August 1, 2017
Day 1 of 1,095
Inside the transport van, I’m chained to two other prisoners. The guy next to me is snoring and the guy next to him has puke all over his shirtfront. It’s sweltering in here and the stench is so bad, I hope I don’t start vomiting, too. “Good to go,” someone calls. Car doors slam, the engine starts, and the van lurches forward, rolling out of the courthouse parking lot and onto a downtown street. From behind a caged window, I watch a blur of trees and cars, storefronts and pedestrians—glimpses of the freedom I’ve just lost.
Two or three miles into the trip, the snoring guy startles himself awake, yanking the chain and me with it. Turning to his left, he gives me a bleary-eyed once-over. “Where’d you come from?” he wants to know. When I tell him, he says he got picked up in Bridgeport and the guy to his right was in Hartford lockup. “Can you believe my shit luck?” he says. “This is my second bid and both times I get stuck next to some dope-sick junkie. At least this one didn’t get any on me.” The other guy groans. “Not yet anyway. This your first joyride in the ice cream truck?”
“What?”
“Never mind. You just answered me.”
The “joyride” lasts somewhere between thirty and forty minutes and I’m nauseous for most of them. The van slows, takes a left, and enters the compound. When it stops at Admittance and Discharge, I’m unchainedfrom the other two, helped down from the back door, and unshackled by a new guard. First stop: getting fingerprinted and having my ID picture taken. After that, there’s the humiliation of a strip search and a supervised shower. The guard who’s watching me tells me to hold out my hand. When I do, he squirts delousing shampoo into it and tells me to wash my hair, pits, and pubes thoroughly; the assumption, I guess, is that if you’re a prisoner, you probably have lice. I scrub myself and rinse, but the chemical stink of that shampoo stays with me. Watching the CO bag up the clothes and shoes I wore to court and being handed recycled prison underwear, tan hospital scrubs, and used, laceless sneakers is a painful reality check about my new existence.
Next, I’m led to a small room where two other admits are seated before a TV. One of them is the guy I’d been chained to on the trip from the courthouse, the other looks like he should be in high school. One of the two COs guarding us, the white one, shoves a cassette into the VCR below it and a Connecticut Department of Correction orientation video begins. It covers DOC’s rules and regulations, how the commissary system works, how to make collect calls and arrange for visitors, what happens when you get a disciplinary ticket. Cell phones are strictly forbidden and there is no access to the internet. I miss a lot of information because the audio has a low buzz and the officers keep chatting with each other without bothering to lower their voices. Staticky lines keep running through the picture. When the video is over, the Black officer asks us whether there are any questions, but neither he nor his buddy bother to look up to see that I’ve raised my hand. Although I’m still pretty much in the dark regarding prison policies, I’ve already learned two things: officers are indifferent to the questions of the guys in their custody and, technologically speaking, DOC is still in the Dark Ages.
The guards who ran the video hand us off to three other COs. One gives each of us a “survival kit”—a brown paper bag holding bedding and hygiene stuff that’s supposed to hold us over until someone on the outside funds our commissary account. Another distributes our newly laminatedIDs and tells us to clip them to our shirts and make sure we’re wearing them whenever we leave our cells. “Ledbetter?” the third guard, an older guy, says as he approaches me. “They got you in B Block. I’m Lieutenant Cavagnero.” When I hold out my hand, he shakes his head. “No physical contact between offenders and staff unless it’s a restraint situation,” he says. “Come on. Follow me.”
As we cross the yard, I notice that most of the inmates along the walkway are Black or Brown. Cavagnero asks me how much time they’ve given me. When I tell him, I brace for the question I assume is coming next: What was I convicted of? Instead, he gives me some practical advice. “You’ll do okay as long as you cooperate with staff and keep a low profile. Nobody likes a showboat. And be careful who you trust. Not too many choirboys doing time at this place.” He says I’m lucky they’ve assigned me to B Block. “It’s one of the older buildings, so the roof is slate, sturdier than shingles, and the plumbing’s got copper pipe rather than PVC. With plastic, the cement that bonds the joints together breaks down so you get leaks. Lots of headaches in the newer blocks because they were built on the cheap.” Jesus, I’m just trying to hold it together and he’s giving me a plumbing lesson.
“Oh, and as far as the racial stuff that goes on in your block, my advice is to stay out of it,” he says. “Some of the white guys will probably try and recruit you because in B, they’re a minority. But don’t pick a side. Stay neutral.” Which is exactly what I plan to do.
“Any questions?” he asks me.
“Yeah, I was wondering. Do they have AA meetings here?”
He nods but says he doesn’t know where or when they meet. I should check with my counselor.
Inside the building, Cavagnero points out the first-floor facilities as we pass by them: a GED classroom, a rec room with TV and foosball, a fitness room with a stationary bike and weights. When I glance in at the brawny white guys lifting and spotting each other, I get the side-eye from a couple of them. After we’ve moved past, I hear one of them out me as theguy who killed his kid. “Flat as a pancake,” someone else says. “Whoops. Sorry, Junior.”
Lieutenant Cavagnero looks over and sees me swiping at the tears in my eyes. “I been working this job for seventeen years, so nothing much fazes me by now,” he says. “But I can still get surprised by how mean some of these guys can get after they’ve been in here awhile, especially where kids are involved. See, most of them have kids themselves, so they tend to target someone who they think has harmed a kid. Makes them feel superior. I know what you’re here for, so you’re probably going to get a lot of that kind of hazing at first, but don’t let them see that they can get to you. Just try and shake it off.”
Shake it off that they’re joking about my little boy’s death? How do I do that?
We climb the stairs to the third tier. Cavagnero calls to the CO behind the control desk to open 3-E. I hear an electric pop and follow Lieutenant Cavagnero into the living space I’ll be sharing with the burly, grandfatherly looking guy who’s seated on the toilet. Turning to me, he says, “You’re the baby killer, right?”
I take a breath.
“Be nice, Pug,” Cavagnero says. “See you guys tomorrow.” The cell door bangs shut.
“Here’s how it’s gonna go,” Pug says. “Bottom bunk is mine. Don’t let me catch you sitting on it. Don’t speak to me in the morning before chow time. Don’t ask to borrow any of my shit and don’t play my radio or my TV when I’m at work. And when I’m watching TV, keep your mouth shut. My last cellie didn’t think I meant it until I got sick of his yapping and dislocated his fucking shoulder. You got all that?”
“Yeah,” I say. “No problem.”
I glance over at what he’s stuck to the cinder-block wall: an American flag poster with Trump’s face in the middle of it, a centerfold picture of two tattooed, nearly naked biker chicks kissing each other, some family photos of what I guess are his wife and kids. Beneath this display is a TV hookup:a coaxial cable poking out of the cinder-block wall connected to a set that’s got a small screen and a clear plastic outer shell that exposes the insides.
“On the chow, ladies!” someone outside the cell bellows.
Pug walks over to the door and stands. “Supper’s four o’clock here. You gonna eat?” I go over and stand behind him, waiting, too. “Don’t do that,” he says.
Have I just broken one of his rules? “Don’t do what?”
“Get behind me where I can’t see you. Someone’s standing close to me, I need to see them. I don’t know you from Adam.”
I nod in agreement, wondering whether paranoia comes with the territory around here. To change the subject, I ask him whether the dining hall is in this building or somewhere else.
He laughs at the question. “The dining hall? You expecting silverware and fancy dishes? Someone asking you what kind of cocktail you want?”
“No, I just—”
