The prison is encircled by a towering concrete wall. Twenty-five feet high. Unpainted, raw, purely utilitarian. It runs for a mile around the perimeter of the prison. A few drab yellow-sided buildings poke their heads above the rim of the wall. Nondescript, they fade from memory; people remember the wall. The Oregon State Penitentiary is the oldest continually operating prison west of the Mississippi. And it shows. Rust seeps through decades of faded yellow paint on heavy bars across the few windows facing out. Minerals leech from masonry patched and re-mortared dozens of times. A massive Department of Corrections crest shaped from steel and bronze guards the public entrance. Families of prisoners, lawyers, and employees; all foot-traffic uses the same doorway in and out.
Inmates arrive in anonymous vehicles passing through a nearby Sally port, a cage of razor wire and grey iron bars large enough to hold a Greyhound bus. A gate at one end is drawn ponderously open. The vehicle enters. The gate grinds shut behind. The sound of iron striking iron ringing in the air. A man-sized foot gate opens for new arrivals. This is the way in for inmates. And the only way out.
The utilitarian buildings and bare grounds encompassed by the unbroken grey wall are home. It is the backdrop everywhere, stained by decades of Oregon weather. It is the horizon, close and massive. Inside the perimeter, the world is like the wall itself; harsh and hard. It contains the prison and its population of inmates. Separating inmates from society. It creates a sense of safety.
Inside the wall, fences cut the world into pieces, dividing the prison into controllable sections. Inside the wall, an avenue splits the prison, running under fences, crossed with gates. A path through the middle of the penitentiary connecting the main building with others. Fencing, walls and gates define the ebb and flow of life, allowing the circulation of inmates and staff through the institution. Fences line each side of the avenue defining where I can walk, controlling when I can walk.
Each morning I make my way down the avenue; an asphalt artery inside the monolithic wall, laid down over years. Poorly patched, uneven, and punctuated by heavy grates and thick metal plating held down with padlocks. Even the sewer covers remind me where I am. To either side of me two stories of chain-link topped with razor wire runs the length of the avenue. Backlit against predawn gloom, tentacles of fog reach across the fence, easing through the chain-link, condensing on the points of razor wire. The glare from flood lights mounted high on the guard towers refracted into glittering constellations in the thickening air.
Fog seeps across the avenue, swallowing the sound of my footsteps. The thin slap of my shoes on damp pavement cut off abruptly in air heavy and impenetrable with closing fog. Out beyond the false horizon of the wall, dawn rises above the Cascades, distant and out of sight. It will not fall on the yard until the sun scrapes above the penitentiary wall. Dawn is pushed even further away by this fog; thickening and condensing, huddling confined in the cooler air of the yard.
Standing watch from the middle of the institution,10-Tower looms somewhere ahead. The blinding flare from its powerful arc lamp reduced to a dim ball of ghostly illumination. Isolated and alone, as the grey blanket of fog coils tighter, smothering its light. Gulls glide above. Their discontent cries reach me but I cannot see them, cannot trace their paths. I hear chow carts being wheeled along the shrouded avenue, laden with the remnants of breakfast. The gulls angered as the fog robs them of an easy meal.
The prison dog, Felix, a blue-heeler mutt, woofs at them. He usually trots the fence line, searching for geese sheltering inside the wall. Thousands of geese used to find refuge on the yard, on rooftops, along the avenue and between fences. Their waste fouling the grounds, causing the yard to become repulsive and dangerous with disease and filth. So Felix was brought in; a herding dog, a rescue given a new life in prison chasing unwanted pests. Today, his woof is captured by the fog and kept away. Kept in that hollow space of uncertain distance. The same space chow carts are pushed through.
The electric voice of Master Control, the omniscient security center, pours from bullhorn speakers mounted high on buildings. It shoves into the gloom as Security calls the institute to “Fog Line.” Fog line means the perimeter towers can no longer see one another. Line of sight has dropped too low as the fog settles in more heavily, hiding inside the haven of the wall, escaping from the growing day. It has forced a change, broken the routine, altered the rhythm of the institute. Settling in, challenging the order of things, opposing Master Control and the Correctional Officers standing post throughout the institute. Inside secured rooms beneath the main building procedures are put into action.
All movement stops on the yard. The carts ahead go silent. I stop. Gulls drifting away. Stillness settling densely. I wait in the chill air for officers to assemble and secure the yard. Four abreast, a hint of orange from vests or rain coats identify them as COs. Sweeping the avenue, collecting inmates in a shrinking net below 10-Tower. Behind them, more COs station themselves every few yards along the avenue.
Master Control rises decisively to the fog’s challenge. Any time of day, during recreation, work detail, or the dead of night, when Fog Line is called, it’s always the same routine. Same is good in prison. Same builds safety; builds a sense of security. Creates predictability. With security and staff outnumbered ten to one, predictability is worshipped. Routine is a god.
The line of COs closes in on me. Flashlights shine in my eyes with terse demands to see my ID. I offer it up, pulling the lanyard from my neck. I am reluctant to hand it away. It is safety, persona and key all in one. My picture on a piece of plastic. They inspect it, lights point to my face and back again. Returning it, they ask which way I’m heading.
I’m heading in. Into my building.
Most mornings I am watched by officers posted at either end of the avenue and by others from perches high in towers. Most mornings I may be solitary, but I am not alone. This morning there won’t be officers on the avenue beyond this gate. This morning the guards in the towers can’t see me. I have an eighth of a mile left to walk, 660 feet, the length of two football fields. Alone.
A tightening begins in my chest. I pass through the central control gate. As it closes behind me, iron strikes iron. Adrenaline hits the back of my throat, the acrid tang filling my mouth, my sinuses.
It’s just 125 steps to the next gate.
It’s nothing.
Then just another 125 to the door of my building, the Special Management Unit. Within a maximum security prison, it is a building where the keys are locked inside. It is super-max with just shy of 200 cells housing the most ill, the most dangerous and depraved inmates including thirty-three on death row... A quarter mile walk.
An eighth of a mile left.
I do it every day.
Walking the tiers of my unit, doing cell side check-ins with inmates is an exercise in endurance. Futility slowly infusing into my body, draining vitality. The noise… fifty-seven voices calling, screaming, imploring the unseen to relieve their plight. Invoking powers imagined, hallucinatory and delusional deities to intervene. Frustration builds to a critical mass sending the unit into free-fall. Invoking becomes damning, pleading becomes blaming. Voices magnifying into a firestorm of implacable fury. Schizophrenics venting psychosis in sonic form, shaking reality into dreams of dust on the floor. Pedophiles, sociopaths and psychopaths giving voice to vices, rage erupting over imagined injustices and paltry slights.
An environment of such relentless hostility makes a compassionate mindset difficult to maintain on the best of days. It hadn’t been the best of days. The aural assault builds the longer I am on the unit. After two years, maybe I ought to have built up a tolerance. I haven’t.
Nearly finished, I am making my way to the sally-port when Charlie calls to me. I’m not supposed to speak with him. He is off my caseload. A special plan has been written just for Charlie. Written last night. It lists who is supposed to interact with him. Strictly speaking, I’m not included on the list, but as the only specialist in the building I don’t see I have much choice. Overnight, Charlie’s cell was modified. Solid sheets of plexiglass had been bolted onto the punch-plate, isolating him even further. It makes talking even harder through the waves of noise ricocheting from drab concrete walls. Dressed in a safety smock, standing at his cell front, he feigned nonchalance. Designed to be tear resistant, minimizing opportunities for misuse by inmates inclined to self harm, resembling a baggy 1920’s era swim-suit made from a giant oven mitt. Charlie calls it; The Mitt. Standing quietly at his cell-front, waiting, leaning his stocky five and a half feet against the punch-plate; quarter-inch steel with pencil-sized holes in it; Super-Max versions of household sliding doors.
With a knack for getting things passed to him, things used to hurt himself, cutting to the bone, he has a reputation for brutalizing himself. Deciding to take no chances after a dramatic series of events yesterday, Treatment Team has taken extraordinary measures to ensure he has little opportunity to inflict harm on himself. When he first came to the unit, Charlie was assigned to me. I had been new to the unit. He knew it. Trying to spook me, he bragged he could make a dixie cup of blood look like he was bleeding out; just add strawberry jelly, red drink-mix, and water.
“What? No time for a chat?” His grin matching the sarcasm in his voice. “You never come by anymore. No cards, nothing.” He spoke loudly to be heard over the noise and added plexi. He still managed to sound casual, though the plaintive desperation for human contact was agonizingly clear.
I glanced at the officer posted on Suicide Watch in front of Charlie’s cell, stepping closer to maintain the illusion of confidentiality, while making sure the officer had a clear line of sight.
“What’s the plan, Charlie?”
“Gosh, what do you mean what’s the plan?” He glanced around the bare concrete and steel of his cell. He shrugged. “I don’t see a plan in here.” The officer waved a piece of paper: The Plan. “Fuck you, cop.”
It was late on Saturday afternoon, the end of my week. I worked hard to appear neutral. “There’s nothing I can get for you. You know that. It all has to go through Treatment Team.”
“Yeah, yeah, your hands are tied.” Holding his wrists together in front of himself, miming being cuffed.
“Welcome to the club.”
“Is there something I can do?”
“Well, I dunno, is there?” He is his own worst enemy. My tolerance already frayed, he wasn’t helping.
“Seriously, Charlie. What do you need?”
“You can’t just talk to a friend?” He played long games of manipulation with staff and inmates. Always working an angle, a con, coming sideways instead of head-on, trying to find a way in.
“A friend?” I can play games too. Sometimes subtle games. “Like Karen was your friend?” Sometimes not. “She’s not here today. Did you have anything to do with that?”
The sarcastic grin evaporated. “Fuck you. She knew what she was doing.”
“Yeah, she knew what she was doing.” I was tired. I had been the lone mental health specialist in the building responding to not just my unit but the other three as well. Responding to the whole two-hundred inmates in the building. It had been 24 hours since Karen had been escorted out by the State Police. I didn’t have my usual clinical attitude in place anymore. “What she didn’t know was what you were doing.”
He stopped posturing. The life-long gang member rose up. The defiant, angry, real Charlie pressed close to punch-plate, hissing, “And you do?”
“Sometimes.” I turned to walk away.
As I pass the officer, he mumbles, “You do?”
I shrugged and walked away.