B59) Word of Honor

I was subpoenaed by the Pima County prosecutor . It was back to the Pima County Jail. At the time I was at Rincon prison in Tucson, Az. When the transport showed to pick me up I had just started reading the book, Word of Honor by Nelson DeMille. I took the book with me. I wasn't sure how far I'd get with the book. 

I’d been in prison for a couple of years. My former business associate (Larry) was finally going to trail. He was able to delay his trail for four or five years. I was in the Pima County jail when the trial began. Larry would come by every day to visit me in the jail. He never looked worse. It got to him. Four years under indictment turned Larry into a raging alcoholic. His wife left him. She was a co-conspirator that pleaded guilty and got probation on her charges.

A couple of months before the start of the trail Larry settled with the IRS. He paid hundreds of thousand of dollars to the IRS in an out of court settlement. If he won at trial his legal issues would go away forever.

The trail ended on a Friday if memory serves. When the jury went to deliberate Larry split. Bye-bye. If the jury came back guilty he would stay gone. If they came back not guilty it would not matter if he was there in the courtroom or not. Larry was indicted on half a dozen charges. All marijuana related. Because of his many priors, if Larry was found guilty on one charge it meant a twenty five year prison sentence.

The jury came back guilty on all six charges. And a life sentence to someone involved with a non-violent and victimless crime. Who does this make sense to?

Larry went to his parents house. Got a bag of cash, a bottle of vodka and one of his dad’s cars. He was fleeing the state. He was not going south. Sixty miles south is the Mexican border. Going north did not make sense.

Larry got as far as the phoenix area. He pulled off the highway bound for a convenience store and more liquor. Once in the store Larry began making a scene. He was blackout drunk. The manager of the store called 911. A police officer was dispatched to see what the problem was. When the officer approached Larry, Larry pulled out his gun and shot the officer.

The officer hit the ground. He pulled his gun and shot Larry three times. It was a nightmarish scene to be sure. After the officer shot Larry three times his gun jammed. Larry walked over to the officer laying on the ground and was getting ready to shot the officer again. This is when a bystander jumped on Larry and wrestled the gun away from him. Larry laid on the ground in the convenience store and bleed to death. 

I think the officer made a recovery from the wound. Larry shot him in the hip.

All this happened after dark on a Friday night

I get up Saturday morning for a Pima County jail breakfast. After breakfast I turn the tv on. The lead story is Larry having been killed the previous evening. I did not know. I did not want to find out by watching the local news.

I flipped out. I was taken to the psych ward of the jail. When I left the prison earlier that week I brought a book with me. I smuggled books with me everywhere I went. The jail guards took my book when I was processed into the jail. I would get the book when I left and went back to prison.

For some reason the novel I'd brought with me from prison was given to me after I was sent to the psych ward.

B58) oops

B57) The Accident Part 4

I was oblivious as to how I looked. When I got home from the hospital and had a chance to see myself in the mirror I found it disturbing. I looked like death warmed over. Green, yellow and pale are words that best describe my appearance. Worst of all the thousand yard stare was back. It’s the look of terror in my eyes. This look more commonly found in the eyes of those on the front line of the battle field during war. I remember the look and I hate seeing it again.

They put radiated dye in my bloodstream the morning of the accident. This was for the CT scanner. Normally you are in there for thirty minutes or more. They shoot the radioactive dye into me and the images can be captured in just a few minutes.

I remember being in the CT scanner. I remember talking to the nurses. Telling them about my pain and the seemingly ineffectiveness of the pain meds I have been given.

I cannot go into that scanner again without the aid of a zanax. The memory and horror are too powerful. The CT scanner is the worst but every visit to the doctor brings back more of a memory I want gone. Sitting in the waiting room, smelling the smells, seeing doctors, nurses and support staff remind me of what I am trying to forget.

"Please go away" I tell the memory.

I close my eyes. With all my might I wish the memory gone ................... to no avail.

I shake and tremble on the inside. Nobody can see it. It’s a curse. Residue from the accident.

The pain and agony was there when I woke. The pain was with me all day. The pain was with me when I went to bed and the pain woke me every night. Every single night without exception I wake up to a terror induced pain. I’m soaked. My hair, my pillow and the sheets. This is the new normal.

There’s nothing normal about the new normal.  Waking up every night soaked, consumed with terror and pursued by agony. I cannot escape it.

"Go away. god damn it"

Pain cannot be reasoned with. You cannot negotiate with terror. The words fall on deaf ears. Pain is a cruel master. Unforgiving. Unrelenting. When I close my eyes I can feel the impact. The memory of slamming into the car and being catapulted off the bike. I’m flying. God help me. I don’t want to be flying. Not like this.

I relive hitting the ground and remember sliding and tumbling down the street. I felt like a rag doll. I recall thinking during the accident, I need to stop. I need to stop tumbling and sliding but I had no control.I could not stop myself.

I remember it all. The memory feels like a fucking curse. I don't want to remember. I don't need to remember. It serves no purpose. Only torment. I wish I could have these memories taken away. Surgically. Methodically. I've spoken with others having had similar accidents. They have no memory of their accident. What a gift. I wonder, why me? Why do I get to remember? why do I have to remember?

4:00am. It's always 4:00am. This seems to be the bewitching hour for me.

I wake up. again. I’m shaking. Hyperventilating. Soaked in sweat. Completely covered in terror. I feel incapable of calming myself down. All I can do is lay there alone in the dark, remembering, trembling with a steady stream of tear falling off my cheeks.

It feels like prison all over again. No longer am I constrained by walls and shackles. Now I am a prisoner of pain. I'm being held against my will by something I cannot touch. I cannot get my arms around it. I'm a captive of pain and terror.

I don't know how to fight this?

I am blessed in having someone in the guestroom down the hall but when I wake in the middle of the night it’s such a lonely experience. I want to call out

“Help. Please. Someone. Anyone".

but I don't call out. Why interrupt their sleep because of my pain? It would be a month before I experienced my first glimpse of life without pain. There's a desperation in wanting to feel normal again. I want to go for a walk. I want to go for a run. I want to get up and leave my pain behind.

The pain rejects that notion without discussion.

Whatever life I had before the accident is gone. Ten years of work gone. Everything was taken and in its place was pain and terror. It doesn’t seem equitable.

There’s nowhere to run. Nowhere to hide. Where ever I go the pain is sure to follow. All I could do was lay there and twist in the wind of agony and pain.

I learned things about pain that I never knew. Pain is insidious in nature. Pain does not make requests. Pain makes only demands. When those demands fail to be headed, pain punishes. sometimes more severely than others.

Pain is such a cruel master. Pain wants you to think it’s giving but it’s not. Its an illusion. Pain not giving. Pain is selfish. It’s a taker. It wont give and inch. It wont give a penny. It’s interest only in taking. Please believe me, what pain has to give, you do not want. Once you have it, it’s too late.

Pain takes and it takes and it takes. It takes a little more from you every minute of every day. When you think you have nothing left to give the pain will demand more. Even more. Even when you are running on empty the pain will take. This is the danger zone, when pain takes after you have given all you  have to give. Now you are running a  deficite. This is what pain really wants, for you to owe.

I felt relief when the pain began to subside. The first morning I woke up and realized I was not in agony,  It felt like a miracle. ---- then I moved. slightest movement sent me tumbling back into the arms of agony.

The constant agony began to ebb and flow like the tide. But the pain, unlike the ocean, would stay gone a little longer each time the tide went out. I was moving in the right direction. A little more. A little more. A little more. A little more relief each and every day from the constant agony. Even if it was only another minute added to the time I was agony free, it felt like progress. It was progress.

The pain would go but, much to my  chagrin, it left in its place trembling. I was trembling but only on the inside. One of my first thoughts about the trembling, I’d rather have the pain.

Who am I now?

B56) The Accident part 3

I woke at 4:00am. Who am I? I have no idea who I am. Complete amnesia. I don’t know who I am or where I am. I have no idea what happened to me. What I do know is pain. Agony. And not knowing who I am allows terror to show it's ugly face

The agony and terror appear to be formidable opponents.

I have been bested. It’s obvious. I feel the agony of defeat from the battle I cannot even remember.

The pain and agony made the situation so much worse. The pain is constant. Unrelenting. It just keeps coming, like an army. Like Xerxes and the Persian army hellbent on taking thermopylae. I feel like Leonidas, the king of Sparta and Xerses is the pain. Xerses demand I bow to his will (the pain).

I say "No". Xerses has a million man army. He is fighting a war of attrition. He keeps sending wave after wave of pain in the form of expendable soldiers.

I fight the good fight but the Persian army just keeps coming.

The pain broke me. They won. They have beaten me into submission and now they have taken my sanity. They have taken my ideity. I don’t know who I am anymore.

I am being tortured.

I am in agony.

The pain keeps coming...

It just keeps coming...

And coming...

(The tv was on, an old black and white WWII movie.

I put two and two together and got sixteen hundred and forty five point seven)

"I've been captured by the enemy. Now I am a POW"


“ Of what war”?

“I don’t know”

It was day four in the hospital after the accident. I'd not slept except for a few minutes here an there. I'm in the critical care unit at Rush Copley. They give excellent care but I'm not allowed to sleep. They come in every two hour (if not more often) to check on me. Sleep deprivation along with the pain and the pain meds have taken their toll and pushed me over the edge.

I didn’t recall the battle. I didn’t recall being shot down or having my ship sunk. I can’t even remember who started the war let alone who's in it. I'm a complete blank. I’m unclear as to how I became a prisoner of war. The only thing I’m certain of, I am a prisoner of war and I am being tortured. I look at my leg and wonder what they did to me or what they are doing to me.

The pain. I cannot think straight. I am struggling to hold one coherent thought in my mind at a time.

“What have they done to me”? I say.

"They are torturing me". They want information but I am a blank. I don't know. It's obvious they are torturing me because I'm not telling them what they want to know.

"I can't remember"

I cannot give my name, rank or serial number because I don’t know it. I do not know the answer to their questions.

"I don't know. I don't know". Don't they understand that.

"I don't know god damn it"! I want to scream this from the top of my lungs.

The pain is so bad. It's so bad. I need to get out of here. I need an escape plan. I feel certain my life is in jeopardy.

They are coming back soon. I know it. I begin trembling at the thought of them coming back and continuing on with more of the same.

I fear them coming back more than I fear dying.

I pulled out my IV and assorted connections. One connection I cannot break is the device attached to my leg (woundvac) . This device has a mobile cart with it. I don’t know what it is but it feels like a major source of my pain. I want to peal it off. It feels as if my bones are being crushed from the inside out.

I feel panic, pain and terror as I struggle with every breath. I fight to get the air in and fight to get the air out.

Agony in.

Agony out.

Agony in.

Agony out.

I can’t take the pain. I cannot take the pain.

I stand. The pain from standing makes me want to vomit. Walkings impossible so I hop. I came close to collapsing on the first hop. It felt like I'd been struck by lightening. My good leg almost buckled. Tears began running down my cheeks ---- another hop towards the door. One small hop at a time while I cling to the woundvac on it's rollers. Half way to the door my gown falls off. I'm naked. So. I don't care. I don't need it. I do not need clothes to escape. Clothes are non essential items.

I get to the door. still naked. Still in pain.

At the door I stop to catch my breath. I realize I have to urinate in the worst way. I see a cup sitting on the chair so I pick it up and releive myself. There I am. Naked as a Jay Bird. In one hand I have a cup of urine filled to the brim. The other hand I'm clutching the woundvac on rollers. I'm standing there on one leg staring at the cup of urine trying not to spill it.

I realize I can't move. ----------- Try it. While standing on one leg hold a cup of coffee and hop from one room to the next.

Then the nurses come in.

When I unplugged my IV and assorted connections I set off some alarms.

The first words out of my mouth:

"Who am I"?

"What have you done to me""


Their Response:

“We are nurses”

“You are Mr. Chip Knight”

“This is Rush Copley hospital”

The nurses got me back into bed and began to reattach all the connections.

“What about the war. What about the torture”? I point to the TV and the WWII movie, then to my leg.

“That’s the TV Mr. Knight. It's a movie". She walked over and turned it off.

"There is no war. You are not a prisoner of war. You were in a very bad motorcycle accident”

Nothing. I remember none of that. There was no accident…..or was there? One of the nurses hands me my cell phone. I take the phone and begin scrolling through names of contacts. I find a name that looks familiar for some reason. I call it.

Now it’s about 4:30am

My sister answered the phone. The instant I heard her voice my memory came back. Just like you would turn on a light switch. I went from not knowing to knowing.

Later on that morning I begged the doctor to let me go home. He heard about my escape attempt. Apparently they had given me such a high doses of the pain medicine it effected my memory. The doc oked my release and allowed me to be discharged. By the time I arrived home there was a nurse and a physical therapist waiting for me.

After getting upstairs (not an easy task in my condition) I took a shower with the woundvac off. My first shower in in five days. After the shower the nurse reattached the woundvac.

Not long after the nurse and physical therapist left I fell asleep. I slept for over twenty four hours only getting up to urinate in my bed pan.

Sleep...

B55) A Conversation with God (part 2)

After the storm passed the yard re-opened. I headed to the library as I heard new books were in. New books are always a big deal. I enjoy reading. This was a gift from my mom. I learned to enjoy reading even more after getting locked in a cage. Had it not been for reading I would have surely gone crazy much sooner.

I estimate having read over a thousand books during my tenure as a convict. I kept track of the books for the first couple of years. At one point I was reading a book a day but that kind of reading schedule depended upon two things;

• 1. Access to books i.e. the library.
• 2. Being locked in a cage for hours on end, day in and day out getting a first class dose of state sponsored “rehabilitation”.

When I was reading a book a day I was reading novels mostly. A biography here and there. I read a wonderful biography about Howard Hughes in my second year in prison that stands out. The philosophy I read was limited to the prison library. They were very limited in that department as there was not much demand for philosophy, eastern or otherwise. I did find the book, Man’s Eternal QuestParamahansa Yogananda's Collected Talks and Essays. This was an amazing find. I came across this book my first year locked up. It helped. It was the right book at the right time.

Every cell block I ever walked into had books on the floor just outside cell doors. Placing books there was an indicator these books had been read and now looking for a new reader. I believe each book has a voice. Some screaming to be read, some muttering to be read.

Exceptional books would get hand delivered from one convict to the next. You would be surprised how many Danielle Steele novels you would find in prison cells. I think that’s so funny, Danielle Steele. I read a few of her books. I think she’s a great writer! My favorite Danielle Steele book is Heartbeat and I love the poem in the book as well.

I spent more than a few night reading Danielle Steele’s books often I was up until three or four in the morning. Better for me to read these books late into the evening so the water works were witnessed by none. Who wants or needs to see a full grown man convict crying like a baby over some fictional character (a soldier ) dying in a tunnel while chasing the enemy during the viet nam war. Please.

When I got to the library the professor pointed to the boxes on the floor. The professor was the inmate (clerk) in charge of the library. They called him the “professor”because he was the only inmate applying for the library clerk’s position that finished Junior high school. I read somewhere the average level of education for an inmate in the Arizona department of corrections was forth grade and the national average was fifth grade. Or visa versa. There is a direct connection between education and crime. Everybody knows this but the criminal justice systems is run my medieval thugs Hell-bent on keeping things the same. Sobeit.

The professor knew what I was there for but the books had not been processed. I took this opportunity to help out with processing the books into the library. The professor was a good guy as far as I could tell. He would often steer me towards good books. Because of his job in the library the professor was someone I wanted to be on good terms with. Being on good terms with inmates in key clerking positions on the yard was a task worth handling. While we inventoried the books I set aside what interest me.

I came across a book titled Conversations with God, by Neale Donald Walsch. Normally I wouldn’t touch a book like this. It’s been my experience books with the word “God” in the title are typically religious books, books about Christianity and that’s not my cup of tea. I have no stomach for organized religion in general. All my life I found “religious”people (mainly Christian’s) to be the worst hypocrites. I think we all have some hypocrisy within us. Maybe it’s something to do with the human condition? Almost every Christian I ever met said one thing and did another. Lie, cheat and steal and worse. Much much worse. Then they to go church, throw a few bucks in the bowl and call it even with their God. No, I don’t want to be like that. I want nothing to do with those people and that religion……… or any religion.

I understand the need for God. I have that need too. But I would never or could never accept a “God” that had wants or needs. I could never swear allegiance to a god defined by words like, "Fear", “jealous” and “obey”. No sirree Bob. That is not how I would define God. The God I would “pray” to would never have me live in fear of God.

Deep inside there is part of me that knows the creator of all life could only be defined by words like, Unconditional Love, Acceptance and Forgiveness.

Someday I will find the God of Love and I will merry my spiritual beliefs to that God. Until then I am going to keep looking.

Something about this book, Conversations with God was demanding I read it. Maybe its because what happened earlier out on the recreation field? I checked the book out and took it with me.

After my evening plate of gruel, a meal that reminded me more of soilent Green than it did of real food, I walked the track. Alone. I needed to be alone. I wanted to be alone. I walked lap after lap thinking about what happened earlier on the rec field. I thought about my phone call home to my daughter and about our conversation. I thought about the storm, the voice, the conversation I had with……………….....................with…...........................................……… the storm.

I began to contemplate the meaning of my earlier admissions and the circumstances surrounding it. Did that really happen? And how do I fully own this experience? What can I do to further my effort to be in the here and now?

The words “I did this” continue to echo in my mind. I said it over and over again along with“I have no one to blame but myself”.

Eventually the yard is locked down for the evening and I am back in my cubical. At the point in the evening where the TV’s go off, this is my time to do serious reading and writing. This is my favorite time of the day because everyone but me is asleep. It’s nice and quiet in the dorm. This is as close as I get to being alone.

Because of what happened earlier on the recreation field I grabbed my journal and made an entry:

Dear God,

What more do you want from me? How much more pain are you going to inflict on me? How much more suffering will you have me do?

Chip…

I put my journal away and picked up the book, Conversations with God and began to read. It did not take long before I sat up and grabbed my journal. The letter to God I’d written moments ago looked eerily similar to the letter the author wrote to God. This coincidence made the book more interesting immediately.

As I continued to read I liked what I was reading. I savored each word and often reread paragraphs and pages over and over again. This is brilliant, I thought, it reminded me of eastern philosophy.

It had been a full day and I eventually ran out of gas. I put the book down and fell asleep.

When the sun came up the following morning everything was different and I mean everything. I woke smiling. It was more than just a smile because I felt wonderful. I felt incredible. I felt like I was glowing with Love and radiating Joy. This was more than feeling something. I was experiencing something. I was experiencing Love and Joy inside my mind, my heart, my soul. It was cataclysmic, earth shattering and euphoric. I remember thinking people are going to be able to see how different I am. Some of this feeling reminded me of how I felt in the delivery room when my daughter was born.

Twelve hours ago I felt as if I literally was in Hell. Hell on earth. Twelve hours later I am certain this is heaven. How do I explain it? How am I supposed to explain this? All I can come up with is God. As I slept that night I had been touched by the hand of Love (God). What other force is powerful enough to do something like this, turning this god forsaken Hell on earth into Heaven.

God is now part of my life.

I am going to be yet another convict that found God. How painfully unoriginal. The fact it’s so cliché doesn’t elude me. Explain it however you like, I was high on God.

It all made sense. Life. My life. The pain, the sorrow. The love, the joy. For the first time in my life everything made perfect sense. This all had to happen in order for me to get here. Mentally. Spiritually. Fortunately I had the right concoction of life events and experiences that would lead to this spiritual epiphany. I’ve heard the voice, felt the presence and now I feel the hand of God in my life. After refusing to believe, then wanting and needing to believe, I now know. There is a God. Only God Could have done this to me. I’m not totally comfortable with the word “God”. The word God is feels much too constrained and limited. I prefer the reference to God in The Ra Material, The One Infinite Creator .

Thankfully I was never brainwashed into believing in God like most people. It was a gift NOT having a steady dose of religion shoved down my fucking throat during my childhood. Thanks mom and dad for NOT doing that. We did get exposed to some religion. Some church going. At the age of nine I remember thinking this cannot be true. I do not believe these people represent God. I could see it in their eyes. Their eyes were full of lies.

Being that perceptive at the age of nine was a gift.

When you brainwash a child into believing something, then that child makes a statement of belief, I always think to myself, so what. You were brainwashed. All you are doing in regurgitating material you were brainwashed with. I wonder, how is that real? How is perpetuating the same fear and evil a representation of God?

It's not.

I don’t think those people (those belonging to fear based religions) really believe. Maybe one percent of them live lives of true faith and true belief. The rest are all a bunch of fucking liars, fakes and fonies.

Wanting to believe and belief are two different things. Just like wanting to know and knowing. In their heart of hearts they want to believe but are filled with more doubt than belief.

“Fear God”. What a bunch of bullshit.

“Obey God”. More bullshit!

"Jealous God". How do people pray to a god that is jealous?

If anyone expects me to believe the power that created the universe, hundreds of billions of galaxies, trillions upon trillions of life forms and this force needs my obedience?  Fuck you! Fuck you and the horse you road in on!

What a bunch of bullshit.

This is brainwashing.

Brainwashing is not believing!

Brainwashing is brainwashing. It’s sick, disgusting, cruel and it does not serve our society or our planet. It serves only the institutions that enslave these mindless automatons within it.

Some day everyone is going to wake up. I believe this in my heart.

The God of fear is a false God and soon enough going to die a quick death.

Why is this not intuitive? The reason people need to be brainwashed about religion is because everyone knows deep down inside the god of fear is a false god. People lack the courage to stand apart from their fellow "believers". It's easier to go along with the herd if you are a sheep.

If you have to be brainwashed into believing, what have you accomplished. That’s not true faith.

This is what I now know:

Love is a state of mind.

Misery is a state of mind.

There is a God!

I don't have faith. I don't need faith.

I know.

I value the distinction between wanting to know and knowing.

B54) Big Joe

Big Joe went home weeks ago. He was one of the lucky ones. Big Joe had a girlfriend that was self employed and willing to give him a job. Big Joe's dad was self employed and willing to give him a job. He could live at either place. This would be considered a great support system, an enviable support system.

Big Joe and I played scrabble daily. He was one of the best friends I had in prison. I have his scrabble dictionary on my desk to this day.

It was six in the morning. Someone began kicking my bunk. I don't have a job and I don't need to be anywhere so:

"What are you waking me up for"?

I demanded to know as I sat up.  It was a guard.

Oops.

He said, "Big Joe is on the tv"

"What"?

The guard walked off.

I hopped up and turned my tv on. TV coverage was from the local news. There were probably a dozen police cars in the background. The SWAT team was there. Joe's mom and niece were there.

When Big Joe went home on parole he didn't have that much time left on his sentence. He didn't make early parole. Joe had a drug problem. He was always turning up with positive UA's. Heroin. As a result of Joe's drug problem he never made it out parole. With so many dirty UA's he ended up spending twice as much time in prison had he not done drugs.

Joe was paroled to his girlfriends house but that only worked for awhile. He needed his own place. Against orders Joe got his own apartment (parole violation). And he was doing a lot of drugs.

Joe went to see his parole officer. While in the office Joe was told he failed another UA and he was going back to prison. The upside to this is he only had a couple months on his sentence. When you max out your sentence they have to let you go, unless you are a sex offender. They can keep sex offenders for life unless they are catholic priests. Then they are paroled immediately.

Joe was told he was going back to prison. Apparently that didn't go over too well. Joe got up and forced his way out of the parole office. 

The parole officer put an APB put out on Joe. The cops went looking for him. He was not at the house he was paroled too. The cops found out Joe had an apartment so they went there. They knocked on Joe's door. Joe told them

"I have a hostage. If you come in here I'll kill her"

That's not good. Right? Out comes more cops. Lots more. Hostage negotiator. SWAT team. The street was cordoned off. Holy fucking shit. This is not good.

They try through the night to get Joe to come out. They brought his mom out and his niece out. Family tried to talk him out. Joe kept telling everyone he could not go back to prison. He had problems there. This was absolutely not true.

Around six thirty in the morning the swat team did their thing.,a front entry assault. When they got in Joe was dead. He cut himself. Giant lacerations up under his arm pits. Most gruesome discover of all, it was reported he castrated himself. Joe bleeds to death.

This was all beyond belief. We had a guy on the yard that was related to Joe through marriage, not blood. He had a family member to call in an effort to obtain more facts. The family had nothing to say contradicting the story.

It would be revealed during the autopsy that Joe did not castrate himself. He put two deep lacerations into his inner upper groin area.  At a glance it looked like castration at the scene. Still he was dead.

Joe was strung out on heroin and speed.

Joe told me a story about him getting out of the county jail on bond once. He had been in the jail on a drug charge. After bonding out joe headed directly to his herion supplier and scored some dope. On the drive home after getting the heroin joe decided to shoot up in the car at a red light while he was waiting.

Coindcidentally enough it was a friend that was in a car directly behind joe.

Joe nodded off in the car at the red light. When the light turned green Joe was asleep with the neddle still hanging out of his arm.

In the car behind Joe's car was someone that knew Joe. He got out of his vehicle to see why Joe was not moving. He walk over to joe's cars in an effort to find out what the problem was.

There he was. Asleep at the wheel with a spent syringe of heroin hanging out of his arm. 

If Joe would have gotten some professional help with the transition from prison to free society it might of helped.

I cannot look at a scabble board without thinking about big joe.

B53) Highlight from year five in prison Part 2

The prison hospital is at Florence Central Unit. Florence Central Unit is referred to by the inmate population as "the walls”. The reason for the reference "the walls" , it was the walls around the prison. It's one of those old fashion looking prisons from the turn of the century. I think the prison was built in 1901 (A picture of Central Unit is posted for your viewing pleasure). The walls are twenty five feet up then twenty five feet down. Central Unit, this unit was just across the street from North Unit, which is the yard I spend the last three and a half years of my sentence at.

I’m sitting in the foyer of central medical. I'm waiting for something. I don't recall if I was waiting on the doctor or the xray technician. It didn't matter. I was waiting. I was aching. Each time I move and felt pain I have a flashback, a nightmarish mental film clip about the incident.

The smell was foreign to me and it was distinct. It had an overpowering subtly about it. It was the kind of odor that burdens you. The longer I sat there, the worse it smelled. I can’t imagine having to work anywhere near the vicinity of this retched odor. I was able to determine the smell was coming from beyond the doors on the other side of the foyer. I watched those doors open and close a few times. Each time they opened a wall of smell came charging out and it blanketed the entire foyer.

"What is that disgusting smell”?

I found myself looking for distractions as I sat there patiently. Throbbingly. It felt like my whole body was throbbing after being pummeled by that fucking mental patient and his sock full of batteries. I decided to get up and walk around in an effort to distract myself from the pain and that retched odor.

While standing at a window I see death row,  or rather the building it was in. Death row was once here at Central Unit. It was right across the courtyard from where I stood. I could also see the chimney stack that vented the poison gas from the murder chamber. It was sobering sight. Arizona no longer use the gas chamber for their murders. Now they murder people via lethal injection.

“Thou shall not kill”, It’s one of their commandments (Christian's). What a fabulous and grand example of their hypocrisy.

In my estimation, nobody likes to kill like a Christian. The bible belt states put more people to death than all the other states combined. It’s a Christian charge to justice, execution style.

“Thou shall not kill”. It doesn’t say “if” or “but”. There’s literally no wiggle room in those words:

“Thou shall not kill” Period. The End

Your principals only mean something if you stick to them when it's inconvenient.

Hypocrites!

The door opened again. This time I saw someone I recognized inside that room. One of my former neighbors (cubical next to mine). I think his name was Fred. I remember Fred telling me he had health issues. Then one day he was gone. He didn't even roll up his own belongings. The guards packed his belongings after he left. People come and go from this place all the time.

I decided to get up and go talk to Fred. My morbid sense of curiosity needed to be assuaged. I was going to find out what was going on in that room.

As it turns out, the room behind the doors was the prison hospice. "Yikes". Not a place I want to be. I don’t know if they actually called it a hospice but every one in that room looked close to death. They were all knocking on Death's door. A few of the dying were dying of AIDS. Others dying from liver failure from Hep C., Fred was dying of liver failure. One of the consequences of IV drug use.

I still find it inconceivable someone would pull a balloon of heroin from their rectum. Then put the thit stained heroin into a syringe and inject it in their veins. Talk about a contaminated field.

Fred did not look well. He didn’t recognize me. He was walking with dead eyes. He looked like the walking dead. He was moving. He had a pulse but when you looked him in the eyes it was like looking into the eyes of a shark. Cold Black Dead Eyes. This was worse than the Thorazine shuffle. This was the dead man’s shuffle. It’s a ghastly sight.

The smell. It was the smell of death mixed with the smell of rotting flesh, puss filled sores, snot, spittle, vomit, urine, feces and more. Combine that vomitous concoction with the typical hospital smells and you get the fragrant picture I'm trying to draw for you. Pretty fucking disgusting. 

Fred didn't recognize me. I found this disturbing. It was only weeks ago he moved off the yard. We were neighbors for a couple of months. We had conversations every day. And he didn't recognize me. Everything about this place was disturbing.

It was obvious this room was not meant to hold patients. It looked more like a storage room than the wing of a hospital. The patients/inmates lay on bunks close to the ground. They were more like cots. They were not in hospital beds. There were maybe eight to ten patients. One looked more gruesome that the next.

It looked like the kind of room that if anyone looked at you funny you slammed them with a hundred mics of Thorazine. Give them the real Thorazine shuffle.

The Smell of death hung in the air. It forced me backwards. I started backing up. I needed to move. To get out of there.

They were dying from disease. They were dying from broken lives. They were dying They were dying from neglect. They were dying. No one to care about these people. They fucked up. They ended up in prison, and now this. A slow death. Painful. Protracted. They were unwanted and unneeded by anyone for anything. I can’t imagine a worse death then to die in that room. To linger on deaths door in a place like this. That may not be cruel and unusual or it may be? I wouldn’t want to die in there.

When I got back to the yard I had a Florence police detective waiting for me. I was taken to the yard office and had a brief discussion with the detective. He asked only one question:

“Do you want to press charges”?

"What", I asked.

“I know exactly what happened. I don’t really need your statement. All I need to know is would you like to press charges”?

“No” I replied.

“I live here. That’s not really an option. But thanks for asking”

He paused, just staring at me.

“Are you sure”?

"Yes"

He dismissed me. I went back to my cubical. I needed rest and I needed to find out what the situation was for me on the yard.

Noony came to see me as soon as I got to my cubical. Noony was a friend. He was former Mexican Mafia. "Former" being the operative word. Years ago Noony grew tired of the politics of prison life. He resigned his commission. Now he was an independent. Noony was the most feared man on the yard. He and big Joe were old friends. They were friends from the street and from prison. I met noony through big Joe.

Noony wanted to see me. He wanted to find out how I was doing and he had a message for me.

“There’s not a Mexican on this yard that will raise a hand to you ever again".

Wow I thought. That’s a kind gesture. I put my hand out to shake noony’s hand as a way to say thanks.

I said to Noony “Thank you, but isn’t that unnecessary.------------- is it”? I had no idea what the fallout would be because of what happened last night.

Noony said, “I want you alive so we can work together when we get out”

“Yes. You bet. Back to business when we get out”

I had no action plan for going back to trafficking after prison. I cannot deny there was some value in having people on the yard under the impression I was going back to my former career after prison. If it helps making my time in prison easier then I consider that a little white lie.

Noony and big Joe were two people believing our friendship would pave the path for our future business relationship (marijuana business) in our post prison lives.

The attack last night was going to have many unintended consequences. I began to wonder about them. I could feel the unintended consequences in a high speed pursuit of me as I sat there on my bunk.