Hard Time

Neicy

I didn’t know it then – it’s hard to see when you are in the eye of the tornado, but now I know it’s the God’s honest truth; I married Bobby C. because he couldn’t touch me. We had what you’d call an intellectual relationship. The State of Michigan Department of Corrections didn’t allow us to have anything more. To insure my safety and his incarceration, we were separated by one-and-three-quarter inches of bullet-proof glass during our twice-a-week visits.

For almost a year, I drove the 104 miles each way to the Michigan Maximum Security Prison. “Neicy loves Bobby C.,” was written on twenty-seven gas station bathroom walls between Ortonville and Ionia. I used a red permanent marker, each time with a heart dotting the “i” and the first letters of our names bigger, like the “O” in “Once upon a time.” On one of my early visits I forgot my marker, so I dug in my purse and found a faded pink lipstick and left my work on the bathroom mirror. These bathroom proclamations were as much a self-affirmation as they were announcing our love to anyone who stopped for gas and to use the ladies room on both the eastbound and westbound trips between Ortonville and Ionia. On June 10, 1978 the visit was different. I, Denise Louise Dotson, was going to the Michigan Maximum Security Prison to marry Bobby C. and become Mrs. 104181.

 

I had fallen head-over-heels for Bobby C. seven years earlier when I was fifteen. Not the kind of love I could do anything about because I had a boyfriend at the time and Bobby C. was an older man, all of eighteen. I met him at one of the Sunday afternoon free concerts in Gallup Park. It was the first concert of the summer and I knew the band opening for the MC5. This was not the kind of meeting where our eyes met across a crowded room and we ran to each other

Running deep to catch a Frisbee, Bobby C. knocked me to the ground. I felt the air whoosh out of my lungs as the contents of my purse spilled to the ground. Still on the ground he apologized for the collision. I began putting things back in my purse and then he helped me to my feet.

“I am so sorry. I didn’t see you went I started running back to catch the Frisbee. Are you alright?” he asked.

“I am fine. A little winded, but fine.” As I stood up, I noticed his eyes were the color of his bleached denim. He was gangly and a little bow-legged, with the new muscles of youth riding taut along his back and legs. With his freckle-ticked shoulders and long wavy brown hair, he reminded me of the Jesus centerfold in the picture Bible I got on my confirmation. Wearing grungy bell-bottoms, a loose-fitting white tank top and with an army jacket at his side, he walked beside me toward the stage.

“Hey. You like the music?” I asked.

“Yeah, I know the drummer in Rusted Chassis.”

“Terry? You know Terry Barnett? Oh, my God. I’ve known him forever.” My definition of forever was anything over a year. I met Terry when his band played a school dance last year and some of us ‘hung out’ with the band after the dance.

“I used to play in a band with him. We were the Knight Beats, before our bass player’s wife made him quit. Now I play with the Last Stand.”

“What do you play?” I asked.

“Mostly lead and vocals, but I do alright on bass.”

As we talked about the music and musicians, we realized that we had many friends in common. I knew some of the garage band groupies for the bands he played with. He was good friends with my boyfriend’s best friend and hung out at his house. That was where most of the gang hung out on weekends.

 

Bobby C. had the misfortune of being born on the wrong side of the tracks. It wasn’t like he was one of those kids who’d been in juvie before. He shopped at Harry’s Army Surplus on Liberty Street – Levi’s and an army jacket - that was Bobby C. His family tree had branches that crossed in more than one place. He told me once that his mother’s youngest sister, Ida married Earl Root. He worked at the shoe store in town and didn’t have a pointer finger on his left hand. I always hated going for new shoes when I was little because I thought if he helped me try on shoes and touched my feet that my toes would fall off. Earl and Ida had two kids before they got divorced and Earl married Billy C’s mother’s oldest sister, Bonita. They had two kids and then Earl stopped working at the shoe store and a few months later this lady started working there and she was missing the pointer finger on her left hand, too. Well, Earl had a sex-change operation and those poor kids, all four of them, now had a father/uncle and a mother/aunt. He still lives with Bonita and they are still married, but anyone who meets them now thinks they are sisters-in-law. Bobby C.’s stories about his family have a way of putting my family problems in perspective.

We started to run into each other at friends’ houses, parties and concerts, and we always made it a point to talk to each other. When I had trouble with my boyfriend, I could talk to him about it and he confided to me the problems he had with his family. Bobby C. was so easy to talk to, never judging or offering advice. He just listened. We saw more and more of each other as our groups of friends merged. His best friend, Dwayne, lived next door to my boy friend, Jesse.

He had a penchant for weed, Pabst Blue Ribbon and unfiltered Camels. He liked Rock-a-Billy music and women whose morals were looser than their clothing. Other than those few vices, Bobby C. had almost always been a stellar young man.

There had been the little unpleasant incident with the robbery and the acid and shooting Eddy eight times before throwing his bleeding carcass in the freezer at the Seven Eleven. “Armed Robbery” and “Assault with Intent to Kill” are the two charges that got Bobby C. a seventeen to thirty-three years residency in the Michigan Maximum Security Prison. It really was as much Eddy’s fault as it was Bobby C.s’. But the judge didn’t see it that way.

Bobby C.

Eddy Stoker had been bugging me and Dwayne to earn us all some extra money by pretending to rob the Stop’n’Go where he worked. He had been a cashier there almost six months and had done this before. He had a friend who would come in and pretend to rob him. Then Eddy and the friend would meet after work and split the money. It never amounted to more than a couple hundred dollars, but he had done it four or five times before his boss finally installed a surveillance camera. He told Eddy that if it happened again, the robber better be armed and dangerous or else Eddy’s tenure at the convenience store would be over. Eddy didn’t see this as a problem. He would supply a gun for his buddy and they could probably get away with it another time or two at least. When his buddy backed out because of being a conscientious objector and not wanting to be seen in public with a gun, he asked me and Dwayne if we were interested in earning a few extra bucks.

Eddy promised us each a third of the take, a dime bag and the country half of his eight track collection if we’d help him just this once. Dwayne and I talked it over and figured we could pull this off. Eddy gave us each a gun to make it look real to the camera and some windowpane acid to add to the fun and give us the courage we needed. I had taken windowpane once before when I went to see Fantasia at the State Theater.

We took a quarter hit of the acid about 8:00 and waited. When nothing happened after a half hour we took another quarter hit. When it got to be 9:00 and we still felt like the acid wasn’t working, we took the other half hit and headed off in the car. My 1960 Impala was cherry. It was a comfort car. The Barcalounger-sized seats fit Dwayne’s six-foot-five, three hundred pound frame. The Beatles song “Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey” came on the radio and we sang along.

“We’re so sorry Uncle Albert. We’re so sorry if we caused you any pain.”

We arrived at the Stop’n’Go about 9:15. Eddy had assured us this would be a good time since the managers were usually gone for the night by then. The parking lot had two other cars besides ours. One was Eddy’s and the other belonged to a customer. We waited until he left and got out of the Impala.

“You forgot the gun,” Dwayne said.

“Oh, yeah. Hand it here.”

“Ok, let’s make this quick and get out of here. I am not feeling so good about this.”

“It will be alright. We’ll walk in and go around to the coolers and get a six-pack. Then we’ll walk up to the counter and do it just like in the movies.” I was trying to convince myself as well as reassuring Dwayne. That is when the acid kicked in.

We walked in the door and there were these two kids, probably ten or eleven years old, at the candy counter. We hadn’t counted on anyone being there considering that the parking lot was empty and had made no attempt to hide the guns. We wandered around, keeping the guns low until the kids left. We walked up to the counter with our guns drawn.

‘This is a hold-up. You know what that means. We want all the money in the drawer. NOW fat boy!” Dwayne always had a dramatic side.

“Hey, my manager will be back in a few minutes. You have to get out of here. Put those fucking things away!” My acid-laden brain couldn’t process much at this point, but I could tell that Eddy was stressed. He was waving his arms in the air telling us to stop. I remember thinking that he was putting on a good show for the newly installed surveillance cameras.

I pulled up my gun and fired. Eddy’s face went flush. The sound was louder than I thought it would be for a gun that wasn’t loaded. I fired seven more times before I realized that Eddie was hurt. Real hurt with real blood – real bullets will do that to a person. Eddy was lying on the floor behind the counter in a large pool of his own blood. Dwayne was standing to the side by the entrance to the freezer with his mouth open and his gun limp at his side.

“Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit! What did you do?” Dwayne asked.

“Oh man. I didn’t know the gun was loaded. Eddy never said he loaded the damn thing. Oh, shit.”

“We gotta hide him and get out of here,” Dwayne said as he grabbed Eddy by the ankles. We put his limp, bloody body in the freezer and left. We didn’t take any money; we just left. Getting in the car, I knew this was big. Nothing makes good acid wear off quicker than a robbery gone awry.

 

Neicy

Bobby C. made several mistakes that night. Arguably, the biggest mistake may have been throwing Eddy into the freezer. Eddy’s blood coagulated, keeping him alive long enough to press charges against Bobby C. and Dwayne. The judge didn’t seem to care that Eddy gave them the acid or the loaded guns. That part wasn’t on the video recording from the surveillance camera. The shooting by the two armed and dangerous criminals was captured in high-resolution black and white. Eddy spent a few months recovering from the superficial gunshot wounds while Bobby C. and Dwayne were hauled off for a longer stay across the state.

My parents let me attend the last day of the trial for my friends. They thought this was a kind of “scared straight” technique. If I saw what could happen, maybe I would stay on a straight path. Bobby C.’s whole family was there. His mother Roberta and his dad Charlie were near the front. In the row behind them sat Ida, Bonita and Earl with their spring bonnets sitting on top of their helmet-headed hairdos and dabbing their eyes with little lace hankies.

Dwayne was considered an accomplice, so his sentence was much shorter than the seventeen to thirty-three years the judge awarded Bobby C. Since the State of Michigan has a good-time law, he could be out in nine or ten years if he behaved. That was seven years ago.

  

Tammy Jo

 

Neicy and I have been best friends since the second grade. We are so close people think we are sisters. We even look a little like sisters. I was the wild one in high school. Now, swear to God, I think Neicy is trying to make up for lost time. I told her I would be her matron of honor, but not because I thought she was doing the right thing, only because she is my best friend in the world and that is what best friends do for each other.

She hadn’t even seen Bobby C. in six years until last Christmas when she decided to go visit him. I don’t know whatever possessed her, but to hear her tell it, she woke up on Christmas morning and just knew she needed to go see him. Then, when she told me she was marrying Bobby C., I thought she was kidding.

“Denise Dotson, I swear. Just because you love him doesn’t mean you have to marry him. I mean Jesus H. Christ, what are you thinking?”

“Tammy Jo, he is so smart. He’s gone back to school and thinks he’ll be a psychiatrist by the time he gets out.” With a sentence of seventeen to thirty-three years, he wasn’t going to need to push too hard or fast.

“And besides, he’s so sweet in all his letters and he loves me and you know you’d do the same thing in my shoes. He needs me. He needs someone on the outside to help him, bring him new jeans and cigarettes and stuff. And besides, I can marry him and nothing else changes.” Neicy finally took a breath. She was talking so fast she didn’t realize how absurd that sounded.

“What on earth do you mean?”

“I mean that there won’t be a man around telling me not to go out with the girls, or getting mad if I go shopping, or if I just want to be left alone. I need a man in my life right now. I need someone to listen to me and just be there. I need a man in my life that can’t hurt me, not after last October. I can’t let that happen again.”

“Ok, I’ll be there. You know that I will.” I never claimed to understand Neicy, but I will be by her side always. Swear to God, Neicy’s tits developed before her brain did.

 

Neicy

I carefully placed the small wedding cake on the floor of the back seat right next to my tape player. Hiking up my pantyhose, I got in the car, closed the door and slipped off my high-heals. The radio was blaring “ Sweet Home Alabama.” I tossed the flowers I was holding to Tammy Jo, who sat quietly in the passenger seat.

“Holy shit, Neicy! Don’t you dare throw these things at me! Don’t you even think about throwing these flowers my way,” she said.

“You, Ms. Tammy Jo, are already spoken for. I think I’ll toss them at Grandma Flo. She’s still got a little zip in her.”

“As long as you don’t toss ‘em my way, we’ll be on speaking terms when this whole mess is over.” Tammy Jo arched her brow. The car jumped as I threw it into high gear.

This wedding would not resemble most other weddings. Sure, there would be a bride and groom, maid of honor, and best man, but there would be no organ music, no flower girl and the groom and best man wouldn’t be allowed to attend the reception. When you get married in a maximum security prison, some things are just different.

 

When I told my parents about marrying Bobby C., they took it in stride. They figured this was some “phase” I was going through and were hoping it passed before the actual wedding day. Daddy said this was my way of saving the world, one soul at a time.

Telling Grandma Stella was the worst.

“What will I tell my friends?” she asked.

I had always been the apple of her eye. She had two sons, my father and uncle and her little girl was stillborn. I was always the daughter she never had. For Grandma Stella, the thought of telling her friends at the Eagles Ladies Auxiliary that her granddaughter was marrying a convict was more than she could bear. Stella Louise Robetta Meyer had been elected the Grand Madame President of the Ladies Auxiliary the year before I was born. You’d have thought she had been crowned the Queen of England. I wanted Grandma Stella to know that Bobby C. was a good person who had made a really big mistake, but I knew she would not get past her pride.

“Denise, my dear, we simply don’t do this kind of thing in our family. We have never had a divorce and certainly never a situation like this,” Stella explained.

“Grandma, I love you and don’t want to hurt you for anything, but I love Bobby C. with all my heart. He needs me right now and I want to be there for him.”

Grandma Stella told me she planned to tell all of her friends I was marrying a man in the service. That would solve the problem of the groom being curiously absent. I was furious with her for not accepting Bobby C., but I tried to understand.

The wedding was at ten. Bobby C. and I were at the mercy of the schedule of the Reverend Walter Horton, former Mr. World Body Builder and now the savior of souls at Ionia Maximum Security Prison. His schedule was clear at ten, so ten it was.

Knowing it would take two hours to clear security, we left at 6:00 am. Tammy Jo and I were in my ’67 Chevy Biscayne, followed in the blue bomber van by my mother and father, both of my brothers and both of my grandmothers.

”How long ‘til we get there?” Tammy Jo asked.

“When we get to the next rest stop, it’s about another forty miles.”

“Can we stop? I gotta go,” Tammy Jo said as she tugged at her too-short skirt.

I pulled over and the van followed. All of the women walked quickly to the bathroom, all except Grandma Flo. Her Parkinson’s disease made her feet stick to the ground. She’d look at her feet willing them to move, but they didn’t always cooperate. At four foot eight, it didn’t take much to give her a little push to get her going. Along with the feet sticking, she frequently hallucinated from the medication she took. When she was good, she was sharp as a tack. But when she was bad she was horrid.

“Come on, move it, Grandma,” I gently nudged her toward the building. After I helped her into a stall, I went straight for the mirror and made a few brushes at my eyebrows with my fingertips and adjusted the golden heart hanging around my neck. I dug in my little beige purse and brought out an atomizer and sprayed a little Cachet behind each ear and between my breasts.

Grandma Flo came out of the stall with two yards of soaking wet peach polyester dragging on the floor behind her. She had a sheepish grin on her face and a twinkle in her eye.

“Grandma, what happened?”

“My dress got sorta wet, I guess.”

Tammy Jo and I started to help her off with the dress so they could dry it with the hand dryers when we realized she had nothing on underneath her dress.

“Where are your underpants?” I asked.

“I guess I kinda forgot ‘em.” She grinned again. We blotted the dress dry the best we could and returned to the car. Climbing into the back of the van, Grandma Flo took her seat next to Grandma Stella, who couldn’t scoot over far enough to get away from the wet polyester.

Forty minutes later the guard towers could be seen from a distance. The sign on the side of the road ordered passersby to not pick up hitchhikers. The sun reflecting off of the razor wire rolled at the top of the electric fence glared as we approached the entrance. We parked the cars and silently walked towards the entrance. I took the cake while Tammy Jo carried the flowers and tape player. The visitor’s entrance was a familiar sight to me. I thought about how this must look to my family. I looked past the yellow brick walls, the sad gray vinyl tiles, glossy with yellowy layers of wax and spotted Louie, the security guard, standing at the first of three steel gates when it hit me - he was going to frisk my grandmothers. The thought of the broad-shouldered, sweaty security guard putting his hands all over Grandma Stella, Grandma Flo and my mother made me queasy. Louie was one of the nicer guards, but he had poor hygiene and his mouth had more brown and black pits than pearly white teeth. I found myself wishing I hadn’t dried Grandma Flo’s dress off quite so thoroughly.

I went first to let them see how it is done and to put everyone at ease.

“Hi Louie.” I said.

“Hi there, little lady. Is today the big day?” he asked.

“Yes. I have my paperwork for the cake, flowers and tape player.” I handed him the forms that were filled out months ago. Getting permission to bring anything into the prison took all but a signature from the Governor.

“I don’t see anything there about the flowers,” he said. I prayed for him to not be an ass and just let me take the flowers.

“I know it was submitted. Can you please just check them real good and let me take them in? I need my flowers to get married.” Christ, I was starting to whine. I knew that would get me nowhere. He set the flowers to the side and waved everyone else over.

My brothers jumped up to the front. At fourteen and ten years old, they thought getting frisked was nothing short of cool. Tammy Jo and my mother and father took it in stride. Then it was Grandma Flo’s turn.

“Hey there big boy.” Grandma Flo said with a flirty voice and a stinky dress. I couldn’t believe she was flirting with him. Maybe it was because of his own odiferous self, but he didn’t seem to notice that she came with her own aroma.

“Ok, little bit, you’re done.”

Now it was Grandma Stella’s turn. She stood there with her lips pursed tightly together. Grandma always did this when she knew she should keep her mouth shut but also knew that it might not be possible to not say anything. She was indignant, but thankfully, quiet. I was very proud of her and told her so as she stepped through the gate after being frisked.

“Grandma, I know that was hard and I want you to know how much it means to me that you are here.” I said.

“I just hope you know what you are doing.” Grandma replied.

We all survived the frisking to be told the ladies could not bring their pocketbooks into the prison. Tammy Jo and I had left ours in the car. My mother and grandmothers each removed a handkerchief and handed their pocketbooks to Louie. He chucked all three into a metal locker and handed my mother the key.

It was 10:15 when we all cleared security. Louie decided since the flowers were not on the list he had to keep them at the gate. He did say I could take them with me when I left. I was not going to let a little razor wire ruin my day so I didn’t worry about the flowers and focused on what was really important. The guards in the visiting room told me that the prisoner count was low that morning, so there was a temporary lockdown until all of the inmates had been located.

We went out in the yard, where the ceremony would be held, to wait. Bobby C.’s family was already there. I had not met his mother, father and sisters, but I figured out who was who and made the introductions.

The imposing stone walls provided cool shade for our wait. There was one small section of fence with loop upon loop of razor wire to restrain the residents should they try to leave prematurely. Most weddings are watched over by stained glass windows of angels and saints. There were large stone arches framing the windows, but the steel bars seemingly replaced the stained glass. When I looked up and to the far right, there was a guard in a tower with a gun - a very big gun. I knew he would make sure everything went off as planned.

Ten o’clock came and went, ten-thirty, eleven, still no groom. If he stood me up at this altar of the damned, I was really going to be pissed. Finally at eleven-thirty the door to the courtyard opened and in walked Bobby C., his best man and rap partner, Dwayne, and the Reverend Walter Horton. Apparently they had found the missing souls.

Bobby C. was wearing a thin white cotton shirt with crisp new blue jeans. He had gotten a new tattoo and it was visible through the sheer fabric. Tattoo parlors in prisons are makeshift at best. Sanitation regulations that apply outside the stone walls are generally ignored and if a guard approaches, the equipment gets quickly shoved under a bed. When Bobby C. got his tattoo proclaiming his everlasting love for me, the dyslexic tattoo artist left off the final “e” and put a rather long tail on the D. It appeared to read “I Love Penis.” Bobby hadn’t taken the time to get it fixed and I was furious. Grandma Flo, however, found this quite funny. All through the ceremony she was doing a little sing-song about the “gay boys.”

Standing before the Reverend Horton, I suddenly wasn’t sure what I was agreeing to. There was no “honor and obey.” And “til death do us part,” suddenly seemed like a very long time.

I looked across the yard and caught someone staring at me, piercing a hole through me. I had seen that face before. He was short and stout with little hands and ears that stuck out from his head like wings. He stood up and hoisted his pants back onto his waist and in that one motion I knew who he was. Two years earlier this man had raped me. He was the reason my life fell apart. After it happened, I told my boyfriend and he said I must have wanted it. He said is so many times I started to believe it. I began to think I was a dirty person for letting this happen. It took months of therapy before I could walk out of the house and I still can’t let anyone touch me. The physical scars healed a few months after I got out of the hospital, but the emotional scars were still fresh. I couldn’t let anyone see my fear, especially Bobby C. He could never know he was in the same place as my attacker.

The ceremony was a blur. I was glad I had worn water-proof mascara. It lengthened and thickened and hid the fact that I was falling apart.

Everyone left shortly after the ceremony. At the front gate, 600 pounds of steel slammed shut between us. We all went home while Bobby C. and Dwayne returned to their cells.

Tammy Jo and I were quiet for most of the ride home. Passing the sea of billboards, I read “You’ve come a long way, baby.” The sepia-toned image at the top showed a woman hanging laundry. In the forefront of the billboard, in full color, a willowy brunette in a periwinkle gown held a cigarette between her slender manicured nails. I wondered what life would be like now that I had married Bobby C. Just how far had I come?

Twice on the ride home I lit the wrong end of my Virginia Slim and tried to laugh it off. Tammy Jo reached over, took the burning filter out of my mouth and tossed it out the window.