Michael Lister - Power in the Blood

I was standing at the gate of Potter Correctional Institution staring at him when he was killed. Actually, I was looking into the back of a garbage truck. As I waited to be buzzed into the pedestrian sally port, my view was slightly impaired by the chain-link fence and razor wire that surrounded the vehicle sally port. The hot July sun reflected off the razors as it would from the mirrored shades of a redneck police chief, waves of heat dancing through the circles of steel. The air was thick and hard to breathe. The clear, blue, cloudless sky offered me no shelter from the sun’s assault, nor any promise of rain for the parched planet beneath my feet.

I didn’t know I was witnessing a murder at the time. All I saw was a rather young corrections officer, with a bad complexion and wide hips, standing on the back of a white, one-ton Ford flatbed truck loaded with trash bags. He was thrusting a long metal rod through each bag. His hips made him look like he was wearing football pants with full pads. Sweat poured off his face, and his light brown uniform was soaked through. What caught my attention in the first place was the enthusiasm with which he executed his task.

I understood the need for a security officer to check every vehicle and everything those vehicles carried before they left the institution. Recalling just one of the many real-life horror stories recited during my recent new-employee orientation about the brutal and bloody trail an escaped inmate leaves behind was more than enough to convince me of that. But as I stood at the gate waiting for it to open, I was awestruck by the violent blows each bag received. It seemed to me that there must be more effective and efficient ways to search the trash. Of course, the manner in which he was searching was a warning to all the inmates looking on as much as it was a search for an inmate trying to escape. Like a prehistoric sign language or an antiquated form of Morse code, every violent stab by the officer was a character of communication. Taken together, they sent out a concise message for all who had the eyes to see: Attempting to escape PCI in the back of a trash truck was a bad idea. And, although inmates were sometimes treated like trash and, at times, acted like trash, they were not going to escape by pretending to be trash.

Preparing to stab the final bag in the center of the truck, the officer stumbled over the outer ones and stood above it. Raising the weapon above his head, he brought it down with incredible force. When the rod entered the bag there was a deep thump followed by the sound of twigs caught in a lawn mower. This time the metal implement did not return when the officer attempted to retract it. He then took another stance and yanked even harder. On his third attempt in that position he pulled it free, ripping open the bag as he did. It was dripping with blood.

At first, I thought he had stabbed a can of chocolate syrup from food services or an old oil can from maintenance, but his reaction quickly convinced me otherwise. The officer lost all his color and stumbled backwards. He dropped his spear and reached for his radio only to discover that it wasn’t there. This only made him more frantic. I waved to the officer in the control room, who immediately buzzed me in. As I ran in, the officer on the flatbed began yelling.

“Chaplain, get out here now. Call for help,” he yelled, but his voice was weak and tight. Then his voice changed. In the high-pitched cry of hysteria he said, “Oh God . . . What the . . . Oh shit . . . There’s a body in . . . “ With that, he passed out.

I rushed over to the second gate that led into the vehicle sally port, and before I reached it, the control room had already buzzed it open. I ran straight through the gate, pausing on the other side only long enough to close the gate behind me. My heart was thumping like a boom box playing rap music in my chest, and my thoughts were a blur of indistinguishable lyrics. Climbing onto the back of the truck, I saw that the officer had landed on a bag of papers that had cushioned his fall. I crouched beside him, the sweat from my face dropping onto his. I could tell he was beginning to come around. My eyes moved down his body. The name tag on his shirt bore the name Shutt. His feet were still touching the last bag he had stabbed; they were covered with blood. It looked like the entire bed of the truck, once white, was now crimson.

“Look at me, Officer Shutt” I said when he first opened his eyes. “Don’t look down. Look right at me.” He immediately looked down and began backpedaling away from the blood, looking like a sand crab avoiding the approaching tide. Blood splattered everywhere-on the bags, on him, and on me. As the blood splattered on me, I wondered if the red rain might contain HIV or hepatitis B.

In his clumsy attempt to escape, the officer knocked me back into the bag with the body. As I fell, it enclosed on me like a beanbag chair, and I felt warm, sticky liquid on the back of my neck and soaking through my clothes. I lurched forward, pivoting slightly as I did, a morbid part of me wanting to see. Lifeless black eyes stared at me blankly from a lifeless black head, which hung unnaturally. I slid forward trying to get away. When I sat up, I noticed that one of the nurses, a rather tall young woman with blond hair, had entered the sally port with us. Shutt was already off the truck moving frantically towards the gate where I had entered. The officer in the control room had the wits about her not to let him through. I quickly jumped off the truck and had to hold onto its side as all the blood seemed to drain from my head.

Within seconds, officers began pouring into the sally port from other gates like ants through small holes in the earth. Two of them immediately went over to check on Shutt. Another came to check on me as all of them strained to look at the back of the truck, which had taken on the surreal quality of a scene from a B slasher film.

“Chaplain, you okay?” Captain Skipper asked.

“I’m fine,” I lied. “But let’s get Shutt to medical. He’s really shaken up. And he’s got blood all over him.”

“They’re on the way,” he said and looked back at the truck. “Damnation. How can there be so much blood?”

“His heart must still be pumping,” I said. “How did everyone respond so fast?”

“Tower,” he said as if it were obvious.

I looked fifty feet up at the tower to see the officer leaning out of the window observing everything with the radio still in her hand. When I looked back down, I saw that the nurse had her arm around the distraught officer talking to him reassuringly. I walked over to see if I could help.

“Chaplain, can you help me for a minute?” the nurse asked.

“Sure,” I said as I hurried over to where they were. “What can I do?”

“I’m Nurse Strickland,” she said, trying, but unable to remove the distressed look from her face. She appeared to be in her late twenties, an attractive and delicate blue-eyed beauty with more makeup than she needed. She looked like the kind of woman who, despite her attractiveness, never actually believed it. Her white nurse’s uniform was as wrinkled as her distressed face. She smelled of smoke and cheap perfume, and her inexpensive gold jewelry made hollow tinkling sounds as she moved.

“I need to check on the inmate on the truck. Can you stay with him?” She glanced at Shutt. “He’s still very shaken up.”

“Sure,” I said. “You go ahead and do what you have to. We’ll be okay over here.”

She turned to leave, but then turned back to Shutt and said, “I am so sorry.” She then ran over to the truck and bravely climbed onto the back. Standing on the truck, she snapped on rubber gloves and carefully, but quickly, made her way to the center bag-the bag with the body in it. She crouched down to check the inmate, nearly disappearing behind the bags as she did. She moved with the surety and confidence of a seasoned ER nurse.