Breaking In (Part Two)

Continued from issue #35

AFTER SIGNING various forms and going through the metal detector, another guard led me through a long series of hallways and more locked gates.

"So you're coming to see Tony?" he asked.

"Yeah." I was 17 years old and wide-eyed, but trying to play it as cool as possible.

"Yeah, he's a nice guy," he said. "Doesn't cause much trouble."

(Which ran counter to Anthony's own tales of all the tickets he'd received for his various badass shenanigans.)

The interior of the prison wasn't as filthy and grim as I'd expected. It was nothing like I'd seen in all those prison movies. The floors, walls and gates were all painted in pastel blues and yellows. Fluorescent lights kept everything bright.

The guard unlocked an unassuming wooden door and let me into a small, square room with a table, an ashtray and four chairs.

"Wait here," he said, and I wondered where the hell else I would go.

Fifteen minutes later, I heard his keys again, and the door opened.

In walked a tiny, wiry, Mansonian figure with a long, black beard and dark eyes. He was wearing an orange jumpsuit. Both his hands and feet were shackled. "Hey," he said. His voice was nasal and thin.

I stood and shook one of his shackled hands, then pulled a chair out for him.

"You have half an hour," the guard said before closing the door. After all it took to get there, I suddenly wasn't sure I wanted all that much time.

"Do you have a cigarette?" Anthony asked. I hadn't started smoking yet, but I'd picked up a pack for him along the way, which I pulled from my pocket and slid across the table. (Smokes weren't considered contraband at the time.) He pulled one from the pack, lit it with some effort-it ain't easy to light a smoke when you're handcuffed-and we sat there in an uncomfortable silence. What do you say to someone whom you're meeting for the first time in prison?

Finally he tried to ask "How are you?" in German.

Up until this point, Anthony had learned all of his German from books. He'd never actually spoken it with anyone before, and as a result, his pronunciation was seriously, seriously mangled. I had no idea what he was trying to say.

For the next 30 minutes, then, we worked on his pronunciation. It was one of the longest half-hours in my life.

It was a relief, after trying to get umlauts across to him for 10 minutes, when the guard knocked once and opened the door. "Time's up," he said. We were both relieved, I think, and jumped from our chairs. I shook Anthony's hand again, and he was led away. Ten minutes later, the guard returned and walked me out.

Instead of tromping back across the field, I followed the access road to the highway. Then sticking as close as possible to the shoulder, I followed it the quarter mile up to Webster Ave.

For some reason, I thought that would be the last time I ever heard from Anthony.

The next letter arrived two days later, and Anthony carried on as if the visit had simply never happened. Letters were fine, but I think actual contact with the outside made him even more uncomfortable than I felt in a prison. I could understand that, and from that point on, we stuck with letters. After all, I was going to be leaving for college soon.

He'd taken to signing off "Heil Hitler!" and dropping German words into English sentences. He kept asking me for money, which I sometimes sent along. Most of the time, though, it was pretty innocuous. He'd tell me about the trouble he was getting into, and I'd do the same.

About the month before I left for Chicago, he asked if he could send me a box for safekeeping. He had to get rid of it, he said, otherwise they'd confiscate it from him. Again, it made me nervous, but what could I do? I had been trying to distance myself, writing less frequently, telling him I wouldn't have much time once school started, and the like, but it never really worked. I was in it, and told him to go ahead and send the package.

My parents knew all about Anthony. They weren't too thrilled with my being in touch with a convict, but they figured I knew what I was doing. Besides, he seemed harmless enough.

"Well, what's he sending you?" my mom asked when I told her what the situation was.

"I'm, um, not exactly sure," I told her, thinking it best that I not use the word "contraband." She gave me one of those looks, but let it slide. "It's nothing we'll need to worry about, I'm sure," I said, trying to convince myself at the same time.

A week later, the box showed up. It wasn't very big-maybe a foot square-but it was heavy. I brought it up to my room and opened it, almost hoping it would be filled with drugs and homemade weapons. What I found instead were books.

The Turner Diaries. Several issues of the Holocaust revisionist magazine Journal of Historical Review, a bunch of paperbacks about Hitler, the S.S. and the Luftwaffe. Some neo-Nazi pamphlets from Germany. Copies of Tom Metzger's newsletter.

Not only were there no weapons or drugs-there wasn't even any porn.

I sealed the box back up and stuck it in a corner of my closet. I figured it would be there forever. Anthony had three years left to serve, barring an early parole. He'd never remember this little box of crap.

I went off to school, soon forgetting all about the box, and eventually all about Anthony as well. There was no serious, definitive break; I was just young and thrilled about being in a new city and a new environment, and didn't have much time for anything from that past life in Green Bay. Anthony's last few letters had sounded concerned, a little sad, sometimes a little frantic-but then they stopped, and I went on with my business.

Three years later, while I was in Madison, I got a call from my mom. Her voice sounded mildly amused, mildly pissed and a little scared all at the same time.

"So," she said, when I picked up the phone, "you remember your friend Anthony?"

I had to think about it for a second, running through the names of all the people I'd known growing up.

"From the prison," she clarified.

"Oh, my god-yeah." I thought she was going to tell me that he'd been killed, or arrested again or something.

"He was just here."

"What?"

"He just showed up at the front door. He's out."

Oh, Jesus-

"And he wanted the box of books back."

I was more than a little shocked by this.

"Well-what happened? Was there any trouble?"

"No," she said. "I wouldn't have let there be any trouble. Shook me up a little bit, though. But I told him to wait right there. I went to your room, got the box, handed it to him and sent him on his way. I'm really glad you didn't throw it away or anything."

"Wow," I said, "and I'm glad it was still where I left it."

Much to my relief, she promised that she hadn't told him where I was living.

After that scene, I vowed to keep my distance from convicts. Or, at the very least, to not get involved in their personal affairs.

It was a vow that lasted all of, oh, a year or so. o