When they first brought me here, it was the end of September, just before dawn, nothing to see on the other side of the transport van’s window. I couldn’t see anything for miles and miles until we got close to the prison and then all I could see was the wall, thirty foot high and topped with a row of razor wire that sparkled in the night like the grinning teeth of a disappearing Cheshire Cat. Every few feet or so, a security lamp beamed down upon the ground like concentrated sunlight, illuminating the dying grass below. And at all four corners were gun towers with corrugated metal roofs and glass walls and little blue smudges of men inside eyeing the perimeter for the possible fleeing bodies of escaping inmates.
As we drew near, I remember thinking that the Hell of the Bible itself was probably behind those towering walls. And I kept waiting to hear the shrieks of demons and the lamentations of tormented souls coming from inside. Or maybe even see the rise of the infernal flames flitter up from behind the wall and lick at the air like the scorching tongue of Satan himself as we approached the gate. But I never did.
Still, altogether, it was the most imposing structure I’d ever seen in my life – huge and emanating a presence of death and despair – and as the gate in the wall opened to allow us entry, I tried not thinking about all the stories I’d heard about the place.
Oklahoma State Reformatory (Planet Granite, as it is sometimes called due to the building material in which it was constructed and its proximity to the town of Granite, Oklahoma) is historically one of the most notoriously violent facilities in the Oklahoma prison system. Having been built in the 1920s at the height of Prohibition and made from roughly-hewn granite quarried from local deposits, each stone looks to be approximately one hundred pounds in weight and what I can only describe as a dingy pink in color. The original building, which is three stories high and adorned with tall steel-barred windows, completes the outer wall of the prison and is mostly abandoned apart from the administration who use it for office space and inmate visitation. The rest of the prison is many years newer and hidden behind the wall.
And for years, stories have circulated through the system about the cunning callousness of the types of killers housed inside its walls who’d prop your body back off in your bunk after they slit your throat just to keep you from being discovered. They’d simply let you bleed out on the floor, throw you in bed, cover you with a blanket so it looks like you were sleeping, and leave you there. Then they’d mop up the blood like it was no big deal and go on about their business. Oftentimes it’d be days before they ever found your body. And by then you’d usually have already started to stink.
So to say I was scared as I sat in that transport van and was told that I was being transferred to OSR, would be a gross understatement. Really, the terror I’d felt was pervasive and had burrowed itself so deep inside my body that it was like my bones had been turned to paper straws, and I thought I’d probably just fall right over when I went to stand up. And when I finally saw the place – dark and looming and cutting into the night sky like a medieval castle – I just knew I was going to get sick all over myself right there in the prison van all chained up like Houdini. I didn’t, of course. I held it in and managed to keep my shit together – but how I managed to, I’ll never know.
After we pulled inside the wall, the transport officer shut off the van’s engine and we sat in silence as a final puff of air blew through the air-conditioning vent like an exasperated sigh. I closed my eyes and said a quiet prayer for strength as the gate slowly rattled closed behind us.
It was official, I was now the newest resident of the Oklahoma State Reformatory, one of the most violent medium-security prisons in the system. And I had no idea what was in store for me.
After the gate shut securely in place, I was let out of the van and met by a Captain who began freeing me out of the many restraints tethered across my body.
“Welcome to OSR,” he said as he took off my cuffs.
“Thank you, I guess. So what’s it like here?” I asked. “Do you guys have many problems?”
“Oh yeah, we’ve got plenty of problems,” he said with a smirk.
I didn’t say anything in response; my stomach had already catapulted itself into my throat and wouldn’t let me speak. It felt like the beginning of a nightmare and his words led me to believe that the stories I‘d heard must be true.
Several minutes later another officer (this time a Corporal) approached me and told me that he would be the one escorting me to my unit.
Once we were out on the yard, I noticed that the stars had mostly vanished and that the sky was starting to turn the color of grenadine. And that just above the wall, all along the eastern horizon, were smears of clouds, glowing in a variety of luminescent colors that are honestly beyond the extent of my vocabulary to name. It was a spectacular sight and the colors seemed to be like a pile of melted pastels strewn across the heavens. My heart dropped at the thought that it might be the last beautiful thing I’d ever see. I mean, I had no idea what was going to happen to me once I was placed in general population. And my mind immediately began playing over the many scenarios in which I could lose my life.
As we walked along the busted up sidewalk, the officer began to speak: “So, how long you get?”
“I have a seven year sentence at 85%. But if I can complete a Substance Abuse Treatment Program I can be released early.”
“Well you’re in luck. We have one here. And I don’t know if you’ve heard or not but this isn’t the same place it used to be. We’ve got our problems like the Captain told you. Every medium-security prison does. But this is a 40+ yard now. Every man here is at least forty and most of them are older than that. To be truthful, this is just where they send the old men to die. Gets them away from the youngsters and the gang bangers and such. It’s like a retirement home for convicts around here and most everyone gets along. You’ll probably like it. Just stay out of trouble and get in that program and you’ll be home in no time.”
“Thanks I’ll do that,” I said. “You’re not going to have any problems out of me.”
Finally we arrived at one of the many identical buildings spread out across the complex: a squat, ash-colored structure of interconnected cubes enclosed inside its own twelve foot high fence.
“This is it. D Unit. Pod One. Cell One. That’s where you ‘re going to be. And hey just you know, these old men around here don’t put up with any nonsense. And they’re not going to fight you in the dayroom over it either. They’re going to drag you in a cell and kill you. So be smart and good luck.”
(Three Months Later)
The other day when the weather was nice I found myself sitting at one of the picnic tables on the yard as a couple of old timers played a game of Casino beside me. They were shooting the breeze, telling lies and talking shit, bragging to each other about their hands and laughing like they didn’t have a care in the world. And I was looking out across the complex at the massive stone wall surrounding the prison, wondering what was directly on the other side of it. It was so dark when I first got here that I couldn’t see anything but the prison itself. Everything else was black. Only thing I know for sure that’s out there is a few craggy outcroppings of granite hills that you see from inside the wall, and freedom. Other than that, I don’t have a clue what’s out there.
What I do know, is that here, inside the wall, it’s not what I had expected. And I’ve learned that the blood flows a little higher that what it used to and there just isn’t as much killing going on as there once was. However, death’s odor still hangs strong in the air. And the men are still dying. It hasn’t even been a week since a man was almost murdered by his celly and a sexagenarian died of liver failure. But for the most part the old men around here have laid down their knives and are now content with letting death come gently in the night while they sleep. As all old men rightly should.
As for me, if I’m lucky, I’ll be making it out of here pretty soon, going on about my life, finally start giving back to the community that I’ve taken from for so long and maybe even repair some of the things I‘ve broken over the course of my time on this earth. And hopefully never return here.
After a moment of sitting there and listening to the raucous laughter of the two old men beside me, my mind drifted back to how, not long ago, I had asked my 69-year-old celly, who is 15 years in on a life sentence, how it felt to know that one day he would die in prison. And at first he was silent, almost comfortably so, and I thought that maybe I had crossed a line or committed some sort of carceral faux-pas by asking, but eventually he spoke, his voice strained and quavering: “I don’t know, normal, I guess. Normal for me anyway. And honestly I haven’t thought about it for quite a while, just pretty well accepted it as the way things are for me, you know. But now that you’ve mentioned it, I really don’t remember how it feels not to.”
Charles Davis #406399
Oklahoma
