Michael Lister - Power in the Blood

Moments later, the colonel and other medical personnel began to arrive. Shutt and I were escorted out of the sallyport and into the security building on the rear side of the control room. It was hard to see from that position, but I could tell that Captain Skipper had finished ripping open the bag to discover there was nothing left to do except call the coroner.

“I don’t know if post-mortem prayers work, but if you have one, you might want to launch it up,” Colonel Patterson said when he was buzzed into the hallway of the security building where we were standing.

He was a short, fat man with thick hands, bushy eyebrows, and messy hair-Lieutenant Colombo gone to pot. His uniform, which always looked sloppy, had large rings around the neck and armpits. His skin was leathery, and his neck was red-literally and figuratively.

In my short time as a prison chaplain, I had met many decent and hardworking correctional officers who performed a difficult job with discipline and integrity. Colonel Patterson was not one of them.

“I don’t know either,” I said, “but that’s never stopped me from making them before.”

“Why don’t y’all come back to my office. We need to get your statements and have each of you fill out an incident report,” Patterson said as he continued to walk down the hallway towards his office.

The hallway, like all the hallways at PCI, was spotless and gleamed with the shine of a fresh coat of wax. Inmates had to have something to do.

In the colonel’s office, we waited while he used the phone. His office was decorated with photographs, paintings, and trophies, all related to hunting. His desk was cluttered; a thin, but visible, layer of dust covered it completely. It looked as if it had been quite some time since the carpet had been vacuumed, and a distinct musty smell lingered in the air. Unlike the hallway, Colonel Patterson’s office was not cleaned by inmates. Like the hallway, his office was included in their job assignment; however, Colonel Patterson hated inmates and made no attempt to hide it. Rumor was that there had never been an inmate in his office. I believed it. There were other rumors about why the colonel hated inmates, many of which sounded like war stories, involving things like riots, gang attacks, and escape attempts, all starring the colonel himself. My theory was that the colonel just needed someone to hate, and since sixty-five percent of the inmate population was black, it came naturally to him. The only thing missing in Colonel Patterson’s office was a large Rebel flag that said FORGET? LIKE HELL. Patterson was a true son of the South, although he was most often referred to as a true son of a bitch.

“I want the yard closed, the work crews recalled, and a count taken immediately. Call the superintendent, and ring him straight through to my office when you get him. Find Inspector Fortner, and get him back to my office with some incident reports.”

If the colonel was upset by what had taken place, I couldn’t tell it. He always operated at a fevered pitch, always barking out orders, always coming on way too strong, imitating a hockey player attempting figure skating. I glanced over at Shutt. He looked as if he had just killed a man. His whole body, which appeared to be trapped in adolescence, trembled.

“Are you okay?” I asked him while the colonel reported to the superintendent what had happened.

He didn’t look up, so I repeated the question. When he finally looked at me, he appeared to be in a trance, not knowing where he was.

“What?” he mumbled.

“Are you okay?” I repeated a third time, this time slowly.

He looked shocked at the question and shook his head forcefully. His pubescent face was pure fear; he was obviously in shock. He dropped his head again. I slid my chair over next to him and put my hand on his back. My hand actually moved from the force of the tremors running the length of his body. Though it was in character, I still found myself amazed at the colonel’s insensitivity.

“Colonel Patterson, Officer Shutt needs to see a doctor immediately,” I said when he had finished briefing the superintendent.

“What? No, he doesn’t. Do you, son?”

Son didn’t respond. He just continued to stare at the floor.

“Call medical, now,” I said, employing the colonel’s method of communication by raising the volume and lowering the tone of my voice.

“Ah, hellfire, Chaplain. He’s been trained. He’ll be all right.”

“Call medical now, or I will. And if I do, I’m going to declare a medical and psychological emergency. Then you can explain to them why you didn’t.”

The colonel snatched up the phone, pushed three buttons, and yelled into the receiver, “Get medical to my office now.”

“Chaplain, you need to get a few things straight about the way things work around here. If I wasn’t leaving this afternoon for three weeks of special training, I’d take you under my wing and make things real plain for you. But the short version is this. I-”

A quick knock on the door was followed by the entrance of the superintendent, Edward Stone, a deliberate-moving black man in an expensive suit.

“Colonel, Chaplain, Officer Shutt,” he said by way of greeting. His eyes stopped on Shutt. “Have you called medical, Colonel?”

“Yeah, they should be here any minute,” he said curtly, as if he were talking to a new officer and not the superintendent of the institution.

“He’s obviously in shock. How are you holding up, Chaplain?” Mr. Stone asked.

“I’m okay, I think,” I said, and my voice still quivered slightly with the anger I felt for Patterson and the memory of those lifeless black eyes.

“I heard how you responded to the, ah . . . situation. Control said you reacted with no hesitation. You never know until it comes down to it what a man will do in those kinds of situations. You’re still new around here, but everybody’s trust level for you just jumped up several notches. Isn’t that right, Colonel?”

“Yeah, you never know what a man will do in a crunch,” he said, careful to respond to Mr. Stone’s first comment and not his second.

“Let’s have medical check out Officer Shutt and let the chaplain go home. We can take their statements tomorrow.”

“Yeah, I think that’s a good idea,” Patterson said as if Mr. Stone had asked him.

“Sir, I’d really like to stay and help out if I can,” I said to Mr. Stone.

“No,” he said, and I could tell that there would be no further discussion about it. “You go home now. We’ll take care of everything here. I’ll drop by and see you at your office in the morning.”

Before I could respond, the colonel’s phone rang and the medical personnel arrived to collect Shutt. As I helped him to his feet, I assured him that everything was going to be okay. The nurses quickly helped Shutt to the door. I followed them out. Just before I closed the colonel’s door, he hung up the phone, and I heard him tell Mr. Stone that the deceased inmate in the trash bag was Ike Johnson.

After a long, hot shower in the training building, during which I scrubbed Ike Johnson’s blood off my body, I drove up to the state park and tried to clear my head.

For as long as I had been a praying man, I had never found a better place to get in touch with God than Potter State Park. The park was roughly sixty acres of sage brush, pine trees, and wildlife, with long, winding trails cut through the dense woods. At its center were two small ponds with a small pathway running between them. That pathway, for me at least, was the path of peace and the way of wisdom. I spent most of the afternoon up there and felt better for it. Had I stayed until nightfall, which during the summer was still several hours away, I might have been completely distracted from thoughts of Johnson’s vacant black eyes. I opted instead to drive home and order pizza.