The Envelop - Franklin's Bennies Episode 7

Chapter 19: Legal Brief

Franklin rested his thick forearms on the desk, his legal folder sitting in his lap. I watched the CO give a serious nod to whomever he is talking to on his walkie talkie. 

“That old doctor trying to get me on a high dose of that crazy man brake fluid. I told him I don’t hear those voices anymore,” Franklin said, rocking a bit in his chair. 

“That true?”

“Today, it’s true.”

I watched the CO nod some more into his radio. Doc Amman had carried a National Geographic with him and studied the pages. Our cover looked legitimate. 

“So I told you I’d pull you out today. But…”

“You came to my hood instead.”

“Seemed to make sense.” 

“The PO PO been standing outside my cell most of the night, just looking in. Took that youngster cellie of mine out of his bunk too for some reason. When he came back, early in the mornin he seemed all chatted out. Like some case been started on him.” 

Franklin turned around and looked at the CO who had now walked away from Doc Amman but had held onto his radio, the volume turned down. “That little cowboy checking on me, Doc.”

The CO glanced at me while talking into the radio. My paranoia or not, it seemed obvious someone was on our tail. “So, Mr. Franklin, I am interested in what you were about to tell me yesterday. You believe your bunkie is a snitch and…”

“Know he is, Doc.”

Franklin shot another look toward the young CO who had moved away from our view. “See that little roper been told to watch me”

“So give me the straight of it all. Why the snitch and why you?” 

Franklin awkwardly scratched his head, cuffs dictating the movement. In the sessions I’d had with him he never got around to telling me anything. He visited me to get out of his cell and knew I was an easy mark. But now he is scared. And I didn’t think he was making up a story.

He shook his head, then unloaded, “Doc, I got a bag of Ulysses and Bens sitting in my auntie’s garage back home.” He again looked back over his shoulder for the CO. “Back in KC.”

”Ulysses and Bens? As in the presidents?” I asked.

“But the thing of it is, I am worried about the dough and my auntie.” 

He scratched his head some more. I’d seen thousands of inmates in my five years with the prison counseling service and I hadn’t struck up any relationships. But Mr. Franklin was different. He was to do a long sentence. Something about him made me want to help. He had a gentleness about him with soft basset hound eyes. And tried his best not to over-do tough guy gangster talk. Ms. Challice, my co worker, had given me more information on his case, something she was in the habit of researching for her cases. 

He’d been convicted under the three strikes statute, which called for the heaviest sentence for his conviction. Given sentencing reform that sentence might be commuted but it was hurry up and wait about any long term prospect of release. For Mr. Franklin, his crime, as it was finally broken down, turned out to be possession of drug contraband, an empty bag of cocaine, residue and all. 

He’d been stopped at an interstate junction in the heart of the rural part of the state, mostly white and charged and held in the small county jail. His attorney, a well known drug lawyer from KC, had gotten a change of venue, but it was to a neighboring white county. He took the case to trial and lost. Mr. Franklin got 25 years, despite the harmlessness of the crime. Having a child, not his own in the backseat didn’t help matters. 

“So it’s about your auntie. You are worried?”

He rubbed through his beard stubble and leaned toward me. “The thing of it is, Doc, is that this all about a drive-by that smoked my little nephew, Jamon. He was 8. He was staying with my auntie. His momma was locked up. My sister. Well, she really be more my cousin. But, the thing of it is, I’d broken off from the 51 St. Went my own way. Too many had become ruthless. So I went my own way, took my own customers with me, white dudes, like you, working on the Plaza and all. No crank scripts. Straight powder. Paid too. Even though the business was peaking out, still white dudes, women, had their need.” 

Franklin checked the ceiling as if he was looking for a camera or a bugging device. I did the same. The young CO stood next to Doc Amman, with an air of accusation in his glare.  

“And no never mind that the little negroes on Norton street couldn’t do business with the white people, cause they cared more bout being gangstered up, blinged out with colors than makin greens. They still took it out on me.”

Franklin cleared his throat and nodded. He teared up, but as quickly wiped them off. Outside, Dr. Amman got up. The young C/O stepped toward the door. Behind him filling up the hallway was Sergeant Boyce, the CO who had called Maria Calderon the night before. He peered down at me. 

Mr. Franklin detected my angst and turned back to the man staring down through the plexiglass. He took in a deep breath. “Now you believe me, Doc?”

The Sergeant opened the door and stepped inside. My dander flared. “Can I help you, Sergeant?” 

For a moment the man was at a loss for words, not expecting a challenge from me. But quickly regained his command. “Time is up, Doc. We need to get this inmate back to his cell.” 

Mr. Franklin looked at me for some backing. “We aren’t done…” I said.

“Stand up, inmate,” the Sergeant ordered. Franklin stood. As he did the legal brief fell to the floor, spilling out the documents. Handcuffed, wrists in front of him, he tried to gather up the papers. The Sergeant stood guard. I moved around the small table to help gather up materials, bending down with Franklin, shielding our moves from the officer.

“Let the inmate do it, Doc,” Boyce said. Franklin gestured to me at a lone small envelope, which had fallen out. He awkwardly flicked it under the desk with his middle finger, his body shielding a view from the Sergeant. 

“Come on inmate, Stand!” 

Mr. Franklin gathered up the fallen documents and placed them back into his folder. He shot an eye motion to the envelope under the desk as he was escorted outside the interview room by the sergeant. Doc Amman watched the ordeal. I bent back down, and quickly grabbed the envelope and tucked it inside my jacket. 

Chapter 20: The Real Story

“Oh my,” Doc Amman said on the walk back to mental health, “Your man Mr. Franklin has become, how do they say, a person-of-interest.” 

“Seems so,” I said, feeling the sting of the abruptness of the Sergeant ending the interview. 

At the turn into our building, a baritone booms Amazing Grace from a cell window. Likely the same man who was singing Sitting on the Dock of the Bay the day before, his genre switched from soul to gospel. Not an African spiritual so much as my history recalled. Doc Amman stopped to pick up the tune. “That was a song written by a slave trader in the 1700’s wasn’t it, Peter?”

“I’ve heard that. I’ll check it out on the Internet.” Inside Officer Babcock shouted a cordial “good morning” to Doc Amman, avoiding any bonhomie to me.  “I’ll catch you later, Doc. Thanks for the trip over to Six House.”  

Maria was sitting in the solitary chair in front of my desk when I stepped into my cubicle. Her legs were crossed and her foot keeping cadence to what I surmised must have been an anxious heartbeat. She was wearing soft-soled-shoes with heels, as much as is allowed in the prison, dark trousers, a blue blouse under a cashmere rose colored sweater. “So, what do I owe…?”

She jumped right in. “I left you a message last night that the Sergeant is overly concerned about your relationship with, a, Mr. Franklin.” I held up my finger. 

“He just interrupted my session with him in Six House. Escorted him back to his cell. I was over there with Doc Amman.” I checked my coat pocket for the paper I took from Six House. And lifted my desk calendar nonchalantly and looked at Wanda’s note. 

Maria wanted the real story. I settled into my chair. She waited. One aspect which bonds me to Maria is an honesty between us. I felt she trusted me to tell her the whole story. Also, I felt she was in agreement with my stance about placing a man on watch who had the slightest inkling of contemplating self-harm, unlike my brethren who felt I was violating a man’s rights by being too quick to do so.

She was cautious, as was I and had gotten where she was being quick to thwart problems, the prison way. I knew she was concerned that I was stepping on some big feet with over attention to Mr. Franklin. 

“So Pedro, tell me the whole story and nothing but the whole story.” 

“I don’t know what the Sergeant is after, or really what he believes I might know. As I’ve said, Mr. Franklin doesn’t want to go down south to what he says is a Nazi camp. His exact words were, “there are more brothers up north.”

Maria nodded. “Well, as I said yesterday, he is right about that. Is there anything else Mr. Franklin is concerned about that makes the sergeant so interested?” 

“Seems the man feels his new cellie is there to spy on him. I told him given his life of crime, paranoia is normal,” I said.

“Did he buy into that?” 

“He does listen to me.”  

“Pedro, you are too nice. That’s why the men like you. But you know most are gamers.” She looked around my cubicle, with a  discerning glance that says, you aren’t telling me the whole story. We shared silence until she gave up with, “Keep me posted.” 

It was early. I let my computer warm up asking its half dozen security questions. The staff started to file in. Perfunctory hellos are said, but little else. And that’s how it would be until mid-morning when talking between cubicles starts. Of course, most of the talking is done by me, Mr. Downey and Dr. Fordham. The women usually have their noses to the grindstone. 

I opened up Mr. Franklin’s envelope, a prison commissary issue, and pulled out the three-page letter. The pages were neatly folded. Each letter was stitched to the next making the letter a finely quilted tapestry. Someone, somewhere, had taught him cursive writing. 

Franklin had not signed his name knowing if it was confiscated, other than in a frisk or in a cell search, the COs couldn’t point fingers to the author, but it was written as a plea.  

The letter began   

I write this with the hope you can hep me. I don’t got no one else. And my time at this camp is short. I be rolling up soon. You been nice. And listened. I made mistakes. But before I picked up this case I done what was right for my people. This letter gives you directions to where some Bennie foldups are. I know you not the kind of white man who is a shyster. And will take not something you didn’t make. 

The short of the story is that my baby cousin was shot dead with a nine by some young gangsters. He died quick. But the bullet was a get back for me. As I said in our talks I done bad things. But these young wanna be outlaws is real bad. Got no decency. My ol auntie was caring for my baby cousin. His moma is doing a small stretch herself. My auntie done nothing bad in this world. She been are hole world. But since this thing, she been tried out by these wanna be wise guys. And she is scared. What I done was payback for my baby cousin. My auntie lives with my other cousin. She be the sister of my baby cousin’s mama. And she works at the club off Paseo. She goes by the name Scarlet. She is the only other person other than my aunite, now, you, I trust. But she don’t know about this. Neither do my auntie.

At my auntie’s in her old garage behind where she park her ol Buick. Don’t drive it no more. Behind it and the drywall is what it is I want you to get.  

Wanda’s letter now made sense. It implied a connection to what Franklin was asking. And if the letter was found, it was obvious it was directed toward someone like me.

My phone rang. “First one is here, Cleary,” Babcock said, alerting me to the start of the day. Click. I stared at the letter for a moment, then folded it up and stuffed it behind some papers in my desk drawer. Now I had Wanda’s note under my calendar along with Franklin's. I was digging myself in deeper. A sensible man would dump both letters in the trash. But then again. 

Chapter 21: A Brood Of Children

My first client was a 20-something white kid from a little town in the Ozarks, who I’d seen before. He’d told his story to me in our first session.

He and his cousin had been convicted of murder. His cousin had been through our prison a month earlier and had been sentenced to 20 years. My client got 30 for pulling the trigger in what he said was a feud over meth territory. 

TV often depicts drug feuds over territory as only a distributor problem in the big cities, but in rural America it is also very real. With closure of the small farms and jobs gone in the little towns, the boys who stayed behind, unskilled, make their living, if so inclined, making and selling methamphetamines. 

This day, my client, Robert Sue Walker, had returned to again ask for sleeping medications. He was not only a maker and seller of this vile drug, but a user and could have been a poster boy for a meth mouth. Only a few of his anterior teeth remained. Those that did, looked little worn stubs poking out of his gum. It was the second time I’d seen the name Sue as a middle name. His parents must have been Johnny Cash fans. 

Meth heads are notorious for being up for days and when they find their way to prison they are the worst cases of those wanting something to help put them to sleep. 

“Doc, I really need something. I been up here since I got here. You got to help me.”

I felt bad for the kid. His dark circles showed he wasn’t fibbing. One foot shook incessantly. I was surprised his body hadn’t gotten itself back to a homeostasis by now.

“You remember Mr. Walker, the last time you were, what just last week, I told you this camp doesn’t give out sleep meds.” I waited for him to explode like the inmate yesterday. But tears welled up. His foot stopped shaking. Snot dripped. I handed him a Kleenex. He talked about what camp he might go to hoping to get near family. 

I figured he had some health problems going on, too. My quick assessment was that he’d die in prison and was already starting down that road. “I’ll tell you what I will do is set you up to talk to the medical doctor. He might be able to help you out.”

“I don’t want no fuckin doctor. I just want something to sleep.”

“Go to medical. I will call them. And who knows they might say you need something which will help you out.” 

The kid took another Kleenex off my desk and blew hard. “OK,” I  said, ”Can you do this?” I picked up the military issue trash can by my desk  and held it in front of him to deposit his snot. 

“So this the only way?”

“You have to try it and see.” 

We sat for some moments while I looked up medical’s number in the prison directory. My time was running short with the man. I knew I had other call-outs waiting in the hallway. “OK?” I said. 

He nodded. “What do I do?”

“Head on back to your cell and I will have medical call you down. And go to chow.” 

The kid again nodded and headed out to the hallway. I dialed up Darla in medical, the RN in charge who knows I am married to a nurse which somehow gives me some credence when I call for special favors. 

I told her about Mr. Walker and that he seems in a bad health way. She said I was too soft, but she’d pull him in for a look and see.  

Of the next six clients on my morning calendar, five had the same wants as Mr. Walker. But all were doing short sentences. It is an easy task to do counseling with short-term men. Short term being anything less than five years, because most would only do 40 to 50 percent of their sentence in prison. And talk always is directed toward self-improvement, and hope which awaits them when they are discharged. Many had a brood of children and the common harangue by the men was, “I need to get right with myself and the Lord so I can get back to my babies.” 

I handed out sleep information, set them up for a group Mr. Downey does on coping, and fibbed telling them that at their next camp possibly the sleep medication policy would be better for them. My last client, an inmate I’d seen a year earlier, remembers me. He just wanted to talk. 

“You lost some hair, Doc. This job must be stressful,” he said, sitting. He unfolded legal papers. 

“What I told you last year, it was all true. You remember? They are responsible for me being here.” 

I looked at the computer screen checking his dob. He was born in 1960. Old for prison. He took out his eye glasses from his beige-colored prison issued jacket and began reading. 

The man, Thomas Watson Granger, looked more like a college professor, with a Mark Twain do, than anyone hardened from a life of doing small bit prison sentences. As he told his story, referring to writing he’d brought in, I recalled his background. From St. Louis, living with his aged mother in her house and now in prison due to being a chronic DWI offender. 

He was delusional, with a flavor of paranoia, and had the strong belief that aliens from the planet Galazia had taken over residence in his mother’s house. “You see, Doc, they don’t want me at my mama’s. And want me back here wherever I get out.” 

The reality therapist in me wanted to ask, “Did the aliens make you drink and drive your mama’s car?” But I let Mr. Granger vent. He takes a psychotropic, Risperdal, a milder antipsychotic, which didn’t seem to have improved his thinking processes. 

After my allotted minutes with him, I told him he can return anytime. He left mumbling something as if the pages of his letter were directing him onward. Most other inmates leave an inmate in Mr. Granger’s shape alone, unless there is money on their books, then they become prey. 

I made a note to contact the warden’s office to see what monies Mr. Granger had. Once a manipulator finds out about the delusional man’s fears and that they have money, they use it to press him for items from the commissary.

After Granger left, I pulled out the letter from Mr. Franklin from my desk, slipped it in my sportcoat, checked to make sure Wanda’s note was still secure under my desk calendar, and put my name on the sign-out board. Then I made my way out of the facility to my lunch post.