My Air Tran seatmate on a flight from Pensacola, Florida to Atlanta fiddles with his seat belt, then points to the small hole on the arm of the seat. “Where are the headsets for this?” he asks.
“You can use your I-pod cord,” I tell him. “I don’t think they offer headsets on a short flight like this.”
“I’m nervous,” he confesses. “This is my first flight. I’ve been in prison for eight months.”
I must look startled.
“Traffic violation,” he says, by way of comfort. “I was caught riding my motorcycle without a license.”
“Seems like a long time for such a minor offense.”
“It’s because of my record,” he answers. “This was my fifth time behind bars.”
Once again, the handsome, neatly dressed young man has caught me off guard. He seems ready to say more, but is distracted by the roar of the engines. He grips the seat arms tightly and worry lines march across his smooth-shaven face.
“Don’t fret,” I tell him. “Flying is fun once we’re airborne.”
“Is that a normal sound,” he asks, clearly agitated by the change in the tenor of the engines.
I assure him it is and then, to distract him, say he reminds me of a young cousin. “I bet he started out better than me,” he says. “They took me away from my mom when I was one. Said she wasn’t doing right by me. My dad took me to South Carolina, but he didn’t want me either. He gave me to my aunt to raise. I grew up tough. And mean. I was the only white kid in a black family living in a black neighborhood.”
“That must have been rough,” I sympathize.
“Yes, Ma’ham. But it made me strong.”
We chat about what’s going on in the outside world—the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the squabbling in Congress, the economy, particularly the lack of available work. “Do you have a job waiting for you back home?” I ask.
“Yes, Ma’ham. “They tell me they’re holding my job at the still, but you know how that goes.”
I try to keep my expression in check. “At the still?”
“Yes, Ma’ham. We distill 100-proof whiskey, then sell it to distributors who add flavors and cut down the strength,” he says. “I was working the second shift from 3 p.m. ‘til midnight, but without a driver’s license, I don’t know how I’m going to get home after work. The buses stop running at 6 o’clock. If my ex-wife is still on that shift, I’m hoping she’ll give me a ride. But I doubt it.”
He looks to young, but I ask. “Any children?”
“Yes, Ma’ham. Three. A boy, ten, a girl four, and another boy two. My daughter is just beautiful.” He breaks into a wide grin, the first I’ve seen.
I ask to see pictures, but he has stored them in the overhead rack and the seatbelt sign is on. “You must have started young.”
“Things happen,” he says, flashing another grin.
As the plane banks over the outskirts, he points to a large round or octagonal building far removed from any developed areas. “That’s it,” he says. “That’s where I come from. It looks almost pretty, but it sure wasn’t pretty down there.”
He tells me that his other times in prison were at work-release camps for low-risk offenders. This time, because of his extensive record, he was sent to a maximum-security prison, built to keep rapists, murderers, and sex offenders off the streets. “The other prisons were different,” he says. “They were work camps. We slept in one big room like a dormitory. This time I was locked up in a two-man cell with a lifer with no chance of parole.”
I shudder and wonder how a slender, young, nice looking man could fend off the bad guys—particularly lifers with nothing to lose.
