Chapter Fifteen #3
Toward the end of my third week here, I hear a commotion downstairs on tier two—shouting and yelling, some guard on the intercom squawking, “Code Purple! Building B, first floor! Code Purple!” The emergency turns out to be an inmate’s suicide.
He’s torn his sheets into strips and braided them into a makeshift rope.
Then, during one of the breaks outside his cell, he tied one end of his rope to a stair railing and, at the other end, slipped the noose he’d fashioned over his head, tightened it, and jumped into the stairwell.
Returning from a commissary pickup, Manny witnesses the jump and the guy’s dying struggle.
At chow that night he’s bug-eyed as he provides all the gruesome details.
“This wasn’t any half-assed cry for help.
He wanted out of here. He was swinging back and forth between the first and second tier, his body twitching and jerking all over the place.
They called maintenance to get a ladder over here, but by the time it arrived, he’d stopped moving.
I tell you, I seen a lot of dead people at wakes and shit, but not anyone dying in front of me.
By the time they cut him down, his whole head was purple like an eggplant. ”
Someone at the table says the guy’s last name was Hogan and that he was doing time here for Assault One. “Found out his half brother was boning his wife and went after the mofo with a pipe wrench.”
Another guy says he can’t picture Hogan.
“Skinny white dude, thirties, horn-rimmed glasses.”
“Oh, him? He didn’t seem like the type.”
“There’s a type? Don’t think so, bro. I heard he just found out the wifey was divorcing him and suing for sole custody of their kids.”
“That’s cold, man. She must feel like shit now.”
“Probably why he did it. Give her a big fuck-you on his way out.”
Nods all around. I look down at my half-eaten meal and say nothing.
That night I wrestle again with insomnia. Emily might divorce me, and if that happens, I’ll just have to accept it. But she’d never withhold Maisie from me. That wouldn’t happen. Would it?
At chow the next night, the conversation’s about Hogan again—specifically, the removal of his corpse.
Pug says, “You ever notice how they always do the ‘back-door paroles’ during third shift? Probably because in the daytime some reporter or politician might see another one going out in a body bag. Next thing you know, there’d be a front-page story about why these hang-ups keep happening.
Nothing DOC hates more than bad publicity.
Somebody ought to write a book about all the shit that goes on around here that nobody knows about. ”
After that, the conversation shifts to other matters: Yankees versus Red Sox, predictions about when the next lockdown is going to be, whether or not some female CO has gotten breast implants. My mind is still on Hogan.
Maybe he was smarter than the rest of us, I think. At least he found a way out of this hellhole. The table goes silent and everyone’s looking at me, some of them with sporkfuls of food on the way to their mouths. That’s when I realize I didn’t just think it. I said it out loud.
A guy at the other end asks Manny what my name is.
When he tells him, the guy says, “Well, son of a bitch, Ledbetter. I guess you ain’t a deaf-mute after all.
” They all snicker and go back to eating.
Everyone, that is, except Manny. He isn’t shoveling in the slop on his tray or running his mouth for once. He’s just staring at me.
A couple of minutes later, one of the guards shouts, “That’s it, gentlemen! Head ‘em up and move ‘em out!” And like a herd of obedient cattle, we all stand and walk our trays over to the garbage cans.
Manny catches up to me on the walkway heading back to B Block.
I’ve been doing the math in my head: a three-year sentence minus the three weeks I’ve done leaves a hundred and fifty-three more weeks.
I can’t do it. “You all right, Corby?” Manny asks.
It’s the first time since I got here that someone’s called me by my first name.
Without looking at him, I tell him I’m fine.
Dying would free me from my unbearable guilt.
And sometimes I indulge myself by imagining that Niko is alive again in some other place unknowable to the still-living.
Reunited by death, he and I will laugh and play together, run after each other.
But allowing myself this fantasy is inevitably followed by intense feelings of heartache and loss. …
How will Emily react to my death? She’ll grieve, sure, but will she also feel relieved to be done with me?
Free to move on? And what about Maisie? Emily’s promised that my daughter and I will stay connected through photos and drawings, but she’s said she will not bring her here for in-person visits.
If I last three years at this place, by the time I get out, she’ll be five and I’ll be a stranger.
I might as well admit it: they’ll both be better off without me complicating their lives. …
Mom will take it hard, but she’s strong and has a lot of friends who’ll support her. And if my father feels any regrets, well, that will be on him to deal with. Or not. Dad’s pretty good about intellectualizing his way around difficult truths.
Over the next couple of days and nights, my flirtation with suicide becomes an obsession. Thinking about it energizes me, but then the adrenaline subsides and I crash, the prospect of my death triggering sobs I have to stifle with my pillow pressed against my face.
How should I do it? Purple like an eggplant .
Not by hanging myself in the stairwell, I know that.
There’s no way I’d make it a public spectacle.
Sleeping pills would be an easy way out, but how would I get ahold of enough?
… Maybe I can find something in our cell that has a sharp edge, hack away at a vein, and bleed out during the hours when Pug is at work.
But no. Some CO might see the blood during count and intervene.
He’d be a hero and I’d be a failure at one more thing. …
What about death by suffocation? Plastic trash bags used for something other than trash are contraband, which makes them a hot commodity here at Yates.
The workout guys fill them with water and lift them during lockdowns when the weight room’s off-limits; the alkies use them as toilet tank liners for the jailhouse hooch they ferment from a mixture of bread, sugar, water, and fruit rinds.
“Tastes like shit,” Pug has said. “But if someone’s desperate to get cocked, ‘pruno’ will do the trick.
” I’m repulsed by the thought of drinking homemade booze distilled in a toilet tank but wonder whether I’d be able to resist it if it was put in front of me.
Pathetic but probably not. Before I got here, I read the Big Book promise that the obsession to drink gets lifted for those who follow the program, but I haven’t been to a meeting since my sentencing.
Lieutenant Cavagnero said they have AA here, but that counselor never got back to me before she transferred out of here and I haven’t followed through with anyone else.
It won’t really matter, I figure, if I kill myself. My addictions will die along with me.
I know Pug has access to those clear plastic bags at work because I’ve watched him bring a couple back to our cell, fold them, and stash them in his lockbox.
The problem is, he never forgets to lock the fucking thing.
But DeShaun, an inmate who works janitorial on our tier, has a small side business going, swapping trash bags for commissary: candy bars, soup packets, styling gel.
I won’t have anything to barter with until my commissary account gets set up, but maybe then I can make a trade.
If I do, then work up enough courage, I can pull it tight around my head and suffocate myself in minutes.
I’ve heard both arguments about suicide: that it’s the coward’s way out and that it takes amazing courage.
I go with the second theory, but once I commit to it, I better have the balls to follow through.
My crying jags continue on and off that night and into the next day, but I’m dry-eyed and quiet, lying face-down on my top bunk, when the door pops and Lieutenant Cavagnero enters the cell. I sit up, swing my legs over the side, and watch him walk to the window, his back to me.
In my limited interactions with the guards at Yates, there seem to be two types.
The gung-ho cowboys just arrived from their academy training are eager to demonstrate what hard-asses they can be if their authority gets challenged.
The older guards are easier to deal with because they have nothing to prove; they’re just focused on getting through their shift without any hassles or complications.
Cavagnero is one of the second type, but why is he here?
I don’t think officers make house calls.
When he turns and faces me, he says, “So how’s it going, Ledbetter?”
I shrug. Say, “It’s going.” Pug has advised me that the less said to the guards, the better—that none of them can be trusted, especially the friendly ones.
“You been here, what? A couple of weeks now?”
“Three and change,” I say.
He sits down on my lockbox like a chummy uncle or something. “Big adjustment for you, I bet. How are you and Liggett getting along?”
“All right, I guess.” After all the kowtowing I’ve done, has Pug complained about me anyway? Is that what this is about?
Cavagnero nods. “That’s good. He can get a little prickly sometimes. He and his last roommate had some dust-ups, one of them a humdinger. They both went to seg for that one and when they got out, we moved Cappy to D Block.”
“Yeah, well, Pug expects to be the boss. He made that clear from day one.”
“You have a problem with that?”
I shake my head.
“So listen, some of us have noticed you don’t circulate much. Skip a lot of meals. Stay put in here during common time. Someone said the only time they saw you out on the yard, you just stood there and didn’t talk to anyone.”
Not true. I had a conversation with a couple of racist assholes and got hit on by a drag queen. And who’s this “someone”? One of the guards? Has Manny opened his big mouth about me? I tell Cavagnero I’m more of a loner than a socializer.
“Uh-huh. So we were just wondering. You depressed?”
“Sometimes. This place is pretty depressing. Why?”
Instead of answering my question, he asks me another one.
“What about your people on the outside? Friends? Family? Much contact there? You getting some support?” I tell him I’m still waiting to get my phone account funded and the people on my visitors’ list approved.
“No contact yet then, huh? Well, that stuff takes a little time, but like you said, it’s only been three weeks. Right?”
“Right.”
“But you wouldn’t say you’re overly depressed, would you?”
“ Overly depressed? What do you mean?”
“Well, like if, for example, you were thinking about hurting yourself.”
“Oh. No, then,” I say. “Not overly.” Now I get it. He’s trying to find out whether I’m going to become another Hogan.
He smiles, stands up, and walks toward the door.
Then he turns back. “Because if you were, you could talk to someone—a counselor or one of the visiting psychologists. There’s usually a waiting list to get an appointment, but I could probably help you jump the line if you’re struggling. Or you could talk to me.”
I nod. Thank him.
“And look, it gets easier to be here once you’ve gotten your bearings, made a couple of friends you can trust. These first weeks are the hardest for guys like you: first-time offenders who never imagined they’d end up here.
For a lot of the guys doing time, it’s just part of the life.
They start in juvie, then graduate to big-boy jail.
Do some time and cycle out, commit another crime and cycle back in.
Some of them get so they prefer being on the inside.
But for guys like you, it’s a whole new experience.
Takes getting used to, but then it’s okay. Right?”
“Right,” I say. “I’ll keep that in mind.”
“Good. Okay, nice talking to you, Ledbetter. Have a good evening.”
“Yup. You too.”
A few seconds after he’s gone, I hear his voice again, coming through the tray trap in our steel cell door. “Hey, Ledbetter?”
“Yeah?”
“Keep the faith.”
“Uh-huh. Thanks.”
Lying there, I start wondering about Cavagnero’s motivation for visiting me.
Have I just been offered some genuine compassion?
It’s in short supply around here, so it’s nice to think so.
Keep the faith: Was he pushing religion?
Or has he been sent here to try to prevent any future bad publicity Yates might get if there’s a second suicide within a week? Don’t trust any of them, Pug said.
Later that afternoon, during one of our tier’s five-minute breaks for common time, I go out on the corridor to show them I’m not isolating.
That’s what they want to see, right? There are just a few others out here, talking and laughing together halfway down the corridor.
One of them is DeShaun. And there, maybe ten steps away from me, is his cleaning cart, parked by itself with a box of garbage bags on the top.
Opportunity seems to be whispering, Do it.
This is a sign. Don’t be a wuss. I look around to see whether the coast is clear, then yank out two of the bags, fist them, and walk back in my cell.
That night, after lights-out, I make my plan.
I’ll do it in the morning. Once Pug leaves for work, I’ll grab that stubby little pencil in my survival kit and use the backs of those commissary order sheets to write notes to Emily and my mother, explaining why this is the best thing for all of us.
… I’ll double up the bags in case I accidentally poke a hole in one or try to claw my way out before I lose consciousness.
If everything goes the way it should, I’ll be dead before the midmorning count.
That’s probably when they’ll discover me.
By chow time, I’ll most likely be the topic of conversation.
I can’t place him. Kept to himself. Killed his own kid.
A week later, I’ll just be another “back-door parolee” whose name nobody will remember.
With my decision made and my plan in place, I feel relief.
I pull one of the plastic bags from beneath my pillow, unfold it, and place it loosely against my face.
It rises and falls with each breath I take, almost as if I’ve given it life.
In the morning, it will return the favor and give me death. My way out of here is just hours away.