God of the Rodeo (24 page)

This and later decisions meant that wardens allow the press into their territory only when-and to whatever degree—they wish, and that the country knows almost nothing about the lives of 1.7 million of its citizens. What the Court failed to acknowledge, in writing that the constitution does not force “upon government the affirmative duty to make available to journalists sources of information not available to the public generally,” is that most government officials feel that duty anyway, as a matter of survival. They need to retain the public’s attention and its trust, and so they offer up a good deal of information. What they try to hide, other officials, also fighting for survival, help to expose. But with prisons the public doesn’t much want to pay attention; it has already handed over its trust.

Wardens and state corrections departments have little motivation
to share anything. Even the statistics they offer to prove what the Court
does
require, that their institutions be run safely, are useless for comparison and not necessarily reliable in themselves. The category of “significant injury” in a prison’s annual report can mean almost anything, depending on the state’s directives and the warden’s own definition and his instructions, direct or subtle, to employees about what to write down and what to leave unrecorded. Except for inmate deaths, it is impossible for anyone to judge from prison statistics how safely an institution is run. It is impossible to judge without being there—and being there for extended periods. (Inmates can write to the media, but their mail to reporters is subject to review in many states. Even where court rulings have made such letters confidential, inmates risk reprisal if their criticisms are discovered, and their accounts are difficult to verify. They can write confidentially to lawyers, but interested attorneys are hard to find.) So by allowing prisons the authority to shut down press access, the Supreme Court has aided in the guarantee that the lives of our inmates occupy no place in our minds.

When I had arrived at Angola, back in September, I’d had no right to anything beyond what Cain had granted other reporters: a guided tour, and interviews with inmates while an escort stood nearby. I may not even have had a right to that. But as Cain had grown confident that my vision was sufficiently affected by his Gospel-infused proclamations, as he’d told his staff early on that I could “see it all,” that I could have “carte blanche,” and that no eavesdropping was necessary, I gained a tenuous hold. My suit was based on the legal doctrine of unconstitutional conditions. Having entered into an unwritten contract with me, covering my access, he could not revoke what he had granted because I would not sign away what was indeed my fundamental right: to publish whatever I found to be accurate and true.

As my attorneys first explained this legal theory, I was ecstatic,
almost giddy with hope. It was cut-and-dried. I couldn’t possibly lose. There was no way the facts could be interpreted against me. He’d given me the access, then taken it away only because I wouldn’t meet his unconstitutional demand. The doctrine of unconstitutional conditions. During the days before filing suit, I must have spoken those five words to friends and acquaintances two hundred times.

But even as I repeated the phrase, I knew the problems. Cain could deny he’d agreed to anything, or he could invent some security-related reason for my banishment. It didn’t have to be much. He didn’t have to say he’d found contraband in my car, or that I’d stood in the cotton fields and called for a riot. The Supreme Court had accepted wardens’ arguments that interviews with the press built the egos of inmates, and in this way threatened the balance and peace of their institutions. Cain could say the inmates I’d been following had begun to seem too self-assured.

I tried to convince myself I had proof. I had the agreement he’d given me to sign the morning of my expulsion. But he could claim there were other issues. He could tell his first deputy and his press secretary, who’d been there at the galvanized fence, to lie about his reasons. He could tell the two assistant wardens, whom he’d called into our January meeting, to lie about his worries. Would they? Would they perjure themselves in federal court?

The two lawyers I’d hired were calm, conservative corporate types. The judge took them seriously enough to ask us into his chambers after reading through the suit. The four of us sat around a long conference table, well-burnished like the one in Cain’s office, but of a far more expensive wood. Around us were dark shelves filled with law books, not the framed flattering clippings Cain hung on his walls. The room held a comforting power, but its elegance unsettled me. How much would the man who presided here want to involve himself in a fight over the warden’s crass control? Yes, Polozola had invested himself in cleaning up Angola for twenty-five years, but he
was known as a conservative thinker—wouldn’t he suggest that my lawyers and I had no chance, suggest we reconsider?

His warning was not unkind—“All this might be true, but I’m still going to have a hard time ordering a reporter inside a prison”—it was only crushing.

He turned to me. “And even if I did, what makes you think any of those inmates are going to talk to you? What makes you think Cain hasn’t warned them already? He doesn’t have to threaten them physically. Those men are in a maximum-security prison. They have next to nothing. So a little crumb means a lot. They know if they cross Burl, they’re going to get that little crumb taken away.”

“Judge,” I said, “if I may just answer that.”

He nodded.

“I know you’re right. I know that all he has to do is take away that crumb. Or let them know he will. But I don’t think he has yet. I think—and I don’t know how tactfully I can put this—that his ego is so big, and that he’s used to such total authority, that he figured when he threw me out I’d just stay away. He didn’t need to threaten anyone.”

“But he’s going to find out he was wrong this afternoon, as soon as this suit gets served. And the inmates are going to hear about it on the news, and it’s going to be all over the paper, because your suit is going to be right there when the reporters check the court press box. He’s not going to need to threaten anyone then, either. The inmates are just going to know. Don’t talk to Bergner. Don’t open your mouth to say hello. He sued the warden.”

“That’s why we hope you’ll issue that restraining order, Judge,” one of my lawyers broke in, referring to the preliminary step we asked for in the suit: that the judge prohibit Cain from communicating with the inmates in any way about the suit, and that he prohibit any reprisals against the inmates for talking with me.

“Even if I sign the order,” Polozola said, “you know I can’t stop
every tiny thing. I’m sitting here and Angola is a long ways away. And a tiny thing is all it’s going to take.”

“We do understand that, Judge,” my lawyer said. “But it would give our client something, in the event he does get back in.”

Polozola stared at me. If he signed, it would be, at least, a show of sympathy, something I could cling to. I tried to demonstrate, through some minute adjustment of posture and expression, that I was no loose cannon, that the story I told was true, that I had given Cain no legitimate reason to throw me out, that if the judge took this initial step he would not wind up embarrassed. Perfectly motionless now at that table of venerable wood, I tried to believe he could tell that I had committed not a single transgression at Angola, that I had refused even to buy an inmate a Coke when he’d asked. But the judge may not have been sizing me up at all. He may have been thinking about everything he knew, as an insider, about the unproven crimes of Warden Cain.

He signed.

What happened next happened fast. The judge called us in for another conference later that day, this one including the Department of Corrections’ chief counsel. “I want you to think about settling,” Polozola told him. “You don’t want a trial on this one.”

As we talked about possible terms, one of my lawyers, trying to soften the opposition, mentioned that I had begun the year with a favorable impression of the warden. “Maybe Mr. Cain can get back to that.”

“I wanted to write this book,” I added, “because I was interested in his unique thinking about criminals and prisons.”

“Unique,” the judge said, exchanging a glance and raised eyebrows with the department’s counsel.

“Yeah,” their lawyer muttered, “Cain’s unique all right.”

The reporters were just then picking up their copies of the day’s business from the clerk of the court downstairs. I flew back to New York, my attorneys betting the Department of Corrections would give me everything I needed, and me not so sure about the odds. Cain ran the show. It might not matter what the department’s lawyer advised him.

I waited by the phone. At four the next day, my lawyers called. Cain had been persuaded to settle—he might succeed in keeping me out, but there was no way he wanted a trial that examined the shakedown. I was given a kind of five-month visa, to complete my year. My interviews would be unmonitored.

Not wanting to spend my time inside a maximum-security penitentiary where the warden felt any angrier than he already was, I declined much comment when reporters called. But fortunately one of the writers, working from the public record, discussed the judge’s order against reprisals. The story ran on the front page of the
Advocate’s
Metro section, so, once convict word got around, the inmates would know that they were—in theory, anyway—protected.

Right after the settlement became official, my phone rang.

“Hello?”

“Dan, this is Burl. How you doing?”

“All right, Warden Cain.”

“That’s good. Now, look. I figure we just got involved in a little game of poker. But instead of just going on playing, you stood up and shot me. I just hope you didn’t kill me.”

He waited for my laughter, and I tried to be polite.

“Listen,” he hurried on, “we got this thing settled and we’re going to get along good. You know that and I know that. There’s not going to be any reprisals against any inmates. There’s not going to be any obstruction. But I wish you
would
talk to the press. Tell ’em
everything’s fine and there’s no war on between us. Tell ’em I didn’t do anything wrong. I’m not talking about you doing the legal thing, I’m talking about the human thing. Would you do that for me? ’Cause my wife can’t go to church. My son can’t go out of the house. This is costing my family a lot of pain. Would you do me that favor? And it’s taking a toll on the prison. They’re all talking about it. You really ought to do it for the sake of the inmates. ’Cause I’m trying to run a Christian Walk, and this don’t look good for that.”

I apologized. I said that I couldn’t give a statement of exoneration.

But within a few days, the press attention died out. And no state or federal prosecutor ever called to inquire about my charges of extortion.

Still, the warden didn’t want any more trouble with Polozola. So when I arrived for my next visit he called a meeting. He put out word across the penitentiary that all the inmates I’d been working with be brought to the Main Prison visiting shed. “Right away.”

Cain asked us to gather around him. We formed a semicircle. Attentive. He spoke quickly, and joked weakly with me about my minimal hair, but he wasn’t overly uneasy. “I want you to know that everything they’ve got in the papers isn’t true. Me and Mr. Bergner’s not fighting. Are we?”

“No,” I said. “I appreciate your cooperation.”

“You see? We’re getting along fine. ’Cause I want you to talk to him. Say whatever you like. Tell him the good things, but tell him the negative, too. Tell it all. Tell it like it is. ’Cause I bless this book.”

“Y
OU
LOOKED
SAD
WHILE
HE
WAS
TALKING,”
ONE
OF
the inmates said to me discreetly as the warden walked away after giving his blessing. I cannot write which inmate. Despite Judge Polozola’s sympathy and the possibility of appealing to him about any reprisal, I can, in fact, offer the convict little protection. The same man soon explained that I was just starting to see what the inmates had learned ahead of me, that Cain loved both glowing publicity and making money exactly as much as he
didn’t
care about the inmates, exactly as much as he wasn’t the warden they’d longed for when he first arrived. “Dumb to say,” the man went on, “but what we’re always wanting with a warden is sort of like a caring god.”

I denied my sadness to the inmate, denied it until the very last day of my year, when we said goodbye outside the rodeo stadium. Then, as he said, crying, that he wished he was leaving with me, I allowed that he’d been right about my emotions. But for the meantime I shrugged, telling him my feelings were irrelevant. “I’m here about you,” I said.

And two days later another of the convicts shook me almost as thoroughly as the warden had.