Part 3 (2/2)

From prison disciplinary reports, I knew of his cycle of violent behavior. Although he was quiet and I never saw him in full throttle, his underlying rage didn't surprise me. I could imagine how he'd react if his delicate pride were defiled, even in a small way. It would provoke a holy windstorm.

Elia spoke in hushed tones and didn't hang around the library's counter, where the brash talking happened-the loud conversations, political debates, pimp verbal jousts, religious disputations, chess trash talk, and other varieties of bulls.h.i.+tting. Instead he retreated into the library stacks, where he quietly reshelved books.

Pitts, on the other hand, loved to be in the fray. Somehow, even in his prison uniform, he was a sharp and flamboyant dresser. Handsome and pampered, Pitts was a high-roller. Raised in North Carolina, where he picked tobacco as a child, he was now a thirty-five-year-old bachelor and ex-Navy man. No kids: not unless he gets married, he said. This had been a vow taken by him and his siblings in an effort to end generations of familial disorder.

Pitts's closest drinking buddies were cops who liked to party hard. They had taught him, among other things, how to bulls.h.i.+t his way through a Breathalyzer test. When it came to vice, he tended toward the cla.s.sics: women, gambling, and booze. And all-you-can-eat buffets. He almost cried once upon arriving at the airport in Vegas. He was just so happy to be there.

”Honestly man,” he said, ”my eyes got misty.”

Pitts was on a quest to discover the true nature of the early Church. He read extensively on the Apocrypha, on the redaction of the Bible. He was in search for the authentic Christianity. Nothing he read satisfied him. A born salesman, Pitts rejected Judaism on the grounds that it ”didn't offer a good plan for Redemption.” When I had suggested that religion didn't function like a cell phone company he replied, ”Well maybe it should.”

He'd sit at the library counter, plumbing the depths of some heavy theological tome, ignoring the mundane requests of our inmate library patrons. Invariably he'd slam the book shut, shake his head, and say something like, ”Ain't that a b.i.t.c.h.” b.i.t.c.h.” He wasn't getting the answers he needed. He wasn't getting the answers he needed.

Pitts, who also worked as the prison's barber (for black inmates), was witty and affectionate; we quickly became close and had many fascinating discussions on the nature of faith. He was wrestling with the question of getting baptized. He even spoke of studying in a seminary and asked for my advice, as a lapsed seminarian myself. His search for truth in the Bible eventually subsided, however, and he channeled his considerable pa.s.sions into chess and trash talk.

Thomas was round-headed, fair-minded, and impatient. A slight man with thick, circular spectacles, and a pinched, perpetually affronted countenance. He was a clean-shaven older Muslim convert, a stickler for etiquette who never failed to call an older inmate OG OG (old gangsta) and younger inmate (old gangsta) and younger inmate Young G Young G. Details of his biography were not divulged. Least of all, to me. He was stationed with Kat and Pitts behind the counter.

John, high-spirited and garrulous, was the white guy. He would narrate freewheeling sagas of various concerts and sporting events attended and of the various drugs taken before, during, and after. When he spoke of the old days, back when he used to get ”f.u.c.kin' re r.e.t.a.r.ded,” his eyes bulged and twinkled and you got the sense he was, in the retelling of the story, able to rekindle just the tiniest bit of the old high. Addicts will smoke even the ashes. His stories were always upbeat, full of madcap near-death exploits and fights gloriously lost-and they always culminated in a request to undertake some personal favor for him. He tried to ally himself to me as the lone white guy. He was a quick study with the law and would often huddle with Coolidge.

And so it went. The roles people played in the library matched their personalities/criminal vices: the operators and crime boss types ran the front desk, the con man ran his own small law firm, the gregarious drug fiend had no place and bounced around hustling whatever he could muster, the depressive homeless alcoholic found a private corner for his own reveries. The library, it seemed, was big enough to accommodate many types.

And then there was me, standing with my arms crossed, taking it all in, wondering what my role would be.

Diana had said that the library wasn't complicated, that it was just a place for people to pa.s.s time with books. Perhaps that was true back in the old days, when the prison would simply deliver books to inmates in their cells, a practice that had lasted hundreds of years. But the library was different: it was a place place, a dynamic social setting where groups gathered, where people were put into relation with others. A s.p.a.ce an individual could physically explore on his own.

This seemed important, even though I wasn't sure yet what it meant. But I was about to get a hint.

The Great Amato During lulls, Officer Gilmore would drift away from his hallway post and into the library for one of a few reasons: to read the sports papers, to give me security updates, to warn me that the big boss was coming, to use a dictionary or thesaurus-as aids to writing incident reports-or to chat. Often it was some combination of these. On a certain Tuesday afternoon, he was on a mission to recover a word. It had been driving him mad. After a minute with Roget's Thesaurus Roget's Thesaurus, he found it: precarious! precarious! His sanity was restored. His sanity was restored.

”I love love that book,” he said, slipping it back onto the shelf. ”Never fails.” that book,” he said, slipping it back onto the shelf. ”Never fails.”

Something in the hall caught his eye. He leaned back, tapped me on the shoulder, and nodded in that direction.

”By the way,” he said. ”There's your man right there.”

”That guy?” guy?”

”That's him, all right,” he said, ”the famous Don Amato.”

I'd heard a great deal about this Amato. The former prison librarian. But I had to admit, I didn't expect him to look quite so...conspicuous. The get-up was more Il Padrone Il Padrone than neighborhood librarian. In a gleaming gray double-breasted suit and cufflinks, he was, without a doubt, the flas.h.i.+est librarian this side of Palermo. The hair was meticulously barbered and combed-back. The hard, leather-soled balmorals clicked a snappy little beat on the prison linoleum. He nodded slightly as he walked, as though conferring, just slightly, his much-desired approval onto his surroundings. Amato cruised by the library, fists in pockets, pouting and dapper, humorless as a tire iron. than neighborhood librarian. In a gleaming gray double-breasted suit and cufflinks, he was, without a doubt, the flas.h.i.+est librarian this side of Palermo. The hair was meticulously barbered and combed-back. The hard, leather-soled balmorals clicked a snappy little beat on the prison linoleum. He nodded slightly as he walked, as though conferring, just slightly, his much-desired approval onto his surroundings. Amato cruised by the library, fists in pockets, pouting and dapper, humorless as a tire iron.

”You sure sure that's him?” I asked Gilmore. that's him?” I asked Gilmore.

”Oh yeah,” he replied, with a snort. ”Who else could it be?”

I hadn't realized the infamous Amato still worked at the prison. As I soon discovered, his promotion to director of inmate vocational training had opened the librarian position. I'd seen him before without guessing his ident.i.ty. But it was true. This man with the cufflinks was a certified Master of Library Science. Perhaps it wasn't as incongruous as it looked. Perhaps in a prison library being a tough guy was as much a professional credential as a degree.

It wasn't until relatively recently that the prison had created a home for books. In the 1980s a room was cleared out in the previous facility on Deer Island, marking the first time inmates could make a proper library visit. The blueprint of the current facility, completed in 1991, included a permanent library s.p.a.ce.

But as soon as a s.p.a.ce is carved out in a prison, it becomes a safety concern. The library, in particular, posed security headaches. It was one of the few places, aside from the prison yard, through which so many inmates pa.s.sed and its layout made it difficult to monitor. Every shelf-some reached floor to ceiling-offered cover, every book a drop spot. The library was well-suited to prison mischief, for leaving notes or contraband, for pa.s.sing gossip to inmate librarians to propagate within their respective prison blocks.

For these reasons, the library had always been run by a strongman. Fu-Kiau Bunseki, now retired, had founded the library at Deer Island. He was a scholarly man, certainly not loud or mean, but he commanded respect. In an attempt to contact him with questions about how the library functioned, I discovered everything I needed to know in his outgoing voice mail message, which consisted of two words, deeply intoned in a heavy Congolese accent: ”Be brief.” There was something dreadful in that baritone, and in that message. Something that really made you want to be brief.

And then there was Amato. Amato took charge of the library after Bunseki and was the library's second strongman. Unlike Bunseki, however, he was anything but quietly domineering. He was a pinky-ring autocrat. According to everyone, Amato was sometimes loud, always direct, and often confrontational. I'd heard a good deal of talk about Amato from both inmates and staff. The word territorial territorial came up a lot. He was a character of legend. Just mentioning his name usually provoked a smile of recognition and a personal tale of fear and trembling. One caseworker told me she used to literally hide under her desk when she heard those shoes tapping on the linoleum. It wasn't a positive development if Amato alighted upon your office doorway. It meant one thing: he was about to tear you a new a.s.shole-and then a new a.s.shole for that a.s.shole. And without so much as loosening his tie. Now that I finally got a look at him myself, I understood. This was a gentleman who played hardball. came up a lot. He was a character of legend. Just mentioning his name usually provoked a smile of recognition and a personal tale of fear and trembling. One caseworker told me she used to literally hide under her desk when she heard those shoes tapping on the linoleum. It wasn't a positive development if Amato alighted upon your office doorway. It meant one thing: he was about to tear you a new a.s.shole-and then a new a.s.shole for that a.s.shole. And without so much as loosening his tie. Now that I finally got a look at him myself, I understood. This was a gentleman who played hardball.

According to the inmate librarians, Amato had whipped the library into shape, vastly increasing the collection and organizing it with care. Although his communications skills may have been questionable, his ability to impose order was not. One had to respect that. Forest and I were new to all of this. Neither of us had any experience in a prison. Even worse, we were both mild-mannered and bookish by nature. Forest was a painfully shy, sweetheart of a man, and I was a reedy, poetry club type. We were far from prison tough.

Amato's reign had been literally marked by the propagation of rules. His laws were posted, in capital letters, all over the library, on some manner of demonic, industrial-grade sticky paper. Impossible to remove. From day one, Forest and I neglected to enforce these rules. Amato's permanently affixed signs stood as aging monuments to a former golden age of decorum and, by mocking contrast, as markers of our new, lax regime.

The week after Officer Gilmore had pointed him out, Amato paid me a visit. Through the library's big windows, I watched him pa.s.s through the door from the yard and stroll down the hall. Hearing those hard-leather soles tapping in my direction, I have to admit, I felt a spasm of panic. I seriously considered diving under my desk. But before I could execute any sort of drastic evasive action, Amato was standing before me, the prison lights glaring heavily from his s.h.i.+mmering suit. There he stood, in fluorescent splendor, adjusting his cufflinks.

It turned out he hadn't come to see me, but to procure a certain legal form from our collection. He was doing this favor, he explained, for ”one of my guys.” We had a little chat.

”You the new guy?”

”Yup.”

”How's it going?”

I shrugged. ”Okay, I guess.”

He seemed concerned by this answer.

”Let me give you a piece of advice,” he said. ”It takes a lot of work to keep this place looking right, working right.”

”I'm learning that,” I said.

”Just don't forget where you work,” he said. ”I'm serious, now. Don't let it become an anything-goes zone in here. I know you're just a college kid or whatever, but you've got to control stuff in here or there could be some serious problems. This is a prison. Don't forget that for a second.”

Amato then launched into a story of what happens when the library is not guarded well. The story involved gangs, knives, s.h.i.+elds, and possibly spears. I wouldn't know. I wasn't actually listening at that point-too distracted by the top of this man's head. With the benefit of a close view, it was now safe to draw conclusions: the hair was impressive. Soft, kitten-soft, yet combed to a satisfying st.u.r.diness. Such hair merited the word coiffure coiffure. It was a professional job. Had there been a way to inquire where I might find the stylist, or what products were used, without sounding like a smarta.s.s, I would have.

He was wrapping up his tale. There was a grave nod of the head, some clicking of heels. Then he was gone.

Once the coast was clear, I walked up to one of his signs, the one that warned inmates not to loiter by the front counter. I tried to peel it off. Then I tried harder. But the d.a.m.n thing would not budge. Amato's legacy wasn't going anywhere.

Solitary Departs Back in the tower, I was making some headway with the women inmates' creative writing cla.s.s. The practice of examining authors' photos before reading their work had become a firmly established practice. I would pa.s.s around a photocopied author's portrait and have the women spend the first or last five minutes of cla.s.s composing a little response to it, putting in their vote at the end. It became a writing exercise.

Regarding Toni Morrison, Short wrote, ”Dats what I'm talking talking 'bout Harvey.” Of a young photo of Lorca, ”That boy is Trouble. My vote Yes.” Brutish had strong views on Marquez. ”That man is a 'bout Harvey.” Of a young photo of Lorca, ”That boy is Trouble. My vote Yes.” Brutish had strong views on Marquez. ”That man is a liar,” liar,” she wrote. Nasty said, simply, ”No.” For Whitman, Brutish wrote, ”h.e.l.lzz ya!!” she wrote. Nasty said, simply, ”No.” For Whitman, Brutish wrote, ”h.e.l.lzz ya!!”

The women were especially taken by a self-portrait of the photographer Arthur ”Weegee” Fellig, peering from behind his giant Speed Graphic camera, a lit cigar dangling from his mouth.

”That is one greasy-a.s.s motherf.u.c.ker,” observed Short.

This was a compliment-and one Weegee would probably have appreciated. We looked at his photos from late-night 1930s New York City: hookers, strippers, society ladies, circus freaks, crime scenes, and a series of tenement fires. One photo showed a man running down a fire escape in only his boxers, holding a pair of pants. He wears the hyperalert look of a man stunned into consciousness and seems amused by his good fortune. Another, which I flipped through quickly, pictured two women wailing as their family dies in a fire.

The final photo depicted two firefighters clutching a statue of a heaven-gazing angel playing a dulcimer. The angel had been pulled from a burning church. I asked the women to write about the fire series but to focus on this last photo, which Weegee had captioned ”Two firefighters rescuing angel,” a print from 1939. The women seemed to like these photo response essays and eagerly got to work.

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