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One Sentence at a Time By Richard Humphries

The hard thing to remember, the Captain said, is that every guy is different. The Cap, Officer D. and I were sitting around the office well past the end of my shift. There had been fourteen disciplinary hearings in one night, a record number, and we were finally done. As the clerk, I had typed all the reports, sending copies to the Inmate and Admin and Sacramento and Files. You have to remember to look at them as one guy doing one sentence at a time. the Cap drained his coffee cup. Not as just another pain-in-the-ass prisoner. Like Humphries, you mean? Officer D. laughed.

I was good at my job and appreciated it. Every day worked took a day off my sentence, and with nearly four years in front of me I needed that half time. Bad. On any given day you could have asked me and I would have it down to the month and day until my release. Every three months I marked off a quarter-year in my journal calendar. Marking off mere months didnt help. I had my remaining time broken down into months, weeks, days, hours, Tuesdays, Christmases, Springs; anything but birthdays and especially those of my children. I felt an almost constant desire to reconnect with my kids. I had to get out as soon as I possibly could.

The smallest stuff makes you miss them. A goddamn happy family commercial on television can make you punch something, or almost cry, or both. The Captain suggested a smoke and we went outside. It was June and the weather was summer warm even at eleven p.m. The Yard was empty and silent. In the dark, the blue light of televisions flickered in the narrow cell windows. Someone had left a Marlboro on my desk, which I happily took out of my denim shirt pocket and lit. Cap was dragging on a Camel. He smoked a cigarette whenever he could. Theres only one sentence I care about, I said. If every inmate was like you, the Captain said, this job would be a breeze. You sure were over-sentenced, Hump, Officer D. was a career Correctional Officer and had seen it

all. He lit a Marlboro. If it makes you feel any better. It doesnt, but thanks anyway, I said. Besides, every guy here says they were oversentenced. We finished our smokes as we talked some baseball. I wasnt one to kiss ass, but I also wasnt afraid to talk with Staff. You really had to take them one at a time. They were all so different. . . . Thuck. I guess that would be how to describe the sound when a hard-driven knife is stuck in a guys gut. Thuck. Almost everyone on the Yard fell to a facedown prone position on the asphalt track as soon as the

buzzers went off. The cops came running from all directions. The Nortenos and Surenos were jumping off. Really jumping off. One of the two jumped over me to stick his opposite in the kidney. Thuck. The stuck guy went down, spurting blood as two C.O.s tackled his assailant. A C.O. took aim from the Control Room of Unit 3 and shot a block gun, hitting a man trying to kill another. The wooden bullet whammed him in the ass and he went down. Fists and blood were flying on the far end of the Yard and cops laid the whole crowd down with clouds of pepper spray. All inmates: Do not move, the loudspeaker announced. Stay down. No warning shots will be fired. Stay down.

This place, laughed my buddy Jim, laying on the track next to me, is getting fucking violent. You think? His sick laughter was contagious. You two, a C.O. shouted at us, shut the fuck up. Inmate Clerk Humphries, the loudspeaker announced, report to the Unit Office. My typewriter calls, I said to Jim, waving to a cop as I stood. See ya later. I think Ive spent about five years total so far on the ground for an alarm, he said. Jim was 46 and had been down a little over sixteen years. He was never going to get out of prison. No parole. Never. Today, he would laugh, is the first day of the rest of your life . . . sentence. . . .

I could tell Ron was feeling all crappy and guilty about his wifes death as he crossed the Yard to where I stoodin the goddamn rainwaiting my turn at the evening pill call. Bronchitis, the MT said. Probably from standing in the goddamn rain, I said. Ron had that teary look in his eyes that he only would do around me. Thanks a fucking lot. I really screwed up, he said to me in a quiet plea. Didnt I? I really ruined everything. We were friends enough. I could walk the Yard with him and not be embarrassed by his rep. He had been a successful contractor before his wife announced their divorce and his gun went off and shot her in the head. When I met him, twelve years later, he would still go crazy with the reality of what he had done.

He had albums in his cell of their cruises together. He referred to her in the present tense. Jesus. Yeah, Ron, I said, a part of it being aware of the audience in the pill line. You cant go shooting your wife in the head with a three-fifty-seven. Not a good thing. And so Ron would laugh a bit and stand beside me and talk while I waited for my chest cold pills. . . . Sunday morning Chow was a big deal on the Yard. Eggs and potatoes and turkey sausage something and grits instead of beans. Toast, even. Coffee and juice. A big deal. I was a popular tablemate because I didnt couldnt--stomach the meat. Id trade the crap with other white inmates for servings of

veggies or fruit. In the Land of the Low Bid the cuts of meat were less than prime, less than recognizable. There is a world of trouble for a White boy who shares anything, especially food, with another race. To take food from a Black mans chow tray would be suicidal. Never mind that behind the Chow Line window men of every race were slopping the potatoes and gravy and limas and whatnot, all equally sweating over the moving trays as linebackers ran back and forth, refilling bins of all of it. Ron and I were standing in line at the Chow Hall. Hump, how about I trade you half my hash browns for your links? Theres something wrong with my left arm, I said to Ron. No shit. Its like numb.

My left arm was like lead in my jacket pocket. No shit. I couldnt lift my arm. Cmon, Ron wanted those sausages. It was a weekly deal. Youre just hungry. Oh, shit, the asphalt came up suddenly to meet my face. What . . .? . . . Being the Captains Clerk saved my life. Thats my fucking Clerk, asshole, the Captain was shouting. Get him a fucking ambulance. The MT was insisting I had bronchitis and should be sent back to my cell, as he had said to me the two days before while handing me some decongestants. Hes had a chest cold for a few days, he said. An inmate in Unit 4 had recently died of a heart attack while waiting for a decision on an ambulance.

I was being helped to my wobbly feet by the gate guard and a Black inmate I didnt know. A small invisible car drove directly into my chest and I crumpled to the pavement again. . . . Oh, shit. Oh, shit, I breathed against the spray the ambulance attendant was sticking down my throat. Oh, God, thank you. My eyes began to clear. Thank you. Thank. What was that? I was in a stretcher, tied down, shirt torn away, attached to a graph machine. The scene spun and the rear doors were open to the ambulance and the Captain was saying youre going be all right. Do what the doctors are saying and the woman said its nitro spray. Hes had a massive infarction. Ben, hit it and the siren screamed and I thought how free I could be if I wasnt afraid and the woman yelled in

my ear not to fall asleep goddamn it Mister Humphries can you hear me. Can you? . . . Ill make you a great cocktail. Okay? the nurse asked. Well put it in your IV. Im scared, I said. No reason to be, Babe. Ill be right here. And she, kindly, was, while they threaded the surgical cable from my femoral artery to my heart, clearing the broken left anterior descending. Usually a death sentence for guys your age. They kept me half-conscious while they installed a stent. My right ankle was chained to the gurney the whole time as my guard sat in the corner of the Operating Room, reading a magazine. If having a heart attack is a medical disaster, having a heart attack in prison is also a psychic one.

Although the care I received at Doctors Hospital of Modesto was first rate, the Correctional Officers assigned there went out of their way to make things miserable. Their juvenile taunting ran the gamut from pitching pennies against my door all night to insisting on playing the television in my room at full volume. They were happily cruel for their own amusement. They werent from Jamestown and I was just another asshole inmate getting free medical care on their taxes. Not allowed to contact any of my family, anyone who would care about me, I never felt so alone. . . . I returned to Jamestown feeling like a zombie and told the Captain I wanted to quit my job. It was too much. The daily grind of report after report of

the worst sort of inmates doing the worst sort of stuff to each other had finally got to me. Stealing and stabbing and indecent exposure to Staff and sticking and punching and spitting in the food and nodding off on smack and threatening supervisors and drug smuggling and over-dosing and making pruno and falling down drunk, and always, always fightingfightingfighting. God, it was enough to write a fucking book and not a very good one. One thing I never saw. I never saw a report of forced sex, nothing approaching the oft-repeated joke idea that men in prison become either rapists or rape victims because theyre doing a few years. The Captain understood that his Clerk was burnt out, was going stir crazy and needed a change. He arranged for a doctor to excuse me from all work

assignments due to my medical condition. With that in my file, I would still maintain my half-time status although I wasnt working. You earned it, Hump. Still, though, I never felt lower. Life was as grim as it gets. The year left in my term looked like a century from where I sat. Death was not an unwelcome idea. I mean the concept. I certainly wasnt going to do it myself, wasnt going to leave a legacy of dying in fucking prison if I could help it. After all, I wasnt doing a Life sentence. . . . Officer D. soon approached me about filling a clerk spot temporarily for an inmate program. It was a fun place to work, he said.

Arts-In-Corrections was under the daily supervision of a remarkable woman who had the grit to be a creative artist and teacher and a quasi-prison guard simultaneously. The studio attracted inmates seeking relief from the unending boredom through some creative selfexpression. It also drew those seeking to get their hands on the many razor blades, awls, screwdrivers, paints and inks and brushes and paper and your lunch and whatever else that wasnt nailed the fuck down. And Ms. H. would have it all present and accounted for, each tool and supply hanging on its assigned hook or on the proper shelf by the time we were released to the yard with our budding collages, novels, paintings, greeting cards (a good hustle for the artistically-inclined) under arm.

Her husband, a highly regarded and talented artist in the real world would often join the classes and help with the construction of mosaic murals and holiday ornaments for local schools and towns. Soon the permanent clerk was in place. Yet, I hung around. The Arts program was a quiet oasis in the middle of the daily madness. Often a group of inmates, of every race, would be involved in a project when the Yard alarms went off beyond the locked classroom door. We would continue with our creation, apart from the craziness for a small amount of time. Most importantly to me, we had involved conversations about art and artists and styles, as I would construct yet another collage from the stacks of ancient National Geographics on hand.

My mind would wander away from Jamestown until the Yard was recalled for the day and I returned to my cell. . . . The foundation that backed the arts program was offering a small budget to start a writing class, Ms. H. explained to me, enough to hire an occasional outside instructor, buy a case or two of composition books, pens and pencils. Most of the pens went for tattoo use. were no more pens. But the Writers Group continued. We would meet on Saturdays, rain or shine, at a circle of tables in the Arts room and listen to a speaker talk about writing. There

Dont worry about where your writing is taking you, one visiting instructor told us. Just start writing one sentence at a time. We would all nod thoughtfully at her tank top and begin writing in our composition books. There was plenty of bad poetry, of course, lots of lonely nights away from ones woman. But, there was some good poetry, too, and Rap, and some eerie short stories that you hoped were fiction. I thought to write a humorous novel and so began, one sentence at a time, my first book. . . .

Digby Phelps, III The Valhalla, West Pier Sausalito, California Dear [Literary Agent/Publisher], Ill keep this brief, as I am sure you are terribly busy, everyone is these days except Yours Truly. Quite nearly went to prison last summer, was even married for a few hours, so a rest is indicated. Started with a gift shoebox of cash from Alfonso Martinez, my iffy client from shadier shores. Mixed the moola with a sudden passion named Shayna, though, and woke to an absence of both. Seems living the unexamined life will allow all manner of evil in our doors. But, I digress. Lets say things fell apartthe center could not holdand leave it at that for now. A friend of a friends friend, name of Richard Humphries, wrote it all down in a book hes calling A Blood-Dimmed Tide. I was hoping for a deeper, more spiritual kind of tome, but Richard says to hang on til the next one. Says we have to find an editor with a sense of humor first. So I faked it and told him not to worry. That I would handle it.

Shall I send you the whole ninety thousand words? It reads fast and even I found myself laughing out loud. And its my story. Cheers! Richard Humphries P.O. B. XXXXX SF, CA 94100

. . .

The cover letter went out to publishers and agents. By the time I paroled a literary agent was representing my twoalmost three--completed Digby novels. As huge of a boost this was for my ego, however, it wasnt the main benefit I gained from writing. Through Digby and his sleazy boss Schroeder and ex-girlfriend girlfriend Therese and Jasper the Art Dealer and Rock the Stockbroker and a fictitious amount of women . . .I escaped from prison and into my composition books on a daily basis.

Soon, a neglected typewriter found its way to my cell. I was up to an actual 65 words per minute and the writing of fiction brought me to life in the real world. I wrote constantly. Everywhere. While I was blithely ignoring my cellie beating off in the bunk below me, I would write until late at night of Digby, busily banging buxom blondes aboard his houseboat. While I choked down the crappy instant coffee from the Canteen, Digby was tippling bottles of bubbly at slightly disguised San Francisco watering holes. While I was alone and lonely among a great many very mean men, Digby was charming a small circle of his good friends over a candle-lit dinner.

Sentence by sentence I made an entire world. It felt like magic to me at first. Then, it began to feel more real than the reality around me. . . . In the next month or so, a company in Los Angeles will begin transmitting pod casts, the modern equivalent of the old time radio serial shows. Each week a new episode of the adventures of Digby and his friends will be sent out to their subscribers. They asked my input on the casting of the actors for this project. For weeks, I was sent audition recordings of highly talented people giving life to the lines I wrote. Sentences I wrote during my sentence, as it were. . . .

My plan is to sit at home in my big favorite chair, with my earphones on and eyes shut. Ill listen to the story, now brought to life, spoken by the characters that came to me in a prison cell such a long time ago, one sentence at a time.

Cover design by: www.ryanhumphries.com

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