“Trick or treat,” Carl said full of energy to the dumbfounded man standing before him.
This man looked at Carl, an old, gray bearded inmate in his late 50’s, standing outside his cell door. Wearing dozens of empty instant coffee bags sewn together to fit like a hooded poncho as his coffee costume. He didn't respond quickly enough.
“Nigga, you best pop that fuckin’ box before somethin’ dramatic happens to yo bitch ass” Dawlool threatened from where he stood behind Carl along with a couple of other Convicts.
Wide-eyed, this man quickly got into his locker box and dug out some Little Debbie snack cakes, hurrying back to his cell door to drop them into Carl's bag as Dawlool stared him down.
“Thank you!” Carl smiled before moving with his chaperones to the next cell. All around the lock we waited with treats. After all, Halloween was his favorite time of year.
This is the life of Carl, the most innocent guilty man I've ever known.
If you, the reader, haven't gathered yet, Carl had a severe mental retardation. Don't word police me, I'm telling you the story about a time where I'm using the language we used at the time. His IQ fell somewhere in the 60’s. He was little more than a child.
That's why we took him trick-or-treating every year. We'd make him a costume and walk him cell to cell as convicted felons took turns dropping treats into his pillow case. As time passed, some guards would even allow him to go to other blocks where the Convicts in there would walk him around. God turned a blind eye to any man foolish enough to be stingy.
Most of us affectionately called Carl “Death Row” given the nature of his original conviction. It made him feel tough and he'd smile. Strutting almost cartoonishly like the cock of the block when we'd use it.
Carl was exactly as you pictured him when I mentioned his age and beard. He was scrawny with a pudgy stomach, thin arms and legs from a lifetime of recurring homelessness. A bird's nest of hair atop his head with sunken eyes and sharp, deeply worn features. Skin permanently tinted from more sunburns than one could hope to count. Even with his few remaining teeth, his smile had more light than the most precious child.
Carl was a gutter rat from a large city. He survived somehow but little else. One day, in the very early 90’s, he wandered into a garage to escape the elements. His case files read that he entered to rob the residents there, however I know better. Carl didn't have the ability to lie. Not because he was too pure but because he literally lacked the intelligence to come up with a story and keep a straight face.
Unfortunately, the home's occupants discovered him and presumably thought the same thing. Attacking Carl inside the garage. Unable to fight back, Carl reached for anything to defend himself.
He grabbed a sledgehammer.
Were it not for his conviction, we couldn't have believed it possible. Carl struck the first man in that garage, causing him to stumble and fall I'd imagine. I picture this because the discovery said the second blow is what killed him as Carl brought the hammer down onto his head. The second victim, the other occupant, was found dead inside the house. Carl had chased this one down.
I personally made candles for this double murderer to blow out on his birthday cake. I watched him close his eyes to make a wish beforehand. “No no no, if I tell you, it won't come true” he told me when asked what he wished for. That man, with his adolescent mind, brutally killed two men.
I still have difficulty with that.
His attorney's were a joke. I use the plural because a couple quit before he landed the public defender that would ride the case out. There were several phycological evaluations ordered by the court because the only defense anyone could come up with was “insanity”. His condition was evident on sight and certainly more so the very moment he spoke to you, yet they soldiered on with the proceedings.
Eventually Carl was sentenced to death. One could only imagine how easy it would've been to lead him down that road. He would've simply done whatever they told him to do. Signed whatever they wanted him to sign. Of course someone took advantage of that. Hence the nickname “Death Row”.
Thankfully, if gratitude could exist in Carl's tale, his sentence was overturned by an appeals court due to his mental deficiency. Commuting his death sentence to a life sentence instead. They moved him from the Row out into gen-pop and that's where the fellas found him.
Carl genuinely didn't understand what he'd done. His mind couldn't wrap around the size and severity of it. I've heard men actually ask him if he understood and Carl would say, “Yeah, I understand. I killed those guys. They're dead.” but then he'd continue, “I hope they're not still mad at me.”
I've watched Carl cry over the thought of his victims, dead men, being mad at him.
Carl belonged to all of us. He was the safest, most untouchable man within those walls. He was already a fixture when I arrived and I simply became yet another member of his extended prison family. In all my time I never even heard him so much as call someone a foul name.
He'd run up behind you and snort in an impossibly loud way to make you jump and then shoot you with finger guns. Yelling ‘Bang bang!” as he fired a pair of rounds at you. He was absolutely notorious for that.
He was terrible at magic but never knew it. Coming into the poker room and picking up a loose deck to show us a card trick. We'd stop what we're doing, nevermind that someone might literally be about to lose his ass in the hand being played, and watch him put on a show. He'd guess the wrong card 100% of the time and we'd yell in astonishment and fall over each other in utter disbelief because we can't believe he “guessed it right” yet again. All the while he'd smile and laugh at how over the top and crazy we were being.
“Thank you, thank you” he once said with a bow.
No one could so much as look at Carl sideways without risking being wolf food. Everyone who mattered agreed he was completely off limits. Carl was the only thing ever I've seen opposing gang members agree on. Going back to one of the Halloweens, a group of black men walked him around the block in a cardboard robot costume and up to a group of actual white supremacists. They smiled, told him he looked pretty badass, then afterwards one of them patted one of Carl's black escorts on the back with a nod. No words, but everyone there knew a “respect” sign of approval when they saw it. He might as well have yelled it.
Everyone cared about Carl. No games, no nonsense, no agenda. We simply cared. Something about him made us feel better about ourselves. Made our environment less of what it was meant to be and more of what he made it into. The absolute innocence of this old and frail and childish man.
It wasn't long ago when word reached me out here that Carl had passed away. His body simply gave out. He had never been healthy a single day I knew him. Too many years in the gutter had left him frail and weak. They cleared count one morning and Carl just didn't get out of bed.
While the message didn't tell me, I knew in my bones the atmosphere on the compound following Carl's death. I didn't need a picture painted. I know my people and I know my former home well enough to do it myself. I know the procedures, I know the prison's response, I know the pine box and the boot hill where he was laid to rest.
I also know the funeral they held for him. I can see it as if I had been there with them. I know they gathered, I know they aired out all of his dirt until there was nothing left to say and that no man dares speak ill of him within those walls to this day. I know they told stories and laughed and celebrated him. I know he had his last call and they walked his shoes to the perimeter, throwing them over the fence. His walk with us was over.
I wasn't there yet I was absolutely there.
Carl had a hard life but only until he found us. Yes, horrible pain and suffering brought him into those walls but I'm confident that he never knew happiness as he did in there. You may see tragedy in his ending, dying in prison, but he spent his final years with friends. Warm and safe and fed and included. I'm sorry for the death that brought him to us but I am not sorry he was there because I can remember that wonderful toothless Carl smile.
This was the life of Carl, the most innocent guilty man I've ever known.
Thanks for that. Gotta go, fucking onions are obstructing my eyes.
GOD.
GOD at work.
How many found a glimmer of decency, a shred of compassion, how many chose that in Hell?
Someone that never walked in hell, won't understand.
Everyone that has, gets it.
In the Bible, it is said we sometimes entertain Angels, unaware. YESHUA also said, " As you do for the least of these,( poor, children, prisoners, infirm,) you do for ME. Every act of kindness towards Carl, was an act of worship, of GOD, in Hell.
Btw, ODIN, was also called the Wanderer, Gandalf, and would show up as a traveler in need. Wandering the Earth.
Why Hospitality became custom and law.
One never knew when a God, had come to their hearth. Even Pagans know,.