Dreaming

I was incarcerated in a prison -- a very large, sprawling operation with multiple floors, multiple wings. It was more of a dormitory than a classic prison, with linoleum and cinder block rather than steel bars and harsh lights. I lived in a big room that housed perhaps thirty men. Everything in the room had to be laid out and arranged with precision - the beds had to be made just so; the things hanging in the closet had to have all of the hangers facing to the left, colors had to be in order. It was a larger, meaner version of the big bays that were just coming into use in Air Force basic training when I was there forty years ago. The on-site equivalent of that organization's Drill Instructor was a burly guard known for his petty cruelties. He would allow the inmates to watch a football game on the television, for example, but when the game was almost over, if it was a close, exciting game, he would snap off the set, smiling. Occasionally, he would then casually insert the earphone of a portable radio and listen to the final moments. He would not tell anyone the results.

I was being released. It wasn't the end of my sentence; something had happened, like a DNA test or exculpatory evidence, that was freeing me. The word came as we were finishing up some kind of group activity. I immediately left the group and went back to the room where we lived, quickly gathering my few possessions, then went down to the administrative center. Twice, on my way, a strolling guard intercepted me, angrily; seeing my pass, reluctantly let me go by. In the administrative center, while one of the secretaries was finishing paperwork, I spoke quietly with another, a large, stolid woman who had never been gratuitously mean to me. As they were handing me the release documents, the warden came to the door of his office. He told me to come into his office. Want to give you something to remember us by, he said, affably. As the door closed, I saw the men holding the billy clubs.