Power in the Blood jj-2

  Power in the Blood

  ( John Jordan - 2 )

  Michael Lister

  Michael Lister

  Power in the Blood

  Chapter 1

  I was standing at the gate of Potter Correctional Institution staring at him when he was killed. Actually, I was looking into the back of a garbage truck. As I waited to be buzzed into the pedestrian sally port, my view was slightly impaired by the chain-link fence and razor wire that surrounded the vehicle sally port. The hot July sun reflected off the razors as it would from the mirrored shades of a redneck police chief, waves of heat dancing through the circles of steel. The air was thick and hard to breathe. The clear, blue, cloudless sky offered me no shelter from the sun’s assault, nor any promise of rain for the parched planet beneath my feet.

  I didn’t know I was witnessing a murder at the time. All I saw was a rather young corrections officer, with a bad complexion and wide hips, standing on the back of a white, one-ton Ford flatbed truck loaded with trash bags. He was thrusting a long metal rod through each bag. His hips made him look like he was wearing football pants with full pads. Sweat poured off his face, and his light brown uniform was soaked through. What caught my attention in the first place was the enthusiasm with which he executed his task.

  I understood the need for a security officer to check every vehicle and everything those vehicles carried before they left the institution. Recalling just one of the many real-life horror stories recited during my recent new-employee orientation about the brutal and bloody trail an escaped inmate leaves behind was more than enough to convince me of that. But as I stood at the gate waiting for it to open, I was awestruck by the violent blows each bag received. It seemed to me that there must be more effective and efficient ways to search the trash. Of course, the manner in which he was searching was a warning to all the inmates looking on as much as it was a search for an inmate trying to escape. Like a prehistoric sign language or an antiquated form of Morse code, every violent stab by the officer was a character of communication. Taken together, they sent out a concise message for all who had the eyes to see: Attempting to escape PCI in the back of a trash truck was a bad idea. And, although inmates were sometimes treated like trash and, at times, acted like trash, they were not going to escape by pretending to be trash.

  Preparing to stab the final bag in the center of the truck, the officer stumbled over the outer ones and stood above it. Raising the weapon above his head, he brought it down with incredible force. When the rod entered the bag there was a deep thump followed by the sound of twigs caught in a lawn mower. This time the metal implement did not return when the officer attempted to retract it. He then took another stance and yanked even harder. On his third attempt in that position he pulled it free, ripping open the bag as he did. It was dripping with blood.

  At first, I thought he had stabbed a can of chocolate syrup from food services or an old oil can from maintenance, but his reaction quickly convinced me otherwise. The officer lost all his color and stumbled backwards. He dropped his spear and reached for his radio only to discover that it wasn’t there. This only made him more frantic. I waved to the officer in the control room, who immediately buzzed me in. As I ran in, the officer on the flatbed began yelling.

  “Chaplain, get out here now. Call for help,” he yelled, but his voice was weak and tight. Then his voice changed. In the high-pitched cry of hysteria he said, “Oh God … What the … Oh shit … There’s a body in … “ With that, he passed out.

  I rushed over to the second gate that led into the vehicle sally port, and before I reached it, the control room had already buzzed it open. I ran straight through the gate, pausing on the other side only long enough to close the gate behind me. My heart was thumping like a boom box playing rap music in my chest, and my thoughts were a blur of indistinguishable lyrics. Climbing onto the back of the truck, I saw that the officer had landed on a bag of papers that had cushioned his fall. I crouched beside him, the sweat from my face dropping onto his. I could tell he was beginning to come around. My eyes moved down his body. The name tag on his shirt bore the name Shutt. His feet were still touching the last bag he had stabbed; they were covered with blood. It looked like the entire bed of the truck, once white, was now crimson.

  “Look at me, Officer Shutt” I said when he first opened his eyes. “Don’t look down. Look right at me.” He immediately looked down and began backpedaling away from the blood, looking like a sand crab avoiding the approaching tide. Blood splattered everywhere-on the bags, on him, and on me. As the blood splattered on me, I wondered if the red rain might contain HIV or hepatitis B.

  In his clumsy attempt to escape, the officer knocked me back into the bag with the body. As I fell, it enclosed on me like a beanbag chair, and I felt warm, sticky liquid on the back of my neck and soaking through my clothes. I lurched forward, pivoting slightly as I did, a morbid part of me wanting to see. Lifeless black eyes stared at me blankly from a lifeless black head, which hung unnaturally. I slid forward trying to get away. When I sat up, I noticed that one of the nurses, a rather tall young woman with blond hair, had entered the sally port with us. Shutt was already off the truck moving frantically towards the gate where I had entered. The officer in the control room had the wits about her not to let him through. I quickly jumped off the truck and had to hold onto its side as all the blood seemed to drain from my head.

  Within seconds, officers began pouring into the sally port from other gates like ants through small holes in the earth. Two of them immediately went over to check on Shutt. Another came to check on me as all of them strained to look at the back of the truck, which had taken on the surreal quality of a scene from a B slasher film.

  “Chaplain, you okay?” Captain Skipper asked.

  “I’m fine,” I lied. “But let’s get Shutt to medical. He’s really shaken up. And he’s got blood all over him.”

  “They’re on the way,” he said and looked back at the truck. “Damnation. How can there be so much blood?”

  “His heart must still be pumping,” I said. “How did everyone respond so fast?”

  “Tower,” he said as if it were obvious.

  I looked fifty feet up at the tower to see the officer leaning out of the window observing everything with the radio still in her hand. When I looked back down, I saw that the nurse had her arm around the distraught officer talking to him reassuringly. I walked over to see if I could help.

  “Chaplain, can you help me for a minute?” the nurse asked.

  “Sure,” I said as I hurried over to where they were. “What can I do?”

  “I’m Nurse Strickland,” she said, trying, but unable to remove the distressed look from her face. She appeared to be in her late twenties, an attractive and delicate blue-eyed beauty with more makeup than she needed. She looked like the kind of woman who, despite her attractiveness, never actually believed it. Her white nurse’s uniform was as wrinkled as her distressed face. She smelled of smoke and cheap perfume, and her inexpensive gold jewelry made hollow tinkling sounds as she moved.

  “I need to check on the inmate on the truck. Can you stay with him?” She glanced at Shutt. “He’s still very shaken up.”

  “Sure,” I said. “You go ahead and do what you have to. We’ll be okay over here.”

  She turned to leave, but then turned back to Shutt and said, “I am so sorry.” She then ran over to the truck and bravely climbed onto the back. Standing on the truck, she snapped on rubber gloves and carefully, but quickly, made her way to the center bag-the bag with the body in it. She crouched down to check the inmate, nearly disappearing behind the bags as she did. She moved with the surety and confidence of a seasoned ER nurse.

  Moments later, the colo
nel and other medical personnel began to arrive. Shutt and I were escorted out of the sallyport and into the security building on the rear side of the control room. It was hard to see from that position, but I could tell that Captain Skipper had finished ripping open the bag to discover there was nothing left to do except call the coroner.

  “I don’t know if post-mortem prayers work, but if you have one, you might want to launch it up,” Colonel Patterson said when he was buzzed into the hallway of the security building where we were standing.

  He was a short, fat man with thick hands, bushy eyebrows, and messy hair-Lieutenant Colombo gone to pot. His uniform, which always looked sloppy, had large rings around the neck and armpits. His skin was leathery, and his neck was red-literally and figuratively.

  In my short time as a prison chaplain, I had met many decent and hardworking correctional officers who performed a difficult job with discipline and integrity. Colonel Patterson was not one of them.

  “I don’t know either,” I said, “but that’s never stopped me from making them before.”

  “Why don’t y’all come back to my office. We need to get your statements and have each of you fill out an incident report,” Patterson said as he continued to walk down the hallway towards his office.

  The hallway, like all the hallways at PCI, was spotless and gleamed with the shine of a fresh coat of wax. Inmates had to have something to do.

  In the colonel’s office, we waited while he used the phone. His office was decorated with photographs, paintings, and trophies, all related to hunting. His desk was cluttered; a thin, but visible, layer of dust covered it completely. It looked as if it had been quite some time since the carpet had been vacuumed, and a distinct musty smell lingered in the air. Unlike the hallway, Colonel Patterson’s office was not cleaned by inmates. Like the hallway, his office was included in their job assignment; however, Colonel Patterson hated inmates and made no attempt to hide it. Rumor was that there had never been an inmate in his office. I believed it. There were other rumors about why the colonel hated inmates, many of which sounded like war stories, involving things like riots, gang attacks, and escape attempts, all starring the colonel himself. My theory was that the colonel just needed someone to hate, and since sixty-five percent of the inmate population was black, it came naturally to him. The only thing missing in Colonel Patterson’s office was a large Rebel flag that said FORGET? LIKE HELL. Patterson was a true son of the South, although he was most often referred to as a true son of a bitch.

  “I want the yard closed, the work crews recalled, and a count taken immediately. Call the superintendent, and ring him straight through to my office when you get him. Find Inspector Fortner, and get him back to my office with some incident reports.”

  If the colonel was upset by what had taken place, I couldn’t tell it. He always operated at a fevered pitch, always barking out orders, always coming on way too strong, imitating a hockey player attempting figure skating. I glanced over at Shutt. He looked as if he had just killed a man. His whole body, which appeared to be trapped in adolescence, trembled.

  “Are you okay?” I asked him while the colonel reported to the superintendent what had happened.

  He didn’t look up, so I repeated the question. When he finally looked at me, he appeared to be in a trance, not knowing where he was.

  “What?” he mumbled.

  “Are you okay?” I repeated a third time, this time slowly.

  He looked shocked at the question and shook his head forcefully. His pubescent face was pure fear; he was obviously in shock. He dropped his head again. I slid my chair over next to him and put my hand on his back. My hand actually moved from the force of the tremors running the length of his body. Though it was in character, I still found myself amazed at the colonel’s insensitivity.

  “Colonel Patterson, Officer Shutt needs to see a doctor immediately,” I said when he had finished briefing the superintendent.

  “What? No, he doesn’t. Do you, son?”

  Son didn’t respond. He just continued to stare at the floor.

  “Call medical, now,” I said, employing the colonel’s method of communication by raising the volume and lowering the tone of my voice.

  “Ah, hellfire, Chaplain. He’s been trained. He’ll be all right.”

  “Call medical now, or I will. And if I do, I’m going to declare a medical and psychological emergency. Then you can explain to them why you didn’t.”

  The colonel snatched up the phone, pushed three buttons, and yelled into the receiver, “Get medical to my office now.”

  “Chaplain, you need to get a few things straight about the way things work around here. If I wasn’t leaving this afternoon for three weeks of special training, I’d take you under my wing and make things real plain for you. But the short version is this. I-”

  A quick knock on the door was followed by the entrance of the superintendent, Edward Stone, a deliberate-moving black man in an expensive suit.

  “Colonel, Chaplain, Officer Shutt,” he said by way of greeting. His eyes stopped on Shutt. “Have you called medical, Colonel?”

  “Yeah, they should be here any minute,” he said curtly, as if he were talking to a new officer and not the superintendent of the institution.

  “He’s obviously in shock. How are you holding up, Chaplain?” Mr. Stone asked.

  “I’m okay, I think,” I said, and my voice still quivered slightly with the anger I felt for Patterson and the memory of those lifeless black eyes.

  “I heard how you responded to the, ah … situation. Control said you reacted with no hesitation. You never know until it comes down to it what a man will do in those kinds of situations. You’re still new around here, but everybody’s trust level for you just jumped up several notches. Isn’t that right, Colonel?”

  “Yeah, you never know what a man will do in a crunch,” he said, careful to respond to Mr. Stone’s first comment and not his second.

  “Let’s have medical check out Officer Shutt and let the chaplain go home. We can take their statements tomorrow.”

  “Yeah, I think that’s a good idea,” Patterson said as if Mr. Stone had asked him.

  “Sir, I’d really like to stay and help out if I can,” I said to Mr. Stone.

  “No,” he said, and I could tell that there would be no further discussion about it. “You go home now. We’ll take care of everything here. I’ll drop by and see you at your office in the morning.”

  Before I could respond, the colonel’s phone rang and the medical personnel arrived to collect Shutt. As I helped him to his feet, I assured him that everything was going to be okay. The nurses quickly helped Shutt to the door. I followed them out. Just before I closed the colonel’s door, he hung up the phone, and I heard him tell Mr. Stone that the deceased inmate in the trash bag was Ike Johnson.

  After a long, hot shower in the training building, during which I scrubbed Ike Johnson’s blood off my body, I drove up to the state park and tried to clear my head.

  For as long as I had been a praying man, I had never found a better place to get in touch with God than Potter State Park. The park was roughly sixty acres of sage brush, pine trees, and wildlife, with long, winding trails cut through the dense woods. At its center were two small ponds with a small pathway running between them. That pathway, for me at least, was the path of peace and the way of wisdom. I spent most of the afternoon up there and felt better for it. Had I stayed until nightfall, which during the summer was still several hours away, I might have been completely distracted from thoughts of Johnson’s vacant black eyes. I opted instead to drive home and order pizza.

  An event, as it turned out, which proved to be distracting in other less spiritual ways.

  Chapter 2

  I was half-undressed when my doorbell rang. I guess if I were more optimistic, I would say that I was half-dressed-and that the glass of seltzer water without a coaster on my dresser was half-full. My dresser, like every other piece of furniture that I scrambled to get aft
er the divorce, was not worth the trouble of a coaster. It had been a gift-actually its previous owners did not know that it was a gift; all they knew was that they threw it out. The dresser, like the house trailer and the rest of the furniture, did not bother me too much, that is, until I had company, which thankfully was not very often.

  I was surprised when I heard the doorbell, not only because I was half-undressed, but also because I had placed my order for pizza less than fifteen minutes before. It had always taken Sal’s at least twenty-five minutes to deliver out here in the sticks. Since returning to Florida’s panhandle after my world fell apart, I had made my home in a dilapidated, butt-ugly trailer in a small trailer park on the edge of Leon County. I quickly pulled my pants back up and whisked by my gem of a dresser on the way out of my room, pausing only long enough to secure the two folded bills on its corner.

  The trailer had been repossessed, and its previous owners were obviously not a gentle breed. It was situated on a thatch grass prairie on what was supposed to be Phase II of an expanding mobile home community called the Prairie Palm. Presently, Phase II was a community of one, due in large part to Phase I, which resembled a trailer junkyard more than a place where people actually lived. The trailer park got its name from the lone sabal palm, Florida’s state tree, that stood in the center of the sixty-acre plot. The lonely tree seemed to me to be an appropriate metaphor for my isolated existence here and for the state I so loved. For Florida is a lonely appendage on a continent it resembles little.

  As I walked down the extremely narrow hall of my not-somobile home, passing over the pale yellow linoleum that curled up so that it no longer reached the thin blond paneling of either wall, I remembered the two-story brick home that Susan and I had shared on Atlanta’s north side. Amazingly enough, this felt more like home, except for the filth of course. I opened the door and extended my hand and the money that it held in one flowing motion, more from practice than a God-given talent. Expecting to see Ernie, Sal’s nephew, who resembled the Sesame Street puppet of the same name, I made an audible expression and suddenly felt naked without my shirt when I saw the pert young delivery person with big brown eyes staring up at me. She was actually more than pert; she was beautiful-but her orange, white, and blue uniform, which included wonderfully fitting navy blue shorts and a baseball cap, made her look quite pert. She had shoulder-length brown hair pulled through the hole in the back of her cap to form a ponytail that swung from side to side as she moved her head. Her dark skin, which I first noticed on her muscular legs, seemed to be her natural skin tone rather than tanned. Her face was kind and soft, with features that reminded me of Bambi. Though Bambi was a boy, and apart from the muscular build of her body and the uniform that covered it, or at least part of it, there was nothing boyish about her at all-at all. Her face was flawless, with the one exception of her slightly crooked nose, which apparently had been broken. However, it made her all the more attractive.