A Father's Nightmare

A Father’s Nightmare

By Sean P. Keefe

This is a true story. Some names have been changed.

Copyright 2011 Sean P. Keefe

Smashwords Edition

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Table of Contents

Inmate 0001363748: Shackled and Chained

Tina

Inmate 0001363748: The Holding Cell

Seanna & Ryan

Inmate 0001363748: Pod C-4

Love Hurts

Inmate 0001363748: My First Night

Louisiana

Inmate 0001363748: Hygiene

Tyler Patrick

Inmate 0001363748: Chow!

Time For Me To Fly

Inmate 0001363748: The Pecking Order

Lawyers and Ladies

Inmate 0001363748: Currency & Cards

Wife and Mother

Inmate 0001363748: Gambling Debt

Let’s Fight

Inmate 0001363748: Fight!

Time For Me To Fly, Really

Inmate 0001363748: Activities

No Deal

Inmate 0001363748: The Man with the Weed

Repercussions

Inmate 0001363748: The Vulture

Lost

Inmate 0001363748: The Preacher

Caroline Elizabeth

Inmate 0001363748: Mother of Invention

Gage, Garett & Tyler

Inmate 0001363748: Dude, You Stink!

Heaven & Hell

Inmate 0001363748: Packed Suitcase

Fight The Good Fight

Inmate 0001363748: Don’t Cry, Seanna

Aftermath

Inmate 0001363748: Communication

The More Things Change…

Inmate 0001363748: Don’t Worry, Mom

Jailbreak

Inmate 0001363748: Shackled and Chained

I stood in a little hallway with my legs spread and hands against the wall. The cyclone that had completely decimated the life I had built had finally hurled me into this holding facility. I was heading to jail.

The deputy patted me down and inspected my shoes. He asked for my personal information, confiscated my driver’s license and the sixty dollars I had in my pocket, placed them in a sealable plastic bag labeled with my name and social security number, and escorted me to a small gray cell.

The confines of that tiny cell just fed my anger. My sense of right and wrong made this outcome inevitable. For too long I’d been the pawn in someone else’s game. I’d had enough. It was time that I took control of the board. If it meant being incarcerated, so be it. I had made my decision, and there was no turning back.

Once the cell was unlocked, I was ushered into the hall by a slightly built guard. He ordered me to turn and face the wall. With my hands and forehead against the cold concrete wall, I closed my eyes as he shackled my ankles. You can watch all the TV shows you want and still not be prepared for your first time in chains.

The guard then told me to turn back around to face him. He secured my hands to the handcuffs dangling from the chain he had wrapped around my waist. For the next hour or so, my hands wouldn’t stray more than six to eight inches from my belly button. Scratching my nose was a challenge. Scratching almost anywhere else was impossible.

When all the prisoners being transferred were shackled, the guards shuffled us out the back door to the waiting van. My first step was an awakening. When I was a kid, I had played with my father’s handcuffs just to see what they felt like. He would show me how he cuffed the people he arrested. As a child, it was a game, no pain, no fear, and there were never chains.

This was no game. Each step I took reminded me that I was wearing cuffs around my ankles. Learning how to shuffle properly was a challenge. I had never before needed to measure the length of each step so carefully. The biggest difficulty was stepping down the curb and climbing up the steps of the van. I watched those ahead of me to see how best to move my body with my new constraints.

The one female prisoner in the transport sat alone in the first row of seats. Joining me in the last two rows were five other male prisoners. I only listened while the other prisoners talked.

There was talk about their crimes and the sentences that they’d received. There was joking and laughter. I had no desire to join in the discussion. I kept my ears open and mouth closed. I had busted my ass for most of my adult life to be a productive, successful, honest person. I didn’t belong in that van. I didn’t belong in those shackles. I didn’t belong in the penal system at all! To get through this unscathed, I would need to stay angry. I would need to listen and learn. I would need to keep my eyes and ears open. I figured for now I should keep my mouth shut.

The ride to the North Central Regional Jail took about an hour. Although the sun was setting when we arrived, the fifteen-foot high fence and barbed wire was still clearly visible. The gate slowly opened and the transport van headed to the back of the building.

The guards who escorted us into the building told us to stand against the wall. Once they had removed and placed their firearms in the lockers on the opposite wall, there was a loud buzzing sound, and the heavy iron bars ahead of us began to move. We then shuffled along the wall into the prison’s processing area.

A guard removed our shackles and told us to sit and wait. Two women who appeared to be nurses and two men in uniform were behind a long counter separating the facility employees from the bad guys. There was one guard on the bad guy side of the counter. As I waited my turn, I watched.

One by one, I watched as those ahead of me talked with the nurse and then entered a room with the guard. After about five minutes, the guard emerged with the prisoner’s clothing. He filled out a tag, placed the tag and the clothing into a hanging bag, and took the bag into an adjacent room. The guard then opened the door that held the prisoner. Each prisoner emerged in an orange shirt, orange pants, gray socks, and orange plastic flip-flop type slippers. The guard then escorted that prisoner to a holding cell.

I waited my turn to speak with the nurse, receive a TB test and answer a few questions regarding my mental state. Her biggest concern appeared to be whether I thought I would be able to handle incarceration. I had known for some time that incarceration was a possibility, but never really thought about the details involved. The anger that I harbored made it easy to think I could handle it. The pride I had in my ability to handle anything made it easy not to worry about it. Although I was unfamiliar with these new surroundings, I knew I had to handle it. I had no choice.

I entered the room with the guard behind me. There was a shower, a bench, a paper towel holder that contains those coarse brown paper towels, and a large bin of orange clothes. In the corner was a pump-action metal spray canister similar to those used to spray pesticide.

Take off your clothes, and get in the shower, the heavyset guard said in a tone revealing his boredom. Once I was naked and had placed my glasses on the paper towel holder, I entered the shower. When I turned around, the guard was holding the tin canister in one hand and the nozzle in the other.

I have to spray you head to toe, he said.

Which goes first, front or back? I asked.

Whichever you want cold as hell first, he said.

I turned around and faced the shower wall. How could it have come to this? I played by the rules my whole life. I had done unto others, as I had wanted done unto me. I had loved my wife with all my heart. This is where it landed me; naked, facing a shower wall with a guard about to spray me with who knows what.

The substance that hit my backside had the temperature of ice water. He sprayed me from head to toe and then told me to turn around and cover my eyes. After he had completed spraying my front, he told me to wait five minutes, rinse off, and then get dressed in the underwear, socks, slippers, and orange clothes he had set out for me.

I stood alone, naked and wet, in that locked room for what seemed like forever. I was freezing my ass off, and my eyes were beginning to burn from the substance in the spray. Was my decision worth going through all this?

I knew that it was! I had to be able to look at myself in the mirror and like what I saw. It was a decision I had to make, and having made it, I had to suffer the consequences. That I was standing naked in a locked room only fed my anger and resolve. Whether five minutes had passed I had no idea, but I rinsed off as best I could, dressed, and knocked on the door.

Since I was nineteen, Tina was the reason I believed, Tina was the reason I hoped, Tina was the reason I knew I would live happily ever after. On October 30, 2006, Tina was the reason I became inmate 0001363748.

Tina

I joined the Navy right out of high school. Having been through boot camp, corps school, and field medical service school, I chose pharmacy as my specialty to avoid being on a ship. On a ship, it’s generally all guys. In a hospital setting, the girl ratio was much better. To me, that was a no-brainer.

When I met with personnel at Portsmouth Naval Base in August of 1983, I was told that I’d have to find living arrangements off base because the barracks were full. I contacted a couple of guys that I’d gone to corps school with, and they had room for one more in their trailer. Although this was good news, living off base would also mean I would need to buy a car.

I was nineteen years old, hundreds of miles away from home, and my parents were not around to help me secure a car loan. I had to resort to one of those Buy Here Finance Here places. The interest was high and so was the insurance, but I had no choice. I had no credit and no co-signor.

With a car payment, insurance, rent and utilities, my limited pay did not go that far. By the second week of each pay period, I was flat broke. I couldn’t even afford cigarettes. That’s how I met Tina.

She was in my pharmacy class, a class of about thirty kids. I say kids because we were all between eighteen and twenty-two years old. We studied a variety of subjects – math, science, typing, and pharmacology. Between classes, we were able to go out in the hall and smoke. Well, as I said, by the second week of payday, I couldn’t afford cigarettes. I noticed that she smoked the same brand as I did, so I began to bum cigarettes from her during breaks. I did this so often that she began to bring two cigarettes out into the hall with her. We talked some and eventually began hanging out with a group of friends at the enlisted club after class.

She was beautiful, around five feet two inches and 105 pounds, and she had the curliest hair I had ever seen. It was almost an Afro. She hated her hair, but I thought it was wonderful. Her hazel eyes lit up her entire face when she smiled, and provided a stern warning when she was angry. Everything about her was petite, except her self-confidence. She was quick to laugh, could hold her own with anyone, and rarely backed down. Her name was Tina. Not short for anything, just simply Tina.

We didn’t fall in love or even in lust right away. We hung out together with our friends and talked with each other during class breaks. That was the depth of our relationship in August and September. Sometime in October, we ended up at the same party. We hung out together all night and ended up leaving together. I didn’t figure our relationship amounted to anything but simply having fun together.

Tina and I began to see each other more and more. There was never any romance between us; we just enjoyed being together. But, within a couple of months, we had become a couple. When she moved out of her house into an apartment, I helped.

Tina shared a one-bedroom apartment with three roommates. Two male roommates shared the living room, and a female roommate had a bed in the dining room. Tina had the bedroom. I stayed with her a couple of nights and just never left. Soon after, one of our pharmacy classmates ended up moving in as well. He slept in the cubbyhole in the hall.

We partied every night and went to school every day. It was great. A bunch of young kids with very little responsibility and, with rent split six ways, lots of disposable income.

There are some days, some events that happen in life that leave such an image in our brain that nothing - not time, not happiness, not sadness, not betrayal, not even life, can take away. Some things are just perfect.

I had known Tina for a few months when I experienced one of those defining moments. I didn’t know how much she meant to me until she had to leave for a week. Her grandmother had passed away and she went to West Virginia for the funeral. I knew, while she was gone, that I missed her but was shocked to discover just how much.

I wasn’t expecting Tina to return for several days, but as I was walking down the stairs after class, I saw her on the landing. A warm feeling flooded my senses. I didn’t know why and didn’t care. I was just ecstatic to see her. It was as if everything else just peeled away from the world, and all that existed in that moment was Tina on that landing.

One Sunday afternoon soon after, Tina and I were in the living room taking turns ironing our uniforms while watching a football game. We were talking about nothing in particular when she said something so cute that my heart just melted.

I was only nineteen and certainly had no idea what love was, but at that moment, I loved her. I think there is a difference between loving someone and being in love with them. Which this was, I had no idea. All I know is whatever she had said struck me, and with the laugh she’d caused still in my throat, I looked up at her and blurted, I love you.

I certainly had never intended to say that. I knew she struck me in a way no other girl had. I knew that what I was feeling was stronger than anything I’d ever felt. But was it love? I don’t know why I said it, and I suddenly wished that I hadn’t.

What did you say? she asked. I could tell from the look on her face she liked what I had said and wanted to hear it again. She knew I meant it, but she also knew that it came out only by accident. She was going to enjoy this moment.

Come on, she continued playfully, what’d you say?

I could only stammer, N-n-nothing, I didn’t say anything.

I was on the floor while she was taking her turn ironing. She pounced on me and started tickling me.

Alright, alright, I said as we embraced on the living room floor, I said I love you. I don’t know why, it just came out.

That’s okay, cause I love you, too. It was just too cute the way you said it. The look on your face was priceless. She put her head on my chest, and we held each other.

It was good. I was glad I had said it. It’s a scary thing saying I love you. Luckily, I’ve not said it to too many girls. One never knows what the response will be once those three little words are first spoken. There hadn’t been any romance leading up to an awkward should I say it, shouldn’t I say it moment. Something inside me recognized the feeling and turned off every internal censor that I had previously relied upon to keep me from putting my foot in my mouth. At that moment, I loved her, and the only way I could express that was to say it.

That winter, we spent the holidays with her parents back in West Virginia. When we talked with her dad (Ron) and mom (Brenda), Ron cautioned us against moving too quickly.

Make sure you know what you’re feeling before you jump head-long, he had warned.

We headed back to Portsmouth undeterred.

The senior enlisted men who ran the school and taught our classes controlled our duty station assignments upon graduation. The only criteria attached to each billet were rank and gender. They knew that my father had been in the Marines for twenty years and had traveled the world. They also knew of my desire to travel. When they passed out our assignments, I received the billet for a sub-tender based in Naples, Italy.

This was my chance. Growing up, I had lived in Ohio, Virginia, and North Carolina. This was my opportunity to see Europe.

Tina had received a billet to Jacksonville, Florida, along with another male classmate of my rank. She immediately wanted me to swap billets with my classmate, so that I could go to Florida with her. I told her that I knew what would happen if I went to Florida. One learns quickly as an enlisted member of the Armed Services that an education is invaluable. Unless I wanted to spend the remaining years of my life doing what others told me, I knew that I needed to get an education. Completing a college education would take many years and all of my focus.

If we go together, we’ll end up married, and then we’ll have kids. I’ll never go to school, and we’ll be stuck like that forever. We’ll both be miserable, I told her.

No! she replied, You’ll go to school. I would never want to be the reason you didn’t. We’ll be fine, I promise. You’ll go to school!

What else could I do? I knew she was someone special. I had to go to Florida. Naples would always be there; Tina might not. If she was willing to do it together, whatever it was, then I had to take a shot with her. I had to go; I wanted to go.

We arrived in Jacksonville in the spring of 1984. After a couple of days of settling in, we reported to the base for duty. We had our meetings with personnel and, just as my arrival in Portsmouth had been met with a barracks issue, this arrival found trouble in the form of obtaining living quarters.

We had assumed that both of us could live off base --- bad assumption. Although the male barracks were at the required capacity that would allow new arrivals to acquire extra pay to live off base, the female barracks were under the required limit. In the Navy, the pay scale assumes that a sailor will be living and eating on base. If a sailor lives off base, the Navy increases that sailor’s pay to reflect the expected living expenses. Since the female barracks were under capacity, Tina’s pay would not include this benefit.

We could hardly afford an apartment, and the additional expenses that would accompany having our own place, with only my enhanced pay. The expectation was that the female barracks might take up to six months to reach full capacity. We wouldn’t be able to make it that long. There were limited options available to us. We took the only one that would fix the problem.

The married housing on base was full. If we were married, we’d both receive married living pay! That seemed like an easy solution. We loved each other. We had occasionally talked about getting married. This may not have been the best reason, but in our minds, it seemed to be the best choice.

We went to K-Mart and found wedding rings. Hell, we couldn’t afford real rings, and we figured that when we could afford them, we’d get nice ones. Anyway, a wedding ring is only a symbol. They didn’t need to be expensive or gaudy to symbolize our marriage. Besides, expedience, not romance, prompted this shopping trip. I found a justice-of-the-peace in the yellow pages, and we set the date. We didn’t tell anyone in our families. How could we explain our situation? It was all somewhat silly. The reason was silly, the rings were silly, and the ceremony was surely going to be silly! No reason to upset a couple of mothers and a bunch of siblings by announcing a ceremony that none of them would be able to attend.

On April 6, 1984, with Tina dressed in purple slacks and a purple sweater and me in Jordache jeans and a maroon pull over shirt, we headed to the address the JOP had given me over the telephone.

When we arrived at the tailor shop, I double-checked the address that I’d written down and confirmed that we were at the right place. Yep, we were married in a tailor shop by a tailor/justice-of-the-peace. Does a ring or a ceremony make a marriage? I know we didn’t get married for the right reasons, and I know we were beginning our marriage on shaky ground, but the pomp and circumstance of the ceremony had nothing to do with the foundation blocks that were there at the beginning. The pageantry of a wedding does nothing to cement that foundation. We were friends and we loved each other. We didn’t know if this was going to last, but we knew we both wanted to try. We had built our relationship around fun, not romance. Anyway, I don’t think either of us would have felt comfortable in a church with everyone watching.

The tailor tried to talk us out of getting married. He said he would only perform the ceremony if we promised not to have kids right away. We told him that our near future didn’t include any plans for children. We were at the beginning of our lives with many goals to achieve. No way were kids on the radar. Satisfied with our answer, he signed the marriage license, took us into a fitting room and said the magic words. Bam! We were married.

It was somewhat weird adjusting to life without all of our friends around. I remember being in my bunk when I first joined the Navy rubbing my shaved head and thinking What have I gotten myself into? In Portsmouth, we had always been among friends. We ate with them, drank with them, awoke and prepared for the day with them. Now we did all of those things on our own. The feelings I experienced in the first few months in Florida were very familiar. I found myself once again wondering what I had gotten myself into.

We struggled at times, but mostly we did just fine. We leaned on each other in our adjustment to our new duty station, and that certainly helped strengthen our reliance upon one another. It seemed that both of us had decided that this was what we wanted. We seemed to fill the needs that the other seemed to want filled. We were only twenty. I don’t think we could have recognized each other’s needs if we had written them down and posted them all over our apartment! But for what we had each expected, everything appeared to be working out just fine.

Inmate 0001363748: The Holding Cell

Open holding one! the guard yelled.

The thick iron door slid open with a loud clang. Once inside, the same slide and clang announced my imprisonment. The cell was about fifteen feet by fifteen feet. To the immediate right of the cell door was a stainless steel toilet and sink. A concrete bench ran along the wall opposite the cell door and continued along the right-hand wall. The well-lit cell held four occupants when I entered.

Two of these men had been on the transport van with me. The tall white guy appeared to be in his mid-thirties and looked as if he could have been a loan officer at the local bank. He had been the most talkative passenger in the van and