Visiting My Picasso

I am writing in my notebook while sitting at a picnic table. The table has a small and rusty corrugated tin roof over it. I took refuge here because the July sun felt like hands pressing on my back and this was the only shade I could find. There are no trees anywhere, and the grass along the edges of the parking lot is brown and brittle.

I become vaguely aware of a red pickup coming to a stop near me. When it doesn’t move on, I lift my head and see a man wearing a John Deere cap and sunglasses looking at me from inside the truck. The electric window glides down and he speaks to me.

“You a visitor?”

“Yes,” I say, pleasantly. I think that maybe this is his first time here, and I feel a desire to help make his orientation easier than mine was. I want to invite him to ask questions, so after a brief pause I ask, “Why?”

He stares at me for a moment, then slowly turns and looks straight ahead. He drums his thumbs energetically on the steering wheel as if he is considering what to say to me. When he finally speaks he keeps his hands on the wheel and continues to stare straight ahead.

“No reason.”

This is, of course, a lie. You don’t stop your pickup, roll down the window, and ask a stranger a question without some kind of reason. Not in Texas, anyway.

I’m four hours from home with nothing to do but wait. I’m still feeling a small impulse to be helpful to him, so I push ahead, trying to move this strange conversation forward.

“Count’s at one o’clock. You check in now they’ll just sit you in the visiting room and you’ll have to wait til it’s over. Could be half an hour. Could be longer if they have to do a recount. They won’t let you bring anything in there but quarters, so you’ll have nothin to do. Might as well wait out here. At least you can read or whatever.”

He leans toward me, pulls his sunglasses down on his nose, and looks at me over the top of them. He gives me an angry and incredulous look, as if to say, “What the fuck makes you think I care about any of that?”

Then he flashes me a sarcastic little salute, touching his index finger briefly to the bill of his cap before pulling away and driving past the tower and toward the main gate. My eyes stop at the tower and are drawn upwards. The guard isn’t watching the departing truck, as you might expect. He’s looking at me for some reason. He’s staring at me and something about the way he’s leaning on the railing makes me think he’s been watching the whole episode. He shakes his head in disgust and turns to go inside his little glass booth.

I lay my pen down and put my elbow on the table, resting my chin on my palm. I am trying to understand what has happened here. I can make no sense of this encounter. I have no idea why the man in the truck asked me a question, then suddenly became distant and disinterested. I have no idea what I have done to draw the attention of the guard in the tower.

I finally give up thinking about it. This is obviously one of those strange encounters in life that make no sense at all. I start writing down everything that has happened. Then the whistle blows, indicating that the count is done. I put my notebook back in my car and walk by the picnic table on my way to the visitors’ check in. That’s when I notice the small sign facing away from the table so that you cannot read it.

Designated Smoking Area
EMPLOYEES ONLY!!

The scales fall from my eyes and everything becomes clear. All of the events click neatly into place like tumblers in a lock when you get the combination right.

The man in the truck was a guard out of uniform, probably off duty but at the prison for one reason or another. He noticed me sitting in the employees smoking area, which for some reason is in the visitors’ parking lot, and the sign is turned so that arriving visitors cannot see it and are likely to assume that it is just a table with a blessed bit of shade.

His initial question, “You a visitor?” was intended as a rebuke. It would have worked if I had known that I was sitting in an employee area and breaking the rules. My innocent responses made no sense to him, and he decided just to drive away and forget about it since he was off duty anyway.

The guard in the tower saw the whole thing. Unable to hear us, he assumed his buddy told me to leave, and I smarted off and refused. It wasn’t enough of an offense to warrant action, but it certainly irritated him and reinforced his idea that the families of inmates are pretty much like the inmates. Always pushing the rules.

The guards are suspicious of us. We are, after all, related to the scum of the earth. This taints us and makes us somewhat scummy ourselves. In their defense, they have to put up with a lot from the families of inmates. They keep a careful emotional distance and are very protective of their spaces.

As for me, I’m here to visit my cousin who has broken her life into little pieces that can never be put together again. Prison has taken the shards of that life and assembled them into a Picasso-like image of her former self. Both eyes and her mouth are now on the same side of her face, and she speaks to me through glass framed by black steel. I don’t know how she will function on the outside. Perhaps she will have to be broken down and rebuilt again when she gets out. I wonder who will be up to that task.

Something about this place shatters everyone connected with it and rebuilds them into angular, one-dimensional characters: The guard, the warden, the prisoner, the visitor. This is not the world you know, and good intentions count for nothing. Even an innocent encounter with a stranger can spin off in directions you can’t imagine, and there is always someone looking down from above, making the worst possible guesses about who you are and what you might be up to.

I have put my best efforts into understanding this strange new world, carefully observing its rules, and trying to be at peace with everyone. It doesn’t matter. Things like this happen to me every time I come here.

© Copyright 2005 Preacher. Last update: 7/17/2005; 8:24:21 PM. Links