From the moment I was indicted, my father believed I was guilty, of something. Forget the presumption of innocence. Forget my rants about being innocent. As a proud career man, he was thoroughly brainwashed by a lifetime of chasing those who broke the law, and if the Feds, with their resources and great wisdom, deemed me worthy of a one-hundred-page indictment, then they were right and I was wrong. I’m sure he felt sympathy, and I’m sure he prayed I would somehow get out of my mess, but he had a difficult time conveying those feelings to me. He was humiliated, and he let me know it. How could his lawyer son get himself so entangled with such a slimy bunch of crooks?
I have asked myself the same question a thousand times. There is no good answer.
Henry Bannister barely finished high school and, after a few minor scrapes with the law, joined the Marine Corps at the age of nineteen. The Marines quickly turned him into a man, a soldier who craved the discipline and took great pride in the uniform. He did three tours in Vietnam, where he got shot and burned and briefly captured. His medals are on the wall of his study in the small home where I was raised. He lives there alone. My mother was killed by a drunk driver two years before I was indicted.
Henry travels to Frostburg once a month for a one-hour visit. He is retired with little to do, and he could visit once a week if he wanted. But he does not.
There are so many cruel twists in a long prison term. One is the feeling of being slowly forgotten by the world and by those you love and need. The mail, which arrived in bundles during the early months, gradually trickled down to one or two letters a week. Friends and family members who once seemed eager to visit have not been seen in years. My older brother, Marcus, drops in twice a year to kill an hour updating me on his latest problems. He has three teenagers, all at various stages of juvenile delinquency, plus a wife who’s crazy. I guess I have no problems after all. In spite of his chaotic life, I enjoy the visits. Marcus has been mimicking Richard Pryor his entire life, and every word he utters is funny. We usually laugh the entire hour as he rails against his children. My younger sister, Ruby, lives on the West Coast, and I see her once a year. She dutifully writes me a letter every week, and I treasure these. I have a distant cousin who served seven years for armed robbery-I was his lawyer-and he comes to see me twice a year because I visited him when he was in prison.
After three years here, I often go months without a visitor, except for my father. The Bureau of Prisons tries to place its inmates within five hundred miles of home. I’m lucky in that Winchester is so close, but it might as well be a thousand miles away. I have several childhood friends who’ve never made the drive and a few others whom I haven’t heard from in two years. Most of my former lawyer friends are too busy. My running buddy in law school writes once every other month but can’t quite squeeze in a visit. He lives in Washington, a hundred fifty miles to the east, where he claims to work seven days a week in a big law firm. My best pal from the Marine Corps lives in Pittsburgh, two hours away, and he’s been to Frostburg exactly once.
I suppose I should be thankful that my father makes the effort.
As always, he’s sitting alone in the small visiting room with a brown paper sack on the table in front of him. It’s either cookies or brownies from my Aunt Racine, his sister. We shake hands but do not embrace-Henry Bannister has never hugged another man in his life. He looks me over to make sure I have not gained weight and, as always, quizzes me about my daily routine. He has not gained a pound in forty years and can still fit into his Marine uniform. He’s convinced that eating less means living longer, and Henry’s afraid of dying young. His father and grandfather dropped dead in their late fifties. He walks five miles a day and thinks I should do the same. I have accepted the fact that he will never stop telling me how to live my life, incarcerated or not.
He taps the brown bag and says, “Racine sent these.”
“Please tell her I said thanks,” I say. If he’s so worried about my waistline, why does he bring me a bag of fatty desserts every time he visits? I’ll eat two or three and give the rest away.
“You talked to Marcus lately?” he asks.
“No, not in the past month. Why?”
“Big trouble. Delmon’s got a girl pregnant. He’s fifteen, she’s fourteen.” He shakes his head and frowns. Delmon was an outlaw by the age of ten, and the family has always expected him to pursue a life of crime.
“Your first great-grandchild,” I say, trying to be funny.
“Ain’t I proud? A fourteen-year-old white girl knocked up by a fifteen-year-old idiot who happens to be named Bannister.”
We both dwell on this for some time. Our visits are often defined not by what is said but by what is kept deep inside. My father is now sixty-nine, and instead of savoring his golden years, he spends most of his time licking his wounds and feeling sorry for himself. Not that I blame him. His dear wife of forty-two years was taken away in a split second. While he was lost in his grief, we found out the FBI had an interest in me, and its investigation soon snowballed. My trial lasted for three weeks and my father was in the courtroom every day. Watching me stand before a judge and get sentenced to ten years in prison was heartbreaking. Then Bo was taken away, from both of us. Now Marcus’s children are old enough to inflict serious pain on their parents and extended family.
Our family is due some good luck, but that doesn’t appear likely.
“I talked to Ruby last night,” he says. “She’s doing well, says hello, says your last letter was quite funny.”
“Please tell her the letters mean so much. She has not missed a week in five years.” Ruby is such a bright spot in our crumbling family. She’s a marriage counselor, and her husband is a pediatrician. They have three perfect kids who are kept away from their infamous Uncle Mal.
After a long pause, I say, “Thanks for the check, as always.”
He shrugs and says, “Happy to help.”
He sends $100 every month, and it is much appreciated. It goes into my account and allows me to buy such necessities as pens, writing tablets, paperbacks, and decent food. Most of those in my White Gang get checks from home and virtually no one in my Black Gang gets a penny. In prison, you always know who’s getting money.
“You’re almost halfway through,” he says.
“I’m two weeks shy of five years,” I say.
“I guess it flies by.”
“Maybe on the outside. I can assure you the clocks run much slower on this side of the wall.”
“Still, it’s hard to believe you’ve been in for five years.”
It is indeed. How do you survive for years in prison? You don’t think about years, or months, or weeks. You think about today-how to get through it, how to survive it. When you wake up tomorrow, another day is behind you. The days add up; the weeks run together; the months become years. You realize how tough you are, how you can function and survive because you have no choice.
“Any idea what you’ll do?” he asks. I get this same question every month now, as if my release were just around the corner. Patience, I remind myself. He’s my father. And he’s here! That counts for a lot.
“Not really. It’s too far away.”
“I’d start thinking about it if I were you,” he says, certain that he would know exactly what to do if he were in my shoes.
“I just finished the third level of Spanish,” I say with some pride. In my Brown Gang there is a good friend, Marco, who is an excellent language teacher. Drugs.
“Looks like we’ll all be speaking Spanish before long. They’re taking over.”
Henry has little patience with immigrants, anybody with an accent, people from New York and New Jersey, anyone on welfare, anyone unemployed, and he thinks the homeless should be rounded up and placed in camps that would resemble, in his view, something worse than Guantanamo.
We had harsh words a few years ago, and he threatened to stop the visits. Bickering is a waste of time. I’m not going to change him. He’s kind enough to drive over, the least I can do is behave. I am the convicted felon; he is not. He’s the winner; I’m the loser. This seems important to Henry, though I don’t know why. Maybe it’s because I had college and law school, something he never dreamed of.
“I’ll probably leave the country,” I say. “Go somewhere where I can use the Spanish, somewhere like Panama or Costa Rica. Warm weather, beaches, people with darker skin. They don’t care about criminal records or who’s been to prison.”
“The grass is always greener, huh?”
“Yes, Dad, when you’re in prison, every place has greener grass. What am I supposed to do? Go back home, maybe become an unlicensed paralegal doing research for some tiny firm that can’t afford me? Maybe become a bail
