Whereas most inmates in the Florida DOC are housed in open-bay, military barracks-style dormitories, those in lock-up are housed in single six-by-nine cells. Some of the lockup cells house two inmates, some one. All have a sink, toilet, bunk, and a very small window covered with steel mesh. The inmates in lockup are fed through a slot in the metal door about the size of a food tray. Jacobson’s was open, and I was talking to him through it.
Squatting down to talk through the tray slot in the door always made my knees ache and my feet fall asleep. I usually chose to talk to an inmate through the tray slot because of the security hassle involved in arranging to meet him in his cell or the conference room. For me to enter an inmate’s cell, he must be frisked and cuffed, and an officer must be present at all times. The same is involved if I meet with him in the conference room. Many times what the inmate has to say to me is so short that being frisked and cuffed takes longer than our meeting. Other times the inmates have a lot to say, but are unable or unwilling to because of the security officer standing within hearing distance. I was hoping that without an officer present, Jacobson would sing me a song. He did. Unfortunately, it was one I had heard before.
“Fuck you, motherfucker,” he said in response to my first question, which was “How are you doing?”
From the last cell of the corridor to my right, I could hear Inmate Starn yelling, “CHAPLAIN, CHAPLAIN, COME HERE. COME HERE, CHAPLAIN.”
He did that every time I came to confinement. It was Wednesday, and I had already seen him twice that week.
It didn’t look like Jacobson was going to cooperate. Perhaps I had spoken too soon about the overabundance of information I was going to uncover during this investigation.
Crouching down on the bare cement floor of the confinement hall, I smelled the same smell I always did down there-sleep. The stale air was thick with smells of drool, perspiration, and halitosis. The cell was one of twenty along a long corridor. There was an officer seated at the end of the hall, a round black man with virtually no hair. Another officer, a tall slender man with strawberry blond hair and pink cheeks, was crouched down by a food slot about five cells down from me.
“Is there nothing I can help you with?” I asked. “Nothing you would like to talk about?” Behind me, the gray block wall was lined with empty milk cartons, wads of crumpled napkins, and various other items of trash the inmates had tossed out of their cells.
“Fuck you, motherfucker.”
“From what I hear, you would, but I’m not interested,” I said, deciding to change my approach. A few cells down, an inmate yelled, “DON’T TALK TO THE CHAPLAIN LIKE THAT, YOU STUPID SON OF A BITCH!”
If Jacobson heard him, he didn’t acknowledge it. “I ain’t no punk,” he said, his eyes seeming to take on a demonic glow in the dark cell.
He may or may not have been a punk, but he certainly did not look like one. His shaved head, pale white skin, sparse beard, and puke-green tattoos made him look like a neo-Nazi serial killer.
“What are you then?” I asked. Somewhere in another corridor a steel door slammed. The noise bounced off the concrete walls and floors and reverberated through confinement. It was, perhaps, the most depressing sound I had ever heard. Another inmate, from a cell to my left this time, said, “We’re locked in now, boys.” Someone else said, “Yeah, and so is the chaplain.”
“I’m Satan, man,” Jacobson hissed.
“Don’t be so hard on yourself,” I said.
“Don’t be so hard on Satan,” the inmate to my left said and started laughing.
“Did you come to cast me out, Holy Man?” Jacobson asked in such a way as to doubt my ability to do so.
“Actually, I just wanted to see if there was anything I could do for you and maybe ask you a few questions.”
“There’s nothing you could do for me. I’m well taken care of. What you really mean is, there’s something I can do for you. You need something I have.”
“CHAPLAIN, CHAPLAIN,” Starn continued to call.
“Which is what?”
“Secrets.”
The officers’ radios sounded at the same time, and because of their distance apart and the cement surroundings, every word was doubled. It sounded like the digital delay that many recording artists overused during the late eighties.
“What makes you think I want to know your secrets?” I asked.
“Believe me, you do. I see evil. I hear evil. I see and hear that which is done in darkness,” he said. His eyes were wide and wild, and he hissed his words, placing about fifteen s’s on the end of darkness. He was a bad actor doing Manson.
I felt something moist on the back of my hand. It was a small dot of water. I looked up. Above me, hanging from the ceiling, there were two bare galvanized pipes running the length of the hallway. I saw condensation around the joint of one of them directly above me. For a moment, I lost my train of thought, forgetting what he had said. Then I remembered-he knew things that were done in the dark.
“What sort of things?” I asked.
“I see evil. I hear evil. But I speak no evil. I’ve crossed my heart, hoped to die. Watch it, or I’ll stick a needle in your eye. I’ll cast you out, Holy Man.”
“I see,” I said. “And hear.”
“Don’t play games with me. I can have you stuck, just like Johnson. Was it in his eye? Corrections officers are so sloppy, you know. I heard it was very messy. Did all his blood drain out? There’s power in the blood, you know. Life and death. Atonement’s in the blood. But, I guess you know that. You think he atoned for his sin?”
“CHAPLAIN, CHAPLAIN. CHAPLAIN, I NEED YOU,” Starn yelled.
“So you had Johnson stuck? What was his sin?” I asked, trying to keep up.
The officer seated at the end of the hall propped his feet on the corner of the desk and leaned back in his chair. The shortness of his legs caused his feet to fall off the desk when he leaned back in his chair.
“I can have anybody I want to stuck,” he continued. As he talked, he widened and narrowed his eyes. I had seen Charles Manson do the same thing on a TV interview. “But I like sticking pigs best.”
The officer at the desk stood, pulled the chair closer to the desk, and then repeated his earlier attempt. This time he was successful. However, his new position made him look extremely uncomfortable.
“Was Johnson your punk?” I asked.
“Hickory, dickory, dock-Johnson didn’t have a cock, but he got one . . . every night, and now he’s taken flight.”
“CHAPLAIN, CHAPLAIN.” Starn’s voice sounded sad and whiny.
“Did you have Johnson stuck?”
“The pig had him stuck because he was tired of getting stuck in the butt.”
He jumped up suddenly from his crouched position at the slot and began dancing around the cell, crashing into the sink, bed, and walls as he did. All the while he was singing the old hymn, “There’s Power in the Blood.”
“Jacobson,” I yelled at him, “Jacobson, come here, now.”
Evidently the officer at the other cell heard me yelling because he rushed over and looked through the narrow glass window of the cell door. He yelled for the other officer, who was still seated at the end of the hall, to come quickly and began to fumble for his keys.
“CHAPLAIN, CHAPLAIN.”
“Step back, Father, please,” he said, his voice an octave higher from the excitement. His strawberry blond hair was very fine and it moved a great deal whenever he did. His face, previously pink, was now a deep red.
I complied. He pulled the handcuffs from the back of his belt and opened them. As soon as the rotund black officer joined him, Strawberry unlocked the door and stepped in, Rotund following closely behind him. As Rotund entered the cell, I could have sworn I saw him smile.
Strawberry told Jacobson to assume the position, to which he responded with many colorful obscenities,
