{"id":18670,"date":"2023-12-25T09:46:58","date_gmt":"2023-12-25T14:46:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/?p=18670"},"modified":"2023-12-25T09:47:50","modified_gmt":"2023-12-25T14:47:50","slug":"the-loners-hole","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/creative-nonfiction\/the-loners-hole\/","title":{"rendered":"THE LONER’S HOLE"},"content":{"rendered":"

A maverick poet and old friend asked if I\u2019d like to replace him teaching prison inmates. Why me, Alex?<\/em> I wondered, and didn\u2019t ask. Men I know don\u2019t often speak directly, even to friends. If pressed, Alex might not have said. Anyway, I can\u2019t ask. He died not long after from a heart attack.<\/p>\n

Thirty years later, I still can\u2019t figure out why he picked me. It wasn\u2019t the Ivy education. Maybe he recognized another outsider like him, a guy struggling with his life like he was. I was no tough guy with fists, he knew that, though I\u2019d spent years in gyms. And, sure, I was curious. He knew that too. Back then before the TV dramas, prisons were off the main road. I\u2019d be an explorer and that had appeal, as it did to him.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m avoiding saying what\u2019s hard to say, something I don\u2019t want to say, the drift close to loser<\/em>. Alex saw me wary and defended and suspicious of others, crouched at the edge, an angry loner like him. We\u2019d been pals because of it, I think. Could be he thought I\u2019d learn from the men inside, though he never said, not in so many words.<\/p>\n

It was the fifth or sixth week and I was still feeling my way, searching out what was possible, how hard I could push without losing them. They weren\u2019t a trusting bunch. Why would they trust some forty-six-year-old who drove a \u201cBeamer\u201d? That\u2019s what they told me I drove (I drove an old Toyota). Me in a \u201cBeamer\u201d seemed to please them, a few had owned one, me in my Hawaiian shirt and Italian shoes. \u201cI\u2019d get those off you if we were on the outside,\u201d one quipped. I don\u2019t think he was kidding.<\/p>\n

Alex may have wanted me to learn about being too far outside, how such people can land in a place like this if they play combative too loud. Maybe he wanted me to see the price angry mavericks pay. Alex wasn\u2019t a preacher. He was crafty.<\/p>\n

I\u2019d assigned Baldwin\u2019s \u201cSonny\u2019s Blues,\u201d a story that follows a Harlem musician raised around boys \u201cfilled with rage,\u201d whose \u201cheads bumped abruptly against the low ceiling of their actual possibilities.\u201d Sonny uses heroin and serves time in prison. He plays the piano, as jazzman Dwike Mitchell said about his own early playing, \u201cto escape the pain\u2014or, possibly, to play about it.\u201d<\/p>\n

I divined early that one of the rare times the races mingled was in a classroom. An inmate said, \u201cWhen I\u2019m in school, I leave the yard in the yard,\u201d the outdoor expanse where violence happened. His practice seemed the general practice, yet the yard was steps away, and a class could be gasoline. I was the rookie too green to know I might be the one striking a match. Inmates proclaimed Enfield Correctional \u201calways about to blow.\u201d<\/p>\n

The classroom the size of a large closet, no windows, reeked of sweat and rusted steampipes, the fluorescents casting the men\u2019s blue uniforms into yellow vomit. We sat in a circle, a dozen inmates and me, black men more or less to my right, whites facing them from the left. I judged they would own Sonny, a man who scratches out a purpose for his anger, snarled as these men were in their own.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat\u2019s it mean,\u201d I asked, \u201cfor Sonny to be at the piano \u2018playing for his life\u2019?\u201d<\/p>\n

Men fiddled with the book\u2019s pages…. No one answered.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s what we hafta deal with daily, this kinda shit.\u201d<\/p>\n

Roone slammed the fat anthology down. With a football linebacker\u2019s build, the sitting Roone was a half-head taller than the rest of us. He\u2019d cut to a moment in the story where drunks for fun swerve to scare a black teen on a country road. They aim \u201cthe car straight at him\u201d and turn the screaming boy into \u201cnothing but blood and pulp\u201d on the highway. The car kept going \u201cand it ain\u2019t stopped till this day.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThose crackers snuffed that kid. That\u2019s a fact, a daily fact for blacks sittin\u2019 right here.\u201d<\/p>\n

Roone pounded a fist onto his desk.<\/p>\n

Eyes on Roone, then me, then Roone.<\/p>\n

\u201cBro\u2019 got it!\u201d A black voice.<\/p>\n

\u201cFrom the giddy up.\u201d Another.<\/p>\n

I sat mute. I couldn\u2019t find words. White inmates, expressions blank.<\/p>\n

A story said a pocket-sized man nearly killed one of Roone\u2019s \u201cgirls.\u201d Roone had been a pimp, and Alex considered pimps \u201cthe worst.\u201d He didn\u2019t explain. When the fellow landed with Roone in the same prison, the latter offered a seat at a card game and, panicked, the diminutive man accepted. In a short time he realized Roone cheated, and continued to play, and pay.<\/p>\n

\u201cKnow whaddit\u2019s like to be black in this fuckin\u2019 country?\u201d<\/p>\n

Roone wasn\u2019t stopping, the entire room suddenly still.<\/p>\n

I\u2019d told the men I taught in Alabama at a Black college the year James Earl Ray shot Martin Luther King on a Memphis balcony. The whites guessed I\u2019d picked a side and it wasn\u2019t theirs. Roone might have taken the remark as an opening.<\/p>\n

I leaned forward. Stay calm. Keep your head. Sweat dripped down my chest as steampipes popped. Place had to be eighty degrees: no windows, bad light, brown walls closing in. Men stared at the floor and twisted in their seats.<\/p>\n

I looked for easier ground.<\/p>\n

\u201cIs Sonny\u2019s story only about race? Only<\/em> race?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHonky mothafucka.\u201d<\/p>\n

I couldn\u2019t tell where that came from.<\/p>\n

Roone\u2019s huge hands gripped the edges of his desk.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat I<\/em> know is, those crackers took out the kid. Blacks, we understand that. How can you expect men not to end up in here when they deal with shit like this every day?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAny problem, anytime,\u201d a guard had said, \u201ctake the phone off the hook. We\u2019ll be there.\u201d<\/p>\n

I\u2019d lose whatever minor respect I\u2019d earned if I went for the phone. Inmates spat on guards.<\/p>\n

Roone\u2019s eyes didn\u2019t focus. They darted everywhere like a frightened man. He wasn\u2019t stretching out for friends. His heat and bulk howled, Back off, every single one of you bitches<\/em>. He was out there alone, big, and alone. Tribeless. That\u2019s what Alex hinted in his \u201cworst\u201d remark. Pimps\u2019 lack of trust made them impossible to reach. Later, one inmate spoke for all the men that night: \u201cI don\u2019t mess with that crazy bastard, that big crazy bastard.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cGo to the last scene,\u201d I said. \u201cSonny plays and people in that jazz club hear their own pain. What\u2019s Baldwin saying about turning what you suffer into something useful?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI dunno,\u201d Roone grumbled, the only response.<\/p>\n

\u201cI know,\u201d someone said. \u201cI know<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n

Forearms thick with tattoos, Simpson was balding, one of the oldest in Enfield. He\u2019d spent time in an Arizona penitentiary where inmates beat, stabbed, and zip-gunned inmates. Arizona taught you weren\u2019t safe inside alone, he told me later; you needed the protection of others. He was medium-sized and a gym rat\u2014broad shoulders, small waist, prominent biceps. Close to release after twenty years, Simpson had \u201cpulled back,\u201d he said. The reputation stuck. Fool with him… well, men were not sure.<\/p>\n

He peered at Roone.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat happens to the boy isn\u2019t good.\u201d<\/p>\n

The room grew still. Faces locked on Simpson.<\/p>\n

\u201cI understand.\u201d His arm swept the group. \u201cWe all<\/em> do.\u201d<\/p>\n

He glanced at each man, the voice a gruff baritone.<\/p>\n

\u201cI can\u2019t get behind the white guys. It happens. Whites on blacks, blacks on whites. That\u2019s not<\/em> what this story is about.\u201d<\/p>\n

He held a beat.<\/p>\n

\u201cSonny\u2019s black. We know. Except we\u2019ve all<\/em>… we\u2019ve all<\/em> been down the same road. The smack. The joint. The tryin\u2019 to turn it around. Sonny\u2019s no different from anybody here. No different.\u201d<\/p>\n

Simpson sat back.<\/p>\n

\u201cSonny\u2019s tryin\u2019 to crawl out of a shithole, the same hole we\u2019re all tryin\u2019 to crawl from.\u201d<\/p>\n

No one moved. The wall-clock clicked the minute hand. Roone sat with arms crossed over his chest, eyes on a spot above Simpson\u2019s head.<\/p>\n

There was noise in the hallway, loud, insistent voices, and the scuffle of feet. Inmate blue streamed past the glassed door. Classes letting out. A buzzer sounded. The men silently closed their book and gathered pens and notebook, and hesitated for an instant, before they moved to the door.<\/p>\n

I switched off the light and returned to my seat to sit in the unexpected stillness.<\/p>\n

Roone.<\/p>\n

Was he what Alex had wanted to teach?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A maverick poet and old friend asked if I\u2019d like to replace him teaching prison inmates. Why me? I wondered, and didn\u2019t ask. Men I know don\u2019t often speak directly, even to friends. If pressed, my friend might not have said. Anyway, I can\u2019t ask. He died not long after from a heart attack.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":19380,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[760],"tags":[3160,3161,3162,3163,311,3164,1272],"class_list":["post-18670","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-creative-nonfiction","tag-baldwin","tag-black-people","tag-learning-late","tag-outsiders","tag-prison","tag-sonnys-blues","tag-teaching","writer-kent-jacobson"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18670","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18670"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18670\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19381,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18670\/revisions\/19381"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19380"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18670"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18670"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18670"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}