Note: Links to previous chapters can be found at the end of the article.

“My ladies will probably try and slip you some letters, ask you to mail them on the outside. Do not do that. It is contraband, you hear me?”

“Yes.”

“One or two might try and hug you goodbye, in that hug, there might be an inappropriate touch. Resist the temptation.”

“Yes, M’am.”

It’s my last day as visitor slash researcher in the prison. I’m being debriefed by the Supervisor, a tough, no-nonsense lady who still manages to retain her femininity—and sense of humor.

“You got what you wanted?”

“Yes, thank you. Can I ask you a few questions?”

“Ask, but I may not answer.”

“Your opinion of the Pet Program.”

She sighs wearily: “It’s fine.”

“I sense a ‘but’ coming.”

“Mr. Hollywood, I’m dealing in numbers here, big numbers. I got thousands of mis-creants within these walls. In the program, five, maybe six women. What does that solve?”

“Five, six women.”

She waves her hand as if swatting away a fly. She has no time for singular redemptions, she is dealing with multitudes.

“Was it always like this?”

“Meaning?”

“So many female prisoners?”

“Oh, no. When I first started in the system, this prison was a backwater, a few hundred shop-lifters, petty felons, check forgers, disorderly conduct drunkards, your basic sad prostitute junkies.”

“And now?”

“Hard-core killers. More like men.”

“And that’s because?”

“Drugs, gangs. Almost all my ladies are mixed up somehow in the drug trade. Oh, sure, they don’t have fathers, there’s that too, and they all pick loser troll boyfriends who just beat hell outta them. But it’s the drug world that puts ‘em over the line.”

Irene Dunne and Helyn Elry-Rock in Ann Vickers, 1933

“Would you legalize drugs?”

“I will not answer that question.”

“Fair enough. How about this: would you decriminalize certain classes of drugs?”

The Supervisor chuckles: “You trying to lose me my po-sition? Move on Mr. Hollywood.”

“You have any hope for rehabilitating these women?”

She bursts into laughter: “Get outta my office.”

As I leave, I suppress an overwhelming urge to salute.

C.O. Cindy is waiting for me outside the Supervisor’s office. My baby sitter, as I’ve come to think of her, walks me across the massive yard, towards the shed where the animals are trained as companion dogs for people with severe physical disabilities.

“You’re awfully quiet, Cindy.”

She shrugs.

Her helmet of red hair kicks light in the bright morning sun.

Cindy spots an inmate sitting on a bench, smoking a cigarette, eyes closed, head tipped back.

“Wait here,” she says to me.

Cindy approaches the inmate.

“You’re supposed to be haulin’ garbage.”

“I’m takin’ a break.”

“Get back to work, skank.”

The inmate crushes the cigarette between her fingers, stores the butt in her pocket, coolly glares at Cindy.

This is the first time I’ve seen Cindy be anything less than respectful towards an inmate.

We continue our walk back to the dog-training shed.

“What was that about?”

“I’m doing my f*****g job, Robert, y’got a problem with that?”

Silence all the way to the shed.

Dog training is not going well today. The atmosphere is strained. The inmates, normally giggly, relaxed and chatty, are impatient as the dogs make mistakes and drop on their bellies, not sure what their beloved masters want from them.

I step outside.

I know exactly what’s going on.

“I’m sorry,” says Cindy.

I turn around. “It’s okay. I understand. I’ve been here a while now.”

“We got used to you.”

“Now I’m leaving.”

“You are.”

“I have to write the movie.”

“Do you know what you’re going to write?”

“I’ll find out as I write it.”

“Like I know what that means.”

“Cindy, I want to thank you for all your help. You’ve been, well, unbelievable.”

“Yeah, yeah.”

“No, really. I couldn’t have done this without all your help.”

“You really wanna thank me?”

“I do.”

“Tell me one true thing about yourself.”

I look at her long and hard and offer her my core.

“I have been in love with my wife since I was nine-years old.”

Cindy squints and searches my face:

“No f*****g way.”

I nod, assuring her that it’s the truth.

“Is that like normal?”

“Um, probably not.”

Cindy grins: “What’s your wife’s name, what’s she do, what’s Mrs. Robert look like, do you guys have kids?”

“One question, Cindy. I answered it, right?”

“Jesus f*****g Christ, you are a piece of work. And by the way, stop making that face every time I say f**k. What, the little lady never lets loose?”

In fact, Karen’s a lady and she never curses—beyond an occasional, blistering, Oy-vey.

Inside, I bid goodbye to the lovely Eden. I wish her good luck. She does not try and slip me any contraband, does not try to hug me. Not one of the inmates touches me inappropriately.

They are all perfect ladies.

Every single murderer.

Cindy accompanies me to the front gate.

“I been thinking,” she says.

“About what?”

“Doing something else.”

“I’m happy. You should. You don’t belong here.”

She holds my gaze.

“’Cause I’m like this fine sword, right?”

“Right.”

She shakes my hand, gives me that shy smile.

“Robert?”

“What?”

Cindy starts to say something, then just shakes her head and mumbles:

“Nothing, nothing.”

I climb into my rental car and drive away. The last I see of C.O. Cindy is her image in the rear-view mirror. She waves to me, hitches up her thick leather utility belt and heads back inside prison.

Back home.

FADE TO BLACK

For this is

THE END

To read Part I, please click here.

To read Part II, please click here.

To read Part III, please click here.

To read Part IV, please click here.

To read Part V, please click here.

To read part VI, please click here.

To order a copy of Within These Walls, nominated for the Humanitas Award, starring Ellen Burstyn and Laura Dern, please click here.

Copyright © Robert J. Avrech

Note: Links to previous chapters can be found at the end of this post.

EXT. PRISON YARD – DAY

The Screenwriter and the Corrections Officer are chatting about the list of prison movies Robert has promised to compile. Screenwriter and C.O. share a companionable relationship that is occasionally rattled by Cindy’s insatiable curiosity about her visitor’s private life.

“Okay Cindy, you ready?”

“Lay it on me.”

“My Ten Favorite Prison Movies.”

I’ve been hired to write a  film, Within These Walls, for Lifetime Network about the prison pet program. Cindy has been my guide, babysitter, bodyguard, my eyes into this hellish world.

My job is to dig into these people’s lives, but it’s a one-way relationship. I have learned, through years of experience and several awkward stumbles, that I must withdraw a central portion of myself in order to be effective. The true me has to remain locked away, or it will be used in the power struggle that exists between author and subject.

And so yours truly, the Orthodox Jew, is gone. Robert, adoring husband to Karen and doting father to three children, is locked away.

It is a disorienting experience.

Casually, I deflect almost all personal questions, answering in the most evasive manner, hopefully without insulting Cindy.

Let’s take a look at several typical exchanges:

Cindy

“So, Robert, you married?”

Robert

“What do you think?”

Cindy

“I think you’re wearing a gold band.”

Robert

“Detective Cindy.”

Cindy

“How long you married?”

Robert

“C’mon…”

Cindy

“Maybe you’re really a homo?”

Robert

“No!”

Cindy aims her index finger at me, squeezes an invisible trigger.

Cindy

“Gotcha.”

I can’t help but chuckle. C.O. Cindy is smart and quick, and unlike so many women—the over-educated and over-bred—she understands the vast gulf that separates male and female nature.

CUT TO:

Cindy

“So, what’s Mrs. Robert do? Is she like pretty or some brainy bow-wow?”

I remain tight-lipped.

Cindy barks: “Woof-woof.”

My inner resolve collapses.

Robert

“She’s brainy and beautiful.”

Cindy nails me with a cool, level gaze. It’s the look she uses to intimidate “the skanks.”

And:

Cindy

“You a Jew?”

INTERTITLE: Oy-vey!

Robert

“Why do you ask?”

Cindy

“Y’know, Hollywood… Jews.”

I would so love to continue this conversation, explore Cindy’s mind-set, but:

Robert

“What do you think?”

Cindy

“I think, yeah.”

Robert

“And if I am Jewish?”

Cindy gives an exaggerated shrug of the shoulders.

DISSOLVE TO:

Cindy

“Robert, are you like this important screenplaywriter?”

Robert

“Cindy, you ever hear the story of the Polish actress?”

Cindy

“Uh, I have the feeling I’m about to.”

Robert

“She slept with the screenwriter.”

Cindy hesitates a second, then cracks up. It’s the oldest, dumbest joke in Hollywood, but it spreads through the entire prison like a virus. And before I know, an inmate repeats it to me.

After a while, Cindy gives up trying to know who I am. Sorta.

Instead of personal information, I substitute Hollywood gossip and legend.

Which does the job just fine. For everyone is fascinated by Hollywood. Even a tough little corrections officer like Cindy.

“Robert, do you know — ?”

She names a female star.

“I do.”

“What’s she like?”

“She’d absolutely kill to have your complexion.”

Cindy blushes.

And the thing is, it’s the absolute truth.

Okay, I’m hanging loose, giving Cindy my list of ten favorite prison movies. It’s a tactic really, a way of creating the illusion of intimacy without the emotional risks.

Not so simple because I like Cindy. Enormously. Guilt weighs heavily on my conscience for deploying such a cold blooded strategy.

“Understand Cindy, I’m mixing genres.”

“Genres?”

“Types of prison films. You’ve got prison dramas, prison action films, you’ve got prison comedies, prison musicals, escape films, riot films, prison war films, and that most durable of all genres: women in prison flicks.”

“Women in prison, coolness.”

“In no particular order, okay?”

“Go on, you’re such a fuss-pot.”

“Number One: The Big House, 1930, with Chester Morris, Wallace Beery, and the lovely Leila Hyams. The big daddy of all prison movies. This was probably the first big studio movie to make the genre respectable and profitable. Inmate falls in love with his cellmate’s sister, gets caught up in an escape plan sure to go bad. Drama ensues. It’s a bit slow for modern audiences, but it’s a keeper.

“Number Two: I am a Fugitive From a Chain Gang, 1932, starring the great Paul Muni. This guy suffers for like ten-years in the most brutal southern prison you have ever seen. Unrelenting and grim. Hollywood used to do grim really well.”

“I have no idea what that means.”

Burt Lancaster as The Birdman of Alcatraz

“Number Three: The Bird Man of Alcatraz, 1962 with Burt Lancaster. This is a movie you should show here. The prisoner, a cold blooded murderer, redeems his soul by taking care of birds.”

“Birds.”

“Tweet-tweet.”

Cindy shakes her head as if to say, some things are just too dumb to be believed.

“Number Four: The Great Escape, 1963, with Steve McQueen, a crackerjack World War II escape movie. McQueen has a great scene where he tries to jump barbed wire on a motorcycle.”

“I drive a Harley.”

“You’re kidding.”

“Want a ride?”

“Nope.”

“Pu-ssy.”

“Number Five: Cool Hand Luke, 1967 with the young and handsome Paul Newman. This film has the single greatest line of dialogue ever in a prison movie: ‘What we’ve got he-are, is a fa-ail-ure to commu-ni-cate.’”

Cindy’s face brightens:

“My Uncle Chris used to say that all the time, a few beers and he’d be like totally hammered, walking around saying it over and over again. I thought he made it up. It’s from a movie?”

“A great movie.”

Cindy heaves a sigh. I’m pretty sure I have just diminished her life by a small but significant degree.

“Number Six: Stalag 17, 1953, another great prison war movie, starring William Holden, directed by the great Billy Wilder. Beautiful structure. Machine gun dialogue. Dark humor. An exquisite machine.

“Number Seven: Papillon, 1973, Steve McQueen and Dustin Hoffman are prisoners on a Devil’s Island run by, get this, the French. Horrifying stuff happens. Things get so bad Dustin and McQueen eat cockroaches. This one’s got everything, starvation, escape, capture, torture, leper colonies. Hugely entertaining.”

“The French?”

“It’s in English, trust me, fun film.”

“You ever meet Dustin Hoffman?”

“Yup.”

“What’s he really like?”

“Really short.”

“You are sooo funny.”

“Number Eight: Oh this is a good one, Chained Heat, 1983.”

“Linda Blair. The broom stick scene. Jesus, we all know that one.”

“A true women in prison classic.”

Cindy smiles hugely. Finally, a film Cindy recognizes.

“Number Nine: Caged, 1950, the spiritual godmother of all sleazy women in prison flicks.”

“Listen to you, all like movie professor.”

“Guilty. A beautiful young bride is thrown into prison.”

“Oh, yeah, we got a lot of those, beautiful young brides.”

“And the C.O.’s I gotta tell you, are just sadistic beyond words. Sadistic and like totally lesbo.”

Cindy, all ironic. “Yeah, there’s a lot of that goin’ around.”

“They shave her head, take away her pet pussycat. Great performance by the underrated Eleanor Parker. Unbelievably dark and depressing. She gives birth in prison, her baby is taken away and put up for adoption. She turns into a hardened criminal.”

“Sounds about right.”

“Number Ten: I’ve saved the best for last. Drum roll please: Caged Heat, 1974, the very best women in prison movie evuh. Produced by the great Roger Corman, and directed by none other than Jonathan Demme. I think it was his first film. Probably made for about fifty thousand dollars. Which only goes to show that it’s not money that makes a good film but vision. Great sleazo film with all this socially conscious nonsense on top of the obligatory nudity. Riveting.”

Cindy just stares at me for a long moment.

“So, what else do you want to know, Mr. Screenplaywriter?”

“How come you’re a C.O?”

“For Chrissake, Robert, I’m a f*****g townie.”

“Ever think of doing something else?”

“I was thinking of being a glamorous movie star, but that s**t seemed kinda out of my reach, y’know? How’d you get to be a screenplaywriter?”

I owe Cindy this truth:

“Worked hard, never gave up, got lucky.”

“Your family rich, Robert?”

“Being with these women day in day out, how does it make you feel?”

“I’ll take that as a yes.”

This is killing me. But I’m not going to give in to temptation and tell her that my father is an Orthodox Rabbi, that I’m from Brooklyn where my family lived a modest, middle class life; that a Hollywood career was a mad dream that, against all odds, I have managed to achieve.

“How does it affect you, this work?”

Cindy shrugs. “It’s work, a paycheck. No big deal.”

“Really.”

“Hey, you know, I ain’t all that different than these skanks.”

“How do you mean?”

“I have done time with loser trolls who I felt like killing. I just, y’know, didn’t.”

“There’s a big difference.Thinking is not doing.”

Cindy hooks her index finger into her mouth, yanks back her cheek. There’s a black space where a tooth should be.

“My last lover boy.”

“What’d you do?”

“Pow. Right back at him.”

Long silence.

“Hey, Robert, don’t look so f*****g sad. I’m home.”

Home. It’s what the inmates call prison.

C.O. Cindy and I make our way back to the dog training shed. Just as we reach the door I turn to her.

“Remember that book I told you about?”

“That Chinese thing?”

“The Art of War, yeah. Sun Tzu says something else, something that’s always stayed with me.”

“Go on, my friend.”

“He says that even the finest sword plunged into salt water will eventually rust.”

Cindy ponders this a long moment.

“You think I’m like this fine sword, Robert?”

“I do, Cindy, I really do.”

Demurely, C.O. Cindy smiles.

Priscilla Bonner, The Red Kimono, 1925.

Stay tuned for next week’s concluding chapter in which yours truly bids goodbye to the amiable Cindy and the 10,000 violent but surprisingly well behaved inmates.

To read Part I, please click here.

To read Part II, please click here.

To read Part III, please click here.

To read part IV, please click here.

To read Part V, please click here.

To order a copy of the film, Within These Walls, starring Ellen Burstyn and Laura Dern, please click here.

Copyright © Robert J. Avrech

EXT. PRISON – DAY
The Screenwriter, alternately known to the inmates as Mr. Hollywood, Mr. Screenplay Writer and Mr. Clueless, sits with Eden, an attractive prisoner who is: mother to three children, an admirer of Jane Austen, and a fine dog trainer. She also committed murder and has agreed to talk about it. One long take. Think Gregg Toland deep focus photography meets Anthony Mann’s elegant choreography within frame.

“The thing y’gotta know is I’m not the same person I was back when I did what I did. But I still take full responsibility for, uh, what happened.”

In prison I keep hearing three tedious words: It. Just. Happened.

I have learned that when dealing with prisoners, women who have killed their parents for insurance money, women who have killed husbands because there was no more beer in the fridge, women who have killed their children because—

—there are no words, there is no comprehension, there is only a terrible rip in the fabric of my universe.

Your brain goes through some pretty strange convulsions in order to process the twisted information.

Eden and I are outside the dog training shed. Her dog, Scout, is lazing in the sun, tail thumping contentedly on the grass. A few minutes earlier the extremely bright and eager-to-please mutt ran through an amazing series of exercises: grabbing a rag tied to the door of a refrigerator, opening the door, and bringing a quart of milk to Eden who was sitting in a wheel chair.

I watched, amazed, as Scout opened a dryer, took out articles of clothing with its teeth, and dropped the laundry into a basket with far greater dexterity than I could ever manage.

Scout opened a clothing drawer and with great tenderness brought some clothing over to Eden.

Holding open the front door with its body, the dog waited ever so patiently for Eden to maneuver her wheelchair through the narrow doorway.

Of course, Eden does not need a wheel chair. She’s an inmate playing the role of a disabled person. The program trains dogs for disabled people, and Eden is one of the best trainers.

I am here researching a film, Within These Walls, for the LifeTime cable network.

Now, C.O. Cindy has called a break and Eden and I are outside on a small patch of grass, surrounded by a chain link fence, crowned by coils of barbed wire.

Every once in a while a clot of prisoners walk by and throw angry glances our way.

“What’s their problem?” I ask.

“They’re jealous, buncha skanks.”

“This is a good gig, huh?”

“Hey, what would you rather do, mow the lawn, pick up the garbage, do the prison laundry, or work with the pooches?”

“Gotcha.”

Eden lights a cigarette, the sleeve of her blouse rises and I glimpse white scars, like thick worms under her skin, testament to her former life as a junkie.

“Here’s the thing, I’m not saying I wasn’t responsible for what I did, I was, I was a bad person filled with sin and evil, but that’s not who I am anymore. You understand what I’m saying?”

“Sure.”

Eden’s riff is a vast improvement over what I have heard from the majority of the other inmates. Over and over, I hear them automatically regurgitate the language of the therapists who infest the prison like New Age locust.

Prison Psychobabble 101, choose your favorite:

a) ”I lack self-esteem.”

b) “I am learning to love myself.”

c) “I have to be less oppositional.”

d) “I have no impulse control.”

e) “I have abandonment issues.”

The inmates repeat these cozy phrases like mantras, magic formulas without true emotional inflection. They tell me that they love their therapists because they don’t judge them, nor judge the crimes committed.

It’s only the religious ministries who insist on bringing good and evil into the mix, thus Eden, a born again Christian, admits to committing an evil act and seems truly contrite.

Or am I being manipulated by a master sociopath?

A very real possibility.

“It was me and Billy Ray, my husband—well not really my husband. He was my suitcase pimp. I danced, he copped drugs, and, y’know, turned me out when we ran low on cash. Which was pretty much all the time. We were in El Paso, in really bad shape. I was shooting speed to have the energy to dance and using junk to come down. You couldn’t even imagine what I looked like.”

“Skin and bones, the teeth were rotting in you’re head.”

“How’d you know?”

“Film I once wrote, had to research addiction.”

Eden hits me with a respectful look. Maybe I’m not so dumb after all.

“Billy Ray tells me about this biker who’s a major dealer. Billy Ray says he’s been coming to watch me dance every night. Got a thing for me. Wants a private session, willing to trade dope for a big night. I’m like fine. For dope, I’m up for anything. That’s who I was. Then Billy Ray says, thing is this biker owes him money. I go, what? This is a new twist. Billy Ray says this biker is like bad news, ripped off Billy Ray for tons of money. I’m like so confused. Where the f**k is this going?”

“Did you love Billy Ray?”

“Love,” she says, her tone flat and contemptuous.

Eden takes a long drag on her cigarette. She shakes her head.

“He copped for me, pimped me out, beat up on me. I called it love. What does that tell you, Robert?”

I say nothing.

Eden continues: “I’m in the motel room. The biker comes in. Billy Ray has arranged the whole thing. The biker’s this typical beer-gut slime ball outlaw. All’s I gotta do is keep his back to the closet. Billy Ray’ll take care of the rest. I do what I gotta do. Get biker’s attention like I know how. Suddenly, Billy Ray’s behind him with this ball peen hammer and I hear this sickening sound, like a melon getting crunched, and the biker goes down. Billy Ray said he was just gonna knock him out. But this guy’s skull was just all caved in, I mean…”

Eden takes a series of deep breaths.

“We go through his pockets, come up with a little dope, I’m talking just a few nickel bags, not the big score Billy Ray was all about, and there was a couple of bucks. Right then and there we fix. Meanwhile, the biker’s still breathing. His breathing’s really all raspy and with these gurgling sounds. I’m so high, and all I hear is this bad sound and it’s driving me crazy. I tell Billy Ray to make it stop, but he’s nodding. Useless.”

Thick tears cut silvery channels down Eden’s cheeks.

“So I take the hammer and put him down.”

I look at her long and hard. How far do I push her?

“Eden, that’s the language you use for a dog.”

Eden looks surprised, then thoughtful, then she nods her head and mutters:

“Yeah, yeah, I guess.”

She takes a long pause, wipes snot from her nose.

“I did it,” she says, “so I could enjoy my high. I can still hear the breathing.”

Is this woman playing me?

The product of a sheltered yeshiva education, in love with Karen, since third grade, yours truly is no match for a talented murderer slash inmate slash actress.

“How’d you get caught?”

“Billy Ray turns me out. We need what we need and I’m the one feeding the need. Undercover cop busts me. They find blood stains on the bottom of my shoes. Like brilliant police work, huh? I turn state’s evidence, make the best deal I can. Like I give a s**t about Billy Ray.”

“You’re in for life, right?”

“I’ll be up for parole in fourteen years with good behavior.”

“What would you do, on the outside, I mean?”

“That’s easy. I have a skill. I’ll be a dog trainer. Like I am now. Train dogs for the disabled. Eventually open my own shop. Join a church. Find a guy. He won’t be just a square, but a total cube,” Eden draws a sharp rectangle in the air,  “with a really normal job. He’ll wear white shirts with what’s it called, that plastic thingee in the front pocket?”

“Pocket protector?”

“Right. He’ll wear that and I’ll tell him everything, and he’ll forgive me, and we’ll live in a nice house with a little fence and we’ll watch television together and we’ll read the Bible at night and nothing exciting will ever, ever happen.”

Eden gets a signal from another inmate, she excuses herself, heads inside the shed to continue the training session. Scout follows, Eden’s loving, faithful companion.

I stay and rewind our conversation. I think about the ambush, the murder, the cold-blooded nature of it all.

What to make of Eden’s fantasy of life after prison? I hear her spitting the word love. I imagine this fantasy man, this cube she plans on marrying. What will she feel for him? What can she ever feel for any man?

Can she possibly live a life where nothing exciting ever happens? For Eden, is such a life attainable?

C.O. Cindy exits the shed to check on me.

“You okay?”

“Fine.”

“You can’t let these women get to you.”

“They don’t get to you?”

“No way.”

“I don’t quite believe you.”

“That’s because I lied.”

“Me too.”

“Now you know why they call prison home.”

“Why?”

“Because home is where it all started, home is where all the bad stuff happened to them. Home is where the ladies feel most comfortable.”

“And you, where do you feel most comfortable, Cindy?”

Cindy plays with the wooden baton looped to her thick leather belt. She ponders a long moment, then looks up at me and says:

“I wish you wouldn’t ask me those kinds of questions.”

“Why?”

Her voice is tinged with a simmering mixture of anger and resignation:

“’Cause one way or another I end up on the wrong side of the answer.”

“Sorry.”

“This place is filled with sorry.”

Feeling confused and out of my depth, I mumble that I have to go inside and watch the training session.

I take a few paces and Cindy calls out:

“Mr. Screenplay Writer?”

I halt, look over my shoulder.”

C.O. Cindy throws me a contrite smile:

“Somebody’s a total bitch, huh?”

I shrug: “Not really.”

“Now you got me doing it.”

“What?”

“For Chrissake sake, Robert. I’m f*****g sorry, okay?”

Stay tuned for Part VI, next week. Thrills and chills galore!

To read Part I of this series, please click here.

To read Part II of this series, please click here.

To read Part III of this series, please click here.

To read Part IV of this series, please click here.

To order the finished film, “Within These Walls,” nominated for The Humanitas Award, please click here.

Copyright © Robert J. Avrech

Establishing Shot: Gleaming barbed wire. Prison walls. Behind the walls, a vast yard teeming with hundreds of female prisoners. Our view narrows to a small SHACK at the far end of the prison. Outside the shack, a female Corrections Officer paces back and forth, casually leafing trough a National Enquirer. Over this we hear DOGS BARKING.

“Do you love me, do you love me, sure you do, sure you do.”

Eden is talking to a dog.

Scout is a playful and intelligent mutt, rescued from the city pound. Eden has been training Scout for about three months. The bond between Eden and her dog is powerful.

The Prison Pet program was started several years ago and it has blossomed into a successful nationwide program.

The dogs are trained to be companion dogs, to live and help people with physical disabilities. But not for the blind, this calls for an entirely different kind of training and dog.

I sit back and take it all in.

The inmates, these women who I think of as broken and damaged creatures, are transformed. They are masters of their domain. The ladies are now disciplined and possessed of iron will. They run the dogs through their paces, reward them when they do well, shake their heads and coo: “Mommy’s not happy,” when the dogs disappoint.

C.O. Cindy leans over and whispers in my ear: “It’s the unconditional love that gets them.”

Of course it is.

The dogs love these women. The dogs have no idea that the inmates have failed tragically outside these walls; that they have stolen, lied, cheated, abused their bodies in unimaginable ways, committed murder, and broken every commandment that exists. No, to the cute little dogs these women are, well, everything.

“They seem to do a good job,” I say to Cindy.

“Yeah,” Cindy allows, “what else they got to do with their time.”

“They could be plotting a riot.”

“Cute.”

“Take over the prison system, make you their slave.”

“You’ve seen too many movies, Robert.”

Sad but true. C.O. Cindy is an excellent judge of character.

“Can any inmate get into the program?”

“No way. Inmates who abused or murdered children, inmates who tortured animals, they are barred, no exceptions.”

“Good policy. Gotta maintain standards.”

“Hey, we ain’t so dumb.”

“But straight-up murderers?”

Listen to me, I’m doing dialog like from an old Warner Brothers movie.

“Killers are our best trainers. In for the full ride, they got nothing but time.”

Hey, C.O Cindy is in the exact same movie. This is fab-u-lous, we’re kibitzing, in cute-tough prison-speak, like Clark Gable and Jean Harlow in the deeply flawed but fascinating Hold Your Man.

And then it happens:

“Where’s the coffee?” says Josepha.

Silence.

“Whose turn wuz it to make the coffee?” demands Josepha. But her eyes are on Eden.

Cindy firmly grips my arm, pulls me behind her and whispers in my ear: “Do. Not. Move. Do. Not. Speak.” She separates her words like bricks.

Eden says: “I forgot.”

Josepha says: “You forgot, what you mean you forgot? Who you think you are, Princess?”

Rasssp!

C.O. Cindy draws her stick.

“Ladies, we don’t wanna do this.”

“Yeah, we do,” says Josepha, eyes still nailed to Eden. “Princess here think she too good to make the coffee.”

“I forgot. Already told ya.”

“No, you’re too busy with Mr. f*****g Hollywood.”

Josepha hits me with a flat, hard stare as if I’m road kill.

Huh, little ol’ me?

C.O. Cindy takes a few paces towards Josepha. She does not raise the stick. Not yet. She trails it along the floor. It makes a hissing sound. Like a rattlesnake about to strike.

“Josepha, our guest’s got nothing to do with this. You know that. You know that. There is history here. You do not wanna do this. I do not wanna do this. You’re skull ain’t that hard.”

“I’ll make the f*****g coffee,” says Eden.

“I’ll put it in your face,” says Josepha. “Melt that pretty right off.”

Whoa! That’s right from The Big Heat. I gotta ask Josepha if she’s aware of the famous and horrifying scene when Lee Marvin flings scalding coffee into Gloria Grahame’s face.

Or not.

Gloria Grahame

“Leave the shed,” Cindy orders Josepha, “right now. You go chill.”

Josepha does not move. She’s rooted to the spot and just stares at Eden with the kind of hatred I have never seen. Not even my college Creative Writing 101 Professor—who hated my guts—ever looked at me with such scorn.

Cindy raises the stick, just a few inches. Her slim fingers turn white gripping the wood.

Josepha blinks.

And after a long moment, Josepha stomps out of the shed.

Cindy nods toward another Corrections Officer, who accompanies Josepha back to the cell block.

I realize that I have not taken a breath in about a minute. I’m gonna put this incident in my movie. If I manage to gulp some much-needed oxygen before going critical.

Cindy shoves her stick back in it’s steel loop on her belt.

Whap!

Great foley.

She claps her hands like a Girl Scout leader.

“Ladies, back to work.”

Cindy steers me to a chair.

“You okay, Robert?”

“Cindy, you ever hear of Sun Tzu?”

“Huh?”

“He was a Chinese General, wrote a great book called The Art of War. Back in 400 BC.”

“I’m sure this is going somewhere, but I’m like: huh?”

“He said that the greatest war is the war that is never fought.”

Cindy cracks up.

“My friend, you are sooo weird.”

But Cindy grabs a pen and scrap of paper and asks me to repeat what I’ve said. She concentrates hard—her tongue makes circles on her lips—as she scribbles down the info.

“Hey Cindy, you’re my hero.”

“Yeah, just don’t make me look like a complete loser in your movie.”

I make a silent vow to honor Cindy and her request.

Stay tuned for Part V, next week.

To read Part I of this series, please click here.

To read Part II of this series, please click here.

To read Part III of this series, please click here.

Copyright © Robert J. Avrech

“Mistake, what kind of mistake?”

Josepha, serving a life sentence for murder one, is known to be one of the most violent and unpredictable women in a society of violent and unpredictable women. She stares at me with gray eyes that are surprisingly warm and endearing.

I have to be careful. I’ve been in this women’s prison for three days and I don’t understand the social rules that make this place go round. I’m terrified of saying something really dumb, and then seeing my insides, well, outside.

I have already witnessed one violent skirmish between snarling inmates, and the CO’s, the Correction Officers, whisked me away before I got hurt.

They do not want the blood of a Hollywood screenwriter on their hands. Me, I just want to go home to my wife, Karen, and our children. The sooner the better.

Prison. One thing I’ve learned about the inmates: they lie. Whatever they say, you have to read between the lines to discover anything resembling the truth.

I’m doing research for a film.

This is the best part about being a Hollywood screenwriter: travel to exotic locations and mixing with beautiful, glamorous people. Well, every screenwriter but me. I get the scary stuff.

Josepha is in her mid-twenties, she’d be pretty if she didn’t weigh over 200 lbs. and stand barely five foot one. Oh, and there’s the matter of the ink. Her body is a living canvas of lurid images. Some are of her Lord on the cross, suffering horribly, with copious amounts of blood spouting from shoulder to knuckle.

Alongside the traditional religious imagery are gang tattoos, tagger images that are a blight on the Los Angeles landscape.

I suppress the urge to inform Josepha that her images typify the worst of Early East L.A. Rococo, totally low-rent decadence, like Betsey Johnson—on a gallon of acid.

And, oh yeah, the tats are not slimming. In fact, the opposite. Most unfortunate on a woman already grossly overweight.

It’s a good choice on my part—not critiquing her ink, for Josepha has three blue teardrops dripping down her left eye. This informs her homies that she has killed three people.

Impressive.

My art criticism would probably not be appreciated. And as the warden of the prison said to me in a private briefing, “The one thing all these women have in common: absolutely no ability to see beyond the moment, to control their urges. These women are emotional morons.”

I love the warden. She’s engaging, funny and utterly unsentimental about, “My ladies.” That’s what she calls these 10,000 female killers, thieves, drug addicts, prostitutes, and G-d knows what else: my ladies.

Anyway, back to Josepha’s confession:

“I killed him by mistake.”

Josepha is telling me about her husband, Silvio. “Well, not really my husband,” she admits. “I mean, it’s not like we wuz married in the Church or nothin’. Silvio, he says, what we need a piece of paper for? He says, we got love.”

“Very romantic,” I say.

Josepha smiles dreamily and lights a cigarette. It’s something I have to get used to in prison. The inmates smoke all the time.

“Did I tell you how ol’ I was?”

I shake my head.

“Twelve.”

I control the urge to scream.

“You were a child.”

Josepha giggles. She’s now in her mid-twenties, but when she laughs, she becomes a little girl.

“Silvio, he was older, thirty-two, that was like part of the thing. My therapist, Mrs. Zuckerman, she taught me that because my Papa up and left and I grew up without a father, well, I grabbed on to Silvio as part husband and part father. Thing is, Silvio was full time bastard.”

“You had a rough time, huh?” I’m all Freud 101, totally predictable and totally dopey.

“How come you not writing this stuff down?”

“I used to take notes, carry a tape-recorder, but found that it made people self-conscious. What I do is, I pretty much remember what we say, go back to my hotel room and write everything down.”

“You gonna put me in your movie?”

“We’ll see.”

“Who gonna play me?”

I shrug.

“Some skinny-ass white bee-atch, right, all skin and bones and like soooooo beautiful.”

“Hey, I’m just  the writer.”

The cowardly writer. If Josepha doesn’t like the film I’d prefer she blame the director. He’s the auteur, or so I’ve been informed by the French.

“Hey, don’t get me wrong, that’s what I want. You think I want some fat slob puta playing me the fat slob puta?”

“I’ll let the casting department know.”

“Like I said, I killed Silvio by mistake. I caught him doin’ my bestest girlfriend.”

“Cheating on you?”

“Can we just say, duh.”

“But you didn’t kill your girlfriend.”

“Nah.”

“How come?”

“Women, we can’t control ourselves. With guys, it’s all their game. So I banged at Silvio.”

“But you killed him by mistake. That’s what you said, right?”

“Absolutely.”

“Mind explaining?”

Josepha examines the long ash of her cigarette. She takes a drag and blows a plume of smoke—right in my face. I cough and heave and feel a migraine blooming in the left side of my skull.

“I shot him right between the eyes.”

There’s a long pause. Her eyes take me in me. Measure me.

Silently, I thank G-d for prisons.

“I meant to hit him in the shoulder,” she says in a flat and utterly unconvincing tone.

“Mind if I ask you how you felt?”

“Felt?”

“After you shot Silvio.”

Josepha ponders a long moment. She’s genuinely puzzled by my question.

I persist. “Did you feel guilty, did you feel sad, did you feel—”

“Hungry. I was real hungry. I went down to the Taco Bell. I wuz supposed to be doin’ Weight Watchers, but I figured what the hell.”

Usually, there are worlds within worlds. But sometimes there are no worlds set within other worlds, sometimes there is just a vast and awful emptiness.

Josepha gives that little girl laugh. This time the sound sends a chill up my spine. “Now I’m home.”

“Home?”

“Home, baby-boy, that’s what we inmates call prison. Welcome to my home.”

To be continued…

Copyright © Robert J. Avrech