True: True Stories From a Small Town #3: Life in A Minor
True Stories
Dell Sweet
$4.99
In AA they say that addictions will take you to hospitals, Mental Institutions and Prisons. It’s true. They will. I have been in all of those places because of my addictions. But addictions are not responsible for the life I lead entirely, and certainly not responsible for the things I did. I may have used because I believe it solved problems, or to cover pain, but the decisions I made, I made because I wanted to make them. Because I chose to make them.
A free read from the book:
This is an unpublished expanded story from the book. I shortened it in the book, but the story mattered to me, so I used it uncut here, Dell.
TRUE: TRUE STORIES FROM A SMALL TOWN #3: LIFE IN A MINOR
By Dell Sweet
Original Material Copyright © 1976 – 1984 – 2009 – 2015 by Dell Sweet
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TRUE: TRUE STORIES FROM A SMALL TOWN #3: LIFE IN A MINOR is Copyright © 2015 All Rights Are Reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced by any means, electronic, print, scanner or any other means and, or distributed without the author’s permission, except those permissions that have been stated in this text. Permission is granted to use short sections of text in reviews or critiques in standard or electronic print. Permission is also granted to copy and use this text in any word amount, or in its entirety, for study, or a study aid in any state, county or privately run facility: Including state prisons, county jails, mental institutions, drug programs, sex offender programs, AA, NA, or any program where the aim is to share experience to promote healthy change and progress in men and women.
LEGAL
This is not a work of fiction. Names have been withheld and changed to keep the focus on the Addiction and the Addict, not the person or persons. The story is true.
It was late afternoon, that in between time, lunch served, dinner somewhere on the horizon, after shift change. That’s the way jail is, this kind of jail anyway, max time, short for Maximum Security. You’re locked in a cell most of the time, a few hours out on the cell block during the daylight hours to socialize with the other men, but for the most part it’s marking time, one event to the next.
I was in jail waiting to go to prison. There was not going to be any last minute reprieve, or some surprise witness, because I was one of the few guilty guys in jail. I had spoken to my lawyer, spoken to my family. There was a court date several months off, but it was set. Waiting for me to do the right thing and I intended to do it. Being sober and in my right mind, I was a life time alcoholic, helped immensely.
Being sober was new for me. It’s not like you can’t get booze in jail, or prison, or even in a psychiatric center. You can, I know, I have been to all three places and had it offered or handed to me. I remember an AA meeting, years ago, before trouble had come for me and I chased it down. The speaker said, “Your addiction will lead you to Jails, Prisons, and even mental institutions.” I thought, bullshit. He was right though, it had simply taken a few years for me to get to all of those places.
You can also get drugs, sex, whatever you want. It’s all about money. If you got it, you can get it. But, for me, being sober and in my right mind felt good. I liked it, and I wasn’t looking for anything to take that feeling away.
I had started a small bible study with a few of the guys on the block. Yes, men who have sold drugs, flesh, murdered, all take a very keen interest in religion once they’re inside. Some of it is fake, some of it isn’t. I’m no mind reader. I could never tell the fakes from the real ones. I knew that for me it was real, on my terms though. Not beating someone over the head with the bible or telling others they’ll go to Hell if they don’t get Jesus. Just a simple belief in God. There is a God. I am in trouble. I need help. So I started the Bible study and a half dozen guys came by every day while we were unlocked.
The thing about jail is there are so many different kinds of people. Thieves. Killers. Rapists. Drunk drivers, parole violators, guys behind on child support. You name it. They like the public to believe that the harder types are kept away from the drunks and shoplifters. Not so. There is isolation. There is P.C. (Protective Custody). But those units are small and expensive to run. They can’t put everyone there, so they save it for the ones who are absolutely not equipped to make it. The ones that will get eaten alive in pop (General Population).
I tended to take the guys in my study under my wing. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not a tough guy. I don’t look for trouble. But I grew up on the streets. I don’t mean I left the house and hung out on the streets all day then went home to my comfortable bed at night. No. I lived, slept, did drugs, drank, took rides, on the streets. It was home. There was nothing else.
I had gone from the projects after a drug overdose that was nothing more than a failed suicide attempt, to live with relatives in the mountains. That place was as alien to me as the Moon would have been to anyone else. I loved it. I hated it. I completely understood it. I didn’t understand it at all. I went from the mountains to the city and right to the streets, drugs, alcohol, prostitution, and all of the other stuff that goes with living on the streets at a young age. So jail, or even prison, tough guys, killers, it’s not something that can scare me. The place. The men. I have seen men murdered right in front of me. How can a guy in jail scare me?
I’ve been told it shows. Something in the way I look at a man. Something they see. Something. Whatever it is they leave me alone. The few times I was tried by someone it didn’t turn out good for them. Living on the streets will teach you to fight, and it doesn’t take a lot to make people leave you alone in jail. So, I took these guys under my wing. That meant everybody else leaves them alone the same way they leave me alone.
After awhile that gets to the C.O. (Correctional Officer), what would have been called a guard in the old days. He uses that information, so if a guy comes in that needs a little looking after he points them to me. They usually catch on quick. Join the bible study and people leave you alone. Sad but true. Kind of like Jesus’ protection racket. I didn’t mean for it to be that way but I knew it was. I still did the study every day.
Sometimes a guy would come in with a crime that might make others go after him. In those cases they would put them in P.C. if they could. Or Admin Seg (Administrative Segregation) we called it. Same as P.C. . With Admin Seg the guy doesn’t have a say, with P.C. They do, or at least on paper they do. If they are really concerned he goes. But sometimes there are borderline cases. Or bad cases but guys that seemed to have their shit together enough to make it. In those cases they put them in pop.; And if they came to my block the C.O. comes to me and personally tells me what the deal is. What kind of crime the guy has, and asks me to keep an eye on them.
If you see hardcore prison movies you might think C. O’s and Cons have no respect, business, or anything else between each other. Bullshit. Nothing comes into a prison unless it goes by a C.O. . Think about that. Nothing. And, nothing happens inside, drugs, alcohol, whatever, unless a Con has a hand in it. That means the two factions work together. Always. I spent a lot of years in a max prison and I always laughed at the new guys who came in spouting shit about cops, ( C.O.’s ), whatever. They hate them. this and that. They have no clue what the real deal is. You see them a few months later and they have usually fallen in line. If not they’re gone. Shipped off by the C.O.’s or stabbed up by Cons (Inmates). Either way, they have decided to buck the system and that doesn’t work. Not only doesn’t it work it causes problems for everyone else.
So the C.O. comes to me one day and says, “Look… This guy will be on the news tonight… Killed his girlfriends baby.”
“Allegedly,” I add.
“Yeah… Allegedly,” the C.O. admits. “So I got no space in P.C.. I need you to keep an eye on him.”
I just nod. Like I said it is give and take. He doesn’t say he’ll give me a pack of smokes, or some weed, or whatever. He asks, I do. Someday, he knows, I’ll ask and he’ll do. It works that way.
You might say, “How can you associate with Killers? Killers of Babies?” I could explain it but you wouldn’t get it. The best I can do is tell you that Jail, and Prison more so, are entirely different worlds. The rules we live by out here don’t apply. The moral code is different. The other thing is judgment. Sounds like bullshit but it isn’t.
Men die in prison all of the time. I knew I was going. Maybe I would be one of those that died. Many men hated me for putting myself between the men they wanted to use. Stopping them. They liked the world where they can prey on the weak and there is no one to stop them. They hate anything that disrupts that. So maybe someone would kill me for that. Or the life I had lived. Crimes I had committed. When I really looked at it, it came down to the fact that I was no one to judge anyone. If someone stabbed me for that? So what.
My motto was Iacta Alea Est (Loosely translated to ‘The Die Is Cast.’). And it was. It was cast, all that remained was to live it. So I took the kid under my wing. Big kid. Early twenties. Cried for the first few weeks. Wouldn’t come out of his cell. Scared to death. I put the word around to leave him alone and he was left alone.
He came to me a few weeks into his time. He looked like Hell. He hadn’t been eating, taking care of himself. It looked like he had at least begun to start taking care of himself again. I had talked to him through the bars dozens of times…
“God can help… It’s not over… If you need to talk, even if it’s the middle of the night, tell the C.O.. He’ll crack my cell. We can talk… Don’t do anything stupid…”
That sort of stuff. And, I meant it. I wasn’t trying to look at this guy any certain way at all. So he came to me a few weeks into it. He talked. Not about his crime. Not about the weather. Lunch. He came to talk about God. What did I think of God? What did I think God thought of people like us who committed crimes and went to prison? I did my best to answer. I answered honestly too.
He came to the studies every day. His demeanor didn’t change though. He never smiled. He never laughed at anything. On the other hand he didn’t seem moody. He just seemed very deep into his thoughts. Probably more than a little depressed too.
Eventually he started asking for time alone. Time after Bible study. He had other questions, he said.
The first few times it was not much. The dance…
“Do you think God can forgive us when we do really bad things?”
“Yes, I do.”
“But I mean really bad stuff.” He looked at me and the tears began to leak from the corners of his eyes.
“You think I haven’t done really bad things?” I asked. It’s where I usually go. It’s safe. I’m talking about myself. It takes the pressure off them.
“You don’t seem like you could have.”
“I have,” I told him.
We talked about life. We talked all around the subject. I knew what it was. I could feel what he wanted to ask but was too afraid to ask.
“Listen,” I said a few days later. We were in my cell. I was sitting on the bed he was sitting at my little steel seat and table welded to the bars. “I’m not a priest… This doesn’t work that way.” He had come in. Sat down, and told me he had to tell me something.
“I know that,” he said. But even as he spoke the tears started hard and heavy and he lost control for a few minutes. I let him cry. Sometimes it’s best to stay silent. Eventually he got himself under control. “I know,” he said at last, picking the conversation up where it had left off.
“So… If you are about to…. About to say something that is serious, I want you to understand that… You may look at me a certain way… Like someone you can talk to about anything. but, I’m not a priest… I can be subpoenaed.. Made to testify… Be careful what you say to me.”
His eyes were red and bloodshot. It looked as if maybe he hadn’t really slept much at all since he had come there. “I know… I know that.”
I nodded. I think I was convinced that he would get back up and leave after what I had just told him. More than once a guy had come close to the same thing, what amounted to, or even was a confession, and had shut up once I said my piece. I thought this kid would too. Or change the subject to something else.
“I did it,” he said. He dropped his head into his hands. “I can’t fuckin’ live with it… I did it.”
The silence lasted so long it seemed to me as though it had always been there. “I wish you hadn’t told me.”
“But I needed to,” he said. His eyes caught mine and I had to nod.
“Well, what do you want to do.” I asked? I knew he had the same lawyer I had.
“I just want to say it… Get it over with… I can’t stand it… I have to say it.”
“So you say it,” I said quietly. I didn’t say that lightly. I understood better than he did what would happen if he did. But I also understood about living with bad shit inside you. It killed you a little every day. It poisoned everything you did. Every relationship. Your whole life. I had an appointment of my own coming up where I would be walking into court and confessing to my crime in exchange for an amount of time that would make most men give up right there. But I had to do that or I wouldn’t be able to live with myself. With me. What and who I was. So I understood what he needed to do and I understood why, like I said, probably better than he did at that moment, he was unconcerned with the consequences of his confession.
It had been part of what had pushed me to the drug overdose that had put me on the streets. That poison inside, some mine, some I carried for others, but poison is poison, it doesn’t care who it kills. My poison had been the streets where you die all of the time. Where some kids did die. There today, gone tomorrow. And sometimes I asked myself where they had had gone to. Did they get off the streets? Did they make it out? Sure, I told yourself. I knew it was bullshit, but lies were better than the truth. It was dying, you couldn’t do a real thing worth anything in the world until you somehow got it out of you. So, I understood it.
He didn’t say much more. Cried for a long time. I prayed with him. He did get me to promise to call my lawyer and talk to him. He couldn’t bring himself to do it as he had lied to him and told him he didn’t do it. I could have told him that everyone lies to the lawyer at first. The lawyer usually hears the truth later on when things get serious. But the lawyers aren’t stupid they know. But I said nothing. Just tried my best to pray with him and reassure him.
The next day I called my lawyer and he came down to see me. I told him what the kid had told me and he took care of it. When I came back to the block he asked if I had talked to the lawyer. I nodded and that was about all there was time for. A second later the C.O. called him to the gate and he was gone. The C.O. himself came in later on and packed his stuff up.
He was immediately transferred out of the jail and I never saw him again. I did see the lawyer again of course as I worked through my own legal problems. Eventually the kid plead guilty in court and went and did his time, life.
I wanted to tell this story for a couple of reasons. First, it is very difficult to be honest when you are facing something like that. I tried not to think about the crime. It was something I had to put aside or else I would have nothing but hate for him either, and that is not what God wants from us, what God wanted from me. Second, he stuck to it. It’s one thing to come clean in a moment of absolute despair, but he stuck to it. Saw it through and then he went and did his time.
Lastly. It made an impression on me. And so when it came time for me to be honest I was able to do that too. I was able to follow through with the plans I had set into motion and then go and do my time, and I think it made me a better person. My mind is clear. It allowed me to be honest with myself too. I don’t think that people should be able to walk away from those sorts of consequences. It appalled me to think that some people do, but in the life I lived I saw it happen very often It was nice to say I do believe you should do the time, stick to it, be honest for a change.
I owe that to that kid that walked into my cell and showed me that you could truly be a complete wreck and turn yourself around. You have to start somewhere. That was where I started.
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