You enter through a door in the back where a big sign says ALL PRISONERS MUST BE SHACKLED. Prisoners who have never been to the jail generally go to the front door and press the bell and are told by the crackling intercom to go around the back, which they do. To get to the back door you walk through the car park, where there are cop cars and tow trucks. At the back door you wait with the other prisoners.
New prisoners are admitted at seven in the evening.
There are seven men waiting by the door tonight. Five are white and two are brown. The youngest might be 20 years old and the oldest might be 60. Four men have plastic grocery bags with their personal effects and one man has a brown paper bag with his personal effects and another man cradles his personal effects in his arms and the youngest man has no personal effects that I can see.
One man waits by the door for a moment and then strolls over to a car across the street. There is a woman in the car, in the driver’s seat, and he says something to her but she doesn’t look at him or speak to him. The man opens the back door of the car and snaps his fingers and a dog jumps out and nuzzles his hand and the dog and the man walk off around the block, the man lighting a cigarette as he goes.
One of the men by the back door of the jail is standing with a woman and two small boys. The man and the woman and the boys all have short blonde hair. The woman is talking quietly to the man. The boys are maybe six and four years old and they are running around and knocking each other down and bickering and laughing and whining. The younger boy tries to spit on his brother but he misses. The woman says something terse and firm to the boys and for a half-second they settle down but soon they are crashing around again.
The blonde man watches them but he doesn’t say anything.
The man with the personal effects cradled in his arms is surrounded by a knot of friends who are not going to jail this evening. The friends are all joking and laughing and the man going to jail banters a little too but then