Fish: A Memoir of a Boy in Man's Prison by T. Parsell (ready to read books TXT) 📕

"Sharon," my dad said, "have them open this one here." He nodded to a four foot box that was brightly wrapped and next to the hall. To THE KIDs, it was labeled, LOVE SANTA.

We posed for a picture in front of it, waiting for the delayed shutter of my camera before we tore into it.

"Iget the blue one," Bobby shouted.

"I already called it," I said, "You can have the green."

"Well, I'm notgetting stuck with yellow," Billy protested.

Connie, we already knew, would get the red one, which none of us wanted. We knew that the Ford Motor Company windbreaker jackets were all the same size. The funny thing was, we hadn't opened the package yet.

"Well, you sneaky little bastards," Sharon said.

For prison inmates, Christmas is the quietest day of the year. It's probably the one day when there weren't as many fights or violence because everyone is in the same frame of mind. Sad. Even the Muslims, who didn't celebrate Christmas, seemed to struggle not to think about being locked away from family and friends.

"Same shit, different day," an inmate said, trying to pretend he wasn't depressed. When the black phone on the wall behind the guard's desk rang, the entire cellblock went quiet. People on the outside don't realize how important a Christmas visit to an inmate truly is.

A Christmas carol, played on a radio, could be heard faintly a few cells away. The staff was kept down to a skeletal crew, so movement throughout the prison was limited. Short-staffed, they did away with lunch, so breakfast came late, and dinner was served early. Dinner included a generous portion of processed turkey roll with cranberries and stuffing and mashed potatoes. Dessert was pumpkin pie with whip cream.

The guys in the kitchen sold spud juice off the back dock. Inmates who skipped the processed turkey were cooking up in their units. The commissary ran extra items, so you could order things like canned ham and sausage and fresh fruit. They even let you spend extra money from your account, and the money allowed in from visitors was higher than usual. (Normally, visitors were allowed to give you up to $15 in tokens, but on Christmas you were permitted $20.)

Because inmates were depressed during the holidays, the administration loosened things up a bit. Shakedowns were minimized, and guards turned a blind eye to minor rule infractions. Spud juice and drugs were in high supply.

Paul and I had a drink together and smoked a joint. The joint was the width of a shoestring, so I wasn't going to get very high, but my resistance was low-considering how clean my system had become-so I experienced a pleasant buzz.

Religious groups came in on holidays, but most inmates didn't bother to meet them unless decent offerings had been brought along. The Mexicans liked to go for the plastic rosary beads. They'd wear them around their necks for a few days, like it was jewelry. Most groups brought Bibles and other religious artifacts, which couldn't have interested us less.

My parents sent money for a small TV. It was $128. A 12-inch Hitachi, which made my time go by faster. Unfortunately, they cut the power off at 11:30 on weeknights, and at midnight on weekends and holidays. You could purchase a rechargeable battery in the store, which would buy you a couple of hours, but at a cost of $45, it was out of my price range. When I got Jake to buy it for me, Paul was proud of me for working him, but he looked disappointed at the same time. I opened Paul's present, and I understood why. It was an extra battery.

I gave Paul a rug for his cell and a Cheap Trick music cassette I had ordered from the store. "No pun intended," I said.

"I'll give you a pun," Paul said, smiling.

I hadn't taken Jake on as my man yet, though he and I were still discussing the possibility. I held off making a decision, because I wanted to be with Paul as much as I could.

Just then, the phone on the wall rang and the guard answered it.

"Parsell!" the guard yelled. "You have a visit!"

I looked at Paul, stunned.

I didn't know who it was that was out there. My family hadn't seen me in several weeks, and I was starting to think that even Christmas wouldn't bring them around.

Paul looked at me and smiled. "Go for it, Squeeze."

Prison officials, recognizing the need and importance of maintaining contact with loved ones on the outside, granted us up to four visits a month. Seeing family and friends helped maintain emotional stability and avoid disciplinary infractions. I doubted I had much emotional stability left hidden inside, but a visit was most welcome.

Visits kept inmates connected to our previous lives and the world we left behind. The visiting room held up to hundred people, but even with over eight hundred inmates, it was rarely filled. Weekends and holidays were the busiest time, and if it got crowded, we would be limited to just one hour.

The room was long and narrow with rows of chairs that faced each another. When visitors arrived, you were permitted to hug once, and then once more when they left. All other contact was prohibited. On the wall, inmates had painted a mural: a watermill with childlike butterflies and a sun with a happy face. Considering all the roughnecks who were housed there, I wondered who had thought to paint butterflies or put a smile on the sun. Maybe the mural was done with visitors in mind, to help put them at ease.

A guard sat at a podium with a stack of visitor passes spread out in front of him. When your time was up, he would politely walk over and hand you one. Visitors had their hands stamped, on their way in, with an invisible ink so that on their way back out again, the guards could check