To Free the Truth

As I mentioned in my story, I was 16 when I arrived at the Garza West Unit, a maximum intake facility. My brother and I “caught chain” (rode the bus) there together with about 50 others from Harris County Jail. It was the first time, I’d seen him since trial and the only quality time I’d spent with him since before Ray died. Handcuffed together, we talked about our family, appeals, and hope for our future. We both hoped we’d be assigned to the same unit after the intake process at Garza but realized it was unlikely because the TDCJ doesn’t like to house family together. Once we stepped off the chain bus and received our TDCJ-ID numbers, we were assigned to different dorms. 

Garza West and Garza East were built on the old airforce base Chase Field in Beeville, Texas. The inmates are housed in dormatories made of sheet metal. Think of living in a tin box with the South Texas sun heating it up in 105 degree weather. There were two large fans to each dorm, but they only circulated hot air. It felt like living in an oven. I tried to stay out of the dorm as much as possible during the day for more than just the heat. The predators hung out in there watching T.V., gambling at the domino table, and doing unspeakable things behind the bunks in the back of the dorm beyond the guards’ observation.

I went before a committee my first day there to determine my housing and job assignment. Being a skinny kid, I’d hoped to get in the kitchen to put on a few pounds. When I asked the warden about it, he bared his tobacco stained teeth and in the deepest redneck voice you’ve ever heard said, “Boy, we gone start a young’un like you in da fields. Come see me when you got some whiskers on ya face, then we’ll see about a food service job.”

Think of slaves on a plantation with the slave owners on horses with whips, cracking them to push the slaves harder. Only here, all the slaves weren’t black, and the master wielded a gun. Everyone had an “aggie” (hoe), You form a line and beat the dirt while the “lead row” (lead inmate) sings in the scorching sun. It’s tedious work, monotonously beating on dirt in time with a tune, and it only pissed me off because I didn’t believe I deserved to be here for a crime my father committed especially when trustee inmates would come around later with a tractor and plow the field we were hitting on in an hour. In other words, all of our hard work was inconsequential. That just added insult to injury. 

My brother and I caught chain from Harris County with a guy tattooed from head to toe. We called him “Scratch” because a lot of his ink looked like it was scratched on. He’d been inside before, so he tried to lace us up on how everything works, what to expect, how to act, etc….Scratch told me he was going to try to get to Jester 4 unit, a psychiatric unit that, according to him, was air conditioned, had hospital bunks that reclined with the push of a button, cable T.V., great food, and pretty nurses who treated you like a human. I asked him how to get to such a place and he just told me to “act crazy” as in tell them I hear voices and see things that aren’t there. 

I didn’t really want to leave my brother, but I felt like we’d soon be sent to different farms anyway. Besides, I was tired of the hot dorms and the hard work after only 3 weeks. Scratch said you didn’t have to work and you lived with psych patients on Jester 4, nothing like the predators on Garza and the other units. So, I told the psych doctor that my field boss’ horse was stealing my thoughts, and that I had suicidal thoughts because I kept hearing my dead uncle calling me from the other side. The next day I was sent to the Skyview Unit, a psychiatric unit in Rusk, Texas.