The prison tried to steal our hearts the summer of 2014. Maybe it began in 2013. Nobody is really sure when it began, to be truthful. It started very subtly, you see. It started first with a few of the older convicts, then it tried to trickle down on us. Luckily, we saw the tell-tale signs that summer day when old man Baker started calling this place home and all. The place I’m talking about, by the way, is called Pamlico Correctional Institution. It’s one of the State’s few remaining single-cell prison facilities.
Anyhow, old man Baker just up and started calling the prison home that day. Just like that. He started calling it home and then began talking about how he’d someday die here, how his life was over and everything.
It all happened one afternoon as he sat on one of the black benches inside the prison courtyard. It was hot as a firecracker that day. It was in July and the rays from the eastern sun burnt into our faces. We all sat there together on the bench. The sparse grass around us was already sun-scorched and withered. There were four of us. I remember it all very well. We were all just sitting there running the mill and old man Baker just started in. He began talking about how this prison was his home now, how his life was over, and how there was “No use in thinking about home or life anymore,” is how he had put it.
“What’s the point?” he’d asked that day.
“With life and all – I ain’t ever getting out of here no how.”
“How do you know that?” I’d asked him pointedly.
“I’m old for one thing,” he’d said as he ran his fingers through his frowzy beard.
“But life ain’t over, Baker,” injected another lifer called Buzz.
“The hell it ain’t,” replied Baker. “It’s been over for twenty years now – they ain’t letting me out of here.”
“You can’t give up,” intoned yet another lifer called Lightbulb.
“I ain’t giving up,” declared Baker, paused. Then added, “I ain’t crazy either.”
“Well, you can’t lay down,” exhorted Buzz.
“Hell, I ain’t,” said Baker. “I just know where home is now.”
“Home!” cried Buzz. “Why – this ain’t home!”
“Is it not, Skip?” said Baker, looking over at me.
“I don’t know about that one,” I offered, as a blue heron skirted above the outside perimeter fence.
“You got life too, don’t you?” added Baker.
“Why yeah – but home could never be a place where you don’t ever wish to be,” I replied, as the blue heron now floated along a drainage ditch beyond the prison fences.
“Isn’t home where the heart is … ain’t that what they say?” added Buzz.
“Something like that,” responded Baker.
“Well – is this the place where your heart is?” I asked Baker.
“Why no – this isn’t where my heart is,” said Baker, paused. Then added, “But it’s home for now.”
“Home for nowww, “said Lightbulb, his voice rising into a sing song. “Home for nowww-ow …”
“Home forrr nev-ver,” I chimed in. Home forrr nevv-ver,” I chorused. “How could this ev-errr be home …?”
“Where’s yourrr heart?” crooned Baker, then looked out across the fences towards the eastern sun.
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