John, my clothing room partner, and I were having early dinner at three. I’d had Baker put us on the list because John and I liked coming back to the clothing room and having coffee during the four o’clock count. It allowed us to think we were special not to be counted in the dorms. I filled out an “out-count” form every morning, which Baker signed, with our names and four others who worked in the back, including Jed Wilson, a new guy who was helping Timmy in the shoe room. During the count, John and I brewed instant Bustelo espresso and sat back in our swivel chairs in the issue room and bullshitted while we monitored the count’s progress on the loudspeakers. We talked about our crimes, our families. John had a brand-new son and showed me his picture often. After count, we managed the complaint window for an hour, told people they couldn’t have anything, and then we’d be off. It was pleasant.
John was in for smuggling marijuana, too. On his last trip he got caught in a storm, got beached at night, miles from his drop-off point. After a frantic night of getting a truck, unloading the pot, he set a fire to scuttle the boat. But the boat didn’t burn and sink like he’d planned and the police were able to trace him. Pot residue in the boat convicted him. John was appealing his case. The government only had a few ounces of pot as evidence, a misdemeanor, but the feds had calculated that the boat was carrying two tons, based on the size of the boat. John was outraged because he’d only had half that. Anyway, he had made successful trips, and I’ll never forget his description of how he felt after his first trip.
“I almost didn’t make it, Bob.” John was smiling, shaking his head. You could tell by the happy twist of his mouth and the shine of his eyes that he really loved smuggling. “Shit, I really didn’t know what I was doing. I was lost half the time. But I got the stuff here. Delivered it to my partner. A week later he comes by my place, plops down a grocery bag on my coffee table. I look inside. Money. Bales of it.
“A few days later, I’m driving down U.S. 1 on my way to Fort Lauderdale. I’m driving a brand-new Mustang convertible that I bought with cash. The top is down. Jimmy Buffet is playing my favorite song on the tape player. I’m smoking some very nice weed, not the stuff I brought in. The sun is shining. I have over a hundred thousand dollars in a canvas tool bag in the trunk of the car. I am free.” He sighed. “Life can be good.”
Jed Wilson was sitting at our table in the mess hall telling John and me that he thought drugs were the ruination of America.
John said, “Jed, they put you in here for smuggling cocaine. Where do you get off?”
“Sure, I smuggled it, but I never once used it,” Jed said. “It was strictly business with me.”
John and I rolled our eyes.
“The truth,” Jed said, smacking his fist against his sternum. “God strike me fucking dead.”
John nodded. “You ever smoke any pot?”
“None of that, neither. Send you straight to hell.”
“Do you drink or anything?” John said.
Jed shook his head and said, “None of that. You want to know a legal way to get stoned that won’t send you to hell?” Jed leaned close to us.
“What’s that?” John said.
Jed smiled. I saw something black in his mouth, like his lower gum was dead or something. “Simple and legal,” Jed said. “You take a piece of fishing leader—you know, that clear kind? And you stick it into a cigarette. That’s it. Smoke that. That’ll fuck you up.”
John and I looked at each other.
I said, “Jed, that shit can kill you.”
“Better’n going to hell,” Jed said. “I been doin’ it for years.” He smiled and I saw the crescent of black stuff peeking over his lower lip again.
“Jed,” I said, “you got something in your mouth? Besides food?”
Jed nodded and finished chewing a mouthful of chicken. He swallowed and said, “Yeah. My chew.”
“Tobacco? You mean you keep that shit in your mouth while you eat?” John said.
“Sure. Where else am I going to put it?”
“That’s disgusting, Jed,” I said.
Jed smiled, encouraged. “I sleep with it, too.”
“You’re kidding.”
“Nope. Works great. I wake up feeling nervous? I just take a couple chaws and stash my chew back inside my lip. Sleep like a baby.”
“God,” I said. “What does your wife think of that? Like when you try to kiss her.”
“Her?” Jed said, looking sheepish. “Hell, Clarice won’t let me chew when I’m home.”
CHAPTER 30
Two good things happened on my first anniversary in Eglin. In August 1984, I got my first furlough, and Chickenhawk became a New York Times paperback best-seller.
Patience came to the prison Saturday morning. I’d changed into my set of civilian clothes kept in the administration building and was waiting for her outside. I saw some staff coming to work and started worrying, wondering if they’d think I was trying to escape. I was dressed like a civilian and armed with a letter that said I could walk around like a civilian until eleven o’clock Sunday night. But they could change their minds, couldn’t they?
Patience drove up in our Escort. I mentioned that the dashboard was dusty. A mess like that would get you demerits in prison, I said. Patience nodded with a worried look on her face. She’d spent hours cleaning it up.
We drove to a seaside motel in Fort Walton Beach, known as the “Redneck Riviera” because it was popular with tourists from southern Alabama. We spent the day making love and walking on the purest, whitest beach I’ve ever seen. I’d asked Patience to bring my camera. I had an inexplicable urge to take pictures—I really missed making photographs. I guess I wanted to absorb myself in something I could control. I had thirty-nine hours of freedom and Patience was watching me photograph sand dunes. That night, we saw Ghostbusters and ate at a posh restaurant that served worse food than I ate in prison.
At ten o’clock Sunday night, Patience drove me back home.
I walked through the administration building, changed my clothes, and, less than fifteen minutes after she dropped me off, I was once again a prisoner. I felt relaxed. I’d felt uncomfortable at the motel. You could do anything you wanted—the choices were endless and intimidating. Meals were confusing—you had to tell them what you wanted from a huge list of possibilities. You had to decide how to dress. There was no count to positively establish that you belonged anywhere. It was also deathly quiet.
Prisoners were supposed to visit in visiting rooms.
It was no surprise that my book was going to be a best-seller in paperback. Gerry Howard told me Chickenhawk would be a best-seller before it was printed because Penguin had already gotten huge orders from the two big bookstore chains, B. Dalton and Waldenbooks. Penguin printed “National Bestseller” on the cover of the first paperback edition, and so it was.
At the end of the first week of publication, my cube neighbor, ex-stockbroker Walton, who subscribed to the New York Times (and the Wall Street Journal), showed me the best-seller list in the Book Review. Number five, on the nonfiction side of the list, read: “Chickenhawk, by Robert Mason. (Penguin, $3.95) The experiences of a helicopter pilot in Vietnam.” Walton said that was great, and maybe I ought to be reading some of the books he had about managing money and investing. He said, “Know what the hell you’re doing, and never trust your stockbroker. He’s trying to make money. For him.” Walton’s advice came from personal experience. He was convicted of fraud because, he said, some salesmen at his firm, an international investment company, made outrageous promises to their clients and a lot of people lost lots of money. The government claimed Walton knew what his salesmen were doing, but Walton just shrugged at that. “Salesmen will say anything, Bob. Just remember that.”