Fix It

The week continues. Mr. Stark comes in on Thursdays: Mr. Invisible.

He is working hard for me, mildly aware of Mr. Stewart in Segregation and my pain and fear. After last session, I want him to talk about the tangle of love, hate and pain engendered by his rape. I start by suggesting love is something that is supposed to be warm and safe. He leaps up from his seat and starts to pace around my office. The new office is big enough to hold ten guys for group, so there is room. As I have mentioned, custody walks by every ten minutes or so and looks in. My goal is to sit quietly, so nobody is alarmed by his angst. He tells me love has never involved anything vaguely safe.

He is a musician. One of his expressions is heavy metal. He tells me this week he has played with the prison bands. He has been asked to lead guitar with songs full of hate. For the first time he has looked at the faces around him, and as he plays, they are suffused with rage and anger. And he is repulsed. He feels that he is funneling his own hate into the crowd, and is responsible for eliciting this response from others. And now, he no longer wants this. Of course he is not doing this; he is just finding resonance from others fighting the same demons he fights.

He flings himself back into his chair, digs in his pocket and gives me the four picks that live there. In prison, these must have a huge value. I’m vaguely confused as to how he even has them, but there is no time to ask.

“I can’t play heavy metal anymore.”

His music is so important to him. It is the thing that keeps him afloat in this crazy world of prison. And he is up again, pacing. I think he just gave me his music. I think in retrospect he was asking me to judge this part of him. If I found it wanting or wrong, I was to take it away from him; I should take his picks. If I did so, he would do his best to acquiesce to my decision. I can’t even imagine what comes next.

He saves me by launching into another topic, starting again with the disclaimer that he is retarded.

I cringe. I have little energy left this week with Mr. Stewart in Seg. The last time Mr. Stark started a topic this way it was horrific. I don’t have the energy for this.

He doesn’t wish to tell me the story, but he knows he needs to. It haunts him and not telling me is a form of lying. He owes $24 to a guy that sold him drugs in the past couple of months; time before I lowered the boom about his behavior. His brother is supposed to feed money into other inmate’s accounts from Mr. Stark’s savings at home. But for some reason, his brother has dropped off of the face of the earth in the past months, and this debt has gone unpaid. He suspects his brother is using again.

Yesterday he was approached by a group, a pseudo-gang, of men demanding the money. The person he owed had sold the debt. He fliped immediately into prison mode and invites them to come one by one into the shower with their knives and he will slice their faces off. They back off and leave with verbal threats. Such violence, offered to me with the most sheepish face. I have no doubt he would be able to do such to at least half of them before winding up another causality in Seg or God forbid, the hospital. But if he chooses this recourse, he ends up leaving me. So he asks me what to do.

Excuse me, I am white naive country girl; I’ve no idea what to do with this crazy prison yard politics and power struggles. I can’t even believe he asks me. I express this and ask for a list of options.

He explains what I already know, what those of you reading this blog know. Now that he has made a stand, if he backs down, he loses face, and the consequences could lead to an escalated level of violence. All I know is I can’t lose him, too. Not two of them in the same week.

“Fix it. Fix it, Mr. Stark” I have nothing else to offer him.

Lunch sits in my stomach like a wad of clay. Two of them in one week will leave me, both for seemingly meaningless things. Maybe the husband is right, and I don’t have the strength for this work.

I have to walk across the yard this afternoon a couple of times to fix some medication problems. It is an early spring day, and most everybody is out and milling around. Mr. Stark should be at work in the music center. I’ve not yet begun to seriously worry; I’m saving that for the ride home. Again, all these guys are dressed the same, and picking them out of the crowd can be difficult. Suddenly somebody peals off of a conversation going the opposite direction and matches my stride. Mr. Stark.

“I’ve fixed it, it’s taken care of, Ms. McLain.”

In two hours? I want to stop and snatch him up and ask for more details. But I keep walking.

“I didn’t do it exactly how you might want.” He means he was threatening violence in some manner, he was being a prisoner.

“I don’t care. But you took care of it?” and I look at him sideways. It is normal for people to stop me to talk and sometimes to walk with me. I know that huge portions of the yard pay attention and balance to make sure I am not favoring one above another. We need to appear low key as he gives me this most important piece of information.

“Yup, I fixed it.”

And our paths diverge.

I come out moments later after dropping off the meds. He is standing down the walk from me yelling instructions and commands across the yard. He gesticulates with power and intent. He is the man that crouches outside my office waiting to be called in. I guess he has taken care of it. I have not found him in Seg in the following two days…