Breaking In (Part One)

WHEN YOU WORK at a small B. Dalton's in a shopping mall in Wisconsin, things rarely get all that exciting. We had our share of harmless neighborhood kooks and occasional visits by local celebrities (I caught the mayor laughing at Truly Tasteless Jokes once). But for the most part, things were pretty slow.

The manager was an extremely high-strung, wide-bottomed woman in her early 50s. She tried to be nice, but was never really able to pull it off-you could always hear the quaver in her voice, and knew that behind those eyes and that hesitant smile, she was screaming.

When something out of the ordinary happened, rare as that was, she tended to slide into a near-catatonia, counting on the part-time schlubs like me to take care of things.

One quiet, bright Saturday afternoon as I stood at the register watching the fat people stroll by, I heard her office door open and close, followed by the quick, insistent click of her heels.

Oh, here we go, I thought, she's having a crisis.

She clipped up to the checkout counter, her mouth taut, her eyes wide behind her owlish glasses. She was clutching a small white card in her hand.

"This was in today's mail," she said, holding the card out to me. "And I just don't kn-kn-know what to do about it. D-do you suppose you could handle it?"

"I suppose," I told her, taking the card. I could sense her growing panic. "Was it delivered to the wrong store?"

She shook her head. "It's from the prison," she leaned in and whispered, so none of the customers could hear. Then she clicked back to the office to worry about things.

The Green Bay Reformatory, as it was known, was less than a mile from my house, at the intersection of I-72 and Webster Ave. Despite the hopeful name, it was a maximum-security penitentiary built in the 19th century. Unless you see the sign out front, or notice the armed guardposts at each corner, it could easily pass for a steel mill. Giant smokestacks rise from within the complex, which is surrounded by high, featureless gray walls. It was about the size of three city blocks. When I was a kid, it seemed to go on forever.

Growing up almost in its shadow, I often wondered what sort of people they kept in there. I mean, Green Bay simply had almost no crime at all, unless you counted drunk driving, drunk and disorderly, and public drunkenness. Nothing that required any hard time. Yet they'd had riots in there, and my dad told me that it was a hell of a lot rougher than I could imagine.

I looked at the card. It was one of those pre-stamped 15-cent jobs. On the back, in a shaky script, was an unusually detailed and personal note.

His name was Anthony, and he was serving a seven-year sentence. He wasn't satisfied with the offerings of the prison library, so was hoping he might be able to order a few books from us (though paying for them might be a little tricky) .

I should've taken the hint when he said he was trying to teach himself German and so wanted a good German dictionary, along with a couple of specific books about WWII. I didn't, though. Instead, I just saw someone who was trying to better himself, study another language and learn some history. I was a junior in high school at the time, and more than anything else, I thought it was cool to get a letter from an inmate.

We had the books he was looking for in stock, so I put a package together. Before sending it off, though, I tossed in a note, telling him that I'd studied German for many years, and if there was any help he needed, I'd be happy to do what I could. (That was a very bad move-and one I would repeat and regret over the next decades.) I also made the mistake of giving him my home address so he wouldn't have to write to me at the bookstore. I was foolish and naive.

Suddenly I was getting two or three letters a week from Anthony. At first it was kind of fun, him being a hardened criminal and all. And, at first, mostly what he wanted was help with his German. Grammar and sentence structure, mostly.

He seemed like a nice enough guy, if a little simple-his letters were full of misspellings and bad grammar, and he used the world "realm" an awful lot. He was in his early 30s, and had grown up in a small town about 30 miles south of Green Bay. He was serving time for felony forgery (he'd stolen an ex-girlfriend's checkbook). He liked Sabbath and Pink Floyd. For the most part, prison didn't seem to be treating him too badly.

Little by little, though, details of his situation began creeping into his letters. He was trying to learn German in order to impress his friends on the cellblock. That's why he was studying WWII as well. It took a few weeks for him to admit that his friends were in the Aryan Brotherhood.

He'd joined up soon after his arrival there, he said, simply for protection. Population-wise, the prison was divided pretty evenly between whites, blacks and Hispanics, and protection of some sort was necessary.

Over time, though, simple protection had bled over into true believerhood. Now he was trying to make his mark within the gang by actually speaking German and knowing Nazi history.

He asked for more books, which I sent along a bit more reluctantly. Then he started asking for money. You deal with an inmate, they're going to ask you for money sooner or later-and if you send them any, they'll ask for more. I didn't know that at the time.

Then, after about six months of correspondence, he started asking me to come and visit him. It was real close, he reminded me, and he never got any visitors.

Well, I was in it by that point. Way I saw it, I didn't have much choice. If I blew him off, he'd come to the house as soon as he was released and slaughter the whole family.

One morning during Christmas break, I put on my coat, boots and a hat, and began walking to the prison, not exactly sure how I planned to get in once I arrived.

The only entrance I knew of was off an access road that fed into the highway. Even getting to that would be hard, as it would mean running down the highway against traffic.

Once I reached the prison, I weighed my options. I walked the length of the blank southern wall, looking for anything but finding nothing.

Finally in desperation, I began trudging across the field adjacent to the western wall. The snow was thigh-deep, making this a slow and exhausting effort. At several points I considered giving up, but figured heading back would be just as bad as forging ahead.

(I wonder now what some of the guards in the towers were thinking.)

It took me 45 minutes, but I finally made it across the field, spilling out into the access road. I walked up the shoulder to the prison parking lot, then up to the first of three narrow, barred doors. The guard behind the bulletproof glass looked me up and down suspiciously when I told him I was there to visit someone. After considering it a moment in silence, he buzzed me inside.

To be continued next week. o