# 12973 Writings and Reflections from Prison
By
George Martorano
Smashwords Edition
Copyright © 2011 by George Martorano
Smashwords Edition License Notes
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
Table of Contents
Last letter to the forgotten God
10 Building East
The structure 10 Building east was built in 1901. It is a part of the huge prison castle of caged men, Leavenworth Penitentiary. The grey stone building lies there alone, surrounded by its inner wall of sorrow. It is the hole. There is a portion of nice green grass in the rear of it, grass that knows no touch other than a lone prisoner with a lone push lawnmower. To cut that lonely portion of grass in the back of that building, where a man’s life come to a complete stand still; is a job that no one wishes. For the prisoner cutting that small patch of grass, must be locked in alone all day…Back in the 80’s, I, George prisoner #12973, took that job. I mowed the soft green grass, taking time to its slowest. After, I put my hard back against a hard wall. I slowly bring up the peanut butter jar of iced tea to my lips…And think. There by my work boots, I place the yellow cap of the peanut butter jar. And fill it with sweet tea, and watch the one or two, or three prison cats. Tongue it and look so deep into me….Yes, I sip some more. Fill the cap some more. And once in a while a breeze comes across Kansas and climbs over the wall down to my hair and the fur of the cats. In silence we will wait the long hours for that thick steel door on that separate high stone wall to crack open. And I and the mower will silently leave. If one cat will remained, he would sit there watching what hand I held the jar in as I left….A day and the life of prisoner 12973...
A Black Cat with Rainbows
Some days it’s black and white, while some days are gray and pale. Year to year caged has a heavy grip on my shoulders.
Then sometimes through the fog coming off the steel and stone, I’ll get a simple change of freshness. It came not long ago. I was moved to a better cell block, cleaner and less yelling. My new cell is not far from the chow hall. One evening I saw a small black cat near the rear of the chow hall. He was in an area that was shut down so I could not attend to him/her.
The next day I looked out my cell window and there was the cat again, I named him, Blackie. What to do, what to do?
The area where Blackie hangs out is restricted and I can’t get to him. So, I decided on a “line” attached a chicken leg to a long line. It took 3-4 throws to get it where I wanted, now I wait. I waited and waited, no Blackie. The next day I checked again, no Blackie, so I slowly pulled the line back towards me, the chicken is covered with ants. I try a piece of beef next and begin to wait again, no Blackie. I think some. I wrap some oily sardines in a thin paper, oil, smell seeping through. I throw the line down, perfect placement; I’ve gotten good at it by now. I sit and wait… oh the joy I have watching Blackie consume the meal. I watch how he prances to it, almost like he knew how to get the paper off and started chewing it down. Later, I got a chuckle as Blackie got tangled in the line and started jumping around finally getting him or herself freed. I see Blackie once and a while when jogging he yard… it’s almost like he gives me a little head nod good morning when I pass by. He sits out my cell window on occasion, asking, not begging, for a snack. Well, sardines cost, here, 95 cents a can, that’s almost 30 bucks a month, 325 to 350 a year. Know what? I got to make a move with someone in the kitchen. Get me some regular fish I can feed to him. Hope Blackie likes it; it’s a whole lot cheaper than the sardines.
Anyways, at least I have Blackie to brighten by black and gray days; I think I’ll change his/her name to “Blackie the Rainbow”
A Cell, a Slice of Sunlight
They call it I-Up. It is the hole at Terra-Haute Penitentiary, in Indiana. I know it well. I’ve been through it a few times. Your lead up concrete spiral stairs to the cell block built decades ago. It was a winter day. It was a month I can’t remember. I lay on the bunk & looked at my feet, looked out the window through the bars across the way and saw nothing. As the hours passed, I watched the sun move before me. Upon the walls and floor of that place of mental pain, his voice came through a crack in the wall as if he was sitting in a chair next to me. He was an old convict who had a lot to tell. He told me much. He told me about himself as a young man in prison work gang in West Texas. When the river near the prison overflows its banks in time then crawls back to the brown flow. Told me how they marched down to the riverside, lugging steel drums. How the guards surrounded the now shallow ponds from the river’s over flow, and how they would wade into those muddy ponds, Grabbing, choking, kicking, pulling, squeezing the stranded fish and tossing them into the drums. It would be food for the prisoners for days. Told me, how the Tellins Brother’s were knee high scooping up fish and how the mud wall behind them facing the river’s racing current, broke and sloshed out the three Tellins brother’s as if going down a filthy drain. We watched from the bank, us prisoners as the guards on their horses, holding 30/30 rifles. Watched, saw their feet kick, faces straining, arms pulling, voices screaming; no help nor any lines were thrown. Yet, the old man told me he watched the solemn faces of the guards moved their horses more to the river bank’s edge. Watched how they exchange words. And the old man’s rough voice continued through that yellowing wall. How the guards decided that they couldn’t make it back and if they hit the far bank. It was bad. There was no way to retrieve them. Those Tellins brother’s, they began struggling up that far bank, as if river animals scurrying for a den. And then the word came from those guards on top of those horses, “they’re trying to escape.” And the old man’s voice got lower, sterner as he told and pictured in the back of his mind.....they pointed the 30/30’s and shot each brother in the head. The old man explained; how the bodies with shocked faces slid back with the mud and eased into the river and were whipped away.....Gone. “Yes sir those Tellins boys were just slinging them fish in the barrows like the rest of us, and then they were dead. Dead from just trying to swim out of that muddy river.” And I didn’t hear the old man speak anymore. It was as if the crack in the wall was suddenly plastered up. Just silence and the memory of what he said going around and around in my head. And I continued to watch the sun crawl above my feet, along the wall and snail down across the floor...