I was locked up with a guy named Hungry. He is a lifetime convict; Hungry has been locked up about 22 years out of his entire life. He was also one of my best friends. If you can’t tell, we ate a lot of meals together. He gained weight; I didn’t 🎯🤷🏼♂️. Hungry got out a while back; He is setting up a sober living for men low on chances and resources and is also a fairly new believer. The dude is awesome, but sometimes I enjoy moderately bad things happening to my friends.
My favorite Christmas happened in August of 2017. I woke up that morning locked up, but my return to society was imminent, nothing was gonna change my world. Then I saw my guy Hungry. He looked scared; he also looked tired. I could tell Hungry had something he had to tell me, but he didn’t wanna tell me. It was about 6:15 am, and I dont really get going good until around lunch. I couldn’t resist though. Hungry was always commenting on my weight and eating habits, so even in tiredness, I was interested.
Hungry said that he was outside the module on our smoking porch at about 330 in the morning. There was fence around him with a visual security cover on it, but there was a little ambiguity about how late we were allowed to have the module open. The trustee’s consensus was that we didn’t have to shut it; I had it on good authority, El Capitan, that it was not a big deal for it to be open all night. Some guards still tried to give us a hard time at night, though. We never knew who or what we were getting outside of those gates with some of night CO’s.
Well, as Hungry smoked his cigarette and petted his red-heeler, Piper, a deep voice called out to him from right outside our fence. It said, “What do you think you’re doing out here smoking?”
Hungry could not see who was on the other side of that fence. He knew it was someone dressed in all black who was walking the jail grounds in the middle of the night. He was having a peaceful time and didn’t want to be bothered by some bored CO. This made his patience razor thin. So he said, “What you mean? I’m just out here chilling.”
The voice didn’t really have a lot of patience either. As it boomed, “What’s up with that dog?”
Hungry loved Piper. I told y’all that my incarceration experience wasn’t exactly like most others. A few of the trustees had pups. Hungry’s dog, Piper, she was our mascot. This raised the bar for Hungry a bit, as he said, “Thats my dog! Whats your problem man? We ain’t hurting anyone. What are you even doing out here?”
The voice didn’t care anything about answering any questions. It was its job to ask not answer. So thats what it did, “What are you and that dog doing out here?”
Hungry had had all he could stomach. This was it; that convict code was getting ready to come back alive. He was flashing back to Camp 29 at Parchman Farm, as he said, “Man don’t worry about me and my dog! Who are you anyway? I can’t see you, tell me your name!”
All of a sudden, the voice had a name! It decided to answer this question, as it roared, “It’s me, Barry!”
My boy Hungry was wound up. Barry was a generic name to him at this moment. This wasn’t like someone said Sinbad or Beyonce to him. This was different; it was just “Barry”. He couldn’t think of any CO’s named Barry. So he asked the next obvious question, “Barry who?”
This was moment of truth. If I had been with Hungry, in the middle of the night smoking squares, I could have let him know long ago who Barry was. I wouldn’t have told him. My instigation radar would have been on high alert; forcing me for the first time, in a long time, into silence. The voice had now become a man, and that man’s name still rings into Hungry’s ears, as he yelled, “Barry, El Capitan!”
OMG!!!!!!!!!! Murder he wrote.
Hungry had been a material witness that day when El Capitan had almost murdered Sweet Pea with a frying pan. We had all seen El Capitan make many of his employees cry. These are employees that want to be cops, many are military, and all 5’9” of El Capitan had reduced these macho humans into smurfs with badges.
Needless to say, Hungry was shocked. He didn’t go to sleep the rest of the night. After apologizing profusely to El Capitan, he sat in that same chair until sunrise, waiting for someone to wake up to commiserate with him, praying it wasn’t me. As he sat there, he thought what was El Capitan doing walking the jail grounds in the middle of the night? He was dressed like a ninja head to toe, in all black. He was up there spying on his people.
As Hungry told me the story, I laughed for a solid 20 minutes. I had never seen my friend so sick. After the most cleansing laugh of my life, we discussed El Capitan and his methods. Hungry was in shock still, but I was thinking a little deeper. He wasn’t spying on us. He was up there checking on his employees. He was away from his family giving up sleep, sneaking around in a ninja suit in the middle of the night, so I knew he would make them cry and spy on them. I wondered what else was El Capitan willing to do to his CO’s.
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