Chickenhawk: Back in the World - Life After Vietnam

I seldom got to see everybody in one place like this. Joe the engineer listened to Red for a while and then turned to argue with Chuck, another engineer. Chuck and Joe had fundamental disagreements about stuff I didn’t understand. Each one thought the other was a quack. Joe was in materials; Chuck was a mechanical engineer. Chuck was also designing an airplane. I had seen the model he made in the woodshop, and it looked like it would work as a full-sized plane. He was having his kid run computer programs at home to design the airfoils for the wings. He was not joking. He said he was going to build it when he got out, and I had no doubt he would.

The show was late to start. The inmates were loud, yapping happily. I looked around for more people I knew. I knew a lot of inmates and I knew all their stories. They came to me with them. That guy, sitting two guys down from Red. Danny? Danny something. He shouldn’t be here. He should get an award for what he did.

Danny was a pilot, in his late twenties. He had been approached by two guys who asked him if he wanted to make a hundred thousand dollars for one flight. Danny was nervous, but he listened. They said, “Look, we’re not bullshitters with some junky plane. We have a DC-6 that’s like new. We need a good pilot and we hear you’re great. Take it for a ride, check it out, see what kind of equipment we have.’’ Danny did. He told me the plane was in first-class shape. When he landed, the two guys gave him ten thousand in cash as a down payment.

Danny went home, told his wife what he was thinking of doing. They stayed up all night talking about it and the next morning he found the two guys and gave them their money back. No deal, Danny told them, something I should’ve done.

A year later Danny was arrested. The two guys were DEA agents. Danny’s crime was that he failed to inform the authorities about the offer these men made. That’s conspiracy. He got five years.

The guys were chanting, “Start the show! Start the show!’’ The hacks were smiling, getting into the spirit of the thing. I saw Simpson, my old boss from my landscape days. He was not smiling—looked a little anxious, in fact. He and I had become friendly since he was no longer my boss. He looked at another hack seriously, but the hack just smiled. The place was looking like a riot to Simpson, I guess.

Simpson had come to Eglin from Marion Prison. Marion is the only prison in the system with a level six section. The most vicious, the vilest, the most heinous criminals our society produces all live in perpetual lock-down in cages at the level six section at Marion. Simpson once told me he still had a hard time seeing inmates wandering around loose. He’d jump if you came up behind him.

Simpson was on a detail one day at level six with two other guards. They were to escort a completely insane murderer to his daily shower. The inmates at level six get an hour a day out of their cells for a walk in the halls and a shower, all under heavy guard. The guards are not armed because weapons could be taken away and used against them. This murderer, Simpson said, used to call the guards filthy names the whole time, but they ignored him. Part of the job. This day, however, the guy had a surprise. He was standing in his cell holding a towel wrapped around his waist, ready for his shower. They let him out. They did not search him. As the guy walked by one of the guards, Simpson’s friend, he dropped the towel, exposing a three-foot piece of broomstick. He’d sharpened one end of the stick, and in one blurred move, Simpson said, he jammed the stick up into his friend’s belly with both hands. Simpson said he shoved it up deeper and deeper, forcing it up into his friend’s chest while all the guards beat him wildly with their clubs. He said the guy didn’t notice, just kept screaming and shoving that stick deeper. When Simpson’s friend collapsed in the hall, a bloody mess, the guy stood up straight and laughed like crazy. “Guards zero! Inmate two!” the guy screamed. He’d killed a guard once before. There wasn’t a federal death penalty for murder then, and the guy was already in for a couple of lives. They couldn’t do a thing about it. Simpson said he had to go tell his friend’s wife. I understood why Simpson was looking anxious. I wouldn’t want his job for anything. The hacks at Eglin had it easy, but they would eventually rotate to real prisons.

The inmate band—we had all sorts of musicians here—played an introduction. The chaplain’s assistant was the master of ceremonies. The first act was an inmate who played the guitar beautifully. We heard a singer, watched a tap dancer, and then a comedian who did impersonations of the hacks.