Caged Fear

"There is a point beyond which even justice becomes unjust."  - Sophocles 

The cellblock goes unnaturally silent, and an eerie sizzle makes its way through my nerve endings as a dead human being surrounded by prison guards, rolls past my cage on a gurney.  One of the backward jogging guards pumps his hand violently into the victim’s chest, and while the pumping lacks the rhythm of genuine CPR, the sight of an apathetic guard even bothering is a sight I’ll never forget. I catch a glimpse of the inmate’s face and it seems obvious that any effort to save him is in vain.  His face is a stale gray, and so slack it appears devoid of muscle.  He looks like he’s been dead for months rather than minutes. 

It’s the first time they’ve taken this route with the gurney, but it makes sense as we’re right across from B-4 cellblock, where they’ve been storing the infected, and our backdoor leads directly outside to where the ambulance arrives. 

We use tiny shards of broken mirror poked through the chicken-wire that covers the bars of our cages to take in this sobering scene. No one would confess it, but we’re scared.  Even the sunny optimists among us can’t deny that our turn to battle Covid-19 is coming soon, and that there’s no escaping it. 

There’s a major difference between public veneer (aka: public relations) and what the government actually thinks.  The truth is only told through their actions.  Texas, along with her Confederate sister states has always ran the most austere and inhumane prison systems in North America.  Texas is saliently proud of its antipathy, believing that harsh punishment is a crime deterrent.  As prisoners, we know that our lives have less value than real people and, that despite the millions of dollars that Texas reaps by exploiting prisoners for slave labor, we’re a financial liability. We know this.  And though it wouldn’t be politically correct even in the Bible-belt to say it, this state’s record of actions makes it clear that it wouldn’t mind culling some inmates. 

Texas will maintain its public veneer, and go through the motions of pandemic prevention, but no reasonable person would believe that they care about protecting “criminals”. 

Even if this state possessed a humane spirit and believed us worth saving, we’re piled on top of each other in a poorly ventilated human warehouse.  There’s just nothing they can really do to protect us.  Our infection is imminent regardless of preventative measures they employ.  We’re completely helpless, and that’s scary.  Oh, we’ve all heard that it’s the elderly and infirm that have the most to worry about, but the fatality we just saw roll by didn’t look that old.  Then, even among the people who recover from Covid-19 it’s been reported that some end up with permanent organ damage.  We may have better odds of survival if we’re under age 65, but it’s still a game of Russian roulette. 

Men aren’t good at expressing fear, not even to ourselves. We’ve been brainwashed by our society to believe such feelings are a weakness.  But taboos against our nature aside, we’re feeling scared in our cages, not just for ourselves, but for the people we love.  We dance around our fear in numerous ways, pretending it doesn’t exist, attempting to deceive each other and ourselves, but even in these solitary cages where we can’t see each other’s eyes, we subtly expose it.  Some guys become more animated, unable to cease their nervous chatter.  Some use bravado and gallows humor.  Others get short-tempered, lashing out at the smallest infraction.  Some rediscover religion, and start preaching.  And others, like me, go stark silent, withdrawing deeply into ourselves.  

I’ve been buried in societies’ septic tank for a quarter of a century, and I rarely buy into its herd norms about how people should feel and be, but no one completely erases the indoctrination of a lifetime, so I beat myself up for feeling fear I’m supposed to be too strong to feel. My mind attempts to compensate by running a reassuring thought loop, or tries to distract me with unrelated babble, but even without dead bodies rolling past my cage, there are plenty of malignant reminders to refresh my anxiety. 

Unlike some prisoners, I have no family or visits, but there are still people out there, and in here, that I care about, and this pandemic is hurting every one of them in some way.  And despite the high survival rates, you just don’t know when someone precious might be stolen from you, virus or no virus.  This feeling of helplessness is the worst aspect of incarceration, the inability to protect our loved ones, or even ourselves.  This pervasive impotence haunts our thoughts, leeches our hope, and invades our sleep.  The constant stress weakens our immune systems and subtracts abnormal years from our life expectancy.  The only feeling that’s worse than helplessness, is being helpless AND afraid. 

Time passes and Covid-19 has taken over the Wynne unit. It’s like a ghost town.  No recreation, hot meals, visits, clean laundry, phone calls, medical appointments, or countless other activities normal to prison.  So many guards have been infected that they’re borrowing guards from other units just to maintain a skeleton crew.  Colored lights from the ambulance flash against the walls many times a day, and the men in the cages surrounding mine are sick.  Even our relative isolation (and ultimate social distancing) hasn’t slowed the spread.  The death toll continues to rise. 

A good-hearted man named Nealy, who once showed me a great kindness, was found dead in his cage today.  No one even knew he was ill.  That’s common; every last one of us are being infected, but most of us refuse to tell our captors because we don’t want to be punished for getting sick. B-4 cellblock is the hole, the solitary confinement that Texas publicly claims doesn’t exist anymore. If you report illness, you’re going to B-4.  Nealy knew that, and as a veteran prisoner, he knew the quality of healthcare in prison is far inferior to that of real people, so why bother?  Even the prisoners so sick and scared that they’re compelled to tell, are mostly refused testing unless they have a fever of more than 102 degrees.  Everyone who reports their illness regrets it, so most of us keep our mouths shut and ride it out in the cage. 

Time passes and youth is served.  Most of the men here with me in high security (G-5 custody) have recovered.  Since the guards murdered the old man upstairs by beating him to death a few months ago, I might be the oldest inmate on this cellblock at 52.  I feel a guilty relief that while many of the young men around me were bedridden with chills and body aches, my only symptoms were a series of headaches.  

More time passes and Texas uses a fraction of the several billion-dollar gift from the federal government to do mass testing on inmates.  But the delay makes them look good because most of us have had the virus and recovered weeks ago, so we test negative.  Michigan, a far more humane prison system than Texas, unwisely did mass testing early on, making them look bad with all the positive tests.  That Texas will put a positive spin on its negative tests angers me, but like most guys I know, I’m more relieved that I won’t be going to the hole for a positive test. 

Many of us believe we’re immune now, and whether that’s true or not, I don’t think it matters.  There’s still a great deal of worry about the people we love, but the exaggerated fear of an invisible and deadly virus attacking us in our vulnerable cages is gone.  And that’s more important than the truth.