One Man's Uniform
By Hugo Rikard-Bell
Jesus looks down at his white baptism robes. It’s essentially a jumpsuit. Well, actually, it is a jumpsuit. A traditional garment worn by the male members of his church when they’re baptized. This is the first time he’s worn it, yet the familiarity of its fit feels like an old shoe worn far past its intended life. There’s only one thing that separates it from the uniform he put on every day for almost 14 years: this one doesn’t have "UDC Inmate" stenciled across his back.
He turns and folds his clothes, placing his shoes neatly on top of them on the bench. It’s getting close to 6 p.m., and he can hear the chatter of his soon-to-be ward members as they begin to arrive in the parking lot. He waits in front of the changing room door and pauses for a second, the way he does in front of all closed doors, before his brain reminds his body that he’s free to open it himself.
Silvia presses down as hard as she can with her sponge, but the stubborn grease spot on the side of her grill refuses to budge.
It has been a busy day at the restaurant — she has become known for her traditional birria tacos, and the lunch and dinner rush has meant the day has gone by in a matter of minutes. The squeak from the sponge rubbing the stainless-steel bench is just loud enough to play over the melody of sirens she can hear in the distance. She wonders if any of the officers, paramedics, or firemen attending to whatever small-town drama is happening a few blocks away, ate at her restaurant that day. They are her most common customers. They come in with their polished shoes and shiny guns at their hips and eat and talk and eat and talk about whatever gossip is going to be discussed by locals in hushed tones halfway down the frozen food aisle that week.
Silvia lives in Vernal, a beautiful country town in the northeast pocket of Utah, home to a population of around 10,000 people, with some of the most beautiful views a traveling man or woman can lay eyes on. You can almost hear a harmonica as you drive down Main Street. If you want a strong pot of coffee and a pancake, you stop in at Betty’s Café. If you want to read some of the most well-preserved history in the West, you go to the local war museum. If you want to just sit and watch a sunset that looks like it was painted by Picasso, you can head in any direction for five minutes and pull over. If you want the best birria? Well, everyone knows where to go for that.
Vernal is one of those towns where the very soul of its people has been sewn into the dirt it was built on. However, like all tiny vessels of humanity in the rural United States, drugs have been stamped across the community like graffiti on a heritage building, or so Silvia has heard, based on snippets of conversation from her most loyal uniformed customers over warm birria beef, as she quietly refills their cups with iced water or soda. Silvia has no knowledge of such poison. A Mexican immigrant turned American businesswoman and restaurateur, she had secured herself a storyline not often told about people like her. Silvia had no interaction with drugs outside of the “Just Say No” TV commercials from the early 1980s.
Silvia’s hard work and dedication is all for her three children. Her son, and two daughters. She is proud of her restaurant, but when she thinks of her children, her heart almost explodes. She and her husband have given them the American dream. When she was a child in Mexico, you only heard about that in songs or movies. She knew her son had made the odd mistake, but who hadn’t? What was most important to her was she had raised him to be a truly good person. The same with her daughters.
The grease spot has finally relented and disappeared from the bench. It is 9 p.m., and her kitchen has returned to its pristine state; the evidence of the day’s chaos has been scrubbed away. The sirens in the distance have been replaced by the sound of the restaurant’s phone ringing at the front counter.
“¿Puedes responder a eso, por favor? (Please answer that).” She calls to her waitress, who is sorting cutlery.
The phone stops ringing, and Silvia goes to pour out the mop bucket when she hears her young worker greet the caller on behalf of the restaurant, the way she had been taught to when she took the job that summer.
Jesus stands in front of the yellow brick house, only a block from where he lives. There is a tree in the front yard with a child’s swing hanging from a branch. He sways on his feet a little as he looks at it through blank eyes. He has no true recollection of how he got here. The flashing red and blue lights in his face give no hint of that either. His only memory is his daughter crying after he took her and his son trick-or-treating earlier that evening.
She always cries when he says goodbye. She is only a toddler, yet she seems to understand the toxicity of his relationship with her mother. Her young mind already seems to have a grasp on the word “custody.”
Jesus is 24 years old, born and raised in Vernal. Up until Halloween night in 2009, small-town America had kept to its script when writing his story. He dropped out of high school the same year he went to a BYU football camp after his girlfriend got pregnant with his son. He went to work as a roughneck in the oil fields at 17, for good money, too. He was 18 when he started drinking during the week, 20 when he bought his first house, and 21 when he was given a prescription for pain pills after breaking his shoulder. Hard drugs, in the form of cocaine, came along when he was 23, and he began using on a daily basis. He does his best to be a good dad, but he is a friend to his kids more than a father, and he knows it.
Tonight, Jesus had hit his vices hard after he dropped his kids back at their mother’s. He is on a warpath against his own mental chemical imbalance. His armor? Ambien, cocaine, meth, and about 15 to 20 Coors Lights. His weapon? A Smith & Wesson Beretta .40 caliber.
His body feels like a machine he is riding, not steering. Somewhere inside him, there is a little plane with a little pilot drifting through the night, and through the windshield he can see Jesus’ world. The tree with the swing flickers red and blue.
A shadow in a cop uniform is shouting from beyond the lights, and Jesus can feel the weight of the gun in his hand, the criss-cross pattern of the grip makes an imprint in his palm.
The sway of his body causes his little plane to lurch, and the pilot tightens his grip on the controls. Through the cockpit windshield, he can see the shadow in the cop uniform loom larger, shouting something undecipherable.
The pistol tightens in Jesus’ grip as his finger finds the trigger.
The barrel of the gun rises into his view.
There is a flash and a recoiling crash of thunder.
His little pilot is thrown back. Dazed and ears ringing, he grabs at the armrests to haul himself back up into his seat properly.
Jesus raises and steadies his gun.
He squeezes the trigger, and a second, third, and fourth flash illuminates the inside of the tiny plane, violently shaking it, throwing the little pilot into the ceiling and crashing him down to the floor.
Jesus drops the gun to his side, still holding it, and turns toward the house. Cries of pain mixed with desperate radio calls for backup echoed behind him.
As he walks back toward the house, a lit basement window comes into view.
Jesus raises the gun again and fires eight more times into the window.
Inside him, his little plane begins to plummet, tearing itself apart as it spirals into nothing. Jesus blacks out. When asked in the future, he says he has little recollection from this moment until he wakes up in a cell the next morning.
He stands for a moment, seeming to watch the shadow of the child’s swing slowly rocking back and forth in the breeze, silhouetted on the side of the yellow brick house.
It is a still night.
He silently and robotically climbs through the shattered glass. He is going to get his daughter. The sirens in the distance grow nearer as he enters the basement.
“It’s for you, Silvia.”
Obviously it’s for me, Silvia thinks. I own this restaurant. As she takes the phone from her waitress, she notices a peculiar look on her face. Silvia pauses as she looks at her, realizing she seems frightened.
“Hello?” she answers, not taking her quizzical eyes off her waitress, whose own are beginning to well up.
Silvia listens to the voice on the other line for less than 30 seconds before her knees give way.
Minutes after the phone call, Silvia is racing to where they told her to. She parks halfway down the street and runs toward the yellow brick house where her grandkids live. She stands there holding her husband’s arm in a death grip. The swing hanging in the tree is softly rocking back and forth, as if being gently pushed by someone who used to play there.
The red and blue flashing from the cop cars light the whole street as concerned neighbors stand in pajamas at their doorsteps.
Silvia’s face is pinched with anxiety and fear. She is still wearing her apron, and her hands are still wrinkled from dishwater. No one is talking to her as different shadows wearing different uniforms push past her, rushing in and out of the house.
Something has happened to her son. Someone has hurt Jesus.
When the front door of the house opens, Silvia’s bones chill as if the top of her spine has been poked by a frozen blade. As she watches her son walking slowly out of the house, covered in blood, with his hands cuffed behind his back, surrounded by officers leading him toward a police car. She realizes in horror that it is Jesus who has done the hurting.
Their eyes meet, mother and son’s, and her body feels heavy again as she holds on to her husband.
It will be the last time for 14 years that Silvia looks into her son’s eyes without graffitied perspex glass or a courtroom separating them.
That fateful Halloween night, Jesus shot Officer Dustin Gray, who was responding to a call from a neighbor who said they saw a man looking through basement windows down the street. Gray survived that night, but retired from the force shortly after. According to police and court documents, Jesus fired four shots at the police officer, hitting him in the thigh. He then fired eight more shots through the basement window before climbing through and holding his ex-girlfriend’s new partner at gunpoint, threatening to kill him. His weapon was out of bullets, though, and didn’t discharge. Several more officers arrived at the scene and arrested Jesus. One assaulted him while he was in custody. Jesus doesn’t remember exactly what happened, but he was severely concussed and had a large gash in the back of his head that required around eight stitches. The sergeant responsible was fired from the Vernal Police Department for the incident after an internal affairs investigation and was charged with aggravated assault by the Utah Attorney General’s Office.
Silvia can now walk through the 8th District Courthouse in Vernal as if it’s her restaurant. She nods quietly to the familiar faces that roam the halls, going from one room to the next. She knows the route from the car to her seat so well she could do it in her sleep, and some nights she does — though in her dreams it is not Jesus in the dock. It is her.
She gives a small smile to the officer from the Uintah County Sheriff’s Department standing at the door of the courtroom. Her smile says, please do not pity me. His returning smile says, I pity you. She hates that.
She steps into the courtroom and heads to her seat next to her husband, the same seat she’s sat in for months. The court proceedings had been relatively short — Jesus pled guilty to two counts of attempted aggravated murder, aggravated burglary, and discharge of a firearm into a home. It was advice given to them by their lawyer, who said Jesus would be able to parole sooner if they went with it.
“All rise.”
The judge re-enters the court. The bailiff continues to give the official details about Jesus’ case, but Silvia isn’t listening. She’s staring at the back of her son’s head. He’s handcuffed and sitting a few meters from her. She could take three steps forward and give him a hug. Oh, how she just wants to hug him. Fury, sadness, hopelessness, shame, and her love for her son pack so tightly behind her eyes that she feels like she might explode. These lawyers, bailiffs, police officers, the judge — they are just calmly going through their day while her life falls apart. She wants to scream. She wants to stop them, plead with them, beg them to let her take Jesus home and punish him there. He’s sorry, she begs in her head. I won’t let him do anything like that again! But this is not high school, and her son’s fate isn’t in the hands of the principal. It's in the hands of the district prosecutors. She grips her husband by the arm. He is her silent rock, and he has been ever strong through this tempest.
The judge is speaking, rattling off Jesus’ sentence as if he’s reading a shopping list to his wife. Silvia said she wouldn’t cry, but her eyes betray her. She doesn’t see the full-grown man her son has become sitting in the chair in front of her, getting reprimanded for his wrongs. She sees her 4 -year-old boy with flour on his face as he helps her make tortillas.
The sentence is swift: Jesus is to serve five years to life consecutively for each of the aggravated murder charges, and then, up to five years for the aggravated burglary and weapons charge, served concurrently. 10 years until he’s eligible for parole, but he could be in much longer.
The Judge brings down his little wooden mallet with a sharp thwack. And with that, Silvia’s boy is gone.
It’s been two weeks since the deafening crack of the judge’s gavel and the ringing in Jesus’ ears still hasn’t stopped. It is about 6 a.m., and Section 3 of the Uintah County Jail is quiet. In Cell 12, Jesus’ eyes are closed, but he is not sleeping. He is lying on the steel plate jutting out of the wall that acts as his bed; the mattress is so thin that there are gaps where the arch of his back lies.
The dull gray walls are scratched with graffiti from previous generations of lost boys and bad men who lay there before him. They blend into the ceiling so much that it sometimes feels like he is at the bottom of a very deep gray well with no light at the top. Jesus couldn’t see that right now, though. His eyes are closed, but he is not sleeping.
The bodiless voice of the correctional officer crackles through his cell intercom.
“Today’s the day, Martinez. Get ready for transport.”
He snaps his eyes open.
His celly is lying stretched out on his bunk. For the purpose of this story, his name is George. He is an intense man, ten years Jesus’ senior and a career convict, in and out of the penitentiary his whole adult life. This time, he’s doing a stretch in the Uintah County Jail for apparently stealing a beer truck in Colorado and tempting the cops into a high-speed chase across state lines. He was “courted in” with the Aryan Brotherhood splinter group, the 211 Crew — one of the more infamous prison gangs in Colorado. He has two lightning bolts tattooed under his eyes to show for it. This is a common insignia and badge of honor among white supremacist gang members. Jesus has been told it means they’d stabbed a Black man. George had received his for beating a Black gang member over the head with a gym weight in the yard when he was serving time in Buena Vista, or so he told Jesus in the first month they celled together.
The term “white boy” in prison carries a different weight than it does on the outside. Behind these walls, it means racist tattoos, shaved heads, and violence. From the day Jesus walks into his county cell, George makes one thing clear: to survive, you need to be disciplined. Routine and cleanliness are the first lessons.
For some reason, George takes Jesus under his wing — but there are rules. Every morning, they wake up, George stays in his bunk while Jesus makes coffee for both of them. He then shaves and washes his face before returning to his own bunk so George can then take his turn. If he has to piss, Jesus is expected to pull his penis out the bottom of his shorts and sit down to minimize splash and keep the cell clean and hygienic. There is no “or else” at the end of George’s rules — but Jesus isn’t going to find out the consequences for ignoring them.
George explains that in the Prison System, particularly in Utah, the whites and Mexicans are allies against the Blacks and the Polynesians, and this is why they are “cool.” George makes it very clear there is a huge difference between county jail and state prison, where Jesus is headed.
He teaches Jesus to always walk holding a towel around his neck because it’s his best protection from getting stabbed in the throat. He tells him if he sees someone taping magazines around their waist and midriff to stand clear and keep his head down because they’re preparing for a knife fight. He tells Jesus to keep his mind active and makes him read books like The 48 Laws of Power by Robert Greene. Many of the rules, like “Law 1: Never outshine the master” or “Law 2: Never put too much trust in friends and learn how to use your enemies,” are remarkably relevant to prison survival. The most important lessons George teaches him, though, is prison etiquette: mind your own business, avoid debt, people-watch, and get to know folks before associating.
Finally, George explains to Jesus what his crime means in the prison world. He shot a police officer, a “worthy adversary” among the incarcerated. If offending against kids puts you at the bottom of the pile, shooting a cop puts you at the top. The stories about Jesus in the news rarely, if ever, report on his toxicology results. So to the inmates at the Utah State Prison, Jesus looks like a Mexican kid who gave a giant “fuck you” to the man. George warns —make no mistake — the boys in the pen know he’s coming. He explains that Jesus is like a five-star high school athlete: high priority, heavily scouted, and already on the radar of the prison gangs looking to recruit.
Everything George has taught him swims in Jesus’ head as he sits up on the end of his bed and does what the cell intercom told him to. Today, his real sentence will begin.
“Open 312,” the guard’s voice statically calls across the section.
George gets up and gives him one last hug and words of good luck. The reinforced steel door opens automatically, and Jesus walks out into the corridor and then down to the second door past the other cells.
“Hands behind your back, Martinez, and back up to the door.”
Jesus does what he is told and feels the cold cuffs close around his wrists. He steps forward as the door opens, and the correctional officers usher him through to the strip-down room.
No more than five miles from the county jail, Silvia calls into a drive-thru intercom, “And a ten-pack of nuggets, please, with sweet-and-sour sauce.”
“Drive forward and pay at the window!” the teenage voice crackles through the speaker.
Silvia hasn’t heard from Jesus this morning, and a growing pit in her stomach gives way to suspicions she isn’t prepared to confront yet.
She speaks to him every morning after his regimented breakfast and before she heads to work. But today he hasn’t called.
“Lift the sack,” the guard walking Jesus through his final strip-down, looks bored.
“Turn around. Show me the bottom of your feet.”
“Now squat and cough.”
Jesus coughs.
“Again.” Cough.
“One more time.” Cough.
“All right, get dressed.”
Jesus pulls his black-and-white striped fatigues on. The guard walks over to him and puts the black box on his cuffs. The device holds Jesus’ hands rigid and limits movement to almost nothing. The guard then bolts it to the chain around his waist that links to his ankle cuffs. He joins the line of other inmates being transported to prison and makes the slow shuffle with them down the corridor and out to the bus.
“Single file. All seats are to be filled,” the prison officers yell down the line of prisoners.
They are jammed in like sardines. Jesus isn’t just touching knees with the guy next to him; he is touching ankles, hips, arms, and shoulders. He is to sit like this for the next 200 miles. The guard is making his way down the aisle, checking each inmate before returning to his seat at the front. Jesus looks forward and notices both officers are wearing tactical equipment and armed with AR-15s.
For nine months, he’s been on autopilot. His court proceedings, his conversations with George, even his sentencing — none of it has ever quite registered to him. But for some reason, the moment he sees the rifles, the barrier gives way, and reality comes crashing down on Jesus.
He is going to prison.
Silvia walks through the front door, her fast-food order in one hand and a bag of groceries in the other. She plonks her shopping on the kitchen counter and grabs the packet of nuggets with sweet-and-sour sauce before the rest of the family gets into the food.
She is about to take her first dip when the phone rings. Expecting it to be Jesus, she rushes over and answers it.
It isn’t Jesus.
The phone drops from her hand, and Silvia collapses to the ground. They took her boy. This time, Silvia isn’t sad. She is angry.
Blind with rage, she starts smashing the box of nuggets and the sauces around the kitchen until she is exhausted and panting. Hot, angry tears spill onto the floor. Her husband comes into the room and drops down next to her, holding Silvia as she cries and screams silently into his chest.
She feels sick. For almost a year, Jesus has been in the county jail, only five minutes from the family home. They could go see him. They knew where he was. He was close. Silvia is not naïve — she knows a state penitentiary is not the same as a county jail. Jesus is in the jungle now, alone.
After what feels like an eternity, Silvia breaks away from her husband and holds him at arm’s length.
“I will be okay, but I have to go now,” she says quietly, looking him in the eye.
Trees whip past Silvia’s headlights as she speeds down the country road outside of town. The tears in her eyes blur the guide lights so much that they look like red and white stars zipping past her.
Her knuckles are white on the steering wheel, and her shoulders are tense. All of her emotions from the year are spitting out of her pores. She feels pressure in her chest as she lets out another scream of anguish. Silvia wrenches her steering wheel to the right, turning onto a dirt road that leads to a mountain lookout she knows. When she reaches the top, she slams on the brakes, letting her car slide to a stop on the soft gravel. Slamming the door, she runs out to the front of the vehicle and screams from the bottom of her stomach, a broken and gruelling cry, as loudly as she could across the eastern Utah desert. She screams again, and again, and again. She wants a bear to come. She dares a bear to come so she could chase it, kill it, and take her anger out. She wants to break anything, destroy something. Falling to her knees, she puts her face inches from the ground and screams into it until her voice is hoarse.
Curled in the fetal position next to her car, still idling, Silvia weeps. She weeps for her boy. She weeps for her husband. She weeps for the officer Jesus shot. She weeps for her grandkids, who wouldn’t see their father again.
Eventually, she sits up, suddenly exhausted. It is past midnight by now. She has no more tears. For some reason, she wants to listen to Chris Isaak — a rockabilly artist she and Jesus used to listen to together. She puts in her CD and hits play, putting her head back on the headrest and exhaling deeply into the night.
“I know somebody and they called your name
A million times and still you never came”
As the sad ballad washes over Silvia, she wipes her eyes and fixes her hair in the mirror. Putting her car in gear, she slowly drove back down the mountain, staring straight ahead, no more tears to give.
“They go on loving you just the same
I know that somebody’s trying”
She puts on her blinker and looks both ways. She catches her own reflection in the rear-view mirror and looks into her eyes for a moment. She gives herself a small nod before breaking eye contact and turning onto the main road toward home, toward her family.
Jesus has been staring out the window for three hours. Not a word is spoken on the ride from County to the Utah State Penitentiary. Adrenaline is pulsing through his veins as he tries to remember everything George has told him. What he would give to be back in his cell with the 211 Crew gang member.
The bus rattles to its final halt in front of the prison. Out of the window, he can see a small crowd of inmates gathering on the other side of the fence.
“On your feet!” the transport officer calls down the bus.
Jesus rises with everyone else and, in single file, walks off the bus.
“Ay, homie. where you from?”
“What do you bang?”
“Who you shoot for, homie?”
The inmates are calling through the fence at the new tenants.
“Eyes forward, follow my every word,” the guard collecting them yells over the taunts and jeers as he leads them through the gates toward the receiving and orientation area. They call it R and O. Jesus does not look back when he hears the clanging crash of the automatic gate shutting behind him.
The intake admin takes hours. It involves a final strip-down of each individual inmate, as well as mountains of paperwork and processing. Finally, Jesus is done, wearing his new jumpsuit with “UDC Inmate” stamped across the back. All the fresh inmates stand in yet another line as their names are called out and they are told what unit they are going to. Walking down the line, the guard reading the names stops in front of Jesus. He looks at his clipboard, then at Jesus.
“Oh, I know you,” he says, staring at him.
“I bet you do,” Jesus says back, talking with his chest the way George told him to. Inside, he feels tiny.
“I got a real special place for you,” the guard smirks. Then he tells him to step to the side.
Jesus is going to Oquirrh 4, Section 1— Security Threat Group (STG). The most dangerous unit, reserved only for the most violent offenders, usually gang-affiliated. No matter how he, his mother, George, or anyone he knew saw Jesus, to the Utah Department of Corrections, Jesus is an attempted cop killer, and he will be treated as such.
Jesus has been on the block for a couple of weeks now. One day on the yard a bald man appears, sporting a handlebar moustache and the same lightning-bolt tattoos beneath his eyes as George.
“You’re celling with me,” he says, looking Jesus dead in the eye. “I got you for coffee, homie. Don’t worry about it.”
Having just got on the block, Jesus has limited commissary — only around $15 a week — and coffee is expensive.
The guy introduces himself as Tex, and only Tex. He turns and looks at something across the yard, and Jesus sees a swastika tattoo on the back of his head with a three-leaf clover. That tattoo is only reserved for the Aryan Brotherhood or AB’s, the largest white supremacy gang in the United States.
Jesus is confused as to why he picked him. There are plenty of white boys in the unit who are a better fit. But Tex tells him later that he can tell by the way Jesus carries himself that he isn't a slouch and won’t cause problems. George taught him well.
Jesus is lying on his bunk reading a random paperback he got from the library cart when he hears a commotion a few cells down. It is a faint popping sound, some “fuck yous,” then the sound of a body hitting the concrete and footsteps fleeing the opposite direction. Jesus gets up and walks to his open cell door and sees an inmate hunched over, walking toward him. He is from the neighboring cell and someone who has treated Jesus well since being inside.
He collapses on his bunk, and grimaces as he clutches his side. Jesus goes to follow him in.
“This don’t concern you, Jess,” Tex says, calling from his own bunk.
Jesus stops in his tracks. He is torn. In front of him is a man hurt and bleeding — someone who has shown him the closest thing to friendship this place allows. But Tex, a high-ranking gang member, has already spoken. He told Jesus not to bother.
He thinks of his mom, and what she would say to him. He decides to bother.
The inmate has been shanked with a shallow blade, probably a sharpened toothbrush. He learns later that the popping noise he heard is the sound skin makes when stabbed with a shallow, poker-style blade.
“Rip the shirt off,” the inmate grunts at Jesus.
“No,” Jesus hears Tex say behind him. He tenses up and wonders if he’s about to feel the popping sound himself for not taking Tex’s advice.
“You want to grab cotton wool,” the AB says, leaning on the cell door as if giving advice on how to assemble IKEA furniture.
Jesus does what he’s told, grabbing a box of Q-tips and pulling the cotton wool off the ends.
“Now poke them deep into the wounds with your fingertips and stuff them,” Tex explains, he is now looking over Jesus’ shoulder.
“That way the bleeding won’t go through the suit and give away the guards.”
It takes almost 20 minutes to fill each little wound. Tex explains that he’s just been poked. In prison, there are different ways of shanking an inmate, and not every stabbing is meant to kill. Some just want to send a message. This is one of those times. Though what message was getting sent to his neighbor, Jesus never finds out.
His hands are covered in blood and he is looking up at Tex, who tells him he’d better wash up.
Back in his cell and washing his hands, Tex looks at him. He is smiling.
“That was fun,” he laughs, before getting back on his bunk to continue reading whatever he had been before.
Jesus looks down at his hands and back at Tex, not really knowing what to say, but he knows what Tex really means is, welcome to prison.
During his time as his cellmate, Jesus has begun to notice something about Tex. He is dead calm no matter what is going on. Fights breaking out, shankings, rapes. Men screaming, bleeding, getting dragged off to the infirmary, or not getting up at all. It makes Jesus’ shoulders tight and his eyes move — looking for a threat every waking minute. An anxiety he didn’t know existed.
But not Tex.
He just stands and watches everything, quiet as a gravestone, a small smile on his face. It occurs to Jesus that there isn’t a kind of violence in this prison Tex hasn’t already seen or taken part in — it all slides past him like the weather. He carries himself like a man who knows exactly how bad things can get in here.
Deep down, this frightens Jesus.
But it isn’t because he is scared of Tex. In fact, it strikes Jesus that he hadn’t really felt threatened by anyone. They all seem to like him.
It would be some time before he figures out that what frightens him when he looks at Tex is the realization that Jesus could be looking into the eyes of his future.
The Utah prison system contains multiple organized gangs divided largely along racial and ethnic lines. White supremacist groups include Soldiers of Aryan Culture (SAC) and Silent Aryan Warriors (SAW). Occasionally, you’ll get an Aryan Brother like Tex whose status earns him respect and good tidings with the other inmates the moment he walks in the yard. Hispanic gangs are primarily split between the Norteños and the Sureños. Black and Polynesian representation includes gangs such as the Bloods, the Crips, and the Tongan Crip Gangsters. Smaller local groups are also inside, including organizations like the Ogden Trece Gang, but these have a more impactful presence in the county jail system.
Alliances within the system are generally pragmatic rather than ideological. White and Hispanic gangs frequently cooperate, particularly in opposition to Black and Polynesian groups. These alignments are based on numbers, shared interests, and mutual benefit, and they shift only when power dynamics change.
Control of contraband, particularly drugs, is largely held by white and Hispanic gangs. Distribution networks are structured and hierarchical, with supply, enforcement, and debt collection handled internally. Drug debts are enforced through violence.
Smaller gangs typically survive by aligning themselves with larger organizations and occupying specific, limited roles within the prison economy. Independent operation without protection is uncommon and often short-lived.
While Jesus is in Oquirrh 4, Section 1, the Sureños run the yard.
Silvia is wheezing, laughing so hard she can barely breathe. She’s sprawled on the grass next to the orange training cones Jesus has laid out.
“Get up mom!” her 15-year-old calls from the other end of the field.
He’s laying a rope ladder flat on the ground — the same drill she’s watched him do countless times while warming up before football games. Silvia stares at him, incredulous.
“You think I can do that? You’re insane!” she yells back. She can see him grinning, enjoying this far too much.
Last night, she challenged her cocky son to a fitness competition. He is on the football team, and he made sure everyone knew it, strutting through the house like he was Tom Brady himself. Silvia ran five miles a day, every day, and figured she could give him a run for his money. He might be king of the gridiron, but this is her house. Surely she can beat him.
Silvia is currently having the unfortunate realization that she absolutely cannot beat him.
Tomorrow, she thinks, is going to hurt.
“Okay, Mom, it’s really simple,” he calls out. “High knees through the ladder, then turn and sprint to the end of the field.”
Silvia watches as her overconfident, underqualified teenage coach demonstrates first. She loves him so fiercely it almost hurts. He flies through the ladder, pivots, and takes off at full speed. She smiles as she watches him run, unsure whether he’s trying to beat his mom or impress her. Maybe both.
She’s still smiling when her eyes open. Morning light spills through the bedroom window. The smile fades as she rubs her eyes awake.
Jesus has been locked up for three years now.
She doesn't dream often anymore. But when this memory comes back to her, she clings to it, savoring every last second before it slips away.
Today, Silvia is meeting with Jesus’ attorney to discuss his parole. When he was sentenced, the attorneys told Silvia that by pleading guilty and accepting a deal, he would do, at most, 10 years. He had his first parole hearing this month, which did not go in his favor. Silvia had high hopes, after all, he has been a good inmate with no trouble, but the parole board still didn’t grant him a release date. In fact, Jesus had told her during his weekly phone call that he received a letter in the mail that told him his next parole hearing is scheduled for 2029.
She is angry and worried as she folds the bed sheets and pulls the blankets tight. Something was wrong. That was 16 years away.
Silvia has done everything she can to find ways to get her son out of prison. She’s part of the American Civil Liberties Union, had spoken to countless criminal justice and prisoner reform advocates and still she felt as close to finding a way to get Jesus out as she did when he was sentenced. Her attorneys just tell her she doesn’t understand, quoting sentencing matrices and intricacies within the Board of Pardons. It was all bullshit to Silvia. Jesus was not staying in prison until 2029. He committed an awful crime, yes, she knew that. But 20 years in prison? It just didn't make sense to her.
She checks her hair in the mirror before getting into her car to drive to what she could only assume was going to be yet another useless meeting with the attorneys.
In the years following Jesus’ first parole hearing, nothing seems to happen for Silvia. Everyone she speaks to lacks answers. In 2014, she goes to see her state senator, Kevin VanTassell. After hearing her story, he tells her that her Vernal isn’t the place where she is going to find help. He instead encourages her to head down to Salt Lake City and speak with Senator Luz Escamilla, who is running for Congress.
While Silvia is going through all this, the Board of Pardons is being audited, and the state legislature isn’t impressed with the reports they are receiving. Escamilla is especially alarmed.
So Silva tracks down her schedule and goes to a campaign speech. She gets in her car and drives three hours across the desert and through the mountains to attend the event.
The place is packed, Silvia looks around at the people there to listen to Senator Luz Escamilla. They all nod along with what she’s saying. But she finds it hard to listen. She is here for one thing.
When the speech comes to an end, Silvia starts making her move toward the front. I cannot succumb to my polite nature, she thinks to herself as she pushes her way through the crowd. She needs to get in front of Escamilla. In her eyes, he is her family’s last hope.
Four years of frustration and pain is erupting inside of her as she moves forward. She thinks about being passed around the state’s judicial system, receiving nothing but sympathetic nods and empty promises to “look into it.”
She squeezes between a couple standing in her way.
“Sorry. Excuse me,” she says in her broken English and thick Mexican accent.
Her accent usually gets her responses like, “oh, you don’t understand,” or long-winded lectures about things she does understand from nearly everyone she speaks to, even her attorneys.
She’s angry as she moves through the masses. She’s sad. She feels cast aside. And she knows she has only a minute or two, in a crowded room, to make Escamilla care about her son.
She pushes past one last voter and there she is. Silvia’s last hope, only a foot or two away.
The state senator turns to look at her and greets her in Spanish. Her eyes well up with tears. But this time and for the first time they are tears of relief.
Senator Luz Escamilla begins poring through Jesus’ case. When she comes across the date of his next parole hearing — in 2029 — she’s taken aback. It seems really far away.
Meanwhile, Jesus is studying himself. From prison, he’s working toward an associate's degree in science and engineering. He’s already completed a rehabilitation program. And unlike on the outside, his prison record is perfectly clean. He has no acts of violence. No listed affiliations with gangs. The only group he’s known to have joined is a church. In Utah, that stands for something.
Yet, Escamilla can see that having a parole date set 17 years into the future would mean he’s going to serve at least 20.
Escamilla becomes dedicated to finding out why Jesus is still in prison when his sentence is five years to life. His case seems to be a perfect example of the problem that caused the audit in the first place: Lack of organization. The five-member board does not have an electronic filing system and instead relies on handwritten notes and documents. This makes records unclear, difficult to interpret and creates confusion assessing performance and coordination between agencies.
Escamilla begins writing letters, booking meetings, and sitting down with members of the criminal justice system. Eventually, she finds herself sitting across from one of the board members who had ruled on Jesus’ original hearing. The Board is required to provide some form of reasoning for denying parole, and when Escamilla requests it, the handwritten document she is given is illegible. She asked the man who had written it — now sitting in front of her — to read it back to her.
He stares at it for some time and then admits, “I can’t.”
When she asks for a copy of the audio from his 2013 parole hearing, the clerical staff admits they can’t find the recordings.
The following week, Jesus is granted a new parole hearing. The notice arrives in his inmate mail. He is getting a new chance. The date is set for 2017.
Jesus’ whole family shows up to the hearing. When he walks into the courtroom, he gives his mom a smile and she returns it. But this time, there is something else in her face. It takes him a while to realize, but it’s optimism.
Jesus gets up from the prison chapel pew. It’s been a month since the hearing and he still hasn’t heard a word from the Board. Last time it only took two weeks, he thought. What’s taking them so long?
He joins the rest of the inmates in line to be escorted back to their block.
Moving through the prison has become monotonous for Jesus. He’s been inside for seven years now.
Sometimes, on these long walks, he thinks back on his time here. The unexpected moments he can’t shake. Like when a member of one of the gangs walked up to him in the yard. He’d only been here about 12 months.
“Homie, I gotta ask you something.”
Jeremy was his name. Jesus stiffened, making sure his guard was up. He had hung out with Jeremy a lot, even called him a friend. But that still didn’t mean he could trust him. Lately, there had been several stabbings on the block — one or two were fatal — so everyone was tenser than usual.
“Why the fuck are you here?” Jeremy asked.
“What do you mean?” This seemed like a pretty strange question, considering where they were.
“You know what I mean, homes. This unit ain’t for you. You gotta get the fuck out of here.”
Jesus knew what he meant.
This unit is for the most dangerous, those who are violent by default, most of them affiliated or doing work. Not guys like him. A week later, he applied for a transfer and was on the prison transport bus to Gunnison.
It’s a memory Jesus thinks about a lot.
“Martinez, bud, I got some mail for you.”
The officer’s voice brings Jesus back to reality. He’s amused when he realizes he’d just done the entire trip from the chapel to his block already. It’s like when you make it to your destination but can’t remember if any of the lights were green.
It isn’t mail day today, he thinks, walking over to the guard.
As he approaches, he notices a small smile on the CO’s face as he hands him the letter.
Jesus looks down and his blood turns to ice. He’d seen that crest in the corner of the envelope only once before — four years ago. It was from the Board of Pardons.
Jesus heads to his cell as fast as possible and sits on the end of his bunk, just staring at the letter. He’s in a single cell now, so he has some privacy. It’s going to be dinner time soon, and he isn’t sure he wants anyone walking in or seeing whatever emotions this letter is going to give him.
So he just sits and stares at it, tracing every letter and every crease on the envelope with his eyes. He feels the weight of it in his hand.
Jesus knows in his heart that the thin sheet of paper inside contains one of two things.
A birth certificate or a death warrant.
Dinner is a blur. A silver lining is that he doesn’t taste the brown slop the prison calls food. Every receptor in his body is focused on the envelope under his pillow in his cell.
The envelope he holds in his hands right now.
They’re shaking as he carefully peels back the seal. He uses surgeon-like precision, taking as long as possible to open the letter.
He pulls the folded piece of paper out and slowly opens it. It’s one page.
He stares at the writing, not reading it, just looking at it. Then a single number emerges from the block of text: Scheduled release date: October 29, 2024
Jesus stares for a second before breaking down. His whole body is shaking as tears stream down his face. He shudders, and for the first time since they put the cuffs on him eight years ago, he lets his shoulders loosen and drop.
He really starts crying now, curled in a ball on his bunk, clutching the letter in his hands.
He cries for his mom, he cries for his father, he cries for his sisters, he cries for Officer Gray, he cries for the friends he made in here and the ones he lost out there. Most of all, he cries for his children, where they are now, he doesn't know. But now one day he might.
He doesn't sleep that night. He reads the letter until he knows it by heart, even the address at the top.
Silvia is sitting across from Jesus in the visitors’ room.
He’s aged, she notices.
So has she, he thinks, sadly.
Their meetings have a different energy now. They have a release date. A light at the end of the tunnel. And they can see it.
They talk about their lives — about his sisters, his father and their friends. She updates him on the restaurant. It’s moved locations to Main Street and as Silvia describes it, Jesus can picture it.
Since he got his letter, life’s changed for him, too. He tells his mom about the new job he has in the workshop. He’s a machinist and Silvia notices something she hasn’t seen in some time. He has pride. She can see it in his face as he tells a story about when he was woken up by the guards at 2 a.m. to remake a valve for the HVAC system. She can see his sense of purpose as he describes getting to work in the dead of the night, making sure the measurements are perfect.
She is watching him, almost hearing him as he babbles away about his trade, the books and manuals he reads every night about machining. She supposes that every mother gets to talk to their kids when they’re grown about their life and their work stresses. She smiles at Jesus, genuinely proud of her son. In the corner of her eye she can see the guards checking their watches. Their two hours are up.
Jesus hears the kettle click as he’s washing his face.
He pours the boiling water over his instant coffee and stirs it gently with a little wooden paddle pop stick. As he stirs, his eyes try to finish the page explaining why metal lathes use different rotation speeds for different metals.
He smirks. A couple of years ago, this book would’ve felt to him like mixing NyQuil and wine. But now he cannot put it down. It’s as exciting as Harry Potter.
He takes a sip of his coffee and finishes his morning routine that he’s kept since county jail with George. He wonders to himself what part of the system his 211 crew gangster mentor is in now.
Over the intercom, Jesus hears the guards prepare them for the day ahead, and he stands ready for his cell door to open so he can go to work. Today he has to make an attachment for a faucet in the kitchen. It will likely take him most of the day.
The cells open down the line, and Jesus steps into the corridor. As he walks toward the staging area for the workshop crew, he has no idea that by the time he’s back in his cell tonight, his life inside will be crashing down around him.
The tiny piece of brass is spinning on the lathe, and Jesus’ eyes are locked on it with concentration. A bead of sweat runs down his forehead, sliding under his safety glasses and down the bridge of his nose. He tries blowing it away with his bottom lip, but ends up just fogging the glasses. He takes the needle away from the spinning brass — never work on what you can't 100% see.
Lifting his head and wiping his brow, he’s about to get back into it when he hears footsteps behind him. He stiffens instinctively.
“Hey, homie.”
Jesus turns to see a gangbanger associated with the Sureños standing behind him. He knows who he is and daps him up respectfully. He’s got a very violent reputation, but has always been good to Jesus.
“What’s up?” he asks, but Jesus has a feeling he knows what’s up.
Working in the shop comes with the territory of certain requests from gangs. He knows whatever the dude wants, it is either for him to make a shank or hide some drugs. But Jesus made a promise to himself when he went in: he wouldn't be responsible for violence or addiction. After all, that’s what got him there. Also, not to mention, shanks are usually made out of toothbrushes or pieces of bunk beds, so a perfectly sculpted and machined shank would be traced back to him immediately. If and when he gets caught, it’s “goodbye release date,” and Jesus would rather die than lose that. And make no mistake, having a release date can be like holding water in your hands. You piss off the wrong guard or get caught talking to the wrong person — see ya.
But Jesus isn’t worried. A shank is a pretty safe request to turn down. Even the gangs understood that, given his circumstances, it would be crazy for Jesus to agree to that. Hiding drugs isn’t that hard to turn down, either, because it’s a negotiation. The bangers will offer him a lot of money; all he has to say is no, and it’s very easy to find someone else in here to do it instead. He gives a small, knowing smile to the gangbanger in front of him.
But he doesn’t get one in return. Instead, Jesus notices something in his face that takes him a second to recognize. The guy looks anxious. Now he is nervous. He doesn’t like being alone with a gangbanger on edge — that’s a recipe for murder. Jesus tenses up inside but makes sure he remains ever cool on the outside. What the fuck does he want?
“We got a package coming in, homes,” he says.
“What is it?”
“I can’t tell you, homie.”
Ice shoots down Jesus’ spine. This is a very different request. What the fuck could it be that he couldn’t tell him? A bead of sweat has reappeared on Jesus’ forehead.
“We need your machine, homie,” he continues.
Jesus looks at him. There’s a slight ring in his ear as his mind races. A pool of panic forms in his stomach. If Jesus can’t know what it is, whatever it is must be bad. Really high-stakes bad. He does his best to keep his face straight. Ever cool.
“We need you to hide something for us in it.”
“You know I don’t get down like that, homie,” Jesus finally says with his chest, like George told him all those years ago. Inside him, a rage is starting to build. He wants to crush this bloke’s skull into his metal lathe for ruining his life.
The banger steps closer, and Jesus can smell the instant coffee on his breath. He smells something else, too. It’s something burnt and chemical-ish.
“You will.”
The two words are said with so much venom that Jesus can almost feel the blade at his throat.
“And if we go down,” the Sureño continues, quiet now, “you’re coming with us, homie.”
Homie. He emphasizes the last word, steps back from Jesus, and stares at him for a second before turning and walking away. Jesus doesn’t move. He watches him disappear behind the different workstations and machines.
His words are ringing in his ears.
And if we go down, you’re coming with us.
The rest of the day goes slowly. Jesus can’t focus. He keeps making measurement errors and having to restart his project.
When it’s time to pack up and go back to the cell, Jesus feels fried. He walks up and stands in line with the other inmates from the shop. An older man in front of him turns and talks to Jesus over his shoulder.
“You want to keep your head on a swivel, Martinez,” he whispers.
“What do you mean?” Jesus keeps his eyes on the guards so they don’t overhear what they’re talking about.
“I just heard they’re tryna sneak a gun in here. Maybe plan an escape.”
Jesus feels like someone just slapped him in the face. It all makes sense. That’s why he couldn’t tell him what they were trying to stash in his lathe. It dawns on Jesus: someone is going to die, and he is now part of planning that murder.
Another thing dawns on him. You can't just get a gun in prison.
Someone with a badge must be helping.
Back in the privacy of his cell, Jesus is now in a full-blown panic. He paces back and forth, searching for answers to his hellish predicament. He sits on the end of his bunk.
“If we go down, you’re coming with us, homie.”
He gets up and continues to pace. He can’t stop hearing the threat in his head. It becomes louder and louder as he walks back and forth. He sits back down on his bunk. They have to be getting help from officers.
Jesus cannot let this happen. He cannot let them use his machine in the workshop for this. He will not stand by and let someone get murdered.
Maybe he can talk them out of it? Idiot. He has no power or sway here. They don’t give a fuck about him or his morals. Jesus laughs to himself, almost maniacally. Can you imagine if I tried to bring that up? They would kill me for fun. Probably execute me publicly. They would use me as an example.
He has seen them do it for less.
He gets up again with a start and walks over to his toilet to try and piss. He can’t. He feels like a caged animal. He just wants to run — to sprint as fast as he can across some sort of field, to sprint until his lungs give out. But he can’t. He has six feet by nine feet to pace.
He walks over to his collection of books and rummages through the pages of a random machinist manual until a loose leaf of folded paper falls out. He picks it up and reads the underlined section.
Scheduled release date: October 29, 2024
He feels tears well up in his eyes as he stares at it. He starts going through his options, repeating the mental loop his mind has been in since the gangbanger approached him hours ago.
If he says no, they kill him.
If he says yes and they get caught, he gets his date taken and they kill him anyway out of suspicion.
If he says yes and they don’t get caught, they keep using him until they do get caught — and they kill him anyway out of paranoia.
He has one choice, but his mind isn’t letting him entertain it. It’s an absolute last resort. His internal monologue, weighted with ten years already in prison, is screaming at him not to consider this last option.
If they ever find out about this, they won’t just kill him — they’ll take their time. They’ll make sure he feels every slice of the razor, hears every bone break. The last thing he’ll smell is his own shit and blood before his body gives out.
He sits quietly on the end of his bed like a boxer before walking out to the ring. He thinks of his mom, probably working right now in the restaurant.
With her face in mind, his whole body seems to calm. If he dies, he dies honorably.
He wipes his tears and reaches for his notepad and a pen. Turning the pages past his notes on machine work, he finally gets to a blank page.
“Dear Warden,” he writes.
There’s a rare group in prison who have a remarkably high attrition rate: prison-house snitches.
Even though they’re often confused, there is a huge difference between a whistleblower and a snitch. A snitch rolls on his comrades in the face of peril. A snitch sells his companions out to save himself. A whistleblower is someone who breaks their silence to expose rot.
Jesus is not a snitch.
He stares at the empty page of his sketchpad. He’s meant to be planning his next work project, but can’t focus. Ever since Jesus wrote that letter, his gut has felt like he’s been punched over and over again. The feeling is impossible to shake. He puts his pencil to the paper. He can feel his pulse in his face.
The workshop had been raided a week ago, and from what they’d heard on the prison telegraph, it was a big haul. Bags of heroin and meth had been found, although nothing had been said about the gun. But there was something else to this raid. Everyone has been moving differently since. Even the guards. Someone must’ve talked.
Rumors are building, and fear lingers on him like cold weather when you’re wearing one layer too few. Eyes are tracking everyone, everywhere. An accusation is a death warrant, and inmates are looking over their shoulders, desperate to distance themselves from whatever went down in the workshop.
The immediate fallout is the usual. Several gang members are taken to solitary, and the shop is shut down. No one has suspected Jesus. They know he doesn’t bang. With his parole date, they know it would be the dumbest move possible for him to start now. But the process of elimination means eventually they will turn to him.
He has to get out of here. He can’t help but feel that he should have abandoned his morals. . Someone is alive because you wrote that letter, he reminds himself.
He looks but doesn’t really see the page of his metalwork textbook he’s meant to be studying. Usually, he would be working on this sort of thing in his cell, but he knows it’s only a matter of time before he gets “booked,” as they say. Stabbed.
He decides to try to make sure that if they’re going to get him, it won’t be in his cell. He doesn’t want his belongings returned to his mom with blood on them. He doesn’t want to die where there are no cameras, either.
If they want to kill him, they’re going down with him.
His pencil lead snaps on the page. Jesus watches it roll across the table and off the edge.
“HEY!”
Jesus looks up. There’s a corrections officer making his way through the tables of inmates playing cards or chess. There are guards, and then there are guards, and this guy is the latter. Everyone knows he’s a bad and angry son of a bitch, and everyone assumes he’s definitely dirty in one way or another.
He is also definitely looking straight at Jesus.
“Yeah, you,” he says as he gets closer.
Inmates glance at each other, then back at the guard, trying to figure out who he’s talking to. Jesus drops his head. His heart races, his throat tight as he stares at the blank page, praying this isn’t real.
Eyes follow the guard’s line of sight, searching for whoever’s about to get what’s coming. The energy in the room shifts as the inmates start to do some maths.
Is the informant about to be exposed? Jesus can feel the collective question spread throughout the room.
But Jesus has a realization. If the guard does what he thinks he’s about to do, it’s clear the corruption goes way higher than he previously thought.
The officer is now standing over him, looking at his incomplete project sketches and calculations. To Jesus, it feels like he’s holding a loaded gun to his head.
“What are you doing?” he asks Jesus. “Telling again?”
Everyone stops what they’re doing and watches them both. You can hear a pin drop. Those last two words seem to echo around the cafeteria.
Telling again?
Telling again?
Telling again?
Jesus looks up, and their eyes meet. He stares at the officer, and both men recognize the truth in each other’s eyes.
The guard has pulled the trigger.
Jesus is going to die.
Jesus is drenched with cold sweat back in his cell.
This isn’t just a death sentence for him. It could reach his family. These gangs don’t fuck around. They have people on the outside willing to kill for them.
What have I done?
Jesus requests a transfer, but it doesn’t matter now. The fact that it was a guard who called him out meant his cell door could have an operational malfunction at any moment.
These concrete walls have finally defeated him. He knows there’s nothing he can do.
There is no point wrapping magazines around his midriff. There is no point ironing up or making a shank for himself. This isn’t going to be a sneak attack. They are coming, and they’re going to make sure he sees them from a long way out.
He presses his forehead against the wall, trying to calm his shakes. The concrete is cool and he starts to pray.
But he isn’t praying for himself. No. He prays for his children, whom he doesn’t know. For his mother, whom he fears doesn’t know him anymore.
His eyes are closed as his lips move. A lonely sermon with no congregation.
He keeps them shut and continues his prayer as the cell door slides open behind him.
Moments of Jesus’ life replay as he prays.
He thinks about the last time he saw his mom. The sadness in her eyes as they tried to talk about nice things. He thinks about his kids. They barely know him, but now they won’t get a chance to.
His muscles are tense, prepared for trauma. The noises around him feel distant, distorted. He thinks about all the little moments that led him to this one. All the times he made a choice that negatively affected someone he loved. And all the times he tried to do the right thing, but ended up in the wrong place.
He imagines his judgment before his maker. What will his God think of his life? Of the decisions he made?
“Roll up your stuff, Martinez.”
God? Is that you?
Jesus opens his eyes. No. It’s not. He’s still here, on Earth, in A Block East, cell 410.
The guard's voice enters his cell with the same authority he would expect its owner to. But at least it’s not with an angry mob.
“You’re getting moved.”
What?
“You’re getting moved.”
All Jesus hears is, “you’re being saved.”
For a while, that moment will wake him up from a deep sleep almost every night.
He’s put into maximum security. It's where they house a lot of inmates with targets on their backs. But he can still hang with other inmates here. And he’s doing that, watching TV news with them one night when a story airs that catches his attention.
“A Utah Department of Corrections guard is arrested for smuggling drugs into the prison…”
As Jesus watches, a realization settles over him: the letter he sent to the warden years earlier had been the first domino to fall, setting in motion what would become one of the largest trafficking scandals in the history of the Utah Department of Corrections.
“Cards Jess?” His cellmate holds up a grubby deck to him.
Jesus is so distracted, he almost forgets to join in.
Once the dust settles, only one guard is arrested and pleads guilty to charges related to trafficking. The Utah Department of Corrections tells local news outlets that he is the only officer involved. When he is arrested, 200 individual doses of methamphetamines and 100 doses of suboxone are found on him. He had been working with high-ranking members of the Soldiers of Aryan Culture. The guard was getting $1,000 for every “drop”. It's not exactly clear the quantity that he had already smuggled into the prison before being caught, but it's suspected that at least one inmate overdosed and died from fentanyl smuggled in by the guard.
He spends 34 days in Jail and is forced to pay a fine of $1,140.
For a while, Jesus has a hard time seeing the good in anyone.
In here, it was gang members who befriended him, outlaws who shared survival tips, and guards who betrayed him. Even though it was the gangs who greenlit him — that was business. He did write that letter all those years ago. Do the crime, do the time — one bell that chimes the same between authority and criminality.
Everything is disoriented, he thinks to himself as he makes coffee for himself and his cellmate, “Crook,” who’s reading a magazine on his bunk. He’s a longtime Norteño. You don’t make close friends in prison, but over the three years he’d shared a cell with him, Jesus had determined two things: Crook was a decent guy and as trustworthy as the penitentiary allowed him to be.
Jesus is stirring his Styrofoam cup with the little wooden paddle. He gets up, walks over to his bunk and sits down, taking a sip.
“Who’s on?” Crook asks, wanting to know what guard was on duty as he thumbs through his magazine.
“Sgt. Whitfield,” Jesus responds.
Whitfield is older, around 60. And one of the few Jesus considers to be a good guy. Seven years earlier, in Jesus’s mind, Whitfield proved that.
A few years ago, the guard had saved an inmate who tried to commit suicide by hanging himself from the basketball hoop. He had locked the door and Whitfield broke through it to cut him down and then performed life-saving procedures on him.
When the paramedics arrived, they were able to find a pulse and took the inmate away to the hospital. Jesus remembers seeing Whitfield standing there in the middle of the court, shirt untucked, red-faced, and exhausted. That image has stuck with him ever since.
Later that day, Jesus heard one of the guards say to a passing inmate, “I heard you’re hanging the Christmas decorations early.” That also stuck with him.
Jesus ponders this memory as he gets up to wash his face in the sink.
Out of nowhere, he hears a loud crash on the main floor downstairs. It sounds like someone slams a tray on something. Jesus turns to Crook, who has the same confused look on his face. Then they hear shouts and the sound of a struggle.
The two of them sprint out of their cell, down the stairs and toward the commotion. They see two figures struggling on the ground near the phones. One of them is Sgt. Whitfield. The other is Travis “Snap-case” Bennett, an inmate affiliated with one of the white gangs. His arm is moving up and down, stabbing at the officer’s face and neck as fast and furiously as he can.
Blood is starting to spread all over the floor and without thinking, the two cellmates sprint over and drag the two bodies apart. A third inmate, Uso, one of the Polynesians on the block, comes running over to help as well. The three of them tear Bennett off Whitfield and surround him, ready to collectively beat him if he tries anything. He slashes at Uso and catches him with the makeshift blade on the arm and chest.
The three of them grab Bennett and throw him up against the wall, forcing him into the showers. Uso and Jesus hold him there while Crook goes over to check on Sgt. Whitfield. He is in bad shape. From the shower block, Jesus can see there is blood everywhere, all over his head and face. He’s suddenly furious. Bennett starts taunting him, still holding the toothbrush and razor blade shank at them.
“I’ll fucking slice you, bitch,” he snarls at Jesus.
“Let’s go then, let’s do it,” Jesus says back to him, squaring up.
Jesus wants to fight him. He wants to fight him so badly. He wants to break his fucking neck, to hurt him. But Uso puts an arm across his chest and stops him.
“Just leave it, Jess,” he says. “We just hold him in here.”
So the three of them do just that. For several minutes, they hold Bennett at bay and make sure Whitfield is still breathing.
Then the area starts filling with cops and emergency services. It was weird to Jesus, the three inmates just walked back up the stairs to their cells as if the guards didn’t even see them standing there, covered in their colleagues’ blood.
They still have Whitfield’s blood all over them when they get back. Jesus is shaking, his pupils are dilated, and he’s breathing heavily. Crook starts washing his hands.
“That was fucking crazy, man,” he says.
Jesus is pacing back and forth like a caged animal in what little room they have.
“What the fuck did we just do, man?” he asks Crook.
“We did the right thing, homie. We did the right thing. It’s done now,” he responds, clearly trying to calm him down.
Jesus, Crook, and Uso had just crossed a rare threshold in the prison world. They had just saved a guard — public enemy number one.
Jesus can hear the jeering from the other inmates, calling at them through their cells.
Jesus is a little over nine months from his release date. He’s already been labeled a snitch. He’s already in protection. Hiding. He was just starting to feel safe again. Hopeful again. Like he might actually get out of here.
“You just saved a cop, homie.”
“You’re dead now, f*ggots.”
“Tick tock, bitch.”
It’s happening again.
As Jesus washes the officer’s blood off his hand. It’s not long before he, Uso and Crook get word: They’ve all been greenlit.
The irony almost makes him laugh. Shooting a cop had landed him in here.
Whistle-blowing on one almost got him killed.
Now he just helped save one’s life, and that will likely get him killed as well.
The next three months pass slowly, but with no drama. No one makes a move on him, but he gets little sleep. If there’s one thing prison taught him, it’s that time comes and goes, never waiting for anyone.
With four weeks to go, he’s pretty sure they are plotting to get him right when he thinks he’s about to be free.
Then, just before Valentine’s Day, 2023, a guard quietly delivers some news. He’s getting out early.
Jesus has one more sleepless night, but this time not from fear or dread.
When his cell door opens that morning, he instinctively puts his hands forward to be cuffed.
“Not today, bud,” the officer waiting for him says, grinning at Jesus.
He has never walked through the sections without being cuffed or chained. It feels odd, unsafe, almost. Every step he takes, he does so with deliberation and care, through the gray corridors and past security door after security door after security door. The guard is talking to him, almost like an old friend, but Jesus can’t hear him. He realizes as he passes through a final security room that this is the closest he’s ever been to the prison gates.
The out-processing takes a couple of hours. A heap of people are there giving him pamphlets and contacts to make his transition to the outside world as smooth as possible. He’s trying to listen, but he just sits there smiling and nodding, not really paying attention.
When it’s time, he’s led into yet another room. The door opens.
It’s Silvia.
She’s surrounded by his dad and the rest of his family.
Everyone is crying. So is Jesus. He stands frozen for a few seconds, not knowing what to do, before they all rush over and embrace him. He feels himself buckle as he falls into their arms. In his mind, he’s waiting for the guards to rush over and break it up, but they never do.
Silvia is holding Jesus’ hand as they step through the steel frames lined with razor wire. She squeezes her son’s hand.
She does not look back when she hears the clanging crash of the automatic gate shutting behind them.
Jesus was never very keen on the institution of religion. But something about spending so much of his adult life inside the institution of justice has brought him to this place. To a door he’s freely opening.
His mother and father are waiting on the other side. They’re so much smaller now. Their ages are more evident.
They walk quietly down the short hallway into the sermon room. There must be at least 50 people taking their seats and facing the lone podium at the front. The bishop is off to the side, greeting an elderly member of his ward. They’re both smiling and whispering excitedly, truly engaged with what is about to happen in just a few minutes. People begin to walk toward Jesus, with beaming smiles of welcome. It strikes him that not two years ago, if anyone moved toward him with the same sense of purpose these people do, it would be to fight or kill. To them, the jumpsuit is only symbolic of one thing: Holy Rebirth. They know nothing of concrete and razor wire, or bedroom doors made from reinforced steel. A toothbrush is just a toothbrush to them, not an extra life sentence.
Several congregants he doesn’t recognize greet his mother like an old friend, and he realizes with bittersweetness that they are old friends. It’s just that Jesus has never met them, despite them being part of his family’s life for almost a decade.
Once everyone has come forward to offer their good graces, the bishop gives Jesus and his mother a nod and steps behind the podium.
“I’m going to open with a prayer,” he says. “Oh Heavenly Father, we are gathered here today…”
Jesus stares at the bishop and hangs on every word. He wants to absorb it all. The room is full of people, but to him, there are only three others present: His parents and the bishop. He feels his mother squeeze his hand, and he knows it’s time to stand up. He turns and begins walking down the aisle. Side by side with the bishop, he approaches a baptismal pond that lies behind two wooden doors.
He can feel the lukewarm water slosh around his ankles as he gently takes the first steps into the pool. The bishop is already in, waiting with his outstretched hand. Jesus wonders, as the water reaches his knees, if he will feel cleansed. If his trauma and sin will simply wash away. As the water reaches his waist, the bishop places his hand on Jesus’ chest, and after a couple of words, gently pushes him under. As his head becomes submerged in silence, it becomes clear to Jesus that it won’t be some sort of miraculous rebirth. Water cannot wash away the fact that he shot a police officer 14 years ago. It won’t cleanse him from his life sentence or anything that happened to him behind bars. Instead, the water cements it. All of it. It makes it a part of who he is, and as the bright LED lights above the baptismal pond come back into focus, Jesus emerges from the silence of the water and accepts that all of those things will always be part of him.
Silvia is quiet, but her face speaks for her. She is proud of Jesus, but his life has not panned out how any mother would want it to. Her boy, who made her do ladder sprints with him one Saturday afternoon, is gone. And the man that boy was meant to become never eventuated.
But Silvia knows that through the darkness, her son did keep something. Something that fills her heart with pride.
His moral compass.
Hugo Rikard-Bell is a politics reporter in Salt Lake City, Utah. He grew up in rural Australia, went to Adelaide University and worked on cattle farms around Australia until making a pivot to journalism in 2021. He worked as a rural correspondent in Alice Springs, Northern Territory for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation before moving to Salt Lake City to cover public safety and politics. He's been there since 2022 and loves snowboarding and tinkering on his motorbike.
