Chickenhawk: Back in the World

The long line of inmates that formed outside against two walls of the building, under a metal awning, divided into two lines inside. The place looked like any civilian cafeteria. You got a tray from a stack, silverware (actual metal, as opposed to the plastic variety used in higher-level prisons), and plates. The first serving table held salads on a bed of crushed ice—tossed, gelatin, fruit, five-bean, and so on. Yes, I am talking about a prison. You scooted your tray along the rails and handed your plate to the servers. Our first meal was thin-sliced roast beef, mashed potatoes, spinach, and squash. As you continued along the serving line, you got your choice of Coke, coffee, iced tea, or milk with unlimited refills. We carried trays to an empty table and sat down.

“How’d you get here?” I asked Jeff.

“Stupidity.”

“Like?”

“Oh, I got wooed, you know?”

“Screwed?” John said.

“Same thing,” Jeff said, laughing. “These guys said all I had to do was to go buy a brand-new yacht in my name, make one delivery with it, and the boat was mine to keep. I couldn’t pass up a deal like that. Naturally, I got busted. Guess who’s the registered owner of the boat? Guess who takes the major rap? Five years.”

“Plus they took your boat,” John said.

Jeff nodded. “Plus they took my boat.”

“And you didn’t even get kissed,” I said, laughing. Jeff looked at me. I shrugged. “Sorry.”

We ate in a hurry. The food was okay, typical institutional fare. The problem with the mess hall was that it was pandemonium. The noise of two hundred men talking, laughing, clattering plates, clinking silverware, moving chairs, echoed and reverberated off the tile floors and concrete walls. You had to shout to be heard. John was sweating profusely, complaining how hot it was. It wasn’t hot. Every building in the camp, except Dorm Three, was air-conditioned.

Outside, we walked the rest of the jogging trail, a sandy path that ran along the boundary of the camp, beyond the dorms, and around a level grassy field big enough for a couple of football fields and a baseball diamond. We walked along the trail beside the western boundary of the camp, a white rope hung on short posts. Beyond the rope was a shallow ditch. Beyond the ditch was woods. To escape, just step over the rope.

The trail went past the weight shack, which was the busiest place in camp. Inside the open-walled building, thirty men lifted weights, punched punching bags, pedaled stationary bikes, and used all kinds of other exercise equipment. Around the weight shack were a couple of bocci lanes (at which four men on each lane rolled five-pound balls back and forth, seeing which team could get the most balls closest to the end of the lane); four tennis courts, which were always busy; and the softball field complete with bleachers—two sets of bleachers, one for inmates and one for the public. The prisoners were in the local softball league and played the Air Force units on the base. There was a baseball game going on as we walked by. We went past a low building that issued playing equipment, toward the administration building, back on the service road, completing one circuit of the jogging path.

The three of us stood at the entrance of the camp, staring at the white line painted across the road. Nobody said anything. That white line was the barrier. The physical thing that kept us here was a white line, painted over many times until it was as thick as two playing cards.

It seemed absurd that this system worked, but it did. The kind of prisoners sent here were just the kind who’d stay behind a white line if you told them to. You could not be sent to Eglin, or any of the other twenty or so camps in the United States like Eglin, if you were guilty of a violent crime, if weapons were used in the commission of your crime, or if your crime was a sex crime. Minimum-security camps were originally built to incarcerate white-collar criminals. Robert Haldeman of the Watergate era was sent here. The governor of Maryland was here the year before. Several wealthy businessmen were here now. Times change. Now the population was swelled by drug smugglers like us. Roughly seventy percent of the prisoners here were in for drug-related crimes, the rest were in for tax evasion or stock manipulation or union violations, or even any of several federal misdemeanors that can send you to prison. The white line worked because, if you stepped over it, you were guilty of escape and would be sent to a level two (or higher) prison, where they have actual, physical boundaries.

Floodlights atop tall poles flicked on, hazy cones surrounded by dusk. We continued down the service road and walked through the recreation room (pool and table tennis), the library (a living-room-sized place with few books), and the craft shop, which had a complete collection of woodworking equipment. We saw a big line of people going into a building next to the craft shop. We walked up to the door and saw that it was the camp commissary.