I met a fella out Key Road, was from Mariel. Part of the then-recent boatlift out of Cuba. He'd made his way up from Miami to Atlanta and got busted for smoking pot in Piedmont Park.
“Key Road, 30 days!” the judge said. Same for practically every first-timer that came before him.
He taught me Spanish as we were pitching cabbage to the pigs. Or, I should say, he taught me one word that I remember: Puerca. He would point at the pink dugong in the cabbage and mud.
“Puerca!” We would snort out a sort of half-laugh, a short choppy laugh, like anyone else straining for humor, almost an oink of a laugh. Try to make the most of a not-so-great situation. Attempt some laughter therapy on a Sunday afternoon on the Atlanta prison farm feeding the pigs. Such a deal.
It was a beautiful Sunday afternoon, a day I recall occasionally in relation to him, early spring, new green sprouts where you didn't look for them, unseasonably warm, sky crystal clear. The pigs were happy and we were happy. Relatively. Not so morose, that is.
Whenever I think of pig, I think of him. Can't eat a pork chop without thinking of him. And the boatlift and Cuba and Fidel.
I read about Gitmo detainees and the loosening of torture proscriptions and I think about him. He was detained briefly. He was a lucky one. No major crimes on record. Had schooling, was of use. He was processed and released. One of those things you don't inquire about too deeply. Point was he was out of Miami. He was good to go.
He was a decent enough fella from what I saw. He said little, smiled regular, always shared what he had. That was as much as I needed to know. Not something as petty as what nationality he was.
Some friends of his were stuck out McLoughlin Boulevard in the Atlanta Federal Penitentiary. Big walls like Attica or Auburn. Sometimes, when I was trustee at city hall during one of my sojourns out at the farm, we would pass by this ominous place on our return trip in the night van. Close to the old solid walls, impressively inhuman. Stretched for several blocks of blank rock. And inside, you took it on faith, were people.
Had to crane your neck to see where guards stood watch in their towers. But you couldn't really see them. Just where they were. And razor wire and floodlights. You could catch glimpses of them, sending off sparks in the night lights.
A friend had committed suicide out there, Marielito told me. The ACLU in Atlanta was fighting to get them expeditious hearings and speed their release. Trying to introduce things like due process and habeas relief. To get them decent medical attention, communication with families.
Relevance for Gitmo, now, of course, what with the wheels of justice grinding fine and ever so slowly. Or not at all.
While on the street, like a few others, I would drop by the ACLU office and read. One fella from Ethiopia stood out, with his wonderful poised Lion of God head full of whatever he absorbed at the ACLU office. I would see him, eyes to the ground, deep in thought, heading for one of the food lines. Where he slept I had no idea. What became of him, no idea. He was more a sort of natural outcropping to wonder over. Like a benign Stone Mountain, was my odd thought of him. Typical of the times. Like the fella I'd get drunk with who worked as a carney and would shackle the elephants when Ringling was in town. How much did I really want to know besides that? We got drunk together and did crazy shit. That was enough. Rarely even a name, only come and go. That the Lion of God guy was part of some liberation front was something I never delved into, just assumed. Everyone had to be somewhere and for him here was better than there. For him the ACLU office wasn't a refuge so much as a key to the kingdom, as it were.
I ran into Marielito the summer following our stay out Key Road and we shared a joint on a bench overlooking the Piedmont Park lake. This was how he'd been busted, just sitting running a joint. Didn't slow us up a bit. The park was way too mellow, and there were lots of folks about anyway, many of them getting stoned as well, and we valued the peace too much to let cops get in our way. We were doing nobody no harm. And I imagine he was as stoned as I was already anyway.
One afternoon at the farm I watched these country boys slaughter a pig. It was a massive pink creature, resembled a manatee, a dugong, a sea cow. Pink, mottled and smelling of well-informed baby diapers, great celestial bloated things… porcine grunting inflatables.
When the fella shot it in the front of its head, its legs gave out and it dropped in its footprints like the Twin Towers. The other pigs gathered close, probing it with their snouts and grunting shallowly. I'm reminded of it when I see photos of another death in Iraq. The gathering of uncomprehending grief.
We hauled it onto the truck, drove it behind the barn and hung it on a hook. It was a lengthy beast. They cut it down the middle and the guts fell to the ground. The efficiency with which these country boys went to work on this huge carcass was stunning. Nothing was wasted. Even things not officially usable disappeared into the bowels of the kitchen where they would be transformed through some country magic and reappear, for instance, as sausage in the cleansed gut lining and eaten by kitchen workers. All for the price of one .22 bullet to the head. Furnished by the state. I wish the good Dean of Criminal Justice could have been there to appreciate it. Remind him of his roots.
I was down Key Road maybe half a dozen times. And in spite of what the judge might have reasoned, I didn’t leave the place one single time better off than when I got there. (Momentarily drier perhaps but that didn't last.) None of the food raised on the farm went to anyone but the deputies. We ate canned stuff and gray fried clots of something brought in from elsewhere. It was simply fried in grease there.
What this place provided was a way station for aging, jug-eared hoboes and street folks, usually country folks who couldn't adjust to the booming city that was Atlanta in the early ’80s. Lost souls, spent souls, misfits, burnt-out floaters. Committed for as much as a year, then released to get drunk for a week or two, then scraped up to be brought back home to the farm. Shoveled back in like compost. Like the cabbage for the hogs. This very nearly became my routine. If I'd stayed in Atlanta much longer than I did, it might very well have been my history. (I want to beggar this point. If it hadn't been for other folks' help, I wouldn't be here.)
I do remember one thing. A mural on the wall outside the nurse's station. Red, white and blue paint, a magnificent depiction of Christ. Very stark and strong. Nothing soft or equivocal about it. The head was a workingman's head, eyes focused in front of him, nonjudgmental but unshakeable. His arms were outstretched, spanning the length of the work. And the work covered all of a 30-foot wall. Avenues of light, avenues out, for some other brother or two. Representing to mind new hope and a faith in things to come. At least when I discovered who'd done it, that's what I chose to see. That long-handled artist deserved better than the life he was living when I saw him spread on the lawn. The mural was especially stunning in all that sullen gloom and despondency. The low-slung building that housed us felt like it was falling in on us. The ceiling sagged. Everything was dirty looking, sour and old. And then you saw this explosion of light and sheer power. The paint was thick and rich and applied with a strong hand. Meant to last.
The artist I had met in ’79 apparently was hauled in for a 6-month stay down Key Road and he'd found some center in himself that he'd lost. He'd found his Lord Jesus Christ, I suppose, and with assistance from the farm's director got access to paints to do this remarkable mural. The solitary point of inspiration in the entire building. For me, the Georgia sky, clear on a winter day, was my inspirational mural. But I could easily empathize with another fella's source of renewal. Ya gotta take what's offered. Whatever provides sense.
My last time out Key Road was in ’86. The housing must have been a hundred years old by then, if it were a day. There were condos going up across the once-anonymous country road that wound by the prison farm. Atlanta was flourishing under Reagan. Lots of new money, development was the game, and the place was busting at its seams. That land was ripe for the taking. And there was plenty's was willing to take it.
God knows where the old hobos went when they got rid of the prison farm. The hobos are in all likelihood simply gone.