Getting Life Page 10

  —JOURNAL OF MICHAEL MORTON, MARCH 4, 2006

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  We drove the few minutes to the Williamson County Jail, a place that was familiar but triggered no fond memories. This time, however, I wasn’t put in the general holding area—they took me to a different part of the jail, a section specifically for inmates who were on their way to prison. I was given a jail uniform, and everything I had of value—my watch, my wallet, a large portion of my pride—seemed to evaporate.

  I was handed what jailers called a “mattress” but most closely resembled a long, worn-out, not-quite-filled pillow. I carried my shabby cushion to the “tank,” two massive rooms holding ten or twelve men. It was dirty and dark, but I could make out a kind of dayroom, a shower, and a sleeping section. There was a communal toilet in the corner.

  Glancing around, I saw that the place was packed. All the bunks held mattresses, or bodies, or both.

  An older guy walked over as soon as the deputies slammed the door behind me. I was on guard, my defenses up. He told me the guys there had a seniority system for doling out bunks. He said as soon as someone left, I would get that guy’s bunk. He advised dragging my mattress over to the wall in the common area and making a sleeping spot there. Another guy shared that he had claimed the same space when he came in. He’d only had to sleep on the floor for three nights.

  I learned later that I had gotten good advice from the “tank” maître d’—the older inmate who served as the county jail “shot caller.” Deadly serious and rational—even helpful—the older guy seemed to know his way around jailhouse rules and rituals. I found out later he was a professional—a professional prisoner, that is—having done time in several states in addition to Texas.

  I would soon learn that guys like him were very much part of keeping a prison of any kind running, if not smoothly then at least predictably. There was an unspoken system controlling everything. My job was to pay attention and adapt.

  I slept fitfully that first night, not just because I was tossing and turning on a filthy and painfully thin sleeping pad on a concrete floor, in a crowded room filled with violent—and violently snoring—men. The guilty verdict, the entire trial, the whole six-month saga since losing Chris played continuously in my mind, like I was stuck in a theater that showed the same heartbreaking film over and over again.

  The next morning, I was introduced to another of the dubious charms that dog our massive systems of prisons and jails—the lack of effective oversight for the people in charge of the inmates’ health, safety, and security. Worse, what little oversight there is often meets with hostility from the hired hands working most closely with the inmates.

  Not long before my conviction, the state agency governing Texas jails had paid a visit to the Williamson County Jail. The inspectors apparently were not happy with what they found. For one thing, there was no hot water. So, they instructed the county to turn the hot water on for the inmates. In a fit of pique, the jailers did, indeed, turn on the hot water.

  But they turned off the cold.

  When I got out of “bed” and headed for the nearby shower, I could see a man already under the spray, soaping up and washing as fast as he could. He had expected his usual icy shower—which was what he got until the cold water ran out.

  Then the scalding water hit.

  He flung himself out of the shower and onto the concrete floor, with a scream and a bone-cracking landing. The man had received first-degree burns. Needless to say, no one wanted to shower after that. We went three days without bathing—until the inmates had proof that someone in the state capitol had finally convinced Williamson County to give its inmates hot and cold water.

  It had now been twenty-four hours since I had last seen Eric. I did not know that I wouldn’t see him again for a full year—or that he would go on to be raised by a family that completely and thoroughly hated me. Apparently, Chris’s family had been preparing to fight for custody of Eric long before I was convicted. They hired Williamson County’s former district attorney, Ed Walsh, to handle their case. The judge who made the ruling on custody was the same one who oversaw my conviction, Judge Lott.

  I missed the final day of the custody hearing because the morning the decision was to be announced in court, I was on my way to the penitentiary. Like every other inmate awaiting transfer, I was moved or held back according to a mysterious schedule that was never shared with the people it would affect most—until the last minute.

  Every few mornings a jailer would just walk up to the bars of the tank with a piece of paper and read off a list of names—men who were being transferred. There wasn’t even a two-minute warning—you were gone.

  I was amazed to learn that the guys who were leaving were actually happy about it—happy to be going to prison. They said the county jail was nothing but sitting around, doing nothing. That much was true—there was no TV, no radios, no newspapers, no make-work jobs, and very few visitors. All we could do was wait.

  For me, the boredom was broken by interviews local newspapers wanted. Sheriff Boutwell said I could do them, but only if he was sitting right there. I wasn’t sure if he wanted the publicity or the chance to continue his personal persecution of me, but these interviews offered the last chance I might ever have to get any of my story out.

  I jumped at it.

  Sitting in a small cell with peeling paint on the walls, wearing my inmate uniform—and with the sheriff a few feet away—I told reporters that my trial had been based on emotion rather than reason, that inflammatory accusations had taken the place of real evidence. The prosecutor’s operatic performance—the table pounding, yelling, and crocodile tears—should not have overwhelmed rational thought. But Ken Anderson’s diva act, the sheriff’s malignant attitude toward me, and the community’s great desire to close the case and move on all combined to almost guarantee my conviction.

  The reporters, like the jury, had not seen evidence that wasn’t admissible in court, so I filled them in. They didn’t know I had passed two polygraph examinations. They didn’t know Eric had told me he’d seen the murderer in the shower. They didn’t know he had talked with a therapist about the man. They didn’t know he’d said some of the same things to my mother.

  The reporters wrote it all down, but none of what I told them sank in. To them—to everyone really—I was just another accused, tried, and convicted pervert. My statements were seen as little more than further evidence of my sick, twisted personality, now trying to use my little boy to gain sympathy for my cause. Everything I said and the way I said it was suspect.

  The sheriff must have loved watching me lose the argument—all over again.

  On the morning the jailers came to take me to prison, I protested that I was supposed to be in court for Eric’s custody hearing—­a complaint that could not have meant less to the men handcuffing me and pulling me into their car. Who cares? I had about as much control over my movements as a suitcase being tossed in a car trunk.

  Most inmates headed for prison are chained together and piled into vans or—in the bigger counties—into buses for the long drive. For some reason, I was stuffed into the backseat of a squad car and escorted by two deputies—sort of the penal equivalent of flying first class.

  We did almost fly. From my perch in back, I could see we were averaging about eighty miles an hour. On our mad dash to the madhouse, our unhappy little trio sped past forests and farmland, nearly deserted little towns, and long stretches of nothing but scrub brush, cactus, and coyotes.

  As we rocketed past the outskirts of one tiny Texas burg, I saw a guy I will never forget. I saw him for only an instant, but in that brief moment, I realized I had never wanted to trade places with anyone more in my life.

  I was handcuffed in a police car—on the way to begin my life sentence in the Texas penitentiary. He was at the wheel of a riding lawn mower, wearing a baseball cap and a headset, with a thoroughly modern-at-the-
time Walkman strapped to his hip. I could almost see his head bobbing to music. I spied a cup holder cradling a cold drink.

  Why couldn’t I have that life—that chance to while away a morning in such an inconsequential, enjoyable way? What had he done to earn his peaceful life on the lawn mower? What had I done to deserve this high-speed race to start the rest of my life in prison?

  I wish the deputies had slowed down. I wish the drive had taken longer.

  The deputy in the driver’s seat finally let up on the gas pedal as we reached Huntsville, a one-of-a-kind company town if there ever was one. Nestled into a leafy, historic neighborhood at the edge of the old downtown is a hulking red-brick monster of a prison with a long, dark history. Known to inmates and local workers as simply the Walls, it is the centerpiece of a sprawling facility whose satellite units stretch far beyond the main “Walls” building.

  The little town is not only every inmate’s introduction to the Texas prison system, it is the exit for many as well. Regularly, a side door in one of the high brick walls opens and out pour inmates who have done their time and are free to go home. Over the years they have, on occasion, been released hundreds at a time—frantic men wearing ill-fitting clothes and floppy prison shoes. Some have women friends or beleaguered mothers waiting for them in battered cars just outside the gate. In minutes the street fills with shouts of recognition, bear hugs, and long kisses—inevitably followed by speedy exits. The cars always seem to peel out when pulling away from the Walls.

  The rest of the freed men often run whooping and hollering all the way to the nearby bus depot. While they wait for their Greyhound getaway, they load up on gum and cigarettes—and in an effort to look good for whoever is waiting at home, they use the few dollars that the Texas Department of Corrections gave exiting inmates to buy clothes from the limited selection on sale at the bus depot. No one wants to wear prison clothes a nanosecond longer than necessary.

  The Walls is also the exit point for a different kind of release. The old Huntsville unit has always been home to the state’s death chamber—the nation’s busiest execution room. The clock on the outside wall above the old building’s front door has counted down to the state-ordered executions of hundreds of men—and a handful of women. There is a businesslike tragedy to the place, a sense that in Huntsville the trains—in or out, bound for home or the great beyond—­always run on time.

  I was due to be checked in to the Diagnostic Unit on the outside edge of Huntsville. We pulled up to the back gate, getting in line behind a busload of men. Another bus packed with prisoners pulled in behind us. I felt out of place, sitting alone in the deputies’ patrol car. One guard wondered aloud why I had gotten this special treatment. Was I such a madman that I needed the extra security?

  Once inside the fences, I was unloaded and marched into a cavernous room with at least one hundred other felons. No one asked about my case. No one cared.

  The guards were loud, unflinching, and demanding of absolute and immediate compliance. Any deviation from their expectations was met with physical confrontation, at whatever level they deemed necessary.

  They told me to strip naked and stand in front of them and I did.

  Fast.

  They looked over every inch of my body, then handed me my first pair of state boxers.

  I kept in mind the advice of an old con I had met in the county jail. He told me life inside would be easier if I kept my eyes open and my mouth shut. He was right.

  Guards hustled me into one of the several lines of men snaking their way to the front to pick up our state-issued boots. While I was waiting, I noticed the bare back of the man in front of me. It was covered with scars—obvious stab wounds. I counted thirteen. Either he was a hard man to kill or his assailant had been incompetent. I didn’t ask him which it was.

  But the way the dark red, twisted flesh marked his pale back served as a graphic reminder of how very serious my time inside the Texas Department of Corrections was going to be. People got hurt here. They got killed. I needed to adapt. My life now depended on it.

  Next stop was the barbershop. While some guys walked in sporting long, scraggly ponytails or full beards, we all walked out looking the same—like closely shorn sheep. Most of my hair and my longtime mustache were gone. I sported a shockingly white strip above my lip for weeks. Many of my early conversations with other inmates began with the question “You used to have a mustache, right?”

  I used to have a lot of things.

  It is odd to look back and analyze my first days inside the TDC system. I can see now that in order to deal with the shock of the place and the people I now lived with, I had to push back my grief for Chris. I no longer had the luxury of worrying about the custody fight over Eric. My past quickly became a hard-to-remember dream. I simply couldn’t think about it. I had more immediate concerns.

  My survival seemed to hinge on my ability to blend in. I didn’t want to make waves. I wanted to hide in the crowd. I vowed to obey the rules, keep my head down, and learn as much as I could about my new, dangerous world while I fought for an appeal. I figured that, even in a best-case scenario, it could take as long as a few years to get this mess straightened out.

  It was a pathetically optimistic assessment.

  That first night inside, though, I had no time to think about the future. I was just trying to survive till sunrise. Because the system was so overcrowded, I was assigned to a bunk in the hallway of a packed cellblock.

  I didn’t sleep much, but not because I spent those first nights bemoaning my lot in life. I stayed awake because I wanted to stay alive—instead of sleeping, I watched restlessly for thieves, perverts, and predators. I knew some new inmates had been beaten or raped—even killed. I was determined to avoid that fate.

  So I lay there and listened—to the prison background music that never seems to change much. I heard slamming doors, buzzers, the squawking PA system, whispered conversations between cells, and the footsteps of guards walking by my bunk doing one more of their constant inmate “counts.”

  The counting went on obsessively, even all night. Keeping track of us—making sure heads were on pillows and bodies were on bunks—wasn’t everything to the prison system; it was the only thing.

  Throughout the night I could hear inmates calling out to each other by making animal noises. There were really no secret messages involved. It was just a way to mess with the moment—something inmates are very good at.

  Down the line of cells, I would hear what sounded like a dog barking. From the other end would come another bark, and then the call of a meowing cat. Above me, I would hear a rooster or a cow or a crow. I would hear inmates snickering, followed sometimes by an impression of a monkey or a mynah bird or the hiss of a snake. It was like trying to sleep in a darkened zoo, complete with cages. Sometimes, we, too, had visitors from outside come to view us.

  The Texas prison system’s most important—and dreaded—­visitor, during my early years inside, was a federal court judge with the fantastically appropriate name of William Wayne Justice. He was personally responsible for dragging the Texas Department of Corrections into the twentieth century, with the prison system administrators kicking and screaming all the way. He reorganized the entire TDC, made major changes in inmate medical treatment, addressed the issues of overcrowding, and generally made the state’s prisons better—if not perfect—places to be.

  Judge Justice would let prison officials know he was coming with very short notice, but he cleverly would never reveal exactly which facility he would be checking out. As a consequence, the whole prison got at least superficially cleaned up—fast.

  A couple of days after I got to Huntsville, word spread like wildfire that Judge Justice was coming our way. The announcement set off an administrative panic to make sure the place was presentable. Inmates were instantly shipped out to other locations, and all bunks were removed from the hallway. It gave me a cha
nce to worry less about being assaulted by random inmates and more about who my cell partner was going to be.

  When I reached my cell, the door was open and the place was empty. There were two bunks, one over the other, a tiny sink, and a toilet in the corner. There wasn’t much room. When I stood in the middle and stretched out my arms, even before my elbows locked, my fingertips touched both walls.

  “Hey, cellie!”

  I turned and saw a man dragging a mattress my way. I made room for him by climbing into the top bunk. He was about my size and height, and he quickly revealed that he possessed an attribute not always appreciated in the free world—he was a nonstop conversationalist.

  He told me he was a drug smuggler, but for all I knew, he could have been a child molester or a murderer. Whatever he had done, he had a treasure trove of fascinating stories. He talked a lot and slept a lot, and within two weeks, we went our separate ways.

  I never saw him again—but then, that’s the nature of prison relationships. Whether you liked people or loathed them, you had little say in how long they’d be around you or the role they would play in your life. The person could be your cell partner or a guard, someone who threatened you in the chow hall, a bully in the shower, or a best pal in the TV room—it didn’t matter. Every inmate and officer was moved at the whim of the administrators. Sometimes it was for safety reasons, but there was never anything like friendship or your wishes taken into consideration.

  Each inmate stayed in the Diagnostic Unit until TDC psych workers had the chance to interview him. They needed to know how dangerous each man was, how far he had strayed from reality, or whether he could be counted on to blend into institutional life. They had a set of five or six standard interview scripts, depending on the nature of your crime, your criminal history, or your family background and education level. Some scripts were aimed at ferreting out hidden feelings that might lead to trouble inside. Sex offenders were asked about everything from their attraction to their mothers to how they felt about animals.