Reader advisory:  The following story contains occasional crude language and a scene of graphic violence.

The dingy silver Greyhound bus rumbled to a stop in front of the main entrance to the Florida State Prison in the town of Raiford.  Reaching into the pocket of the penitentiary-issued suit jacket, I extracted the pre-paid one-way ticket to Jacksonville and climbed aboard.  Adjusting my eyes from the searing brightness outside, I walked past the openly curious gazes of the handful of passengers and settled into a window seat near the back of the bus.  Were the backs of the buses still only for colored folks?

The spare landscape of northern Florida passed by the window, and for a while I drank it in.  Pine trees, white clapboard houses, a gas station, a school, and a couple of warehouses flashed by before I began to lose interest.  I reached into the other breast pocket of the chocolate brown jacket and pulled out an envelope with the return address of the Florida Bureau of Prisons.  Inside was a letter from the Governor of the state, certifying on that date, the 28^th of June 1973, that my conviction and sentence for murder in the second degree of one Elijah S. Burks were voided and my record expunged.  Also in the envelope was a certified check in the amount of nine thousand dollars, a thousand per year for each year of my life I had lost while serving my sentence.  I could still see the look on the face of the warden, J. D. Alexander, as he acknowledged and apologized for the miscarriage of justice the system had inflicted on me.  He looked like something unpleasant he had eaten was settling uncomfortably on his stomach.

Two weeks earlier, some poor sap who had been busted red-handed on a homicide beef in Plant City and wound up confessing to the murders of Burks and two other men was found guilty and sentenced to life.   His confession spared him a date with Old Sparky, Raiford’s electric chair.  As a result, I was given my freedom that morning.

When I went into prison, Lyndon Johnson was President; now, Richard Nixon was in his second term.  Neil Armstrong had walked on the moon while I served my time, and Vietnam had become part of the national vocabulary.  The Athletics had moved from Kansas City to Oakland, the Braves from Milwaukee to Atlanta, and they even had a baseball team in Montreal, Canada.   What else would I need to learn about?

The bus pulled into the grimy downtown station in Jacksonville.  I waited until everyone else got off, then left the bus and looked for the nearest branch of the bank the state’s check had been drawn on.  I cashed it, then found a biker store a couple of blocks away and bought a wallet with a chain that fastened to my belt.  I went into a Belk’s and picked up a backpack, a pair of jeans, some boots, a few shirts and several changes of underwear.  I used their dressing room, putting my chocolate brown suit in the department store’s bag.  I gave the bag to the first bum I saw walking on the street outside the store.

One more purchase to go.

A darkly lit bar on Odessa Street looked promising, so I stopped in.  The bartender, an older, heavyset guy with thinning hair and a soiled apron stopped polishing the glassware and looked at me.

“What’ll you have?”

I looked at the taps.  “Lemme have a Bud.  You got any food here?”

The barkeep jerked his head in the direction of the back of the joint where a flat metal grill sat unattended.  “You want a burger?”

“Sounds good,” I said.  “With cheese if you got it.”

I finished the Bud while I was waiting for the burger, then ordered another one when my meal came.  Had to watch the brew—I didn’t want to get soused.  While I ate, I watched the bartender as he polished the glasses.  Worth a shot, I figured.  I reached in my wallet and palmed a twenty.  “Hey,” I called to the bartender.

“Yeah?”

“My name’s Vern.  What’s yours?”

The bartender considered for a moment.  “Pat.”

“Well, Pat, I got a question.  The right answer might be worth something to me.”  I let one corner of the twenty peek out from under my fingers.

Pat looked at it, his eyes brightening.  It was more than he’d likely see in tips all week in a joint like this.  He sidled down the bar to where I was sitting.

“What’cha looking for, Vern?  You need a girl?”

“That would be nice, but that’s not what I really need right now.”  I lowered my head and my voice.  “I need to buy a gun.  You got any ideas?”  I worked the bill far enough out of my hand that Andrew Jackson’s head saw the light of day.

“Yeah, Vern, I might know a guy.”

“Pat, I need this gun kinda quick.  Some ammo, too.  Nobody asks no questions.”

The barkeep turned away from me and picked up a phone from under the bar.  His stubby fingers worked from memory as they spun the rotary dial.  He muttered a few words, then hung up and placed the black instrument back under the counter.

“Alley out back.  Guy named Frankie.  Fifteen minutes.”  He slid the Jackson from under my fingers and into a pocket in his dirty apron in one smooth motion.  He went back to polishing glassware.

After ten minutes, I finished my burger and drained my brew.  I peeled off a ten-spot for the bill and walked out of the bar and around back.  Two guys were already there, Marlboros dangling from their mouths.  The shorter one looked at me.  “You Vern?”

“Yeah.  You Frankie?”  The short guy nodded.  “I wasn’t expecting company, Frankie.  What’s up?”

He looked me over, lingering on my eyes.  He thought a moment, then turned to the taller guy.  “Tommy, go take a walk, would’ja?”

When we were alone, Frankie started to reach into his jacket.

“Slowly, Frankie.”  My voice was soft, almost indifferent.  “Two fingers only, pal.”

He pulled out a Smith & Wesson .38 Special from an inside pocket, just his thumb and forefinger on the grip.  “Two hundred,” he said.

“You’re out of your mind.  You think I just fell off the turnip truck?”

Frankie smiled, stubby teeth yellowed with nicotine.  “You want it clean, no questions, right?  Serial number’s filed down, it’s untraceable, and the butt’s taped.  I got two boxes shells.”  He looked me in the eye.  “No questions,” he repeated.

I took the Smith from him.  I opened and spun the empty cylinder and snapped it back, looked down the barrel, cocked the hammer and pulled the trigger.  The action was tight, the barrel immaculate.  The weapon had never been fired.  I hefted the Smith in my hand and felt its cool, solid weight.  It would do.  I reached in my wallet and gave him two hundreds.  Frankie handed over the boxes of ammo.

Giving me a parting look, Frankie turned and disappeared.  I reopened the cylinder, quickly slipped six slugs into it, and snapped it home again.  I put the Smith at the bottom of my backpack beneath my undershorts, and headed back to the bus terminal.

I bought a one-way ticket to Asheville, North Carolina, and waited an hour for the bus to arrive.  I boarded and found a seat way in the back by the window again.  I stashed my backpack under my seat and got comfortable.  It was supposed to be an eight-hour trip.  As we pulled out of the terminal and on to the highway, the swaying motion of the bus put me in a kind of half-sleep.

It was my second day in Raiford.  I had been working in the prison cabbage fields, busting my ass all day in the broiling hot sun.  I rode the truck back to the cell block, stripped, wrapped a towel around me, put on my flip-flops, and went to the showers.

The thin stream of cool water felt soothing against my hot, sweaty, gritty skin.  If I had known better, the absence of any other prisoners in the shower room would have sent warning bells screaming in my head, but I wasn’t savvy.  Until two inmates entered…

A short, wiry Hispanic with jailhouse tats up and down both arms and across his chest and back walked under the shower head to my left.  A tall, overweight Negro stepped over to the place to my right.  Neither turned on the water.

All at once, they each grabbed one of my arms and slammed me against the faded white walls of the shower.  I shouted out—the colored man slammed a meaty fist into my face.  “Shut up, motherfucker.  Ain’t nobody gonna help you here.”  The Spanish guy with the tattoos gave me a kick in my genitals.  I screamed out again and doubled over in pain.  “That’s right, maricon.  You have assumed the proper position.”

The first of four other inmates walked up behind me and pulled his towel aside.  He rammed his swollen phallus into my rectum.  The pain was so sharp I saw red spots swimming in my eyes.  With each thrust, my cries grew fainter.  The men on either side of me forced my head lower, pulling my buttocks up higher.  I heaved the contents of my stomach onto the wet, slippery tile floor.

When the first man had finished, the next one stepped up to take his place.  The pain, the degradation, the inevitability of the attacks had drained all shreds of resistance from me.  I swayed and buckled.  I prayed the assaults would be finished quickly.  I prayed that I would die quickly.

At one point, I think it was while the third guy was taking his turn, I swung my head to the left.  That’s when I saw him.

He had to be about sixty.  A fringe of snow white hair crowned his tanned, creased, leathery face.  A hand-rolled cigarette hung from his lips.  A sick gleam was visible in his gray eyes.  He wore the crisp, starched gray shirt and slacks of a prison guard, the Florida Bureau of Prisons patch prominent on his sleeve.  The hand he wasn’t smoking with was in the pocket of his trousers, moving slowly over his groin.

Sergeant Joe Bob Pardee.

“Help me… HELP me!” I said in as loud a voice as I could muster, looking straight at him.

Pardee stood there, then coughed up some phlegm and spat at the floor drain.  He turned and walked away without a word.

The bus clattered to a stop in Charleston, South Carolina, to take on and discharge passengers.  I emerged from my reverie, watching people shuttling on and off the Greyhound.  As the bus pulled onto the highway again, my thoughts returned to Raiford and Sergeant Pardee.

The incident in the shower room was my first and last sexual assault, but it was not my last encounter with Pardee.  He seemed to have made me his pet project.  He worked me harder in the fields than the other convicts, denying me water and rest breaks in an arbitrary manner.  On a couple of occasions he had one of his inmate stooges take a run at me in the yard, then pounded me with his truncheon while allegedly breaking up the fight.  He singled me out for special treatment at every opportunity, and all I ever did was stare at him a split-second longer than was acceptable and say, “yes, boss.”

Two years before my release, there was a ceremony attended by the guards and some of the trustees in the mess hall.  Pardee was retiring.  Before he left, he paid me a visit in my cell, one last time.

“Today’s your lucky day, Gibbons.”  He coughed, then took a drag from his hand-rolled cigarette.  “Discipline in this block’s gonna go all to shit now I’m gone.”  He barked out a half-cough, half-laugh.  "I’m really gonna miss you, Gibbons.  You keep swearin’ you’re innocent, but you an’ I knows different, don’t we.  Wanna know why I busted your balls so bad?”

“Yes, boss.”

“’Cause you’re a lyin’ hypocrite, is why, and I cain’t stand a hypocrite.  You ain’t any better than any of the other swingin’ dicks in this block, but you keep thinkin’ you is.  And that’s why I broke you, son.  Now, it’s time for me to go.  Y’all be real careful now, hear?”

“Yes, boss.”  I looked into those narrow gray eyes one last time.  “See you around, boss.”

Pardee let go with another laugh-cough, swung on his heel, and strode away.  “I’ll see you, Gibbons—in hell.”

But Pardee was wrong, of course.  He thought I’d never get out of Raiford except in a plain, bleached-white pine box.  He never reckoned with the possibility that I’d be exonerated.

It cost me ten decks of Camels out of my canteen fund, almost all the money my wife Shirley had put into it before she ran off with some accountant from Oldsmar.  One of the trustees who worked in the office, Skidmore, managed to get me a copy of the prison’s newsletter with Pardee’s mailing address on it.  I memorized it and gave it back to Skidmore so it could go out in the mail.

14902 Davis Mountain Road, Hendersonville, North Carolina.  About fifteen miles south of Asheville.

I was going to pay Sergeant Joe Bob Pardee, retired, a visit.

To be continued…