Previously: At the jail they gave job assignments. So I start working from seven am to seven pm in receiving: passing out jumpsuits, deodorant, soap, towels, and toothpaste to new roll-ins. That give me more chance to keep my mind off what I’m facin’. One day they brought a guy from up in the jail; he was hollerin’ and screamin’, “My eyes burnin’! I can’t see!” The guard was telling us, “Go up front and close the door.” I don’t know what happen but it wasn’t nothin’ good. This kinda thing happen a lot. Guys getting maced and brought down to clean ’em up and then they brought them to the hole, a small steel cage underground—right beside the morgue—and inhabited by big rats. I started to get talkin’ with some guards and correction officers that work in the prison. Some of them I trust, some I didn’t. I started to feel like whatever happen, I just gotta face the truth. That’s when I also start minglin‘ with some other inmates; I open up. Some of them been in the feds doin‘ time for the same case like I had.
Some of the other inmates said to me, “You might get ten years. Or they might come at you with a rehab program.”
When I was in the cell one morning me and my cellmate woke up and come out to go to work and we see a whole lotta guards. And then we see a guard knocked out near the booth. An inmate was runnin’ around, shouting, “Get your ass up!”
I hear “Code blue, code blue.” I ain’t never heard that, so I asked my cellie what they sayin’. He told me it means a guard need help, like he stabbed up or somethin’.
Guards were yelling, “Get down! Everybody get down!”
To me it was like a drug bust, the way the guards was runnin’ around.
There were white shirt guards too; that mean they higher rank.
So we stayed in the cell—could still see a little bit, but not much as I wanted to see. That’s the kinda thing go on in jail.
One evening at 6:30, they told me I had a lawyer visit. You don’t come in contact with nobody, so I sit behind a glass and he on the other side and me and my lawyer talk to each other on the phone.
He say, “Sometime this week, we should be back in court. They might offer you a deal.”
I say, “What type of deal?”
He say, “A rehab program or something like that.” He say the only thing is to pay attention and he hope the best for me. He say just stay out of trouble here and I’ll see you in court.
So I leave to go back to my cell and I’m sayin’ to myself, What really gonna happen this week?
A few days later, it was like 3:30 in the morning. A guard came to my cell. He say, “Anderson.”
I say, “What?”
He say, “You have court in the morning.”
So I got up, say my little morning prayer, brush my teeth, and wash my face.
I think, Damn I wish I could go home today. You know it not gonna happen, but you still have that feelin’.
The guards go to each floor and pick up the inmates who have court for that morning. My co-defendants were in the group.
I was askin’, “What you think gonna happen?”
They say, “We know one thing, we ain’t goin’ home.”
To be continued . . .
I hope you’ll check out my book, Still Standing: How an Ex-Con Found Salvation in the Floodwaters of Katrina. It’s available on Amazon in paperback and Kindle form.
