Arriving at Prison
I arrived at the youth prison in Manchester, New Hampshire in the back of a police car. My hands and legs were shackled. There was a chain around my waist, and both the hand cuffs and leg shackles were connected to the waist chain by even more chains.
So many chains.
“It’s like I was a present he was delivering, but in the place of a red bow was a padlock tying the whole ensemble together. For now, the free world could breathe easy. I wasn’t getting away.
The police car drove onto the sprawling youth prison campus. A long, straight driveway connected the prison grounds to the main road. About a quarter mile down on the lefthand side was the first building in the prison complex, Cox Cottage. It was a dirt-colored rectangular one-story concrete block building with a flat roof. If cold and uninviting was the architect’s goal, he hit the nail on the head. Frigid would be an apt description. I would later find out that this was a medium security housing unit, one of my future homes.
To the left of Cox Cottage was a large farm. There were fields, but no crops, this being wintertime. There was an enormous barn and some outbuildings.
Directly ahead was a large, ominous looking three story building made of red brick. This dungeonesque building was the schoolhouse. The road teed at the schoolhouse. The police car stopped at the intersection for what seemed like an eternity. He then slowly turned right and drove up a reasonably steep hill.
He didn’t use his blinker I thought to myself…what has this world come to?!
The first building on the left at the top of the hill was a four-story red brick building. It looked like it could be an old mental hospital. Security screens on all the windows, no landscaping, peeling white paint on the window trim. Warm and inviting were not thoughts that came to mind as I peered out at the structure from the back seat as we drove by.
What is this place? I thought to myself. To suggest that I was freaking out at this point would be an understatement. My hands were clammy and cold. I felt short of breath. I was hot and cold at the same time. A swarm of butterflies churned my stomach. I felt nauseous. I squirmed in around on the hard, cold, plastic bench seat in the back of the police car. To make matters worse, the handcuffs holding my hands behind my back were freezing cold and digging into my tiny wrists. My back and shoulders hurt from hours spent in this position. Like freaking out, uncomfortable would be an understatement. I was in agony.
Looking back, this was my first panic attack, although I was not familiar with the term at the time. What I was at that moment was scared shitless. What have I gotten myself into? Fhhhhhuuuuuck….
Past the haunted asylum at the top of the hill on the left was the main prison building, a foreboding concrete block house of a structure, complete with bars on the windows and a huge steel door at the entrance.
I bet that’s heavy, I thought to myself. Strange are the thoughts that run through the mind of a 14-year-old on his way to a living hell.
The police car rolled to a stop in front of the door. The brakes squeaked. Hmmm, he should probably have that looked at…
The policeman put the car in park, slowly turned his head to face me and said, “You’re home.”
THUD! Went the pit in my stomach. At this point I began physically sweating. My head was hot, my brow damp. My hands were tingling and clammy. The cuffs felt colder and tighter around my wrists, which had begun to chafe, adding to my discomfort. The saliva in my mouth started to flow, as it does in the moments before vomiting. Am I going to puke? I thought to myself. The anxiety and fear were almost too much. Ahhhhhhhhh!
I wanted to run. I wanted to scream. I wanted to NOT get out of the police car. I wanted to NOT go through the big steel door. I wanted to NOT be cuffed and chained and about to enter a prison made for children. Hold it together, Michael…hold it together, I whispered silently to myself.
I remember as a child hearing a strange sound in the house after being tucked into bed and fearing what it might be. This was like that times one hundred. That’s how scared I was. Fhhhhhuuuuck…
The police officer got out of the car and opened the driver’s side rear door where I was sitting peering out the window, wide-eyed, petrified. He held the door while I lifted my feet out of the car and put them on the ground. As I leaned forward to stand up, the police officer put his hand on the top of my head and guided it out of the car so that I would not hit my head on the door frame as I exited. The police officer wasn’t mean to me, but far from nice. More of a drill sergeant who’d had a fight with his wife that morning after the dog took a crap on the carpet kind of mood. Neither comforting nor endearing, to say the least.
As I stood up, He grabbed a handful of material on the shoulder of my jacket with his free hand, and then transitioned the hand that was on the top of my head to my back.
“Let’s go.” the policeman grumbled in an impatient tone, lightly applying pressure on my back with his hand.
It all felt like a movie. The set of the prison looked as one might expect. The policeman, not quite an asshole, but not exactly grandpa serving cookies and milk either. The sky was grey, it was freezing cold. My little balls were shaking…
I shuffled as best I could toward the huge, grey steel door. It was well worn…dented and scratched, especially around the C shaped handle. The door was at least four feet wide. The props and set crew had done an A+ job on the jail entryway. Very believable.
BANG
BANG
BANG
BANG
BANG!
The police officer pounded five times on the door. Sitting here, 39 years later, I can hear the echo of that banging like it were happening now. Writing this brings back vivid memories. Thoughts that haven’t crossed my mind in years, decades. I can feel the cold on my face, the fear in my belly.
We stood there, silently, for what seemed like an eternity. The policeman, his hand on my left shoulder, had my nose positioned just a few inches from the door. I glanced to my right. Hinges. Did this guy know that the door opens out? Am I about to get a cold, oversized steel prison entrance door to the kisser? Time was at a full stop.
I was 14 years old. Hands and ankles shackled and chained at the waist.
I was standing at the door of a prison.
I was 85 pounds soaking wet. I wasn’t a young man; I was a boy. A child.
Nightmares of being beaten and raped were flowing through every pore in my body.
This is the end for me, I thought to myself while my tiny legs trembled below, straining to not give out and leave me in a pile of fear and chains on the icy ground.
A million years later I heard clanking and clicking.
I would soon see that the sound that I heard was the warden unlocking the bars to the security area between the inside of the jail and the giant steel door. A moment later I heard footsteps, followed by keys and then the sound of the door being unlocked. The police officer pulled my shoulder back, and I shuffled backward two steps. The hand on my shoulder stopped firm. So did I
The door opened slowly… creaking hinge and all.
(Great effects…well done, set people, well done).
Pleasantries were passed between the warden and police officer. The prisoner exchange felt more like two chums exchanging holiday gifts after not seeing each other all year, only the present being exchanged was me.
Once inside, the cold steel door slammed shut with a metallic, thundering thud, followed by a concussive echo off the grey concrete walls of the prison. We were standing on a landing. There were about eight feet between the steel door and some stairs that lead down to another small room. This area was buttressed on one end by the stairs and on the other by a row of red bars, the grey primer showing through dozens of scratches peppered by chipped paint. A sliding bar door was positioned in the center.
(What attention to detail. Props to the props guys…this all looks super real. I’m sold. This is a prison.)
The fluorescent light above was flickering slightly, as it should have been in Scene One of the child prison nightmare.
The warden said “Welcome to your new home, son” in an authoritative but monotone voice.
(Great line reading. No need to re-shoot the scene.)
The policeman proceeded to remove the shackles. I rubbed my wrists. Those things need some padding, I thought to myself.
As the policeman was taking off my irons, an inmate entered the scene, stage left, with a large janitor’s broom. “Shwooph, shwooph” went the broom as he pushed it along.
He turned his head and looked at me as he pushed the broom: “Ohhhh, we’ll have you broken in in about 20 minutes” he announced with an air of superiority, followed by an annoying little laugh.
I might have thought to myself, “No one likes a guy who laughs at his own jokes…” had I thought that was a joke. I did not. Fhhhhhhuck.… I’m fucked, or about to be.
Thunk…the pit in my stomach dropped another level, to a level below rock bottom, a level that, before that moment, I did not know existed.
These were my first minutes of what was the start of a horror story about the child prison system. As it turns out, the boy with the broom was exaggerating. I was not broken in in the first 20 minutes. It was mid-day. I wouldn’t be sent to the group dormitory–the unsupervised group dormitory–until later that evening. For now, I was safe.
For now.