to whoop the shit right outta you.”
I hang up the unit payphone and stare at him. “Na, it was my wife. Why do you care?”
He jestingly elbows the old orange-clad inmate standing next to him and sarcastically repeats what I said: “Why do I care? Ha! You hear this kid, Larry? Why do I care? Tell you what youngster, I won’t beat your ass right this second for talking to your wife like that if you promise to come up and see me later in cell 215 for a little talk. Deal?”
“Listen, if I gotta choose to fight you now or later, I’d just as well get it over with now,” I reply, even though fighting this guy is the last thing I want to do. He is quite a bit larger than me, tattooed up and down, and has a face that says right away that he doesn’t mess around. Still, as young as I am, I’ve already learned that in lockup you don’t back down from a fight. If you do then people will think you are weak and everyone will try you. And I don’t want that either.
Don’t miss Charles’ story The Last Prison Visit I’ll Ever Have With My Daughter
So I say what I say. He laughs. A quick little chortle like you’d give a puppy that’s chewing on your pants leg. Like he thinks my words are cute or something. “There will be no fight unless you don’t show. Come up after chow, okay?” He speaks slowly, smiling the whole time.
“Yea, sure. Whatever,” I say, seeing a way out of having to fight and being smart enough to take it. “I’ll be there.”
Chow comes an hour later. Then it is time and I find myself standing outside of cell 215, knocking softly on the heavy steel door.
“Come in.” A shout comes from somewhere inside. When I open the door, I immediately see him towering over the steel table protruding from the wall, his hand reaching for a book laying next to an ink-stained plastic coffee cup. Then he sits down on the bottom bunk.
“Sit over there,” he says, pointing at the stool next to the table. I sit. “Jeff,” he says. And then he puts out his hand to shake. As we shake, I tell him my name. “So, Charles,” he says. “Man, you just shouldn’t talk to your family like that. Not your wife. Or your Mom. Or even your Dad.”
It’s at this point that I interrupt. “My Dad is dead,” I say.
“Really? Well, sorry for your loss.”
“Oh, yeah, well… he died before I was born.”
“Damn, that explains a lot.”
“What do you mean?” I ask, confused.
“The way you talk to women. If you’d had a father around you probably wouldn’t be talking to your wife that way. Unless, of course, he talked to your Momma like that. And if he did then he’d need his ass beat.”
“Yeah,” I say, laughing nervously. “He would.”
“Why are you here, Charles?” he asks, suddenly changing the subject.
“Because you told me to come see you.”
“No, dumbass. Sheesh! Why are you locked up?”
“Oh. I got caught with a quarter pound of pot in a motel room. Had it all bagged up and scales and shit too. They got a couple thousand dollars off of me as well. Possession of CDS with intent to distribute. And possession of paraphernalia.”
“You are a freakin moron aren’t you? Selling weed out of a motel room. Who told you that that’s a good idea?”
“No one,” I reply.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
“And if someone would’ve told you that it was a bad idea, would you have listened? Never mind, don’t answer that.” Then he paused. “You’re probably wondering why I called you up here, huh?”
“Yeah,” I say. “I am.”
“Well, dude, I was a youngster just like you at one time, doing dumb shit and running around talking like I didn’t have any fuckin sense, and then an old timer picked me up and gave me a gift that revolutionized my thinking. And now that I’m the old timer, it’s my turn to re-gift his gift. Especially since it looks like you’re going to be doing a lot of time in your life: selling weed out of motel rooms and shit. Little dumbass.”
“A gift? You have something to give me?” I ask.
“I do,” he says. And then he hands me the book he’s been holding.
“A book?” I ask, somewhat taken aback.
“Yeah. A book. You ever done much reading?”
“Not since I was a kid, really. Ralph and the Motorcycle and The Bridge to Terabithia and shit like that. I used to love reading, even used to write stories and stuff. But I haven’t done much of it lately. Read a couple of books in the Marines but only cause they made me.” Then I looked down at the cover of the book in my hand. “1984. What’s it about?”
“Wait a minute! Wait a minute! Wait a minute! You can’t just slip something like that in there and blow my mind and then follow it up with a question like you ain’t just said something crazy. You’re a fucking Marine? And you talk to your wife like that?”
“Um, yeah, I am. And I normally don’t talk to her like that. I was just upset. I’m stuck in here and she’s out there supposed to be bonding me out but it is taking too freaking long. You’re right I shouldn’t talk to her like that. I just got carried away is all.”
“No excuse, man. You never talk to your people that way, especially women. Besides, you’re lucky to have a wife in the first place. What with selling weed out of motel rooms and shit. Marine, huh? What happened there? And how old are you anyway?”
“My alcoholism happened. And I’m 21.”
“Still a fucking pup and already a drunk.”
“Yeah, I guess. But what’s 1984 about?” I ask.
“It’s about a dystopian future society in London.”
“What’s a dystopian?”
“Dystopian is the adjective usage of the noun dystopia. And a dystopia is the antonym to a utopia.”
“Uh… okay. And a utopia is what?”
“The perfect society. And so that would make a dystopia what?” Then he stops and holds his hand flat out in front of him with his palm up, inviting me to answer.
“Um, the absolute worst society?” I say in an inquisitive tone, unsure of my answer. “Right?”
“You got it. It’s what little twerps like you are making a reality everyday with your insouciance. Man, I can’t believe you were a fucking Marine.”
“Well, I was. And, actually, I wasn’t kicked out so I kind of still am. You know, they say: Once a Marine always a Marine.”
“A drunk ass, drug-dealing Marine. I don’t know, man, maybe I should quit talking shit. Marine and all, you might be kicking my ass. Anyway, thank you for your service.”
It was my turn to laugh. “Yeah, don’t thank me. I haven’t done anything to deserve it. Right now, this second, my platoon might be over there in the shit, losing their lives, and I’m here, in this place for selling drugs.”
“Hey, don’t discredit your accomplishments. Everyone makes mistakes. And like you said: Once a Marine always a Marine. You earning that title and consciously making the decision to die for freedom’s cause deserves my thanks. But let’s not get any further on that subject right now. Get outta here and go read that book. You’ll love it. I promise. Come back when you’re done and we’ll talk about it, okay?”
And so begins my love affair with books. I start out with Orwell and work my way through Kafka and Tolstoy and Dickens and Bronte and Huxley and Dostoyevsky (my favorite) and end up in Walls and McCourt and Tan and Bradbury and Sagan and of course King and Patterson and Clancy. I learn about panpsychism and quantum entanglement and the power of forgiveness. I travel through foreign lands and ride the Orient Express. In my mind’s eye I witness Washington cross the Delaware River and see the battles of the Barbary Pirates. I hear the sorrows of Irish immigrants and the jokes told in Canterbury’s Tales. I live a thousand lives and experience a million things. And I do all this thanks to the power of the written word.
Now I wish I could tell you that from then on I never break the law again and have an immediate and complete character transformation from the knowledge I glean from that amazing and deep (amazing and deep at least in my opinion anyway) selection of literature. But that isn’t the truth. (Besides, 1984 is really only transformative to those inclined to believe in the Illuminati and conspiracy theories about fluoride.) And many times since then, I speak when I should listen. Rough when I should be compassionate. Stupid when I should be smart.
Drugs, and alcohol, and crime have been a steady part of my life for more than nineteen years at this point, and all the encumbrances that come with that lifestyle – including incarceration – have plagued my life. But I have grown. Through the words of those writers who’ve come before me – from the memoirist to the fantasy writer – I have grown and had countless hours of escape while locked in a box with another man (sometimes two or three other men) and a steel toilet and a sink. Sometimes a book is the only thing between me and insanity. Or quite possibly a suicidal death. And I owe it all to the gift of that old convict and the power of a good book.
Today I am that old convict bibliophile with a foul mouth and a desire to make a positive influence on a junior man’s mind. And when I run across a young man who seems like he might be receptive, I pass on the gift of reading good books, and he either is smart enough to take it and see it for the potential power it wields, or he isn’t. All I can do is drop the book and a few F-Bombs and maybe a word like ultracrepidarianism in his lap and hope he takes the bait. If he does, he’ll never be the same again. His life will never be the same again
Charles Davis has been released and is thriving in the free world. He’s training for his PRSS certification to become a drug and alcohol counselor.
