One Sentence at a Time

One Sentence at a TimeBy Richard Humphries

“The hard thing to remember, “the Captain

said, “is that every guy is different.”

The Cap, Officer D. and I were sitting around the

office well past the end of my shift. There had been

fourteen disciplinary hearings in one night, a record

number, and we were finally done. As the clerk, I

had typed all the reports, sending copies to the

Inmate and Admin and Sacramento and Files.

“You have to remember to look at them as one

guy doing one sentence at a time.” the Cap drained

his coffee cup. “Not as just another pain-in-the-ass

prisoner.”

“Like Humphries, you mean?” Officer D.

laughed.

I was good at my job and appreciated it. Every

day worked took a day off my sentence, and with

nearly four years in front of me I needed that half

time. Bad.

On any given day you could have asked me and I

would have it down to the month and day until my

release.

Every three months I marked off a quarter-year

in my journal calendar. Marking off mere months

didn’t help. I had my remaining time broken down

into months, weeks, days, hours, Tuesdays,

Christmases, Springs; anything but birthdays and

especially those of my children.

I felt an almost constant desire to reconnect with

my kids. I had to get out as soon as I possibly could.

The smallest stuff makes you miss them. A

goddamn happy family commercial on television can

make you punch something, or almost cry, or both.

The Captain suggested a smoke and we went

outside. It was June and the weather was summer

warm even at eleven p.m. The Yard was empty and

silent. In the dark, the blue light of televisions

flickered in the narrow cell windows.

Someone had left a Marlboro on my desk, which

I happily took out of my denim shirt pocket and lit.

Cap was dragging on a Camel. He smoked a

cigarette whenever he could.

“There’s only one sentence I care about,” I said.

“If every inmate was like you,” the Captain said,

“this job would be a breeze.”

“You sure were over-sentenced, Hump,” Officer

D. was a career Correctional Officer and had seen it

all. He lit a Marlboro. “If it makes you feel any

better.”

“It doesn’t, but thanks anyway,” I said. “Besides,

every guy here says they were over-sentenced.”

We finished our smokes as we talked some

baseball. I wasn’t one to kiss ass, but I also wasn’t

afraid to talk with Staff. You really had to take them

one at a time. They were all so different.

. . .

Thuck.

I guess that would be how to describe the sound

when a hard-driven knife is stuck in a guy’s gut.

Thuck.

Almost everyone on the Yard fell to a facedown

prone position on the asphalt track as soon as the

buzzers went off. The cops came running from all

directions.

The Nortenos and Surenos were jumping off.

Really jumping off. One of the two jumped over me

to stick his opposite in the kidney. Thuck. The stuck

guy went down, spurting blood as two C.O.’s tackled

his assailant.

A C.O. took aim from the Control Room of Unit 3

and shot a block gun, hitting a man trying to kill

another. The wooden bullet whammed him in the

ass and he went down.

Fists and blood were flying on the far end of the

Yard and cops laid the whole crowd down with clouds

of pepper spray.

“All inmates: Do not move,” the loudspeaker

announced. “Stay down. No warning shots will be

fired. Stay down.”

“This place,” laughed my buddy Jim, laying on

the track next to me, “is getting fucking violent.”

“You think?” His sick laughter was contagious.

“You two,” a C.O. shouted at us, “shut the fuck

up.”

“Inmate Clerk Humphries,” the loudspeaker

announced, “report to the Unit Office.”

“My typewriter calls,” I said to Jim, waving to a

cop as I stood. “See ya later.”

“I think I’ve spent about five years total so far on

the ground for an alarm,” he said. Jim was 46 and

had been down a little over sixteen years. He was

never going to get out of prison. No parole. Never.

“Today,” he would laugh, “is the first day of the

rest of your life . . . sentence.”

. . .

I could tell Ron was feeling all crappy and

guilty about his wife’s death as he crossed the Yard

to where I stood—in the goddamn rain—waiting my

turn at the evening pill call. Bronchitis, the MT said.

Probably from standing in the goddamn rain, I said.

Ron had that teary look in his eyes that he only

would do around me. Thanks a fucking lot.

“I really screwed up,” he said to me in a quiet

plea. “Didn’t I? I really ruined everything.”

We were friends enough. I could walk the Yard

with him and not be embarrassed by his rep. He had

been a successful contractor before his wife

announced their divorce and his gun went off and

shot her in the head.

When I met him, twelve years later, he would

still go crazy with the reality of what he had done.

He had albums in his cell of their cruises

together.

He referred to her in the present tense. Jesus.

“Yeah, Ron,” I said, a part of it being aware of

the audience in the pill line. “You can’t go shooting

your wife in the head with a three-fifty-seven. Not a

good thing.”

And so Ron would laugh a bit and stand beside

me and talk while I waited for my chest cold pills.

. . .

Sunday morning Chow was a big deal on the

Yard. Eggs and potatoes and turkey sausage

something and grits instead of beans. Toast, even.

Coffee and juice. A big deal.

I was a popular tablemate because I didn’t—

couldn’t--stomach the meat. I’d trade the crap

with other white inmates for servings of veggies

or fruit. In the Land of the Low Bid the cuts of

meat were less than prime, less than

recognizable.

There is a world of trouble for a White boy

who shares anything, especially food, with another

race. To take food from a Black man’s chow tray

would be suicidal. Never mind that behind the Chow

Line window men of every race were slopping the

potatoes and gravy and limas and whatnot, all

equally sweating over the moving trays as ‘line-

backers’ ran back and forth, refilling bins of all of it.

Ron and I were standing in line at the Chow Hall.

“Hump, how about I trade you half my hash

browns for your links?”

“There’s something wrong with my left arm,“ I

said to Ron. “No shit. It’s like numb.”

My left arm was like lead in my jacket pocket.

No shit. I couldn’t lift my arm.

“C’mon,” Ron wanted those sausages. It was a

weekly deal. “You’re just hungry.”

“Oh, shit,” the asphalt came up suddenly to

meet my face. “What . . .?”

. . .

Being the Captain’s Clerk saved my life.

“That’s my fucking Clerk, asshole,” the Captain

was shouting. “Get him a fucking ambulance.”

The MT was insisting I had bronchitis and should

be sent back to my cell, as he had said to me the two

days before while handing me some decongestants.

“He’s had a chest cold for a few days,” he said.

An inmate in Unit 4 had recently died of a heart

attack while waiting for a decision on an ambulance.

I was being helped to my wobbly feet by the

gate guard and a Black inmate I didn’t know.

A small invisible car drove directly into my chest

and I crumpled to the pavement again.

. . .

“Oh, shit. Oh, shit,” I breathed against the

spray the ambulance attendant was sticking down

my throat. “Oh, God, thank you. “My eyes began to

clear. “Thank you. Thank. What was that?”

I was in a stretcher, tied down, shirt torn away,

attached to a graph machine. The scene spun and

the rear doors were open to the ambulance and the

Captain was saying you’re going be all right. Do

what the doctors are saying and the woman said its

nitro spray. He’s had a massive infarction. Ben, hit

it and the siren screamed and I thought how free I

could be if I wasn’t afraid and the woman yelled in

my ear not to fall asleep goddamn it Mister

Humphries can you hear me. Can you?

. . .

“I’ll make you a great cocktail. Okay?” the nurse

asked. “We’ll put it in your IV.”

“I’m scared,” I said.

“No reason to be, Babe. I’ll be right here.” And

she, kindly, was, while they threaded the surgical

cable from my femoral artery to my heart, clearing

the broken left anterior descending.

Usually a death sentence for guys your age.

They kept me half-conscious while they installed

a stent. My right ankle was chained to the gurney

the whole time as my guard sat in the corner of the

Operating Room, reading a magazine.

If having a heart attack is a medical disaster,

having a heart attack in prison is also a psychic one.

Although the care I received at Doctor’s Hospital

of Modesto was first rate, the Correctional Officers

assigned there went out of their way to make things

miserable.

Their juvenile taunting ran the gamut from

pitching pennies against my door all night to insisting

on playing the television in my room at full volume.

They were happily cruel for their own amusement.

They weren’t from Jamestown and I was just another

asshole inmate getting free medical care on their

taxes. Not allowed to contact any of my family,

anyone who would care about me, I never felt so

alone.

. . .

I returned to Jamestown feeling like a zombie

and told the Captain I wanted to quit my job. It was

too much. The daily grind of report after report of

the worst sort of inmates doing the worst sort of stuff

to each other had finally got to me.

Stealing and stabbing and indecent exposure to

Staff and sticking and punching and spitting in the

food and nodding off on smack and threatening

supervisors and drug smuggling and over-dosing and

making pruno and falling down drunk, and always,

always fightingfightingfighting.

God, it was enough to write a fucking book and

not a very good one.

One thing I never saw. I never saw a report of

forced sex, nothing approaching the oft-repeated

‘joke’ idea that men in prison become either rapists

or rape victims because they’re doing a few years.

The Captain understood that his Clerk was burnt

out, was going stir crazy and needed a change. He

arranged for a doctor to excuse me from all work

assignments due to my medical condition. With that

in my file, I would still maintain my ‘half-time’ status

although I wasn’t working.

You earned it, Hump.

Still, though, I never felt lower. Life was as grim

as it gets. The year left in my term looked like a

century from where I sat.

Death was not an unwelcome idea.

I mean the concept. I certainly wasn’t going to

do it myself, wasn’t going to leave a legacy of dying

in fucking prison if I could help it.

After all, I wasn’t doing a Life sentence.

. . .

Officer D. soon approached me about filling a

clerk spot temporarily for an inmate program. It was

a fun place to work, he said.

Arts-In-Corrections was under the daily

supervision of a remarkable woman who had the grit

to be a creative artist and teacher and a quasi-prison

guard simultaneously.

The studio attracted inmates seeking relief from

the unending boredom through some creative self-

expression.

It also drew those seeking to get their hands on

the many razor blades, awls, screwdrivers, paints

and inks and brushes and paper and your lunch and

whatever else that wasn’t nailed the fuck down.

And Ms. H. would have it all present and

accounted for, each tool and supply hanging on its

assigned hook or on the proper shelf by the time we

were released to the yard with our budding collages,

novels, paintings, greeting cards (a good hustle for

the artistically-inclined) under arm.

Her husband, a highly regarded and talented

artist in the ‘real world’ would often join the classes

and help with the construction of mosaic murals and

holiday ornaments for local schools and towns.

Soon the permanent clerk was in place. Yet, I

hung around. The Arts program was a quiet oasis in

the middle of the daily madness. Often a group of

inmates, of every race, would be involved in a project

when the Yard alarms went off beyond the locked

classroom door. We would continue with our

creation, apart from the craziness for a small amount

of time.

Most importantly to me, we had involved

conversations about art and artists and styles, as I

would construct yet another collage from the stacks

of ancient National Geographics on hand.

My mind would wander away from

Jamestown until the Yard was recalled for the day

and I returned to my cell.

. . .

The foundation that backed the arts program

was offering a small budget to start a writing class,

Ms. H. explained to me, enough to hire an occasional

outside instructor, buy a case or two of composition

books, pens and pencils.

Most of the pens went for tattoo use. There

were no more pens.

But the Writer’s Group continued.

We would meet on Saturdays, rain or shine, at a

circle of tables in the Arts room and listen to a

speaker talk about writing.

“Don’t worry about where your writing is taking

you,” one visiting instructor told us. “Just start

writing one sentence at a time.”

We would all nod thoughtfully at her tank top

and begin writing in our composition books.

There was plenty of bad poetry, of course, lots of

lonely nights away from one’s woman. But, there

was some good poetry, too, and Rap, and some eerie

short stories that you hoped were fiction. I thought

to write a humorous novel and so began, one

sentence at a time, my first book.

. . .

Digby Phelps, III

The Valhalla, West Pier

Sausalito, California

Dear [Literary Agent/Publisher],

I’ll keep this brief, as I am sure you are terribly busy, everyone is these days except Yours Truly. Quite nearly went to prison last summer, was even married for a few hours, so a rest is indicated.

Started with a gift shoebox of cash from Alfonso Martinez, my iffy client from shadier shores. Mixed the moola with a sudden passion named Shayna,

though, and woke to an absence of both. Seems living the unexamined life will allow all manner of evil in our doors.But, I digress. Let’s say things fell apart—the center could not hold—and leave it at that for now.

A friend of a friend’s friend, name of Richard Humphries, wrote it all down in a book he’s calling ‘A Blood-Dimmed Tide’. I was hoping for a deeper, more spiritual kind of tome, but Richard says to hang on ‘til the next one. Says we have to find an editor with a sense of humor first. So I faked it and told him not to worry. That I would handle it.

Shall I send you the whole ninety thousand words? It reads fast and even I found myself laughing out loud. And it’s my story.Cheers!

Richard HumphriesP.O. B. XXXXXSF, CA 94100

. . .

The cover letter went out to publishers and

agents. By the time I paroled a literary agent was

representing my two—almost three--completed

‘Digby’ novels. As huge of a boost this was for my

ego, however, it wasn’t the main benefit I gained

from writing.

Through Digby and his sleazy boss Schroeder

and ex-girlfriend girlfriend Therese and Jasper the Art

Dealer and Rock the Stockbroker and a fictitious

amount of women . . .I escaped from prison and into

my composition books on a daily basis.

Soon, a neglected typewriter found its way to my

cell. I was up to an actual 65 words per minute and

the writing of fiction brought me to life in the ‘real’

world.

I wrote constantly. Everywhere.

While I was blithely ignoring my cellie beating off

in the bunk below me, I would write until late at night

of Digby, busily banging buxom blondes aboard his

houseboat.

While I choked down the crappy instant coffee

from the Canteen, Digby was tippling bottles of

bubbly at slightly disguised San Francisco watering

holes.

While I was alone and lonely among a great

many very mean men, Digby was charming a small

circle of his good friends over a candle-lit dinner.

Sentence by sentence I made an entire world. It

felt like magic to me at first. Then, it began to feel

more real than the reality around me.

. . .

In the next month or so, a company in Los

Angeles will begin transmitting ‘pod casts’, the

modern equivalent of the old time radio serial shows.

Each week a new episode of the adventures of Digby

and his friends will be sent out to their subscribers.

They asked my input on the casting of the actors

for this project. For weeks, I was sent audition

recordings of highly talented people giving life to the

lines I wrote.

Sentences I wrote during my sentence, as it

were.

. . .

My plan is to sit at home in my big favorite

chair, with my earphones on and eyes shut. I’ll listen

to the story, now brought to life, spoken by the

characters that came to me in a prison cell such a

long time ago, one sentence at a time.

Cover design by: www.ryanhumphries.com