Running the Books: The Adventures of an Accidental Prison Librarian (6 page)

I emerged from the barber’s—my exposed scalp cool to the breeze—with a chill of doom. Even if I passed the test, I was marked as guilty. The moment my new bosses saw my drastic haircut on the day of the hair test, the sequence of events would be plainly obvious. I was a criminal applying for a job in a prison. I might as well walk into the joint festooned in oversized dollar-sign pendants, wearing an
I ♥ Drugs
T-shirt. I felt so exposed I actually wore a baseball cap on the way to the prison, as though my guilt were apparent to all. I couldn’t shake the feeling I was making a misstep in pursuing this. Maybe the woman from personnel had been trying to tell me to quietly drop out.

The thought of turning and fleeing was unavoidable as I neared the front entrance. But before I could weigh this option, I was already walking fatefully into the lobby. Within a second, an officer told me to remove my cap. That was the rule, apparently. No headgear in prison. There was no anonymity, no hiding here.

I sat down on a bench, cap in hand—a gesture that felt comfortingly Victorian—waiting for my potential boss, poised to catch her reaction to my radical new hairdo. Would she smile? What type of smile would it be? Would it be better or worse if she said nothing? This was no way to begin a new job.

But the boss took her time. I had a moment to absorb the surroundings. The lobby was an accumulation of wide gray pillars, like somber votives, which alerted you to the immense weight bearing down from above, the concrete and steel tower balancing overhead. This was a very heavy building. From the moment you entered, you were being watched. You were on record and were meant to know this. You were dimly aware of a control room, which flickered and buzzed behind heavily tinted windows next to the door to the prison—or was it the door to the door of the prison?—located at the far end of the lobby. The officer guarding this door, identified by his name-patch as Grimes, fidgeted with his pistol holster and toyed with the metal detector. He kept a well-worn book of Zen Buddhist philosophy at his post.

It was the three o’clock shift change. Large groups of officers came and went, ribbing each other loudly, dodging children who were running around, doing silly dances, playing hide and seek, while their mothers or grandmothers sat by nervously. The children seemed intimately acquainted with the prison lobby, well-versed in the fun-making dimensions built into the wide pillars. This was, I gathered, where they waited to see daddy or mommy.

A few officers stood nearby, next to a
No Fumar
sign by the front steps, puffing cigarettes and ogling women. Speaking in semi-code, they gossiped about union matters.

“Hey, ya hear Fitzy’s taking some heat?”

“Really? For …”

“Yup, that.”

“No shit?”

“Yah, no shit is
right
 …”

Both laughed.

An officer approached me with a message. The boss was skipping our meeting. He told me to follow him. What was going on? Had my boss seen my crew cut on a closed-circuit security TV and decided I was a criminal? And if so, where was I being led? I followed the officer, though not without trepidation, into a back hallway. He directed me to some guy named O’Shea, who would administer the hair test. Nothing was wrong—the boss was merely overbooked. I would be spared the awkward encounter.

The hall led to the clubhouse of Local 419, the officers’ union. It had vending machines, an empty lounge with a giant sheriff’s badge painted on the wall, and a TV that beamed in a daytime talk-show in which a studio audience scrutinized a messy family drama.

Further on were unmarked offices, men’s and women’s locker rooms. A transistor radio blasted classic rock from an unoccupied weight room. A glass trophy case displayed artifacts and photos from the old prison at Deer Island: a dusty set of nineteenth-century-era handcuffs, shackles—both of which called to mind Harry Houdini—an old-fashioned mug shot number sign, a billy-club and tear gas canister from the neolithic age. Nearby, plaques honored officers from the prison who were serving in the wars. And next to that, a handwritten sign:
Inmates do only as much as you let them
.

I waited a few minutes in front of O’Shea’s office, cap in hand. There was no turning back now. Finally, the door swung open and a large man with a buzz cut and a mischievous smirk emerged. He winked at me and said “g’ luck” as he walked by. He’d just taken the hair test himself.

The office was cramped, though there was nothing in it. O’Shea was a short, aggrieved man. After a quick
how y’doin’
, he took a few snips of my hair, and sealed it in an envelope. It was an oddly intimate gesture, like he was taking a lock of my hair as a romantic keepsake. Perhaps that was why the conversation turned to sports. We reviewed the Red Sox’s prospects. O’Shea was openly disdainful of my optimism.

“I don’t care what they did last year,” he told me, referring to the Sox World Series title. “They’re still the Red Sox and they’ll always fold in the clutch. Any asshole can get lucky once in a while.”

Sitting in that office, anxious and radically shorn, I readily agreed. I myself was just such an asshole, hoping to get lucky this once.

T
wo weeks of low-grade dread passed. Finally I got a phone call from personnel. I was to begin ASAP, she said. There was no more talk about the hair test, no
congratulations, you passed the drug screening!
It was official. I was now on the side of angels. The Po-Po. The Fuzz. The Heat. The Big Blue Machine.

The transformation was immediate. Over the weekend, I couldn’t help spinning around quickly, scowling into a mirror and saying, “I’m with Johnny Law.” Or simply, “Whada
you
lookin’ at?” This act was first performed for the benefit of my girlfriend, Kayla. But pretty soon I was doing it all alone, for the benefit of no one.

“I
heard
that,” Kayla shouted from the next room, during one of these supposedly private performances. “You better not freak out on me. I know you.”

T
he next Monday I headed off to the prison—or to work, I wasn’t sure how I’d refer to it—with a brand new sheriff’s badge in my pocket. The photo on it had been taken by O’Shea the day of the hair test, when I hadn’t known the outcome, when I was feeling exposed, still feeling as though I were sitting for a mug shot. In the photo, I am captured with the buzz cut and a crooked, bewildered grin. This photo—which I was required to wear at all times—was to be my official image in prison.

The Tour

In Boston, justice is a mom-and-pop shop. Bob throws you into the joint, Patti takes it from there. Patti, director of the prison’s Education Department, was my supervisor. She is married to Boston’s number-two cop, a perennial candidate for the police commissioner job. Patti agreed with the general perception that Bob was “too rough around the edges, too much of a street cop, not enough of a politician.” She said this with some resignation but mostly with pride.

Patti herself was much smoother. She was friendly, smartly dressed, bobbed and highlighted, clearly the hip lady in her weekly fifty-plus knitting group in Dorchester. On my first day, I was an observer. Patti was my tour guide. After drifting through the classrooms, we entered the library. We immediately ran into an inmate, or rather he nearly ran into us. He emerged from the back room, walking briskly with a giant stack of papers tucked under his arm. Patti gave him a skeptical look.

“Hello, Mr. Coolidge,” she said.

Coolidge was a tall, stout man with a quick, peckish grin, and a pencil mustache mismatched, or perhaps, overmatched by a large, square head. Wide, intelligent eyes passed judgment with each blink. The tan prison uniform, from the 3-2 unit, was worn as though it were a business suit. Reading glasses dangled from the collar. A fragrant puff emanated from the square head. Could it be?
Le parfum
, in the joint?

As soon as he saw me, he stopped in his tracks, a grand cartoonish gesture, almost hurling his papers into the air. He threw back his head demonstrably. To my surprise, he had a goofy, high-pitched snort of laugh. Patti shot him a look.

Still composing himself, he said, almost shouted, “Are you
kidding
me?” And then to me: “How
old
are you? You in school?”

“No,” I replied. “I’m done with school.”

“Done with school already? Hey,
congratulations!”

Patti began to nudge me in the other direction. Coolidge took the cue.

“Awright, awright,” he said. “Let’s be serious now. How do you feel about black folks? Ever spent time with black people?” This was making his day.

“Um, I have,” I said awkwardly, unprepared for this much more pointed second interview. “I grew up in a mixed neighborhood in Cleveland. And at different times of my life. And a lot with my work as a reporter.”

I sensed Patti fidget. I was divulging way too much personal info and walking into a variety of traps.

“I’ve been around a bit,” I concluded, “Even though I’m young.”

Coolidge desisted.

“Just kiddin’ with you,” he said. He offered his hand, “Robert Coolidge …”

With the handshake Patti shifted with noticeable discomfort. Did Coolidge notice this? Was that his intention? He flashed a warm, professional smile. His demeanor made me certain he would say, “attorney at law.” And I wasn’t far off. What he actually said was, “I work in this library. I run legal affairs.”

Patti rolled her eyes.

Coolidge proceeded to point out the salient features of the operation. The different sections of books, the organizational principles, the law library in the back, which he referred to as “the most important part of the library.”

“It’s mandated by law,” he said of the legal shelves. “I’ll show you the case law sometime. I remember it personally.” He lectured us on the finer points of the library’s system of circulation. On the quirks of the daily schedule. But when he began to walk forward to continue his tour into the next room, his “office,” Patti put her foot down. “That’s okay, Mr. Coolidge,” she said. “I’ll show him around. You can go back to what you were doing.”

Coolidge pursed his lips. The mustache twisted into a tiny, angry knot. I got the distinct impression that he was struggling to control his temper, which, judging from the rising tension in his shoulders, was considerable. As I’d later learn, years of hard time had taught him to pick his battles carefully, though rarely carefully enough. But, at that moment, he kept his cool and flashed us a false smile.

“Okay,” he said. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got some motions to fill out. We’ll talk later. Alvie?”

“
Avi
,” I said.

“Halby?”

“No,
Ah
-vi.”

“Ah-vi
. Got it. What is that, French?”

“No, Hebrew. It’s a Jewish name.”

“Uh-oh. We
definitely
have to talk later.”

As Patti’s tour continued out of the library, to other corners of the Education Department, the fragrance that had radiated from Coolidge lingered. It was definitely cologne, and it was clinging to my right hand. The handshake. A minute in prison and I’d already been scent-marked.

Job Training

During my first week, Patti alternated staff people in the library to keep an eye on me. They had their own agenda: to earn comp time.

My first tutor was Linda, a flirtatious (dyed) blond Italian-American woman who resembled a polecat cub and wore a leopard-print, faux fur-lined frock coat. There was talk of mafioso ex-boyfriends. (“Oh, Dino, Dino, nobody knew but he really was a teddy bear even though he had a
terrible
temper.”) Tilted at a clever angle, her mouth decanted gossip gently into your ears. She bore no grievance against inmates, nor much interest. Her job in the prison was to administer reading tests.

Diana presided from afar. She was a tough, older, Albanian-American teacher, a formerly groovy 1970s feminist who now wore a windbreaker printed with pro-parenting slogans. She was a quirky matriarch with a wry smile—unless she got angry, and then she breathed fire. She didn’t discourage dissent as much as strongly encourage assent. When she spoke, she’d grab my arm. At the imminent approach of a punchline, she’d squeeze my wrist with surprising might and wrench me, judo-like, toward the ground.

During my first days, Diana would pop her head into the library to “check my status.” Which I took to mean, to see whether I was being beaten and/or stabbed. It was Linda, however, who was charged with babysitting me. But when the inmates came filing in, her affability evaporated. She sunk into a chair behind the library counter with a pile of
Star
and
Us
magazines, immersing herself in a report on Tori’s shocking weight gain. I was left to fend for myself.

The next day, a new prison staffer showed up to help me. She looked like a friendly pigeon, middle-heavy, a small, smiling head. She was a butch woman who inhabited a crisp, tucked-in polo shirt and roomy khakis. An ID lanyard dangled from her neck, a plastic coffee cup was glued to her hand. From a hundred yards away, one could tell she was a prison caseworker. Her demeanor was business casual. She deployed a firm handshake, but otherwise didn’t clutch my arm or confide past loves. I doubt she dated mobsters. My guess was school principals. She didn’t divulge much. What she did tell me was that I had to be tougher than a prison guard to work this job.

“You’re in a bind here,” she informed me, “you don’t have that uniform. Your authority comes from
you
, your actions alone. In my opinion every staff person in here should wear a uniform.”

The first few seconds of every prison library period were crucial, she told me. That’s when you establish your authority. She showed me how to stand. Back straight, chest puffed out, arms crossed.

“Don’t smile,” she said. “This isn’t The Gap.”

That made me smile.

She had me practice. I put on a super-mean face. My much-rehearsed Johnny Law scowl. After considering my style with a critical eye, she had only one suggestion.