A CHANGE OF SCENERY

A CHANGE OF SCENERY

I jumped a little as the steel door clanged closed behind me. I stood frozen stiff for a few moments. It was as if time stood still. The grass seemed greener, the sky a more vivid shade of blue, and even the birds in the nearby trees sang sweeter than I had heard them sing in years. I listened with intensity. A sense of peace descended on me, and fear that had resided in me for years fled. Possibilities seemed endless. I finally understood the phrase, “Hope springs eternal.”

 Well, maybe I didn’t fully understand it yet, but I desperately wanted to, for today was the beginning of the rest of my life. It was time for a fresh start. It sounded trite, I know, but I felt like a newborn baby, just sprung from its mother’s womb, eager to begin life. I took a step forward, faltered a little, then took another step, and then another. My chest heaved as I took that first deep breath, a breath of air so fresh, a breath of air so sweet. A small cry escaped my lips and I looked around to see if anyone had heard my response but I was alone. Truly and utterly alone. For the first time in eight years. I started to laugh at my silliness and then I couldn't stop, I threw back my head and laughed till the tears ran down my cheeks.

A big yellow taxi pulled onto the long drive and I took a few deep breaths to calm down and get a grip. 

I raised my hand as the taxi approached and I took some steps forward to the edge of the driveway to meet it. I opened the door to the back seat and scooted in, placing my brown paper bag beside me.

 The cabby turned and glanced over his shoulder and asked, “Where to?”

I hesitated for a moment; I don’t know why I hesitated, I had had eight long years to make plans for this day but now that the moment was here I panicked.

“Where to?” he asked again.

Better play it safe I figured, and gave the cabby the address that had been provided for me.

I didn't turn around and look behind me, but in the taxi’s rearview mirror, I could read the sign on the buildings. It was backwards but I still knew it. Wentworth Correctional Facilities.  The drab gray walls were behind me. The stench of fear, anger, and despair in my past.

I had two hours to get to my destination, a halfway house in the city. A halfway house; halfway between prison and freedom, halfway between Heaven and Hell. It would be here that I would meet my probation officer who would go over the rules I had to follow before I was totally free to leave the system. I had an interview lined up for later on in the week, at a warehouse within walking distance of the halfway house.

I picked up the brown paper bag from the seat beside me and opened it. I was asked to sign for the contents as I passed the last checkout point of the prison. There wasn’t much in the bag. A wallet with a driver’s license expired now, a health card also expired, a ten-dollar bill, and a watch, not currently working. I gave it a useless shake and put it on my wrist anyway. At the bottom of the bag was a small silver chain with a St. Jude medallion on it. St Jude the patron saint of the hopeless and impossible. The Saint that was said to help those with hopeless causes and in desperate situations. That has always been my plight in life. Hopelessness, my past was filled with that.

 At age thirteen I took off from my foster home, got into trouble, and did a stint in Juvie. It wouldn’t be my last. I was out long enough to get my driver’s license,  then used it to help with a bank heist driving the get-a-way car, and then Bam! Back in the system again.

My workers from the John Howards Society had gifted me with a silver cross as a parting gift. They said I needed to concentrate on Hope and that the St. Jude medallion might remind me of my past hopelessness but the cross would remind me of  Love, Forgiveness, and Hope.

They were good people, a local charitable organization that had been formed years ago to assist in criminal justice reform and offer prisoner support and reintegration to the newly released prisoners. They operated with humanity, dignity, and compassion. They were the DoGooders, the prisoners called them this with a touch of derision in their tone but their good works did command them a small modicum of respect, even from the most hardened criminals.

I reached into the bag, pulled out the last item, and held it tightly in my hands, I ran my fingers down the faux leather cover and traced the gold embossed lettering on the front cover. Holy Bible. Another gift from my pious friends, I didn’t have the heart to tell them I could barely read, having left school and the foster care system at an early age. Street smarts I had plenty of, and I could always talk a good game; pick up dialects, accents and con my way in and out of practically anything.

 As the taxi rolled along, I stared out the window at all the changes that had happened while I was locked up. I started to reminisce.

I didn't know anyone on the outside anymore, well, none that would ever want anything to do with me anyway. I had burned too many bridges in the past. You can’t always go back was another expression I was familiar with, and some of my past associates might have a grudge against me. If I was being honest, the grudge they had against me might have been well earned. You know what they say, there is no honour among thieves.  If I wanted to stay alive, and I did, I had best avoid them. The seedy underworld on the streets of Toronto was a scary place at times. I was starting to panic now. I didn't think I could make it on my own. At least in prison, I knew everyone, and they knew me. In prison I was in general population, I didn’t have any enemies, well I mean other than the psychopaths, and they mostly hated everybody, and the real heavy hitters were usually locked up, right and tight, in solitary confinement.

 It was a long ride from the prison to the halfway house but the taxi fare was being paid by the John Howards Society or the Ontario Government or somebody other than me so I sat back to enjoy the free ride. I had always liked free rides, which was one of the reasons I was in the clink in the first place.

Things had changed while I had been in the lockup.  In the slammer, you don't really know a lot of what's happening in the outside world. Your world changes dramatically. You got the other inmates, the guards, who rotate in and out of your life, the warden. You all have specific duties, in the laundry area or the more trusted ones in the kitchen, where there are knives ( which are always counted and accounted for at the end of your shift,) the library, such as it is, and the dispensary. You know the playground, our name for the fenced yard with its mile-high fence topped with barbed wire, and sentry towers. You know the cafeteria, the tuck shop or the common room where you get to go in your free time.

 There are outdoor exercise areas, programs, and service areas for educational, counseling, and faith-based activities,  and of course the cell block. All these places I was familiar with and in hindsight they had a certain familiarity that was somehow comforting as opposed to the current freedom that I now had, that was leaving me feeling very uncertain. 

There is a separate prison culture that you gradually get used to and claim as your own, a separate language mostly unknown by the world outside the prisons, there are different customs in prison and even a hierarchy.

Oh, Sh…shoot I changed the ending due to my newly altered spiritual state. It would take a while to adjust to that state of mind. Old habits die hard.

 We were almost there. I asked the cabby to pull over in front of a convenience store that I knew was several blocks from the halfway house. The ten bucks was burning a hole in my pocket and the thought that this was my last few minutes of total freedom before entering the halfway house was weighing heavy on my mind. I had been on the inside for so long, would I know how to cope in today's society?

The cabby pulled into the convenience store.  It was a packed parking lot. Teenagers hanging with their friends, and police lined up for their coffee and donuts.

“I’ll only be a minute,” I assured him and slid out of the cab.

A few minutes later I ran back into the taxi.

“Go! Go! Go!” I shouted and banged on the back of his seat for emphasis.

“What the…” He looked in the rearview mirror and saw a group of people swarming out the door.  Several were dressed in dark uniforms and badges. “Oh no! You didn’t just…”

I had to. I couldn't stop myself. It's all I ever knew. Soon I would be going back home.