A Christian, a Liar, and a Thief
A Story About the Most Popular Guy in Prison
3 years and 6 months until freedom
“5b, 6 top!” shouted the Sergeant through the plexiglass booth before he pressed the button to unlock the door.
The day I had been waiting for was finally here. I was in prison. And not just locked in the receiving block awaiting a security classification. I was walking out of that block and into general population along with a few other guys who were coming from jail.
Fat Terry took a deep breath before the words “I’m home,” left his mouth. The sound of his voice resonated within his gigantic chest and echoed across the vast empty space between the housing units.
“Fat Terry, is that you?” was the answer to his call. An inmate on the rec yard who noticed our arrival was pressed up against the fence.
“I’m home,” Fat Terry responded — even louder this time.
“Ah haaa, Fat Terry’s back,” the other guy shouted with excitement before turning back to the rec yard.
I shook my head in disbelief. It would be some months before I was the guy pressed against the fence noticing a new arrival I recognized — Ricky from jail. The difference was that these guys recognized each other from this prison. Fat Terry had gotten out, reoffended, and was convicted and sentenced in a short enough time span to see familiar faces here.
My relationship with Terry started on my first day in jail. I remember being locked in my cell in phase 1 of the jail — bored out of my mind — when he entered the pod dressed in the white scrubs of a trustee while pushing a cart full of books. Our cells opened for a few minutes giving us a chance to grab a book from the cart.
“Any recommendations?” I asked him.
“Yea,” he said as he picked up one of the books. “The Shack is real good. Take this one.”
And I did.
When I went back to my cell I read the story of a father who’s daughter was kidnapped and murdered before he underwent a supernatural journey in an effort to confront his grief and explore forgiveness.
It was a book about faith.
A few months later I joined a casual game of poker that would meet and play every evening. We’d play high/low games where each person would be dealt 4 or 5 cards and a board of 10 or 20 additional cards would be laid out. The person with the best poker hand would split the pot with the person with the best padooki hand.
We’d wager commissary food — represented by face cards from an older deck of cards with a different backing. But very little money actually exchanged hands. It was just a way to pass the time.
Until Terry moved into the pod and was invited to join us. I quickly realized that with Fat Terry at the table I was losing commissary food at a much faster rate — he always seemed to have the best hand.
I watched him closely during one hand when I noticed there was an ace of spades on the board in addition to the ace of spades in his hand.
“Hold on, hold on,” I said. “Why are there 2 aces of spades in the deck?”
Terry tried to laugh it off and play innocent. “Man, that’s a misdeal. What ya’ll doin with extra cards at the table?” He threw his hand down. “Sort out that deck and deal ‘em again,” he said.
The other guys at the table laughed. Everybody knew somebody was cheating. But now that it was out in the open, it seemed like everyone just saw it as an opportunity to cheat harder.
I stopped playing poker with them after that.
Today we continued walking for a short way before Fat Terry turned left at the fork in the sidewalk to building-6 — the housing unit where those who needed more medical attention were kept. Older guys, guys with diabetes, guys in wheelchairs, etc. Building-6 had the shortest walk to the chow hall and was also the closest to medical. Nobody was very sick there though. If someone had a more serious medical condition, like cancer, they would go to a different facility altogether that was more equipped to handle that.
I walked to the next fork in the sidewalk before turning left toward building-5 — a mesh laundry bag full of all my stuff slung over my shoulder. Nobody familiar to me joined me on this leg of my journey. As the building loomed nearer, Hankley’s words echoed in my ears — another guy I met on my first day in jail.
“Get on down the road,” he had said. “They got softball, volleyball, horseshoes. You can buy peanut butter by the jar. They got vocational programs, so you can work on small engines. You can go to school, get your GED. Yea, there ain’t shit like that here, man, get on down the road.”
I was down the road. I was supposed to be excited. I was excited. But I was also anxious. People get stabbed in prison right? What if I get stabbed? Are there gangs? I don’t wanna join a gang. Will they target me if I don’t join? Will they steal all my stuff and beat me for no apparent reason? I had no idea what to expect.
I approached building-5 and pulled on the door handle. Locked. I looked to my left and saw Fat Terry had already disappeared into building-6 a hundred feet away.
How’d he get in so fast? I wondered.
Buzz was the sound that came from the door in front of me.
Oh, somebody’s watching me from somewhere. It must be unlocked now.
I reached out to pull the door again but I was too slow. The buzzing had stopped and the door was still locked.
Not off to a good start so far.
I peered in through the plexiglass and all I could see was a 20 sq. ft. sally port and a bunch of guys in t-shirts on the other side of that — one of whom was staring at me. There was no expression on his face.
Buzz went the door again, and I grabbed it in time to feel it pull open. I walked into the sally port and buzz went the next door. I continued through into my new housing unit.
In front of me were a few stainless steel tables bolted to the floor — a couple of guys playing chess on one of them. To my right were a couple of microwaves and a hot water dispenser — a man filling up a plastic coffee mug with hot water.
A 5 foot tall cinderblock wall separated this room from the bathroom. Someone walked out of the saloon-style doors and I saw the urinals and the toilets. 4 urinals. 4 full-sized toilets. No dividers between any of them.
Beyond the bathroom were the bunks — 4 rows of them.
The man who was staring at me a moment ago was the first to address me. “Ay, you come from receiving with Fat Terry?”
Damn, does everybody know this guy?
“Yea, we were in jail together for a few months,” I responded. “Just got out of receiving.”
“I’m gonna have to go look him up later,” said the man before turning back to stare out the window through the sally port. “We go way back.”
I turned back to the bunks to try to search for mine. “6 top,” the sergeant had said. The bunk on the row to the left had a big black “1” painted on it. The bunk on the row to the right had a big black “49” painted on it. 12 of the beds in the middle of the room had no top bunk.
I started walking down the row to the left until I got to bunk 6. There was someone sleeping in it.
Well that can’t be right.
I turned around and went back toward the front door to the officers’ booth. There was a little metal grate at eye level that looked like something to talk into.
“Where am I supposed to go?” I asked into the metal thing.
“They can’t hear you through that,” said Fat Terry’s friend without even turning around. “You gotta talk into the mail slot,” his arm extended behind him to point at the big slot at knee-level in front of me.
Really?
But before I could bend over and talk into the slot I heard a voice shout over a loudspeaker.
“WAHH WAHH WAHHH WAHHH, COME ON LET’S GO!”
And then through the slot I heard, “hang on.”
A moment later and one of the officers exited the booth into the sally port and then entered the pod. He looked at me and said, “hang on,” again before continuing his walk to bunk 6 to rouse the guy in my new bed.
I didn’t let my eyes pry too hard into anyone’s personal space while I waited, but I did get a gauge of the guy sleeping in my bunk. In particular, I wanted to know how thoroughly I needed to sanitize the area before moving into it.
Decently thorough, was the conclusion I came to.
I turned my attention to the game of chess happening next to me. I liked chess and thought I was quite good at it before I went to jail. I was wrong though.
One guy at the chess board was a dark-skinned guy. I would later learn he was a devout Muslim. He was very quiet and kept to himself. But his breath was so bad that I could smell it from 6 feet away.
The other guy at the board was a middle-aged white guy. I would later learn that he practiced Ásatrú — a religion that worships Old Norse gods like Odin and Thor. Really — at least at this institution — it was a front for white supremacy. In the days that would follow this guy would repeatedly use the N-word in conversation with me to describe many of the people who lived here.
I have no idea how many years they’ve been doing it or how many years they continued doing it after I was gone, but these two diametrically opposed individuals would come together every day to play chess.
I never asked either one of them if I could play.
Before long the previous tenant of 6 top had loaded up his own laundry bag and was on his way out the front door. I then made my way over and started unloading my stuff into my new locker.
My new home.