Robert Mason - Chickenhawk - Back in the World - Life After Vietnam

I lay in bed after the lights went out at ten-thirty and listened to the fans buzzing. I closed my eyes and begged for cosmic intervention. I needed a miracle. Someone could decide I’d had enough and call and tell the warden to let me out. Or, equally likely, a spaceship might land and take me away. I slept.

Fred was right about us having to work on the weekends. The next morning at eight, the speaker blared that all A&O inmates were to meet at the television room in Dorm Two for checkoff. Jeff and John found me on the porch of Dorm Three. We walked to Dorm Two together.

We gawked at the luxury we saw inside the dormitory. Air- conditioning. Shiny and clean aisles, carpeted floors in the sleeping sections. There were glassed-in recreation rooms where inmates played chess and checkers and cards. Each inmate had his own stall, a cube. The bathrooms were completely tiled, brilliantly clean, with private shower stalls. It was like a hotel compared to Dorm Three.

The TV room was packed with new inmates. At one end of the room, the TV, a big-screen projection model, was off, but I found myself staring at the gray screen. After a five-minute wait, a hack showed up carrying a clipboard. “Tarzan,” somebody said. Somebody else laughed. The hack ignored them. I’d already heard the story. Tarzan got his name a year before by hiding in a tree in the woods next to Dorm Five trying to catch inmates smoking pot. He’d fallen out of the tree and broken his arm.

Tarzan was a compact man, wore his tailored uniform well, and seemed to enjoy his work. I’d seen him pat-searching an inmate the night before on the porch of my dorm with cool, professional, hawklike interest. Random body searches were part of the drill at Eglin. They were looking for drugs or money. Of course you couldn’t have drugs. I was surprised that you couldn’t have more than a dollar in change on you, either.

Tarzan looked at his clipboard and called out a few names, including John’s and mine. “You men have visitors.” The inmates booed and hissed. Tarzan looked at us dispassionately, continued. “After visiting hours, report to inmate Harris and clean up the visiting room.’’ The inmates cheered and laughed. As we left, we heard Tarzan calling off names for the work details.

The visiting room was actually two large rooms that made an L-shaped building next to the administration building. The open sides of the L were walled off, making the visiting area a separate compound from the rest of the camp.

Wives and families lined up and waited outside until the place opened at eight. Then they brought in picnic baskets and books and kids and toys and gathered together chairs and tables inside the rooms and out in the yard, establishing small enclaves where they could visit with their men. Most people stayed until closing at three. In the yard outside, inmates dressed in their blue prison uniforms sat around circular concrete picnic tables talking to their gaily dressed wives. Children played tag.

Guards watched to see that the rules against physical contact were enforced. You were allowed to kiss upon meeting and upon departure. Holding hands, as long as they were in view, was permissible. When a hack told me that having a hole in your pocket was against the rules, I had to ask. “We got guys who’ll let their wives play with them through their pockets,” said the hack. His disgust reminded me of a schoolteacher who told us to ignore whatever it was the monkeys were doing during a trip to the zoo.

Some inmates and their wives strolled together around a short walkway that meandered through the yard. Against the farthest wall from the visiting rooms was a sandy play area filled with kids who played on seesaws and spring-mounted rocking horses. With all the blue uniforms mixed with bright civilian clothing, it looked like a weekend picnic for a bunch of gas-station attendants.

Patience and Alice had set up a table inside where it was cool. Patience brought some coffee and doughnuts and yogurt. We hugged and kissed under the watchful eyes of the hacks and sat down.

“I love you,” Patience said.

I winced.

“What? You don’t think I should love you now?”

“No.”

“Just because you’re a convict?”

“That’s a pretty good reason, don’t you think?”

“Maybe if you’d killed somebody, or robbed a bank at gunpoint. Maybe then I’d have trouble.”

“We have at least two more years of this, Patience. It’s going to get old fast.”

Patience looked at me carefully. “I love you,” she said.

Before I finished my coffee, I heard my name called. I went to the hacks at their desk near the entrance.

“I’m Mason,” I said.

“They want you at control,” said a hack known as Rocky. Rocky was a three-tour Marine Vietnam vet who, I later learned from him, thought guard duty at Eglin was about the pussiest job he could imagine. He was surly to inmates, with the amiable fierceness of a drill sergeant.

“What’s the deal?”

“Deal?” Rocky said. “The deal is you get your ass up to control. That’s the deal.” Rocky made me miss the Army.

I went outside and walked to control. I went up to the window on the side of the glass booth and told them I was here. The hack nodded, motioned to come around the other side to the door. I walked around and went inside.

“What are you doing in here, inmate?” the hack said.

“You just told me to come in here.”

“Wiseass, eh? What’s your name?”

“Mason.”

“What’s your number?”

“Eight-one-three-four-nine-dash-oh-seven-one-ay.”

The hack nodded and said, “Wait right there.”

I stood against the wall in the hallway. Hacks passed me like I was wallpaper. In a minute I saw the photographer from People magazine walking toward me with Superintendent Honsted.

“Hey, Lynn, how you been?” I said. I remembered his name because while he’d been photographing me at home, we had talked about photography: the kind of film he used, the cameras he liked best, and so on.

“Fine, Bob. They treating you okay?”

I looked at Honsted. “Here? It’s like staying at a resort, Lynn. Great place.”

Lynn smiled and asked Honsted if there were any restrictions for the photography session.

“No. Not as long as I’m with you. I suggest we go outside. You can start out there.”

I posed next to the big sign out front. I had to cross the white line to get to it, but I had Honsted’s permission. Next we walked to Dorm Three. The other A&O guys were mopping floors and scrubbing the latrine. Jeff looked up from his mopping, shook his head, and smiled. The inmates watched me, their faces filled with curiosity. An inmate, the warden, and a photographer are walking around here? Who’s that guy?

Lynn photographed me standing by my bunk and then we went out on the porch. He had me sit on one of the benches and mug for the camera while he ran off a roll. I stood up and leaned against the porch railing for another roll. While he took pictures, I watched the other inmates staring. In that few minutes, half the camp finally knew exactly who the asshole, big-deal writer was.

By three o’clock, I was ready to snap from aggravation. I hated the visiting room. I hated being a prisoner, but that wasn’t why I was so pissed. I deserved humiliation, but having Patience subjected to it made it much worse. I was selfish. I wanted isolation to sulk, to forget where I was. Visitors from the outside, even Patience, reminded me that I was inside.

We hugged by the door. I gave Patience the one legal kiss I was allowed and we said good-bye. She promised she’d be back the next day. I smiled, trying to suppress my disappointment. “You want to see me, don’t you?”

“Yes. You know I do.”