The Prisoners

Ask any resident who has been here long enough and the day he looks forward to most is the annual prison rodeo. Contrary to popular belief, there are many days we anticipate. To the down man, Salisbury steak is a holiday. So is the occasion a guard falls ill. We anticipate the first morning of autumn when the heat breaks. Executions come and go, but those hold little interest to the balance of us. More than the memories of our birthdays or Christmas, even more than seeing our wives on visitation days clutching our bewildered children, it is the rodeo that sustains us. The only day we might anticipate more is the day of our release, when we can go home and sit under the shade of our childhood climbing trees. But for many of us the State has rendered this a moot point. We know we will never leave this place for the crimes we once committed and so, folding laundry or peeling radishes, we recount great rodeo performances of the past—Wylie Farte’s 98 point ride or Big Tom Jonovitch’s sweep of the centennial Chicken Run. Alone in our cells we cast ourselves in these roles. We dream it’s us hoisting the “Best Cowboy” trophy before the throngs of spectators, and we revel in the glory of our triumph, the enduring respect it will garner from our peers and captors. Whereas originally the warden had to designate participants, now a raffle must be held to decide the lucky few who will have the privilege to compete. When the numbers are announced over the tinny PA system, we cease all activity and the prison goes quiet. Murderer, thief, and pederast alike squeeze their eyes shut, mouthing the five digits that adorn our gray uniforms.

Of course, the rodeo is also a welcome respite from our daily routine. It breaks up the tedium of the days and carries us through the long months of tilling our inhospitable land, where we manage to grow all mess of vegetables, grain, and legume despite being walled off on three sides by a river as swift and savage as the Nile.

We are under no delusion that the rodeo is free of danger. Without fail a rider gets trampled by a colt or mashes his face against the metal safety railing. Death by goring is a real possibility, as Cooperson can attest from last year when he lost his spleen. Still, we mark our chalk calendars for that brisk April morning when the light licks quick off the surfaces and good humor hangs in the air. We wait for that moment when the gates swing open and throngs of spectators—children cheering from atop their father’s shoulders, women watching through slatted fingers—file into the bleachers and fill their lungs for us, a glint of absolution in their faces.

~

Leading up to the rodeo there is a show of public displeasure. A bespectacled journalist from some sitcom city will appear and cast about on the periphery of our daily activities, striking poses of indignant observation. They will ask the warden, proofing his white linen suit, what purpose the rodeo serves, and he will cross a gator-loafered foot over his knee and expound about the woes of underfunding and the palliative effect of healthy releases of violence in the rehabilitation process.

The journalists will offer the least threatening of us cigarettes and inquire if we have a moment to chat. What do you really gain from this event? they will ask, holding their n’s. Have you heard of the gladiator fights of ancient Rome? Do you feel exploited by your role? Do you feel dehumanized? They ask about this year’s new event, Inmate Jousting, which up until this point we have regarded with zealous excitement, and then they are determined to convince us it is the worst injustice of all.

One of us, usually a man fresh off the chain, will swallow their line. “Yes, oh God yes,” the fish will tell the journalist, “this rodeo business is truly a nightmare,” and later, like Muther a few years back, the sieve might be found slouched in a corner with his tongue cut clean out of his skull. But despite this unfortunate barbarity, a change in the population’s atmosphere can be detected. Though none of us would ever admit it, we begin to consider these questions once the lights are put out and we are left to converse among ourselves.

About this time the letters will start arriving, missives from outraged citizens and national humanitarian organizations beating their chests, and an inmate, invariably one whose claim to public opinion per the prison hierarchy is borderline, will stand in the yard like a sidewalk holy man frothing about our basic human dignity. Those in earshot will grumble at first, then begin to linger, and soon a small crowd will have gathered waving library books and quoting passages from Gandhi or the Greeks of antiquity until a hum has built among the lot of us at mealtime.

More letters will arrive, this time garrulous texts beautifully handwritten by our suddenly doting wives, or else perfume spritzed by mistresses we’d long ago lost hope of ever hearing from again; notes from our children on construction paper, sticker-strewn and scrawled with four different crayons, only the backwards D’s blue for the color of daddy’s.

The leader of this spontaneous movement, the rabble-rouser, will stand atop a table, a pair of glasses perched on the end of his nose, and start a chant that will spark a succession of protests and escape attempts, each more reckless than the last. The participants of the rodeo will grow anxious, reconsidering their complicity in this spectacle. They will pray in the night asking guidance of we priests beyond the bars of their cement confessionals and receive no answer.

These men will hold their wives a little tighter when they visit and kiss their children more tenderly, recognizing the miracle they represent. They make plans to take classes or start small businesses on the outside and talk about the future as if it were a real unit of time. They become aware of the fragility of their lives in a way they never realized before, and begin to guard themselves from us with a paranoid fervor bordering on the insane.

But inevitably we tire, lose our momentum. Our voices spent and our wills exhausted, we lay our backs against the cool walls of our cells and exhale. We eat and go to sleep when we are told, perform our duties at the laundry or kitchen, and it is as if our grand commotion had been just another block in the prison schedule. Those who shouted the loudest, men whose names seem to fade quickly from the prison consciousness, get their comeuppance. They are found choked in the kitchen walk-in or piked through the neck with the sharpened arm of a pince-nez, no witnesses among us, and the poor soul who abdicated his place in the rodeo—terrible imaginations roam the halls of our house.

We return to farming, tilling the earth, and let our blood recirculate. For long stretches we achieve an equilibrium of malaise in which we inflict no harm on our fellow man, placid like the cows of India joined by our common star. Then from the calm someone will mention the rodeo, offhand, like a funny thing we all witnessed together once upon a time. Inspiration will spark the artisans among us, and the man who was sent here for negotiating bank vaults will build a ship within a bottle whose scale and intricacy would rival the Antikythera mechanism.

We come to realize we were duped, our natural suspicions strummed, made to believe that our lofty expectations were unfounded, that we were undeserving of any enjoyment in this lifetime. The rodeo is a good and noble endeavor.

We tear up the letters we taped to our walls and burn the photos pressed between the pages of our holy scriptures. We harden our hearts against the false promises they came to symbolize, and once again see how dangerous the world outside our walls can be.

~

The morning of the rodeo is ebullient and skillet hot. We are herded into our designated area, square in the meanest glare of the sun, and watch as the spectators amble into the shaded bleachers. The Grand Entry kicks off and the best of our riders perform a choreographed routine on par with any ceremony in the country. Our pride swells in our throats and we go mental as our brethren parade into the arena led by last year’s Best Cowboy runner-up, who presents the flag to the Warden. A beauty queen from the nearest town sings the National Anthem and it is all we can do not to shed a tear as her voice soars through the quiet grounds.

The noon heat beats down on our bare heads, and we watch the events unfold as if in a fever dream. The air, fat with the smell of popcorn and barbeque and skunked beer makes us nostalgic for nights long past wetting our sleeves on salty bar tops. Roman breaks his arm falling from his horse during the Calf Rope. Salamanca is hoofed in the spine steer wrestling. Four others are sent to the infirmary following the Joust. The crowd erupts with each misstep, cheering louder the more gruesome the injury. They begin to chant in anticipation of the final event, the Chicken Run, and we join them. The winning barrel racer finishes his last run and the chants grow louder, echoing throughout the arena. Soon the corral can be heard rattling from the bull’s approach.

The first of us walks out, taking his position on the red X marked in the dirt. He’s a young man, new to the rodeo, and we razz him for his good fortune. His number is announced over the speaker—“Now competing, Prisoner 22593”—and he tips his hat to the crowd. “Grand theft auto,” one of us says, “No, vehicular manslaughter,” another refutes, and as we argue over who is right, the bell clangs, jolting us back, and the bull tears into the open like a thing from a long ago time, its black hide taut and lathered, showing every tensed muscle.

“OK, folks, here’s what you came to see,” says the announcer, and as if predetermined, the crowd shifts its chants to Toro without breaking stride.

The bull raises its head. Toro. The young man crouches at the ready. Toro. He stands headlong for an instant as the bull charges toward him then turns tail and bails over the railing.

“So much for bravery,” says the announcer. “I guess crime don’t make a cowboy.”

We are thrilled and sickened to witness the man’s cowardice. Toro, we find ourselves yelling. We know no matter how the bull performs, he will not make it out of this place alive. The hired rodeo men will come for him at the end of the day for the guards’ annual barbeque, and so we cheer his name, like a sort of incantation, for what we have done to his forefathers and will do to his sons.

When the second of us enters the arena, we shake the rails as he trots to his mark. A snap of pride spurs us as we recognize the man from years at the cafeteria or folding linens in the laundry line. A little piece of us is out there dusting his heels. We begin to stomp and holler, nervous for the man, secretly praying for his safe return. We strain our voices as the clowns swing open the steel gate and the bull surges forth. We empty our lungs of the year’s anticipation.

The man holds his spot. He holds as the bull acknowledges his presence and holds as the bull paws at the dirt. He holds as the crowd swells and holds as the bull starts his charge. We see the animal before us. The pluming ground. The nostrils matte with dust. And we feel our own worth in play on the man’s actions. Our own lives.

He holds as the bull raises its horns, holding even as the crowd turns away in horror—children wailing atop their father’s shoulders—holding as the announcer falls silent, holding as the guards drag his body away.

When the rodeo is finished, and the awards presented, we watch as the spectators empty the bleachers, carrying their prison art crafts and souvenirs—Mary’s masterful glass ship among them. We hear the men dispatching the bull in the prison’s makeshift slaughterhouse, and watch the red pickup ferry its remains off to the kitchen. The afternoon sun bakes the dirt and sweat onto our faces, and we groan with the understanding that now we must clean the grounds and clear away all evidence of the morning’s activities. It will be dark by the time we finish and, hungry and exhausted, the glory of the rodeo far behind us, we will dream of hot showers and soft beds. The guards will open the gates of our corral and we will look to them for a hint of mercy. We will ask them for a short respite and a cool drink of water, and they will refuse. We will carry out our duties, before the butchers come for us, imagining the day when we can cross the river, and rest under the shade of the trees for a while.