On the road
Don was sitting in the audience at the first event, the launch, for my new book, A Grip of Time. He had been released from prison two months earlier after spending 34 years behind bars. One of the original members of the Lifers’ writing group I had started at Oregon State Penitentiary almost four years ago, he was a part of the book I’d be reading from. I’d asked him before the room filled whether it would be okay if I introduced him at the end of the event. He beamed. Don was beaming a lot these days. He was re-learning how to live, and he could barely contain the joy in that.When I’d finished reading and answering questions, I introduced Don, and the room erupted with sustained applause. I don’t know why people applauded—and possibly they weren’t quite sure either—but I do know, because Don told me, that it was at that precise moment that he felt part of his new community.
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At Powell’s in Portland I read about Jimmie’s in-prison marriage. Jimmie was another of my Lifers’ group writers. I read about how at OSP you can get married twice a year, either on a Tuesday in April or a Tuesday in October. You can get married between 8 and 10 in the morning. No flowers. No food. You can’t write your own vows. The ceremony takes 3 minutes, and the go-to Reverend charges 20 bucks a pop. I read about how Jimmie was dressed in his best prison blues and had gotten a haircut the day before.At the end of the event, after I’d read and answered questions and signed books, an older man who’d been waiting to one side came up to me. “I’m the barber,” he said. For a moment I didn’t understand. “I’m the one who cut Jimmie’s hair,” he said. Then we shook hands and he told me that he’d been out 8 years after being down for 28. He was still cutting hair.
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The first person to raise her hand after one of the Seattle reading events was a well-worn fortyish woman with a smoker’s gravelly voice. She introduced herself by reciting her prison number, then went on to talk about her 19 revolving-door years behind bars, the GED she finally earned, how education was transforming her life. The other day, she told us in her raspy voice, someone from her old life asked her what her prison ID number had been. She quickly recited it. “Huh?” said her former inmate acquaintance. “That’s one digit too long.” That’s when she realized she had recited her University of Washington student ID number instead.There was not an un-goosebumped arm in the house.These are the joys of being on the road for this book