Running The Books : The Adventures Of An Accidental Prison Librarian Part 11

Now Jessica had left without giving Chris a thing. I sent him a note through another inmate. It said, "I tried, Chris. I'm really sorry." I felt bad for having raised his hopes. I shouldn't have been so optimistic, shouldn't have said, "it's in the mail."

I couldn't get Jessica's letters out of my mind. That horrible letter of abandonment that she had placed into toddler Chris's pocket at the church that day in 1987-and now this, the letter she did not not put into his hands. The small thing that would have been the immeasurable difference between something and nothing. Still, I held out some hope that Jessica would send him something through the actual mail. put into his hands. The small thing that would have been the immeasurable difference between something and nothing. Still, I held out some hope that Jessica would send him something through the actual mail.

But then Martha the gossip approached me in the library. Jessica, she told me, had ripped up the portrait and a draft of her half-finished letter shortly before she was transferred. Martha saw the shreds in the garbage bin.

I thought about how isolated Jessica seemed that night when I saw her standing in line, as the prison commotion swelled around her, the laughing inmates, the shouting guards. Oblivious to her surroundings. She had just told me the story of abandoning her son. Her guilt and shame, her deep regret had sapped her senses. Just by looking at her that night, waiting for the officers to finish their count, waiting to march back to her prison cell, it was clear: Jessica was done. She hadn't been tuning out the noise around her. She wasn't ignoring the others. No, it was that she herself barely existed. Her presence then was papery and insubstantial. No wonder she'd ripped up the portrait. Ghosts cannot give gifts.

There had been one gift, though. Given to her cellmate, the Vietnamese woman who didn't speak any English, whose inability to communicate with Jessica had formed the basis of their relations.h.i.+p. The woman was acutely anxious and would stroke a tiny piece of fabric compulsively, day and night. I witnessed this myself in the library. After a couple of weeks, she'd stroked her worry-totem down to a pile of furry threads. From the prison black market, Jessica had procured a tiny black ribbon, the kind used by mourners. The deal was done in the library-and she gave her cellmate the gift on the spot. The exchange happened near the bookshelves closest to the counter, where the Vietnamese woman had been flipping through books in a language she couldn't read. The woman smiled at Jessica, and proceeded to stroke her new ribbon. Not a word was exchanged A few months after she'd given this gift, after she'd ripped up Chris's letter, Jessica was dead. The news came by way of Martha the gossip. She had arrived red-eyed one night in the library. Standing a few feet from where Jessica had sat for the portrait, Martha leaned on the counter and told me what she knew. Less than a month out of prison Jessica had overdosed. few months after she'd given this gift, after she'd ripped up Chris's letter, Jessica was dead. The news came by way of Martha the gossip. She had arrived red-eyed one night in the library. Standing a few feet from where Jessica had sat for the portrait, Martha leaned on the counter and told me what she knew. Less than a month out of prison Jessica had overdosed.

"I heard she died in a boarded-up building," Martha told me through her tears.

This apparently wasn't quite true. A more reliable source later told me she'd overdosed and died at home. But I suspect this detail-that Jessica died alone in an abandoned building-had somehow made sense to Martha. When she'd delivered the news to me, there certainly had been an awful kind of plausibility to it.

The other inmates gave Martha s.p.a.ce to cry at the library counter that night, though a few came over occasionally to put an arm around her.

"She was my friend," was all Martha could say.

When she had calmed down a bit, she added, "Jessica thought of you as a friend, you know."

"I know," I said. "I considered her a friend too."

In prison this was a complicated, impolitic thing to say. I was surprised how easily it had slipped out of my mouth. But at that moment, the shock of the news had forced out the uncomplicated truth.

Was it a suicide? With addicts it is sometimes unclear. Often unanswerable. So indeed was the related question of why she'd turned her portrait, and the letter to her son, into a pile of ripped paper in a prison garbage can. I could speculate but I'd never really know. Even if I did, I probably wouldn't truly understand.

A ribbon to a stranger-this may have been the last gift she had in her. Perhaps it was as much as she had left to give. My mother once said that the one gift she'd received from her mother was her mother's long life. Time. A gift given accidentally, but no less precious. It had been the single factor that allowed my mother to forgive my grandmother. Jessica was not able to give even this pa.s.sive gift to her son. An early death was the final affirmation of her belief that forgiveness was not possible for her in this world. She'd given birth alone at Boston City Hospital. She'd abandoned Chris alone in a church. And in prison, when she was so physically near to him, she may have finally realized, or perhaps decided, if she hadn't already, that she would remain alone. Perhaps it was precisely this proximity, the sight from that window in my cla.s.s, and the unavoidable challenge it presented her, that finally brought this grim truth to her. That possibility weighed on me.

For days I kept imagining the fate of the world's misplaced letters. I started noticing them everywhere. All the right letters sitting on desks and dressers, slipped into purses, abandoned in email Draft folders, forever sealed and unsent. Shredded. Forgotten, sometimes intentionally. And the wrong letters, placed in someone's hands-which, once delivered, may never be taken back. Emailed and immediately regretted.

When I looked around the world, I couldn't see these letters. But I became aware of their indirect presence. They contained life's great subtexts, embedded between the lines of cell phone conversations of strangers on the bus, in the hazy motive of a coworker who told me she was taking a "mental health" day off after receiving a difficult email from her mother. These notes were virtual, folded up, hidden, like letters tucked into books of the prison library. A kite, barely visible in the sky, bound to a person by an almost invisible string. Even the unsent ones are very much present. Especially the unsent ones.

Man Down

I was stuck. It was a Friday afternoon. After finis.h.i.+ng up an early s.h.i.+ft, I found myself detained longer than usual in the sallyport, together with a group of officers and a.s.sorted staff. The doors rolled shut, locking us in with the loud metal-to-metal crash that alarms visitors, and which staff members don't even notice. It had been months since I'd pa.s.sed into this second category. It was only after the second door-the one that would let us back out into freedom-had failed to open, that I realized we were locked in together. An emergency call went out. I heard it clearly from the radios strapped to the belts of the officers locked in the sallyport with me.

Man down in 3-3.

"Oh f.u.c.k," said an officer next to me. "Here we go."

"This could take awhile," a nurse said to me, on the presumption I was a volunteer.

Until things were settled in 3-3, we were locked in this little limbo between freedom and prison. Everyone was coming off of a long s.h.i.+ft, some were coming off double s.h.i.+fts. It smelled like overworked officers: a combination of worn rubber, leather, stale coffee, and sweat-soaked polyester. Not even a nurse's overpowering perfume could mask it.

Through the dark, bulletproof gla.s.s that separated the sallyport from the central command center, I could see security cameras broadcasting the chaos in 3-3. I leaned in toward the thick gla.s.s to get a better view of the screen, which beamed a lurid light into the darkness of central control. I saw inmates in blue prison uniforms running in and out of the picture. Then an officer running. Then an inmate hop on a table and shout something. The wisdom of bolting prison tables to the floor suddenly dawned on me.

I was so absorbed in the scene broadcast live from the prison war zone that I almost missed the drama happening right there in the sallyport. As the group grumbled and sighed, and s.h.i.+fted uncomfortably inside our accidental prison cell, someone spoke. At least I thought he was speaking. A second later it was clear he wasn't speaking, but singing.

Everyone went quiet and turned to the source. The singer was a large, loping labrador retriever of a man, top-heavy, a s.h.a.ggy officer's uniform, scraggly beard and stately belly, a big, nutty grin affixed to his face. He smiled as he sang.

"My story is much too sad to be told-but practically everything leaves me totally cold..."

An officer heckled him from the other side of the sallyport, "We're not gonna give ya dolla bills, ya fat b.a.s.t.a.r.d."

A few people, mostly officers, laughed. But he ignored the comment and pressed on. Though still barely audible, his singing gained in strength. It had a pleasant little swing to it. He was playing it up, c.o.c.king his fist like a microphone, and a.s.suming various jazz singing poses, to the extent possible in a tight, locked s.p.a.ce, packed with people.

"The only exception I know is the case-when I'm out on a quiet spree-fighting vainly the old ennui-and I suddenly turn and see..."

And with this, the big man made a surprisingly lithe full spin in his bulky officer's boots and, mischievous smile widening to capacity, swung around until he was in a face-to-face serenade with a short, plump contractor.

"Your fa-bu-lous face..."

She blushed, and everyone laughed.

I suddenly remembered the chaos in 3-3 and I turned my attention back to the closed-circuit security TV.

By the time the officer launched into the refrain, "I get no kick from champagne-mere alcohol doesn't thrill me at all," "I get no kick from champagne-mere alcohol doesn't thrill me at all," every staff person locked in the sallyport, including me, was smiling. And not despite the violence up in 3-3 but because of it. You had to be open to humor in order to work in this place or you'd grow hopelessly bitter. Or simply numb. every staff person locked in the sallyport, including me, was smiling. And not despite the violence up in 3-3 but because of it. You had to be open to humor in order to work in this place or you'd grow hopelessly bitter. Or simply numb.

Often the humor turned dark. During a recent staff holiday party I'd laughed with everyone else when, during a gift exchange, someone presented, as a gag gift, a "hooter kit"-the container of bathroom supplies, a tiny cheap toothbrush, toothpaste, and soap, given to inmates who were too poor to purchase these things from the prison canteen. The hooter kit is one of the bleaker, more poignant expressions of prison loneliness. The question I'd asked myself at the party, while twenty or so of us laughed as a coworker pulled the hooter kit out of a hat, was not whether the joke was witty (it was not) nor whether it was tasteless (it certainly was). The question was why was it funny anyway. Partly it was the surprise of seeing the kit appear out of place. But mostly it was because in prison you were often presented with the options of dark humor or no humor. And the former seemed like the better choice, the only way to feel that your strange place of employment was also just a human workplace, complete with awkward holiday parties and stupid gag gifts.

But my ability to cope through humor, my smile, was short-lived that day. I just wasn't feeling up to it. At that moment, stuck in the sallyport, I felt felt stuck. Crammed inside of a machine, I was given to the sudden awareness that this wasn't the mere sensation of feeling crammed, but the literal fact of it: I was crammed inside of a machine. A small system with two heavy doors rolling on tracks, controlled by a remote will, a situation not unlike that of a lab rat. It took only this small bit of pressure to puncture my equilibrium, letting in a torrent of emotions. Jessica's death. I wasn't doing well with it. It had shaken me personally. stuck. Crammed inside of a machine, I was given to the sudden awareness that this wasn't the mere sensation of feeling crammed, but the literal fact of it: I was crammed inside of a machine. A small system with two heavy doors rolling on tracks, controlled by a remote will, a situation not unlike that of a lab rat. It took only this small bit of pressure to puncture my equilibrium, letting in a torrent of emotions. Jessica's death. I wasn't doing well with it. It had shaken me personally.

I kept returning to what she'd said to me, her face and hair done up with such sincerity-it must have taken her hours to acquire all of the materials and to pull that off-she'd turned to me, smiled, and said, "This is a big deal, right?" What an understatement that had been. It was the first time in many years, maybe since she'd abandoned her son, that she was taking some major initiative, exerting her will. She was trying to push back against the immense machine of her fate, before it was too late. It had been a very big deal indeed.

Stuck in the sallyport and feeling stuck, my defenses breached, I was suddenly overcome by a wave of emotion. For Jessica: who, with the complicated staff-inmate relations.h.i.+p behind us, I could now call a friend-one who died broken and alone. And for her son, a kid with a rough future. And for me: a fool for using the library as anything else but a place for inmates to get silly thrillers. I felt deeply ashamed for telling Chris that his long-awaited letter was "in the mail." Books are not mailboxes, said Amato's sign. I hated that sign. To me, the library was at its best when creating the s.p.a.ce for Jessica's letter to pa.s.s through, to be delivered. But perhaps the sign was right. My optimism amounted to a cruel joke played on a troubled eighteen-year-old orphan. I was overcome by a shrinking feeling. Oh s.h.i.+t Oh s.h.i.+t, I thought, I'm actually going to cry like a little girl in the sallyport I'm actually going to cry like a little girl in the sallyport.

I stared at the one-ton steel door and willed it to open, so that I could spare myself this. I stared and willed it open, but the door remained locked. It wasn't working. I tried to divert my mind with something else.

I s.h.i.+fted my gaze to the dark figures moving around in the control room itself. Set against little flas.h.i.+ng red and green lights, switches and levers, and various monitors beaming images from the violence in 3-3 and from all over the prison-and a monitor, set low and out of view, that beamed in daytime TV-these dark forms stood, sat, leaned, held paper cups of coffee to their shadow-darkened faces. From where I was standing in the sallyport, it was hard to make out anything in there. But I noticed two long, fine feminine hands, like a pianist's, working over a switchboard. I hadn't noticed it before: such brutal doors operated by such a pair of refined hands. While their owner remained shrouded in darkness, those elegant fingers, illuminated under a small lamp, tapped b.u.t.tons, pulled switches. After a few more painful moments, they hit a master stroke. The heavy steel door rumbled open and we were set free until the next day.

The Automat

The next evening I spotted the prison shrink in the staff cafeteria. I made a beeline for her. She was a tall, thin woman with big clunky jewelry and poofy hair that hovered over her like a fair-weather c.u.mulus cloud. There was something comforting about her professorial disarray. She pursed her lips, furrowed her brow, and paused for long moments before answering serious questions. I had one for her that day.

Before saying h.e.l.lo, before giving the woman an honest chance to dig into the tofu salad she'd brought from home, I put my tray down next to her and said, "So what's so bad about countertransference anyway?" She paused, and pursed her lips.

Countertransference was a concept I'd heard her mention once before. The idea, as she had used it, was basically that people who work with populations like psych patients or prison inmates might identify a particular individual with someone important in their own lives. And, as a result, regard this patient or inmate in a similar mode as they would this person. For example, treating an inmate with a strange, seemingly unwarranted blend of sympathy and jealousy because he reminds you of your brother.

"Well," said the therapist, "a lot, potentially. Especially if you aren't, for whatever reason, paying attention to it."

The practical dangers, she said, included inappropriate unprofessional behaviors of all sorts, from bending rules to throwing all propriety out the window. The feelings themselves are natural and inevitable. It's important to be aware of what is happening, to keep the situation in check by setting boundaries, and, in some cases-especially for a therapist-to ask yourself if the patient is eliciting these feelings in you because of her her behavior toward you: that you see her like a daughter, for instance, because she views you as a mother. A therapist may have to carefully explore this patient-doctor relations.h.i.+p in the context of the session itself. behavior toward you: that you see her like a daughter, for instance, because she views you as a mother. A therapist may have to carefully explore this patient-doctor relations.h.i.+p in the context of the session itself.

"Sounds like a headache," I said.

"It is," she laughed. "But I'm in the headache busines, and so are you, by the way."

She added, "Let me know if you ever want to talk about it."

I didn't. The talking cure doesn't do much for me. I tend more toward the brooding cure. In my brooding, I had decided that I was experiencing a reverse transference: not seeing an inmate as though she were a loved one, but rather seeing a loved one as though she were an inmate. I saw some of Jessica-her tortured solitude, the abyss of silence-in my mysterious grandmother. I had always judged my grandmother by her malicious words and actions, and never tried to understand her predicament. Never really appreciated that she was an intensely lonely person. A prisoner.

In my writing cla.s.s I found myself distracted by the empty chair in which Jessica used to sit looking down at her son through a prison window. I had asked the women to write about Edward Hopper's 1927 painting Automat Automat, to personify in words the lonely woman in the painting. The a.s.signment was inspired by Jessica. But when I started to think about the woman in the painting, I found myself thinking of a certain portrait of my grandmother.

Once, in order to shake my grandmother out of despondency, my aunt had forced her to buy a new dress, get a makeover, and sit for a photo portrait at a local mall. I knew this photo well. It was the one of my pale grandmother in a hideous blue suit, hair set like a trench helmet, wearing too much lipstick and looking as dour as ever. This was the photo I had long a.s.sociated with the sneering portrait of Mussolini in my eighth-grade history textbook. The moment I'd turned to that page in the World War II chapter I'd thought, Whoa, that looks Whoa, that looks exactly exactly like grandma's picture! like grandma's picture! I hadn't shaken that feeling since then. I hadn't shaken that feeling since then.

But now I saw things more clearly. Like Jessica preparing for her portrait, my grandmother had been dressing up her vulnerability-one accessory, one stroke of makeup at a time-in order to sit defiantly in the presence of her loneliness. It was an act of self-preservation and quiet courage.

A small detail about Jessica returned to me. The day of her portrait, she had arrived with the bottom of her uniform pants cuffed, following a prison style popularized by the cool crowd of women inmates. She'd never cuffed her pants before. At the time, it seemed unremarkable.

But now, I got it. The cuffed pants-and for that matter, the perfume-were not meant to be depicted. They had nothing to do with the portrait itself. And that's not why she wore them. It was intended for her, to allow her to playact, to give her a way to imagine herself, for a moment, in a beautiful light. To be the person she'd wished she had been. I had to wonder if perhaps the entire portrait session was never really meant for her son. If it was, like her recurring dream of him, a fleeting moment of private grace.

I looked at Hopper's automat woman through the reflections of Jessica's portrait, and of my grandmother's. When I gave in-cla.s.s writing a.s.signments, I usually jotted down something myself. In the fifteen minutes remaining in the period I wrote the following notes into my wire-free, prison-issue notebook: the privacy of droopy hats and thick lipstick to keep the darkness at bayclothed in brightness against the night to make it all go awaybut nothing can protect her from Nothing from the empty seat across the table the impossible window the overwhelming sense her tea has grown cold.

In mourning Jessica this way, I'd found a means of mourning my difficult grandmother, an experience I'd been dreading for as long as I could remember. It clarified something else, as well. That I'd begun to need these writing cla.s.ses as much as the prisoners who were my students.

After cla.s.s I went down to my office in the library and did what any semi-repressed Midwest-raised kid would do with such a crush of emotions. I called my mother and provoked an argument about her parking ability. Which expanded into a commentary on her driving skills, before resolving into a critique of her commitment, or lack of, to a proper exercise regimen.

When I paused, she said, "Is that all?"

Could I admit the truth? That I was just calling to hear her voice, because I knew that, at some point in my life, this simple act would be impossible.

"No," I said instead, "that's not not all. But I gotta get back to work now, 'bye." all. But I gotta get back to work now, 'bye."

Messiah by Kite I reach into my pocket to fetch a coin for the vending machine in the officers' union clubhouse. I have my eye on a certain PayDay peanut caramel bar. Instead I pull out a note. I'd forgotten about it. Kites sometimes glide into my life like this, out of the blue. Sometimes wildly out of context. I'll be at home, at a movie or a restaurant, light years from prison, and one of these small, insistent voices brings me right back. I unfold the note.

Dear Messiah, it reads, I know things is tough but you gotta hang in there brutha I know things is tough but you gotta hang in there brutha...

I smile. One tiny ballot cast for theological optimism. I know the note refers to an inmate named Messiah, but one can't help but wonder. I take out my notebook, copy the words of the short note, and append a short gloss: "the Messiah's plight." I had never considered the unfortunate fate of the Messiah himself (perhaps Christians have a better sense of this). The Messiah has to suffer as long as the rest of us, forced to await his own long-overdue arrival. Poor guy. Maybe his fate is worse than ours.

This is the flip-side to the skeptical old Jewish joke: A small town pays a ne'er-do-well to sit on a bench, wait for the Messiah, and to announce his arrival to the rest of the townspeople. For years, that's exactly what the man does: sits on the bench all day, every day, waiting. One day a man asks the ne'er-do-well why he took such a thankless, low-paying job."It's true, the pay is low," says the ne'er-do-well, "but it's a steady job."

In a world where nothing, not even G.o.d's promises, is reliable, at least one can rely on disappointment. And as the joke says, the doomed optimism business offers wonderful job security. It's a perfect summary of prison work.

At the moment, it is my work. When I return to my office, I draw up a propaganda poster to be placed in the prison blocks-it shows an image of the library and a child. Use the Prison Library Use the Prison Library, it reads, So Your Children Won't Have To So Your Children Won't Have To. It's a bit pessimistic, perhaps, but also optimistic in a way. It turns out that even after I defected from yes.h.i.+va, I still abide by the medieval Jewish article of faith, which is itself full of doubts and subtle irony: I believe with perfect faith in the coming of the Messiah, and even though he tarries, nevertheless I await his arrival every day I believe with perfect faith in the coming of the Messiah, and even though he tarries, nevertheless I await his arrival every day.

The Archive Forest, my co-librarian, was beginning to wonder about me. In his abundant politeness, he'd kept mum. But one afternoon, shortly before taking off for the day, leaving the library in my hands, he finally turned around from his desk on the other side of our shared office and spoke up.

"So," he said, in his near whisper of a voice, "what are you doing over there?"

I'd been clearing precious shelf s.p.a.ce for empty boxes and was now filling these boxes with piles of raggedy-looking sheets of paper.

"I'm making some storage area for kites and stuff found in the library."

"Oh," he said. "Okay."

He put his coat on, closed up a few Word doc.u.ments he'd been working on. He stood watching me for a moment, wearing a pained expression.

"Like an archive?" he said.

"Yeah," I replied. "Exactly."

"I think you're more an archivist than a librarian," he said.

He told me that archivists and librarians were opposite personas. True librarians are unsentimental. They're pragmatic, concerned with the newest, cleanest, most popular books. Archivists, on the other hand, are only peripherally interested in what other people like, and much prefer the rare to the useful.

"They like everything," he said, "gum wrappers as much as books." He said this with a hint of disdain.

"Librarians like throwing away garbage to make s.p.a.ce, but archivists," he said, "they're too crazy to throw anything out."

"You're right," I said. "I'm more of an archivist."

"And I'm more of a librarian," he said.

"Can we still be friends?"

He flashed me his shy smile and headed out the door.

I was rational enough to realize that refusing to throw out kites, and other such material, was a bit eccentric. But I couldn't help it. It seemed brutal to trash a letter that someone had taken the time to handwrite. And there was some part of me that thought, Who knows, maybe these letters will be important to someone in the future? Who knows, maybe these letters will be important to someone in the future? I majored in history and literature, and wrote newspaper obituaries. I spent many hours looking at letters and artifacts that some oddball had decided not to throw out. There is no history, no memory, without this. I majored in history and literature, and wrote newspaper obituaries. I spent many hours looking at letters and artifacts that some oddball had decided not to throw out. There is no history, no memory, without this.

I couldn't bring myself to destroy records. When I thought about it, I could link this impulse to my emotional investment in Jessica and her letter: if not to reunite a family-a tall order under the circ.u.mstances-then at least to preserve a record, some sc.r.a.p of family memory, for Chris and his children, if he has any.

For months, I had been vaguely conscious that the prison itself maintained an archive. But since it hadn't directly related to my work, I'd forgotten about it. Now, given that Forest had correctly diagnosed me as an archivist, I was curious what an actual prison archive looked like.

When I approached Patti with an awkward and vaguely phrased request to "see the archive," she said she'd see what could be done. That same day, Deputy Mullin, the warden, called me himself to tell me that he'd put me in touch with the prison archivist, Sergeant Gallo-whom the deputy accidentally, or possibly intentionally, referred to as Sergeant Gallows. Deputy Mullin had told Gallo/Gallows that I was a "history buff" and would "appreciate a tour." When he recounted this, he laughed faintly.

"Knock yourself out," he told me. "But watch out for Gallows. He's kind of a character."

In my imagination, an archivist-a real archivist, unlike me-is meticulous, pedantic, solemn, a person who doesn't let anything slip, neither a doc.u.ment nor a candid phrase. Sgt. Gallo was not this man. He was of another genus altogether. The sergeant was a charmingly unkempt fellow, quirky and freewheeling, a man who wore both his officer's stripes and his effusive emotions on his sleeve. Perhaps he preferred the solitude of the archive, or perhaps he'd been banished there-it wasn't clear. Gallo, who teetered as he walked, was a perfect square of a man, as though almost three decades toiling in a box-shaped cinderblock room, surrounded by boxes, had turned him into one himself. He grunted and snorted, boasted, told off-color jokes, and proudly subverted the ethos of his job: He told me that he'd been "itching" to destroy an entire wall's worth of boxes (once the court gave him permission, of course). He had no affection for history ("it's all bad news") and was much more concerned with making room for new doc.u.ments. Apparently, he was more of a librarian.

"Empty s.p.a.ce is gorgeous," he told me, "it's literally beautiful to me. But, as you can see, there ain't much beauty up here."

When I'd first arrived in the archive-riding on an elevator that started and stopped at the whim of a distracted officer in central control-I shook hands with Gallo and immediately marveled at the stunning view of Boston's skyline and at the luxuriant sunlight pouring in through giant skylights. He squinted in the direction of the grand windows, as though he had never noticed them. Perhaps he hadn't.

"It's all right I guess," he said, "if you're into that kind of thing."

He then harangued me for almost an hour about how n.o.body appreciates him or the work he does. Most of his fellow prison guards routinely implied that he spent his time "sitting around touching myself all day." Although the little square-shaped sergeant didn't find this amusing at all, he finally cracked a smile and conceded, "This is mostly not the case."

I asked him about the photos hanging over his desk. In the spot where most people might hang a family portrait or a pinup girl, he had photos of an old, decrepit brick fortress on a gray overcast day, the path leading to it marked by foot-deep tire tracks in fresh mud.

"That," he said, a smile suddenly brightening the thick creases of his face, "is Deer Island." The old prison facility. Everyone who'd spent time at Deer Island-inmates, officers, and civilian staff-all spoke of it as a depressing h.e.l.lhole. But not Gallo. He became nostalgic when recalling the beach picnics and barbecues that officers had up there.

"There weren't so many rules rules at Deer Island. It was great. n.o.body cared what went on." at Deer Island. It was great. n.o.body cared what went on."