Behind the Grey Mountain

Page 11

What matters most is that my heart beats. "Ak achumka imma an chu kash," the goodness of my heart. Against the worst intentions of a few, against the odds of many, my heart beats on, marking the passing of the prime of my life in this cell. The life I live is not at all what I thought my life would become. For now, I exist. I live in an altered life which has altered the person I would become...

My heart beat in wild terror as the Judge announced verdict in July of 1988,. Guilty! Instead of giving me death, the sentence was life in prison without the possibility of parole. Never even achieving as much as a traffic citation before, I was now thrust into an unknown world behind the Grey Mountain. I could have considered a more immediate alternative - an open courtroom window, 10 stories above the Santa Ana, California, street. My mama was there. She had watched attempts to give me death in three different trials, withstood that shock and accompanied me in prayer over the hundreds of miles that separated us. Now she watched me being sentenced to life in prison. She is a strong woman and forgiving in nature. Just three years earlier, her only daugher, my beloved sister Kim, was tragically murdered and now, as always, mama stood there tall and proud, expelling strength to me through eyes filled with love...and tears. No, you can't stop running water nor kill the fire that burns inside...

I was sorely tempted by the window and the prospect of a life so drastically altered simply terrified me. AHO! The trickster, the one they call the devil, was playing games with my mind. But I could not ask her to witness the leap. Mothers see their children into this broken world. None should have to watch them leave it so abruptly. Six years, approximately 2,190 days, 52,560 hours, 3,153,600 minutes. How many heartbeats? My mind can't compute the number and this trivia is just another way of idly passing the time. Others have passed longer periods in these cells. Surely I can muster the strength and faith to endure...

The morning silence is flushed as the cell door opens its steel-jawed mouth. It is a beautiful day as Father Sun spears his rays of sunlight through the broken glass of the window. The cells around me empty as the repetitive motion of work-call of this institutionally structured time unfolds into another day.

As the tiers of lost souls on my block begin to empty, I hear the prisoners cursing and verbally abusing the Yard Officer. Her name does not matter. These men would grouse and grumble at whoever cranks the door open and closed, regardless of gender. This matters, though: that this sickening display of verbal abuse towards another person underscores our culture today and exposes our social attitudes. No, this is not simply a bunch of prisoners yelling just to be heard but a mirrored reflection of a society gone awry. Dehumanization in this place hangs thick enough to cut with a knife...

Sunset smells heavy - the musk of the field nearby, the odor of the rank and polluted Salten Sea that flows near the prison, and the stench of over-crowded human bodies. Throughout the day, shouts, curses, racial slurs, and the mind-numbing blare of television sets in the crowded day rooms make concentration difficult, sleep impossible., As I write, earplugs made of toilet paper screwed firmly into my head, a half-dozen prisoners stop at my cell and interrupt. They ask me if I want to get in on the football pool. I tell each one I don't gamble. They look at me like I am crazy. Some ask for coffee, a cigarette, anything before deciding that when I say no, I mean no! "Sorry Chief," they utter. I reply, "I'm not a chief" to deaf ears. They go to the next cell and try again.

There are times my rage becomes intolerable. Despite my attempts to adhere to non-violence, there have been times when that rage has overflowed. I try to check the stress and tension sparked in the belly of this over-crowded beast by running the perimeter of he yard until, exhausted and winded, I stagger to a halt. Other times, I lift weights (drive iron) trying to keep in abeyance not only my range but the toll of these 37 years on my body.

One afternoon, under the weighty burden of iron, I watched a thunderstorm move inexorably toward the prison. As it began to baptize the land, a brisk wind sprang up, heavy with the breath of wet soil and the advent of another fall that is coming. The sky cleared its throat with the rattle of thunder. Raindrops peppered me, soft accompaniment to my repetitious bursts of expelled breath as I heft the press, pushing my rage away. The wetness on my face isn't completely from the rain....

My catharsis incomplete. I walk to the gym and burn my hands punching a wildly swinging heavy bag. An officer makes me stop. He notices the crimson smear left on the bag when I stop to rest and wipe my hands on my shirt. He doesn't understand; sometimes neither do I.

To know the truth about prisons and being an Indian in prison, one must pierce illusions and view it from the inside. Things aren't always as they appear and the general public has been brainwashed and blinded about truth, justice, and the American way. It's freedom of speech as long as you don't say too much.

Prisons slowly kill most souls. They swallow lives whole and cut many of them short. Prisons affect everyone they touch forever. They are designed and operate specifically for revenge. In this "kinder, gentler" country, we mete out harsher punishment of longer duration than any other industrialized nation in the world.

Prisons hurt, maim, and kill. They demoralize and feed the self-hatred generated by failed human potential. To be a human caged, shackled and bound is a humiliation which makes one feel subhuman. This is the white man's way. His promise of justice for all that only a select few receive. He has made the Indian People many promises and broken every one except one - he promised to take our land.

The slow and methodial rape of the spirit continues day after day. A lot of people in prison are convinced that they have no worth, no purpose, no hope, no rights, thereby no chance in life. After all, they are prisoners, subhumans to society. For too many this terrible lie becomes truth, a prophecy fulfilled in a thousand ways each day and night, a reality sometimes culminating in a sharp razor blade at midnight.

There are over a million people locked up in America's prisons today. As more institutions are constructed (and even more are called for) we cannot deny any longer the damage we are inflicting on ourselves as a nation and a people, damage which can be fatal to a democracy.

Thomas Merton's words on decisions filter into my mind:

"We live in a time in

which we cannot

help making decisions

for or against humanity,

for or against life,

for or against justice,

for or against truth."

As long as decisions are made for others, we are all doing time. As long as there are others wiling to sit in judgment of many, regardless of whether they are innocent or not, we are walking a road of eventual doom for society. For it is only when we decide in favor of humanity, in favor of life, justice and truth, that the rage I acknowlege and that so many others deny can finally be kept at bay. Then the job of re-building the shattered lives of a broken world can begin. But I am simply a red man, an Indian incarcerated behind the Grey Mountain, a number that the court has determined by a stacked sense of justice to be guilty because they said so. It has been said, "It is easier to perceive error than to find truth," and I believe this is true. The former lies on the surface and is easily seen, while the latter lies in the depths, where few are willing to seek it.

It's midnight again. Darkness has fallen over this cell and a tiny insect crawls around the corner of the concrete wall that separates my cell from the one next door. It stops to watch me write memories away.

(Andrew L. McCarte is incarcerated in a California state prison. Despite his three trials and his repeated efforts of appeal, to date all attempts to obtain a new trial on his behalf have failed. His Grandfather was the interpreter for the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma.)