Leaving the World Behind

Early on New Year’s morning, there wasn’t much to say. A cold wind blew along the train platform, and a few other waiting riders came and went. Small talk was always available: did anyone know if the train was running on time? Wasn’t it cold? And windy too.

The platform faced the rear of a government building. A few official cars were parked behind chain-link fence. The windows were narrow, frosted, and high.



”That’s the county jail,” my mother said. “It was built it for eighty and now they have over two hundred inmates.” Through some of the windows you could see folded bedding, or papers taped to the glass.

“Do they all have a window?”

”I think they have people sleeping in the lunchroom.” I thought about sleeping in a converted classroom, and how draining it is to try to sleep in a public space, never feeling quite safe. How much more so in a prison!

“That sounds awful.”

“Well, they did something stupid.” And they got caught, I think. I remember a friend of mine saying “What was I thinking? I wasn’t.” after the denouement of a particularly juicy crisis in personal judgment. Imagine coming to after a spell of particular stupidity and discovering that the shambles of your life include incarceration. And that incarceration includes sleeping in an open room with a bunch of felons.

My mother had fallen into an awkward non-conversation about weather and trains with a couple who had just arrived. So I observed the jail, and the arising of associated thoughts….

You’d never see anything like this in Northern Ireland. Even the police stations there are heavily fortified. You have razor wire and armoring and watch towers and a wall around the whole thing. Certainly not a chain link fence as the only barrier between yourself and an internal door. Certainly not only two surveillance cameras taking a look at you. City streets in the North are more heavily monitored than jails are here.

As my mother chatted on, a column of inmates emerged behind the chain link fence, and ambled slowly to another door. Eight or ten men, and two guards. The men looked small. The guards looked small. One was a woman. They were all much more docile and much more…petite than I would have guessed. I held my breath, just as I did the time I saw a coyote in the wild.

Would the prisoners look at us? Would they be curious about the free people standing not fifty feet away? No. One man’s face might have been turned our direction. But then they were gone, silently. I don’t think anyone else on the platform noticed. I felt like I’d seen a ghost—just like after the coyote sighting.

Were the inmates ashamed? Would they have been disciplined for looking at us? Or did they even care? Maybe the latter.

The guard with a neat ponytail closed the door. I thought about her job. Escorting prisoners here and there. What else do you do with prisoners? You feed them. You exercise them. You perhaps supervise some sort of work or therapy. But it’s boring. Time drips by. Maintaining humans. Keeping them alive. Like having two hundred compliant, silently duplicitous pets. They have all the time in the world.

In that situation, who cares who’s standing on the platform? Did I care who was standing on the platform, even now? Not really.

The minutes stretched on. My mother was silent next to me. “Did you see the inmates?” I asked.

“Oh, where? Were they wearing orange jumpsuits?” I nodded. “You know,” she continued, “they let out all the ones they can. The ones they keep are really dangerous.”

“They looked very small. And they seemed very mellow. I wonder if they were embarrassed.”

We agreed they might be, since doing stupid things lands you in jail.

The train came, flashing its lights and sounding its whistle. I kissed my mom and carried my bag up the steps. I forgot to wave again, or to look out at the people standing on the platform.