Start at the beginning → Superpower

Right before I started my long drive, I flew to Seattle to pick up the car that now sits somewhere in impound. Seized. On my way back, I made a side trip to Port Townsend to visit with old friends. Me, 8 years older now. Still running.

I stayed with friends who lived above the graveyard and told them about how I savored a chance to visit the madrone.

Matteo furrowed his Sicilian brows in concern.

My friend, I must warn you that that tree might not be there anymore. They hired an arborist to cut down a diseased tree and he ended up taking the wrong one down. If we are thinking about the same tree, you may be disappointed.

I follow the downward slope of the hill - careful to walk in between the graves and come to a missing shadow. Only a gaping stump remains where this majestic madrone used to sit.

And I beneath it.

A coppice of thin branches has begun to grow from the sides of the stump. New life.

I circle the stump - wanting to to stand on it with my arms and fingers extended skyward to draw down the heavens but the new growth is too thick.

So I settle for a deep bow, find a coin in my pocket, make a wish and toss it onto the open scar. Watching it as it spins and then settles amongst a century of rings. Then I turn and follow the hill downward - still oblivious to the protection that I’m leaving.

The pay phones are busy today.

Inmates line up and when your turn comes, you put the receiver to your ear, huddle against the wall for privacy and begin following the series of prompts to connect you with the outside world.

Five dollars a minute.

A barrier disguised as a fee.

I have been dreading this day.

I work my way through the prompts and wait for my mother to pick up.

Her voice, on speakerphone, booming absurdly loud in her retirement community apartment. The pluush cream carpet and overstuffed chairs do nothing to absorb the sound.

Hello? Chris?!? What happened? What were you doing?

Ma. We can’t talk about the case.. This call is probably being recorded.

She pauses. Then redirects.

Chris. We were so worried about you.

I know. I’m sorry.

We are so glad that you are okay. Are you safe?

Yeah, it’s not so bad here.

Are you sure that you are eating enough.

The food is terrible but I can manage it.

Okay, do your best. Try not to worry too much. Your brothers are working hard to take care of things.

Yeah, I know. Me too. We’ll figure things out. Don’t worry.

Ni zi gi hao hao Bao zhong - Take good care of yourself.

Yeah, I will. Oh and happy Mother’s Day.

Unh.

Everything is going to be okay.

Brushing away a tear, I compose myself and turn back into the pod.

Everything is NOT okay.

We have a Spades game going when Tail drags himself back from court.

Eyes wide.

Face unbuttoned.

We lay down our hands.

The judge shot down the deal that we made with the DA because of my “fugitive” status. Instead of giving me quarter-time and letting my ass out on time-served, I got five years for something I did ten years ago. Fuuuck. My dogs are probably gonna be dead beforeI get outta here.

He slumps back to our cell.

Through the cell door, I see him prop himself over that narrow window frame - watching the branches shift in breeze on the street below.

As the news leaks in through the television, the pod fizzes and pops with excitement.

Secret location.

Seal Team Six.

Confirmed kill.

Osama Bin Laden is dead.

Crowds flood Times Square. Sporting events erupt with spontaneous cheers of “USA! USA! USA!” A chill of patriotism runs across my skin. I turn my head down to hide my smile but as I do I can see the rest of the room is smiling too.

Most of the room.

Tail stands stone-faced, arms folded as he glares up at the screen.

USA?

USA?

FUCK the USA!

Bin Laden is just another brown person for those USA fuckers to kill.

You ever hear of ‘sovereign nation’ ? Look it up, Wang! I ain’t from the USA.

I wait for him to break. A smile. A wink. Something.

Instead, he pushes his chair back with a scrape and calls out for the C.O. to unlock our door. Tail enters the cell and pushes the door closed with a “click”.

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Next Installment in Two Weeks.

Start at the beginning → Superpower

Cackling laughter reverberates off the concrete walls. My hackles raise. A new batch of prisoners arrived today. The laugher, a white man with slicked back black hair, angles towards the control desk with a pimp limp so pronounced that it looks like his left leg is a full 12 inches shorter than his right. He uses three hops on his right leg to swing the left one over. He wears a long white sleeve shirt, odd because it’s not part of the standard clothing that we’ve been issued and beneath this these sleeves are other ones. Black and blue scrawlings of ink that creep down his arms, up his neck and around his ears. Scary clowns, skulls with eyeballs that bulge, smoking pistols. His laugh sounds like a Gatling gun. So loud that it feels like a taunt. A dare to the guards or other inmates, anyone, to quiet him.

His laugh an act of defiance.

I watch the guards defer to Navarro like the kids in high school who acquiesced to the bad kids ones an effort to fit in. It’s hard to imagination who would choose to work here? Guys that tried to become cops but failed? People desperately in need of work. The guards will spend more time in jail than most of the inmates.

Navarro has a side kick. Dark head shaved peach-fuzz short, olive skin, chunky black glasses. Latino or Lakota, hard to tell. He spends hours doing boot camp style exercises on the concrete in the yard. A single tattoo tear drops from his eye. Small but shouting. While Navarro distracts by rattling like a shaken can of spray paint, his sidekick looks like the one who will slip in and slit your throat.

Tail keeps a wary lookout from inside our cell.

I don’t mess with those Mafia guys.

The vibe shift has me on edge too. I scour for unspoken meanings and underlying codes. Scars with stories. Chipped teeth that chatter. Tattoos that tattle.

These inmates move different. They use wet toilet paper to wrap to pencils end for end and make them longer. Their plastic cups are personalized with scratches and excess edges of stamps. They pore over the Rapid City classifieds and talk about motorcycles.

They call it doing your own time.

I absentmindedly left my plastic cup out in the pod before the last lockdown. It’s a point of rank to have a plastic one rather than be stuck with a styrofoam one. From within our cell I can see it sitting at a table next to a errant newspaper. When the doors click open at the end of the lockdown, I beeline it to the table to scoop it and dip back into our cell.

A pair of hands reaches out and both pulls me in and slams me hard against the wall.

Tail.

He’s livid. In my face. Growling.

Boy, are you crazy?!?

Did you see that dude that was eyeing the paper? He’s in for capital M.

Never walk up behind someone all fast like dat.

That’s how you get fucked up.

The Royal Wedding fills every channel today as Kate Middleton marries the future King of England. William.

The inmates stare up at the TV screen with captive interest. The pageantry. The adulation. The amount of money poured into this one event would significantly change the lives of every Native American in South Dakota. Pine Ridge Reservation hosts the lowest life expectancy in the Western Hemisphere outside Haiti. 48 years for men. 52 for women.

I taste the irony - thick and sticky. American colonists fleeing the English monarchy, came to the New World and set in motion a chain of events that decimated the people already here. And here we are, in jail, cheering on the oppressor of their oppressors.

But, alas, everybody is running from something.

That’s how we justify trampling those that stand in the way of our retreat.

Even though I now have money on my commissary and money to make call, the only calls I make go to Bruce’s office. As quickly as my brother’s appeared on screen, they have disappeared. Returned to their busy lives on either edge of the United States. Their work now will be much but behind the scenes. They spread a wide net when they were searching for me. Anyone that needs to know what happened to me will have found out by now.

Besides, anything sensitive should not be uttered over a jailhouse phone. As Bruce reminds me:

Just because you are paranoid, doesn’t mean that they aren’t watching you.

Thursday night is movie night in Pennington County Jail. If one were to start searching prisoners as they went back into their cells, one would start finding an inordinate amount of buttery socks as movie night approaches - the little Dixie cups that they come in ingeniously pulled apart and folded into little pouches - because along with movie night comes popcorn!

First, though, we must clean and scrub the pod for inspection.

Every institution of men has something similar. On the tall ship, it was Field Day, my fraternity called it House Clean Up. At home, my dad would say a simple, “Go pick up fuzz,” and the four of us would sprawl across the shag carpet like chickens pecking for grubs.

In jail, with a pretty simple carrot of movie night held out, the inmates rush to sweep and mop before the Unit Commander comes through for a white glove inspection.

For the cleaning, the stronger solvents come out. Like trays, like silverware, like anything non-consumable that enters the pod, they need to be accounted for. What comes in must go out.

Today, the trustee discovers a little plastic nozzle from a spray bottle missing. The C.O. warns that, if not found, lockdown replaces movie night. Anything unaccounted for risks being weaponized. Spray nozzles. Pencils. Thoughts….

The pod scrambles. Trash cans overturned and sifted: warm half-drunk milks, fruit cocktail sludge, chicken cacciatore… At last the nozzle turns up - snuggled in like a grape.

Tail can barely contain his fury.

Fucking Paint Huffer snitch! He best remember who’s side he’s on! I’d kick his teeth in if he had any left.

With movie night salvaged, after dinner the chairs are pulled close under the high-mounted tv. Even though the pod conversations have shifted from probation holds to five year minimums or simple assault to attempted M, once assembled and waiting it’s all pinches and fidgeting. Wet willies. Outbreaks of laughter. A loud fart and a shock wave of chairs disperses from the guilty epicenter - pink t-shirts pulled up over noses and mouths.

Puppies.

Tonight’s movie is Street Kings II. A plotless gem with Ray Liotta whining and shuffling through a cadre of dirty cops, crime and betrayal. What the curatorial genius picked this out to show a bunch of inmates?

Despite the onscreen atrocity, the room is mesmerized. Eyes tilted upwards. Mouths agape.

I try to gauge on who everyone’s rooting for. The good guys? The bad guys?

We are the bad guys. Right?

Mercifully, Street Kings II is short. Last week’s feature ran long and clicked off mid scene as lockdown began. With nary a complaint, the inmates averted their gazes, pushed their chairs back to their places and returned to their cells.

Good dogs.

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Next Installment in Two Weeks.

Start at the beginning → Superpower

In my senior year of high school, I borrowed a book from my brother, Ben’s, shelf. Valedictorian of his high school class and in his second year as a natural science major at Yale, I could always trust to find something good on his shelf.

It was Peter Matthiessen’s The Snow Leopard. In it, Matthiessen joins his friend, the biologist George Schaler, on a quest through the Tibetan Himalayas to track the rarely witnessed Snow Leopard. For the Matthiessen, reeling from the death of his wife by cancer and somewhat new to Zen meditation which was more his wife’s practice, has been given a koan by her Zen Roshi which he ponders all through the trek. As much inner exploration, as trek into the wilderness, The Snow Leopard whet my appetite for Matthiessen’s Zen exploration leading me to his deepening practice in 9 Headed River Dragon and then the foundational Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind by DT Suzuki. I always felt that there was no mistake that Eastern Philosophy landed in the US at the same time that the first psychedelic revolution launched. Meditation… psychedelics - they are both sides doors into Universal Consciousness.

Brother Brian also had a mustard-colored, soft-covered edition of In the Spirit of Crazy Horse — Matthiessen’s 600-page exposition — on his shelf, which I plucked and read. Admittedly, it didn’t capture my interests as much as a trek into the Himalayas and even deeper into the heart of a man’s search for meaning. I remember I skimmed the drier sections of courtroom transcripts but caught the larger themes.

In the late ’60s and early ’70s the United States was fighting a war of ideas within its own borders. The Civil Rights Movement, the Women’s Rights Movement, the Vietnam War protests, and the American Indian Movement all pressed against the state. The FBI’s sharpened stick was its Counterintelligence Program, COINTELPRO, designed to infiltrate, discredit, and destroy these movements.

On Pine Ridge Reservation, this national struggle played out locally. A battle raged between Dick Wilson — tribal chairman aligned with federal authorities — and his GOON, Guardians of the Oglala Nation, squad, and the traditional Lakota elders and spiritual leaders defending identity as a sovereign nation. The period became known as the “Reign of Terror”: intimidation, beatings, even killings of those who resisted Wilson’s rule. As many as 60 AIM leaders and Lakota traditionalists were killed or disappeared during that time. AIM came in at the invitation of elders to stand with the people, to offer both protection and solidarity.

It was within this crucible — between assimilationist leadership, federal repression, and grassroots resistance — that the Wounded Knee shootout of 1975 erupted. Two FBI agents and one Native man were killed in the crossfire. Dozens were charged; most acquitted. Before Peltier was tried, two others were tried and exonerated for the same crime. Afterwards, Leonard Peltier was singled out, extradited on coerced testimony, his trial was moved to a less sympathetic part of North Dakota and he was convicted on evidence later shown to be falsified. His continued imprisonment is less about the deaths at Oglala than about the government’s determination to make an example of AIM and to punish Native resistance itself.

Amnesty, Tutu, Mandela — have all recognize him as a political prisoner. and still, nearly 40 years later, he is still in a cell. Coleman Federal Correctional Complex, Florida. One thousand eight hundred miles from my cell near Pine Ridge.

Tail snaps back when I ask him about it.

You think that’s ancient history, Wang? Well, I got news for you, Mr. Passing Through.. We’re still here. Been here long before all those fuckers showed and we’ll be here long after they pack up their broken treaties and leave. Why? Because we are Lakota. We’re born of this land - carved out of this soil and rock. You can steal the land, slap a new name on it, steal what’s underneath it but you can’t unmake what the land itself made. This place is us. Always has been. Always will be.

This has been a quiet process—writing, releasing, and not always knowing where it lands.

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Click there to go to the next installment —> Field Day

Start at the beginning → Superpower

I used to meditate in a graveyard. Having spent most of the previous decade living aboard sailing ships and fishing boats, I was determined to spend a whole year living on land. I chose Port Townsend, Washington for its maritime and agricultural ties. I wanted to feel the earth under my feet. To hunker down and grow roots. Sailors call it Swallowing the Anchor.

It took me nine months to cough it back up.

I shared a cramped apartment with a couple that often raged a passive silent war against each other. Being out in the open felt somehow safer…clean. In the graveyard, I could sit and be mostly unobserved.

Every morning, I’d wake up before dawn, slip on my coveralls, puffy jacket and clogs and walk the four hundred and thirteen steps to the graveyard. Careful to avoid stepping on the graves, I’d rustle down through a hillside cemetery picking my way past the newer more ornate sites to where the gravestones were simple rectangles. The marble edges softened and rounded by time. The dates and names eroded away. Tabula rasa.

With Mount Baker looming up out of the bay below, the undersides of the marine layer would catch fire long before the sun crested the horizon. Blazing orange. Deep purples. The world would appear like the inside of a furnace blast furnace until the sun got above the clouds and we were back in the Pacific Northwest grey.

An enormous madrone tree stood sentinel over that yard and it was beneath it’s opened arms that I would take my seat. On the grassy spot still matted down from where I had sat the morning before. And the morning before that.

I’d slip out of my clogs and prop my butt up on them as I took a cross legged seat. I’d feel the roots ground deep into the earth below me. The branches above pulling down the sky. I’d slow my breath and begin by counting to one.

One.

One.

One.

A bird lived in that tree. Sometimes it would skitter along a low branch, twitter at me and then fly off.

The fluttering of wings. A chip of bark falls in my lap. Natural decay in real time.

On one morning, I chanced upon a man curled up like a deer on my spot. His prone body surrounded by a layer of frost. I circled around to get a better look. Fetal position, hat pulled down over his eyes and ears and hair sticking out like straw. A pink crack of lower back peeks out from where his jacket pulled up short and untucked his shirt. I observed. Waiting for signs of life and, satisfied, circled back towards home. No sitting today.

20 minutes later, I returned to the spot carrying a small bundle An older pair of long underwear, a patched pair of Carhaarts, a flannel shirt that I still love, the only pair of wool socks I could find without holes and a construction grade garbage bag for a makeshift poncho or sleeping pad. The sleeping man had already left. On the spot of matted grass beneath the giant madrone, I stacked my bundle like a soft sided cairn, took a few steps back and bowed.

A hello?

A good bye?

Are they the same thing?

The next morning, I returned to the spot beneath the madrone tree. No man. No bundle. And so, on the spot of matted grass beneath madrone I, once again, bowed, took my seat, and began by counting to one.

Wang. Wang. Wang.

I hop down from my bunk and peer through the door as the latch releases with a “click”.

Counsel here to meet with you.

I scan the entry of the pod for the public defender and her case file of spilling pages. Instead, I see a tall white woman in a long, cream wool coat with round wooden buttons, leather briefcase in one hand and a slightly embarrassed truncation of a wave in the other.

Rae!?!

It’s my sister-in-law.

She extends her hand in mock formality before pulling me in close.

Hey! In order to get in to see you, I told them that I was your counsel. Sorry -, all you got now is me.

She’s an attorney, though not a criminal one, and she practices in upstate New York.

Brian and David are here. They’re on the schedule to see you tomorrow.

In the privacy of the meeting room, I embrace her like she’s my saving angel. The softness of her coat, the humanity of a hug - I savor the memory as I make it.

Leaning in, I share Lawrence Kline’s warning that our words may be recorded. She nods, already aware.

Once seated she takes me in with wide eyes and stifles a chuckle.

Well?

I give her the PG version of the arrest and life in PCJ dialing back the isolated terror and the hunger.

For her turn, she gives me the PG version of how they came to find me. How, after no one heard from me for a week, my brothers got worried enough to start looking. First locally and, after that turned up nothing, they widened the net.

Cell phone records revealed that my last calls were made from Wyoming and the two brothers that lived in the states planned to meet there and start scouring the highways with one person driving and the other spotting out the window for where my car might have driven off the road. A missing person report filed with my local police eventually turned me up in the corrections system database.

Chris, I know it’s weird but we were so relieved to find you here.

Shit. I’m not relieved to be here.

Yeah, we were worried that you were dead.

Today, I have a visit with my brothers, Brian and David . For the visit, I do not leave the pod. Instead, I sit in front of a fish eyed monitor behind one of the closed doors in the pod. I can make out their picture stretched, green and distorted at the edges.. We must be in the same building, but they might as well be mission control and me an astronaut marooned on the moon.

As we lean in to try to make each other out, I pull my leg up high so they can see the orange crocs and pink socks and get the full effect of my wide striped clown suit.

David , the youngest, cracks a smile.

But then it’s straight down to business.

They say we have exactly 12 minutes and the timer has started.

We cover the logistics of vetting a lawyer. They’ve already spoken to several and have come to the same conclusions that Tail told me when I first came in. The two best criminal lawyers in town are Lawrence Kline and Bruce Ellison. I tell them how Lawrence Kline has been a dead-end for me..

Okay. Then it’s Bruce Ellison. We’ll get a call in and get him on retainer. We’ve put money in your phone account, so you can make calls. There’s also money in your commissary. So, if you need to buy food to eat or for trade or whatever… you can. Do you need anything else?

How about some books?

Done.

So… mom knows you’re okay and that you’re here but doesn’t really know any of the details. How much info do you want us to give her?

Yeah, shit. I’ll call her. I should be the one to handle that piece. It’ll probably take me a few days That’s going to suck.

Hey. You’re alive. It could be worse.

I’m hardly out of the weeds but, after two weeks of near paralysis, to KNOW that there is motion on the other side is a different kind of hope. I can feel sinovial fluids innervating my joints.

Tail agrees.

Why didn’t you say you had a lawyer in your family. Regular organized crime shit. Bro, you sure that you don’t have the Big Boss as a cellie ?

Within the huge sigh of relief maybe there’s a niggle of deflation. I’ve learned to trust my family more that I trust myself. It’s part of our training.

Family first.

Bruce Ellison shows up early the next day. I get a first glance at him through our cell door after they summon me to the control desk. A middle-aged man with a touch of a belly. A silverly braided pony tail drips down his back. He’s got a grey beard as well which is fuller and covers more of his face than the Lakota can grow. It’s clear that Bruce is a known guy, as inmates arc over to shake his hand and say, “Kola”. He receives them graciously and with warmth - a far cry from the contempt most staff reserve for us.

Back in the meeting room, he gets right to it.

So, listen, let’s see about getting your bail reduced and figuring out how to get you out of here.. That will probably take a little less than a week. Your family seems to have things pretty together. Should I work with your brothers to figure out how payments will work? Do you need anything? Do you feel safe? Just keep your head down and lay low and we’ll have you out of here as soon as we can.

From his accent, it’s clear that Bruce is an East Coast. I ask him how a New York guy ends up in the middle of nowhere, South Dakota.

Well, I came out here back in the 70’s as a volunteer with the lawyer, William Kunstler to help defend Leonard Peltier. That project ended up extending over many, many year and there was a lot of need. You know that story?

Yeah, a little bit, I’ve read Peter Matthiessen’s book.

Oh, yeah, that book. I’m working on an account of my own. It’ll be a lot less boring.

Back in our cell, Tail can’t help but express his excitement.

Sheeeet, Waaang - you got old cut ‘em loose, Bruce?!? Man, your people must have some reeeeal clout. You’re in good hands boy! They’re gonna have you out of here in no time! You been hiding all quiet like a ninja in here - but now I see you. You da silent killer. Hiding in plain sight.

This has been a quiet process—writing, releasing, and not always knowing where it lands.

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Click there to go to the next installment —> Sovereign Nation

Start at the beginning → Superpower

Tail has started to object to me working out in the cell during lockdowns. He says it makes the cell “stuffy”. For that reason, I’ve limited body weight exercises to when he’s out in the pod. Simple planks, squat thrusts and hand stands. Working on alignment and tonal strength rather than bulk. Maybe I’ll get brave enough to start exercising out in the yard when the boys aren’t playing basketball. It’ll be a stretch for me, though. I’m loathe to be spotted in “The Yard” with the scrutiny it brings.

In the corner of the pod is a table with a jigsaw puzzle spilled out on it. When I’m not playing cards or sitting and writing on my papers, I work on the puzzle. From this corner, no one can sneak up behind me. As an extra challenge, I won’t let myself reach for a piece until I’m certain it fits. So I sit and stare and spin and fit the shapes around in my head and get lost in making order out of chaos. I find comfort in the certainty that all the pieces belong somewhere. There is a correct answer. A widening contrast to radio silence I’ve had from Lawrence Kline and thus the outside world.

A chair scraping across linoleum breaks my focus. A Lakota twists into the chair. A gappy smile with a chipped tooth and a straggly goatee that provides little cover for his blocky chin. Hollow Horn slides into the seat across from me. His hair has been chopped unevenly so that it stands up at weird angles.

After clicking in a couple of pieces, he breaks the silence.

Waaang, so what is it that you are doing when you are just sitting there during lockdown.

How do you know I’ve been meditating?

I hear things.

I shrug.

I’ve seen that in the movies. I’ve tried that shit on my own but my mind just keeps bouncing all over the place.

Well… it’s a practice. You get used to your mind wandering off and bringing it back. That’s the practice. To be honest, I’ve been spinning way out of control here. I can’t reach anyone on the outside. My friends. My family. I don’t have any idea what’s going on. My mind is the only thing that I have control over and I barely even have that.

Yeah, your deal sounds grim.

I look up puzzled.

He smiles and gestures at the walls.

I go on.

I’m stressing it man. I can’t reach out and let my people know to lay low and I can’t reach any one to bail my ass out of here. I just blew a shitload of money. My car, which I just bought, got seized.

Hollow Horn interrupts me with a wave of his hand.

Things, my friend. These are just things.

We go back to the puzzle. Keep working our sides. After plunking a in another piece, he goes on.

Well, Waang, the good news is is that things are gonna get better. The bad news is is that it’s not going to happen anytime soon.

For the second time, I hear myself laugh.

You know any martial arts?

I want him to believe that I do - that the meditation practice is the tip of the iceberg of a powerful mind and body training.

Some. I studied Aikido for a bunch of years. What about you?

Yeah. I’ve been studying martial arts for a long time now.

What kind?

Chinese boxing. You know, like Bruce Lee. Kung Fu and Judo.

Where did you take classes?

Nah. I’ve been learning from reading books in the library. Books and movies. And then I take what I learn and practice it. Street fighting. You can learn a lot from YouTube.

Yeah, I guess you can.

Bro, I’ve been living on the streets for years. Hustling meth and coke - don’t get me wrong, I don’t use. Strictly business. But this jail shit is for the birds. I want to fight MMA. I’ve been fighting my whole life. Might as well get paid for it.

Hollow Horn pushes his seat back and dips back into the flow of inmates doing laps.

Something that has me completely spun out is that my laptop and passport were amongst the things they impounded and the hard drive contained a archive of all my photos.. Photos taken while I was working as a private chef on yachts and family compounds. Private islands. Mansions. Photos of enormous Kolas taken in Ganja gardens on random homesteads. That paired with my passport, fat with an additional leaf of pages stapled inside of it. Stamps that covered all parts of the globe Jamaica, China, Cuba, Indonesia. Between my passport and the photos, a story could be woven about someone living life well beyond their means. Truth be told, 90% of my travel was around work.

Still, amongst my fellow inmates, I want to appear as big as possible without being a threat. A Big don’t-fuck-with-me Dog. It isn’t something that I’m used to trying other be. I’m more accustomed to being the little screen blip that I want the authorities to register me as. A little Asian man that you would wave off as a nerd - but not too nerdy. There is nothing to see here. I am not the droid that you are looking for.

Another regular at the puzzle table is a Lakota man with shoulder length snow white hair. He lurches as he walks with deadened step, his mouth a ruin of brown and yellow teeth.

I ask Tail about him.

Oh yeah, dat’s da Paint Huffer bro, he pretty much lives in here. They let him out and he comes right back in. He spins a finger. Revolving door.. Here he can get three squares and roof over his head. Safer for him here especially when it gets cold out. He’s got ‘Trustee’ status around here which makes it so he can do the laundry and clean the meeting rooms. But dat boy’s barely got two brain cells left to rub together.

As a puzzler, he has unique style. He will pick a piece up and methodically try every side and every available position going down the line until he’s exhausted all possibilities or it mercifully clicks as it snugs itself into place. When that happens, he’ll glance up to make sure I saw, give me a smelly smile and then pick up another piece to begin the process over again.

I try to offer my fellow puzzler a nod of approval and a close lipped smile but I’m holding my breath while I plot my escape.

My nose has started to bleed. I can’t tell if it’s from the forced ventilation or the general lack of nutrients. I’ve decided to start drinking the packet of powder that comes with each meal instead of handing them to Tail. It’s laced with Aspartame. I’m pretty sure that’s carcinogenic. In the nutrition facts, it lists “Vitamin C - 100%”. Sweetness headache guaranteed.

Given my nosebleeds, I’m willing to adjust. My body needs something. But eating the bright red spork may be a denser caloric intake than the slice of Wonderbread that comes with our meal.

Rather than go for a tissue, I try to snort the iron-tinged clots back and swallow them down. Best to keep my scent out of the water.

Twice a week our laundry is collected by the Paint Huffer and washed in these cheap white non-industrial washers from Sears. Everything gets mixed together. You don’t get your own socks or tightie-pinkies back - just your size.

At PCJ, it is a violation not to wear socks out in the pod.

Whenever I wear socks, I make sure they are turned inside out.

As for the tightie-pinkies, I’ve opted to go commando style and have started to leave my spares out for Tail to find.

I suspect there’s a reason for the constant flushing and snacking. Diabetes.

We never talk about it.

A public defender came to visit me today. Having finally given up hope on Lawrence Kline reaching my people, it felt like my only move. She lacked the polish of Lawrence Kline and her file folder spilled over with cases. She promises nothing but thinks that she can get the bail reduced. When I jot down some cell numbers for her to call to render aid, she frowns and folds a page over it. It doesn’t inspire much confidants. Maybe confidence. Maybe both.

Our pod has been changed from “Classification” to “General Population”. According to Tail, the jail is too full and they need more space for more hardened prisoners. The inmates that they move in now, have the rough hewn looks of more seasoned criminals. Sixth senses firing, I scan the roughly shaved heads, pimp limps and tattoos trying to discern the significance of, well, EVERYTHING.

Tail is similarly agitated.

A fight breaks out in the upper catwalk across from us.

As the guards funnel in to break it up, Tail hovers at the edge of our locked door to get a better look. Smacking his closed fist into his open palm he mutters a warning.

Remember how I told you they were going to move my ass to the Max? Boy, ain’t no pussy footing around here no more. The Max came to us. Welcome to the gladiator pit, Wang! Running Deer asked for a cell change because that white dude’s BO stinks and he yammers too much. Request - DENIED! So what’s Home Boy gotta do but take things into his own hands?. Beat his ass? Now they GOT to move him. Ha. It’s a good thing I like you, Waang. Yup. It’s a good thing. We are stuck here together for a reason.

Click there to go to the next installment —> The Madrone

Start at the beginning → Superpower

I’ve all but given up on hearing back from Lawrence Kline but will give him a few more days before I send out an Inmate Request Form asking for a public defender. My calls to his office reveal nothing more than a deepening sense of abandonment…that familiar, hollow echo of unworthiness.

My first guided meditation came in 8^th grade health class. Our teacher this small, soft spoken man of Italian decent who loved to sing doo-wop. I’m pretty sure my mom sold him a house shortly after she got her real estate license - surprised at the disciplined lifestyle he must be living to be able to pay cash for his house. Health class was already an eye roller because of the sex education part of it so you can bet that the half of class we spent on meditation was met with a fair bit of incredulity. John Perricone also had black belt in karate. Maybe it was the first time anything of Asian culture was being presented in class by anyone other than my mother who would help us bring in Chinese New Year with a won ton folding class. For whatever reason, I took it seriously.

That evening, in the darkened family room with my dad pounding away at his exercises upstairs, I experimented with what we had learned. With focus, I could tune out my surroundings completely. I already had a couple books from the school library out on ESP and telekinesis. Maybe, with focus, I could move the objects on the table. Maybe, with focus, I could disappear. Somewhere in that delicate balance between focus and letting go, I could access something that felt familiar and maybe even safe. In the shadow of all those books, I could just separate from my body and disappear. Then my father would say a curt, “Now.” and, from wherever they were, my brothers would appear and go to their rooms to do “EXERCISE”.

I can’t say when Exercise started but it had been a part of my life since the first house that I can remember living in on Woodberry Dr. I think that my father must have gotten it from compulsory basic training that the displaced Chinese went through in Taiwan. From as far back as I can remember every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, my father would get home from work, strip to his underwear, lay out a sheet at the landing at the top of the steps and do Exercise. Four movements made up the routine. “Push-ups, Sit-ups, Lift-ups and Stand-ups”. The Lift-up a bicep curl where he used his other arm as resistance. The Stand-up a form of a deep knee bend. 400 repetitions of each. The movements accompanied by breathless counting in Chinese.

During Exercise, the brothers would lurk about the house waiting. Doing homework, flipping through the collection of National Geographics and, later, listening to records in the basement. No matter where we were held hostage by the intensity of the shouted count in Chinese and on alert for that spoken, “Now.” after which we would go to our rooms and in the darkened house start doing exercise as well. Over all the years, the exercises never really evolved away from the same four exercises but eventually my father had made up strips of papers with each of the exercises written out in block letters and a square where we would write the number of repetitions which we handed him before joining him in the shower. I don’t know if I could ever do 100 push ups but, on paper, I did.

Somewhere there’s a memory rendered in jittery Super 8. My father holds his best Schwarzenegger pose while my brothers and I clamor over each other like unweaned puppies to hold onto his flexed arms.

We are all giggling - still unafraid to muss up his hair or stretch his white t-shirt into deformity.

This was the era of trips to the V Drive-In.

Superman.

The Return of the Dragon.

Raiders of the Lost Ark.

I so much wanted to see E.T. but never got the chance.

Still haven’t.

Out in the yard, an overweight Lakota boy plays three on three basketball. His extra large waist doesn’t match his extra short legs. So he has to roll up his pants to make them fit. Running across the court to on defense, his pants suddenly come unfurled sending him spilling across the concrete. He curses and then stumbles onto a solution. He pulls his pink socks high and tucks his pants into them. So proud now, he smiles and looks around for an audience. A wide-striped harlequin with his pant legs now blousing out over his socks. A court jester!

He catches me watching, makes a goofy face and then takes a bow.

Let in on the joke, a guffaw escapes from my chest. The foreignness of my laughter takes me by surprise. For half a second, I let it run unbridled and then catch myself and suck it back in before anyone catches me smiling.

D’ya play Spades?

More challenge than invitation.

Ya, sure.

Four years of playing Wist in college, makes Spades an easy game to pick up. I’m good at tracking cards and suits and know how to read my partners. I quickly climb the ranks and end up completing a foursome with the OGs of the pod. Tail, Running Bear, and some guy who’s been brought in on conspiracy/“king pin” charges. I’m happy to sit with big dogs. Although probably capable of extreme violence, it feels like there is a deliberateness to how they move.

It’s the young rattlesnakes you got to worry about.

That said, when they talk story, my ears go wide at the sounds of SWAT team arrests and flash bang grenades. Running Bear stuns us into silence as he recalls how he accelerated through a police barricade. His pale arm shooting forward and rotating to indicate the car he flipped three times after glancing off a cruiser.

Small and sinewy, Running Bear has a long, straight scar running over one eye, pulling his right lid down sleepy. Shark-black eyes. A rattail braid drips down his back almost to his waist. His sallow skin and pink, scratchy scars make him look like a vampire.

When I was fourteen, I got busted watching pornos over at my best friend’s house. His mom chased me out of there but, then, the next time I was over, she asked me if I knew what to do with “that thing”.

I said, ‘Hell Yeah!’ and we got busy. Ended up going back to my buddy’s house after school everyday. I had to figure out how to dodge him but I kept perfect attendance.

She ended getting pregnant and put the kid up for adoption.

To this day, my buddy doesn’t know his sister was my daughter.

As we are exchanging glances of disbelief, Running Bear is off on another one.

He’s driving his cousin and her boyfriend down the interstate.

Rolling joints and steering with his knees. The couple starts arguing and it escalates into a fist fight.

They are pulling at each other.

Pulling at his seatbelt.

He loses control and the car flips five times.

He does that thing with his hand again.

Ejects them.

Running Bear description drifts over the part where the boyfriend doesn’t make it - cracked his head open - and lands on his cousin — bloodied, shirt torn and he holds his hands out feeling their weight.

Big ol’ titties hanging out.

Somebody at our table pipes up.

But, wait, her boyfriend died.

Yeah. He didn’t make it. There grey stuff coming out of his head. I had to go on the run because his family was hunting for me.

Shit, bro, I’m never getting in a car with you.

What do you mean? It wasn’t my fault.

Whose fault was it, then?

He shrugs.

Rearranges some cards in his hand.

Must have been the car’s.

I’m having a hard time getting used to it but when you are slow to play your turn in Spades there it is.

Hey…Wang.

Yeah?

It’s on you.

Click there to go to the next installment —> The Paint Huffer

Start at the beginning → Superpower

Following Tail’s advice, I’ve begun to structure my lockdowns to avoid just sleeping through them. Meditation in the morning. Workout during the prelunch lock down. Reading before dinner.

Tail confounds me.

At one moment he’s talking about the greater forces that have brought us together - pledging me his eternal allegiance. The next, he is threatening to knock me down for saying I prefer Honey Buns over Little Debbie Ho Hos.

Self-declared patron of the pod - I can’t tell if he actually commands respect or if the rest of the pod just let’s him be.

Still, the younger Lakota refer to him as “Kola” which sounds like a form of respect.

Tail relishing his role of Jailhouse Lawyer dispense all kinds of advice. Plea bargaining, sentencing, anything, he’s got an opinion to offer — but his advice comes with a cost.

At meals, when the guard’s backs are turned, trays get passed to Tail as he collects his debts. Food is the currency and he stuffs what he can’t choke into his striped uniform to eat later.

Back in the safety of our cell, Tail is like a magician feigning surprise as he produces cakes or cornbread from his socks, a carton of milk from inside his underpants, fake butter spread for movie night. Even something as small as sneaking a bit of illicit food tastes that much more like freedom.

When Tail doesn’t wear a shirt, I can see the smoothed over, puffy red scars that cover his scapulae. Many of the Lakota guys have these marks. The mark of the Sun Dance. Tail dribbles out details.

Days without food or water.

Leather thongs strung through the chest or back.

The participant then leant back and suspended until the skin rips through.

Or tethered to buffalo skulls and trudging forward with the horns spinning and biting into the earth.

The opening of the body.

The clarity of pain.

You want to see God, boy?

Sundance.

Brutal.

Beautiful.

A passage to adulthood.

Jail feels like its hollower cousin.

Another lockdown. I climb up to my upper bunk perch and nestle into half lotus. I’ll pull my bed sheet over my head to block out the florescent light flickering overhead. Maybe Tail chuckles when he catches a glimpse of me from below. This strange Asian man hidden beneath a sheet. A ghost trying to hide from his fate.

I can feel Tail restlessly pacing around as he often does - rustling plastic wrappers, snacking on his crumby snacks and flushing the toilet incessantly. It actually drives me a little bit crazy. After a spell, I can feel him settle down and then, completely out of the blue, he starts a guttural chant that builds and then relents. The words hanging hauntingly around the cell as they reverberate off the cinder block walls.

I pull a corner of the sheet away and peer down. Tail’s perched on the stool scars shining like a dark angel - wings clipped and banished from heaven. His elbows rest on his knees and he sings into the open bowl that his body forms. I let my eyes fall back to closed allowing him this privacy and soon my breath rises and falls on the undulating path of his song. The verses repeating in a tongue that I don’t recognize but still remember.

Through that narrow pane of window, I can feel the sky go from clear to dark while Tail continues his song unrelenting. A flash of lightning. A crack of thunder. By now I’ve opened my eyes and have pulled the sheet off fully.

It’s hailing outside. Falling with such ferocity that the street below has turned white. I can hear it tap tapping as the wind sweeps bands of hail across our window.

A thousand footsteps marching.

The roar of a crowd.

The fluttering of wings.

A murmuration.

For an entire week, I haven’t heard a sound from the natural world. The walls and glass too thick for the wind or the patter of rain much less the song of a bird. Just the white noise of the forced ventilation, the jangling of keys, the drone of the television, the clicking of locks, the tick tocking of time.

Another crack and I’m riding that wind as it covers the world outside in white. As the room rumbles with thunder, I’m quietly crying for the first time since long before my arrest.

Tail continues to chant away on the stool below. His eyes closed in concentration. Tears mixed with sweat, follow the furrowed line down along the edges of his mustache, through the cleft of his jowls, and then fall to the floor.

Tails slows to a finish and smears away the snot and tears with the back of his hand. He puts his glasses back as the blackened sky clears to blue. The dusting of hail melting to reveal the black asphalt beneath it.

Tail rises and leans against our narrow window and watches the world come back to life. That, cuzin, was a wocekiye migasu olomon.

A wind prayer.

My people told me that they would send me an eagle and I just saw it.

He takes in a breath and turns to look up at me in my perch.

That means we are going to be ahh-lll right.

Still half draped in my sheet, I nod dumbly and stare past Tail out onto the wet street.

In Paul Pritchford’s Healing with Whole Foods, he talks about mindfulness when eating and recommends chewing each mouthful of food thirty times. Masticating the starches until they become sugars. Slowing the meal down by resisting the temptation to swallow. It’s how some concentration camp survivors made it through mass famine.

Because the food on our scratched plastic trays never feels like enough, I’ve begun to do the same - rendering the already mushy chicken a-la-crap into a saliva slurry before forcing it down my gullet.

Thirty chews.

Not of my choosing.

O a pe - this hour

Muza Tidra - Iron Door

Wa chi Tanka - to have hope

Yu shka - to be set free

Wakan Tanka - Great Creator

Wo Lakota - to have peace among men

Ina - Mother

A Te - Father

Tunkashila - grandfather

Wo che kya Oloman - prayer song

Wa Su - hail

Ma Ga Gu - Rain

An Pettu - Day

Unchi Maka - Mother Earth

Kola - friend

Ho Mitakye Oyasin - All of my relations

I’ve asked Tail to teach me some words in Lakota. He relishes in the role as a gruff taskmaster - growling out the words until I get the pronunciation right. Like the snap of a ball hit off the sweet spot on a racket or the click of a puzzle piece snugging into place — there is a feel to the words when sounded correctly. A tone that I can feel in my chest.

Maybe language at its heart is just prayer. Reverential soundings trying to encapsulate the raw beauty of life on Earth.

I keep a running list of words amongst my sheaf of papers sandwiched inside Moby Dick. When Tail tells me what Kola means, I look up at him and squint.

I think that that was the name of the drug dog that they used on me.

Yeah, probably was.

Fuckers.

Click there to go to the next installment —> It’s On You

Start at the beginning → Superpower

Writing gives my brain some where to go. Spinning out pages and pages of the incident, observations, thoughts…

Everything.

Anything.

I write until the edge of my hand turns black from smudging over written words.

More.

I’ve found a hard bound copy of Moby Dick on the library cart and start carrying it with me out in the pod.

I wedge my growing sheaf of papers between the covers.

In the event of a fight, I could cup its broad spine in my hand and it would extend my reach seven inches while protecting my fingers from damage.

Strictly theoretical.

I once saw Matt Damon do it in a movie.

The guard, annoyed with my constantly asking to sharpen my little pencil, shoves across a styrofoam cup filled with eight mini-golf pencils with stubby tips. I pre-sharpen all eight of them into long tapered points - resisting the tug as the motor chugs.

It badly needs to be emptied.

When I slide out the small plastic drawer, the spirals of shaving rinds puff out and expand releasing a billowing plume of childhood.

Art classes and grade school.

Chalk board erasers and dust.

Exposed mechanical grinders and that dial in front to click in the right diameter.

Public libraries.

The musty tang of books entombed in plastic covers.

When I was six, my second oldest brother - 15 months my senior, Brian, and I came down with a mysterious illness. My mother had enrolled us in a summer day camp called Camp Sertoma. We spent our days knee-deep in shale creek beds, collecting tadpoles in Styrofoam cups, staging crayfish battles and skipping stones. We’d come home sun-kissed and tired; dragging our Camp Sertoma bags — a bust of Sitting Bull in full war headdress screen printed in red across the muslin.

One afternoon we came home with fevers that wouldn’t come down.

Within days we were in intensive care.

I can still hear the hollow clacking of the buttons of that old remote control. Brian, propped up on pillows with his bed reclined into regality, happily watching shows my father forbade us from watching at home.

Morning cartoons, the A-Team, Ponch and John on CHips. Slurping lime jello brought by a nurse summoned by the click of different button. Brian, content and in control.

Meanwhile, I was starting to lose control of everything.

My mother, in her broken English:

Chris, no one could tell what was wrong because you never say where it hurt. When the doctor asked how you felt, you say, “I’m okay,” or “I don’t know.” So they believe you. But I don’t believe you. I know you. I know something’s not right.

I stayed in the hospital every day. You were such a difficult boy but also so good. You kept apologizing for being sick, but you couldn’t say how. When you started wetting the bed, the nurse said that was normal. I said no. That’s not normal. He is sick.

I called your uncle and asked what tests we should run. She told me which ones. I made them test you. You were not wetting the bed. You were losing control of your body. By the time they did the right test, you were already in a coma.

Oh, you worried Mommy to death.

You were in intensive care for three months. I stayed there every day. One day I went to the hospital church, got down on my knees and prayed. I said, “God, if you let him live, I will be a good Christian. I will believe in you.”

A bird flew into the church and landed on the bench next to me. That’s when I knew you were going to be okay. I have believed in the good Lord ever since.

When the right tests come back, we know.

You had viral meningitis.

It’s amazing you came back without permanent brain damage.

What do I remember of from the space between living and dying?

The plush Chewbacca doll that my father’s colleague gave me.

The way they rolled me out of the hospital in a wheelchair because I had forgotten how to walk.

The gummy substance they pressed in my hair to attach the wires for the brainwave tests.

What I remember most was the redness. Like viewing the fiery-hot sun through closed eyelids. Orange everywhere.

Years later, I came across a passage in the Dalai Lama’s How to Practice that snapped me to focus.

“Except in extraordinary meditative states, the subtlest, or deepest consciousness manifests itself only when we are dying. Less withdrawn and therefore brief versions of the subtle levels of consciousness also occur when going to sleep, ending a dream, sneezing, yawning and during orgasm…

In the 6th phase - your mind turns into a red or orange vastness more vivid that before; nothing appears. It is like a clear sky filled with sunlight - not the sun shining in the sky but space itself, filled with red or orange light.”

I close the book and take in a breath.

Feel my side ribs expand and then my chest.

Maybe there is more to the memory than just the story. Maybe I liked what I had felt during my big sleep. Maybe it explains my attraction to meditation or the fugue states induced by extreme physical activity or the deep void of being blacked out.

Maybe, after having falling out of the in-between, I’ve been trying to get back there ever since.

I release the breath and let my eyes open.

We are all recidivists at heart.

Deferent puppies out in the pod, Tweedledee and Tweedledum have been getting more comfortable with each other behind their cell door. Boisterous - even jovial, their strange, howling laughter echoes through the forced ventilation and into our cell - driving Tail to derision.

During lockdown, he paces the cage. Smacking his balled up fist into his palm and hissing into the ventilation grate.

Shut up!

Shut up!

Shut up!

I can hear you fuckers.

As soon as the doors click back open, Tail beelines for them and puffs his chest into the face of the kid with greasy hair - tapping him hard on the solar plexus.

I’m sick of listening to you dorks giggling in your cell. What the fuck is so funny in there? You guys better keep it quiet from now on…

Tweedledee blinks and takes a half step back.

Eyes wide, Tweedledum moves off to the side. Verging on tears.

In the frame of the cell door, I disappear.

But then, Tweedledee arrests his retreat, puffs up and steps forward.

Or what?!?

Now it is Tail’s turn to pause.

Or you best watch yourself, boy.

But Tail’s saying this as he’s turning away.

Sputtering. He flings an orange chair aside and then disappears into the reawakening pod.

The guard summons me to the control desk and pushes the top copy of my Inmate Request Form back at me. “DENIED” in red stamped across the top of the page. No explanation. Just a flat “no”.

Who knows where this form needed to go in its weeklong sojourn to find rejection?

Meanwhile, my daily calls to Lawrence Kline’s office have gotten repetitive. After the now familiar clicks and beeps that move me through the jail phone system, Tammy answers.

Hi Tammy, it’s Chris Wang again, I just wanted to check if you’ve heard from my people, yet.

Hey Chris. I’m so sorry., hun. No, I haven’t heard anything. Mr. Kline’s still on vacation but I’m sure if he said he would reach out to your people he would. I don’t know…

Yeah, I’m sorry for calling you so much, I just need to know when things start rolling because I need to know that the process started to get me out of here.

Yes, I know, hun. Don’t worry about the calls. I completely understand.

This one brush with empathy catches me in the throat and it takes me a second to return the phone to its cradle and gather my papers as I pass my hand over my eyes.

Then I turn and walk back out in to the pod.

Back straight.

Head up.

Eyes forward.

Heart a hyphen.

Help is not on its way.

Time has begun to stack.

I’ve been drowning now for days.

Sinking.

Spiraling.

The fact that I can’t reach anyone.

The pink underwear.

The lack of eye contact.

The exhausting vigilance of keeping your sixth sense on at all times.

The unacknowledged requests floated out on hope and then swallowed by the mawing black void of the bureaucratic machine.

A faceless countenance.

A finger without a print.

A node.

Nothing.

The daily schedule amplifies the murk.

0700 - doors click open. Breakfast.

11-12 - Lockdown.

12 - Lunch

1440-1510 - Lockdown

1730 Dinner

1800-1900 Lockdown

2130 Lockdown/Lights Out

They lock us down for at least thirteen hours a day. Shuffle us back into our cells.

Too small for two to stand, so we both end up in our bunks.

Zebras.

Half asleep.

Inured into docility.

There’s a word for it.

Narcotization.

Sleep is tempting when I’ve exhausted trying to find the end of my Mobius loop of actions and outcomes. What could I have done differently? What is happening now? Are my people okay? But other traps yawn open when I start falling through the darkness.

Tail issues a warning.

Watch yourself, Waang. Don’t sleep away your time. That’s how you die here. Once you give in, you go to sleep forever. Become a sheep and the Muza Tidra closes forever. Stay awake.

I used to have this dream. Within it, I’d wake up in my bed but couldn’t move. Dead limbs. Body wooden. I’d try to pull myself out of bed and drag myself across the floor. The shag rug rubbing my bare knees raw. If I could only reach the light switch, I could wake up. But I could barely move. I’d try to call out to my mother sleeping at the other end of the house but my lips feel like they are super glued shut. No one can hear my muffled screams. My body locked in an isometric hold.

If I could move, I could wake up.

If I could wake up, I could get free.

When the dream would finally release its hold, my body would jerk awake with a start - the blankets puffing a breath of cool air as they drifted back down across my body.

It followed me for years. The threat crept up like an aura and made me avoid sleep.

Willing myself awake.

I’d watch tv until the programming dissolved.

The national anthem.

Static.

Or I’d drink myself into blackness.

Sliding back to the womb of my coma.

We are all recidivists at heart.

I once told a coworker at the ABC Cafe about the dreams of paralysis.

A morning prep shift.

The smell of freshly brewed coffee layered over bleachy mop water and stale beer.

630 a.m.

Emmy Lou Harris’ Wrecking Ball droning through the speakers.

The plate glass windows sandwiched between hoarfrost and the steam of brewing coffee - an envelope of privacy. Clara Brown, adult cherub, dicing onions with her favorite Japanese knife. Cheeks ruddy from the warming room.

The rectangular blade tap tapping.

She listens to me then puts down her knife, and rests a warm palm on my forearm, holding my gaze with her watery blue eyes.

My gosh, Chris, I used to have the same dream.

Often.

Where I was trapped.

In my body.

In my life.

Sleep paralysis.

It’s a thing. It went on for years. But then I found a way out.

How?

Well, the last time I ever felt that dream come on, I just stopped and told myself that I didn’t have to be there anymore.

It was a decision.

I made it.

Steps appeared.

I walked down them, came to a door, turned the knob, and ended up walking out of that dream forever.

It’s a choice.

It’s a choice.

But our door has no handle.

Click there to go to the next installment —> The Wind Prayer

Start at the beginning → Superpower

I had taken classes at Georgetown the summer after my junior year of high school, so going back doesn’t feel like much of an adjustment. I steal my oldest brother’s ID, so I have access to alcohol and bars. I try out for the crew team and have early wake ups, but I’m unfazed. Years of delivering newspapers and running cross country practice have prepared me for the grind. I even take a certain level of pride in being able to muscle through the early workouts hungover. Besides, I end up dropping out as soon as the workouts get really serious and making the team feels like a long shot.

Once I quit rowing crew, I’m free to fall into something more dangerous.

Study, party, study, party. Rinse. Repeat.

It also helps that I’m taking classes that I’ve already finished in high school. By freshman year of college, I already have two years of calculus under my belt — one of them taken at a local community college. At Georgetown, I’m back in Calc I. I go to three math classes. The first one, the midterm, and the final. A plus. I’m also in Chem and Bio I, both of which I passed the AP exam for in high school. For whatever reason, I never jump through the hoops to get credit for my high school efforts. I somehow think that I’m getting away with something.

I take a certain amount of pride in the belief that I’m a “safe” drunk. I can hold down conversations at parties without letting on that I’m blacked out. I do not get in confrontations or trespass personal boundaries. People I meet at parties approach me on campus to reengage. I do my best not to betray the fact that I have no idea who they are or what they are talking about.

Me squinting through the conversation as if I weren’t wearing my glasses.
Them walking away unsettled, as if they were in the presence of a ghost.

Semiconscious.

That limbo space between wakefulness and sleep.

My face driven hard into my pillow.

Head thumping from another night of hard drinking.

My tongue dry and cemented to the roof of my mouth.

The radiator steaming away.

I’m too hot under my sheets, but in too much of a torpor to move as I stew in that fucked up sense of accomplishment that comes with yet another night of blacked out drinking.

Flipping through the slides from the night before.

Click

Beers with friends downtown.

Clack

Frustration with the division of the bar tab.

Click

A solo walk home with empty pockets.

Clack

House parties that have spilled into the street.

Click

Chugging free beers with new friends who I won’t ever recognize again.

Clack

Home. Safe.

A yawn, a stretch and I reach down for an absentminded scratch.

Something’s different.

I feel around some more. Only scratchy black stubble where the coarse long pubic hair was before. I pull my fingers out and there are a few loose strands of hair stuck to them.

Somewhere, in between the slides, my balls have been shaved.

I swallow hard.

Chuck!

My roommate finds his glasses and blinks back at me.

Unh - Wh.. what?

What happened to me last night?

I don’t know. You came home. You went to bed. That’s all I saw.

More studious than I, Chuck does not share my affinity for night crawls. Probably worries about mine. He stays closer to home. Sipping beers and reading. Tending to his grades and his campaign for student council representative. Besides, he doesn’t have a fake identification.

No, Chuck, really, I’m serious. What happened to me last night? Did I say anything when I got home? Do you have any idea where I was?

No. I didn’t see anything. You came home. You went to bed. That’s all I know.

I try to shake out the cobwebs.

Snow globe.

In the haze, somewhere out in the wild, I must have passed out.

Somewhere in the night I became a joke. I replay the slides looking for the frame where the scene turns.

My comfort in the voids inverted.

How many might have been there during the act?

How did I get to be so compromised but still make it home?

Did anything else happen?

How can I know for sure?

On campus I move in the straight lines of a hunted animal. Room. Class. And, when I can stomach it, food. But I don’t want to linger in the open. With threats lurking everywhere, my chest is a fist. I can’t exhale. I suspect everyone. But short a perpetrator, I turn to self-loathing.

People on my floor start acting weird.

That barometric shift that makes dogs eat grass.

Maybe I’m just being paranoid.

Maybe people know more than they are letting on.

One night I find myself huddled with Nigel on the floor outside his doorway. More acquaintances than friends, we’ve gone to a couple basketball games together but mostly because we live on the same floor. He’s fastidious. Pressed and starched shirts. Ruler flat high top. In a semi-conspiratorial way, he may be letting me know that the ball shaving actually happened on our floor. He only gives me whispers of hints.

I press him for more.

Chris, you’ve got to look for your answers elsewhere. They’re around. You just have to look.

But, if you know something, why don’t YOU just tell me?

I ain’t no snitch. I’m just saying that you’ve got to look closer to home to see.

He says it with a finality that closes the conversation and, with that, he begins to walk down the hall.

I reach for the only leverage I can find.

C’mon, why won’t you help me. You, you, you ni—.

Even before the ugly spider claws its way out of my throat, I’m trying to choke it back down.

Nigel slows, stops, then circles back, gets so close to my face that I can breathe in the crispness of his freshly pressed shirt.

No. No. No. We are not going there, Wang. I get that you’re hurting, so I accept your apology. You should know that I want to help but I live here too. Either way, we are not walking down this road.

With finality, he enters his room but resists slamming the door behind him.

I’m left cowering in the shadow of the monster that Nigel protected me from becoming.

I’m covered in blankets when I make the call. The phone cord extended to the full length of its coils.

My mother’s voice explodes through the receiver. I can never tell whether the extreme with which she exclaims my name comes from unmitigated joy or surprise that I’m finally actually calling. Either way, I have to hold the phone away from my ear.

Chriiis!!! How are you?

Mom, I want to leave school.

Why, what happened?

Mom. Somebody shaved my balls.

What, your gi gi? Who?

Uncontrolled sobbing finally surfacing under the safety of my mother’s watch.

Chris! Who?!?

I don’t know.

How can you not know who? Were you drinking? How can you not remember?

I don’t know.

Chris, why do you always have to drink so much?

I don’t know. I need to get out of here.

Okay. I’ll see what I can do. You have to finish the semester though.

I know.

One of my mother’s gifts is an ability to open pathways where they didn’t exist before. She does not hear, “No” . Within a week, she has convinced Hamilton to honor a scholarship proffered me before I decided to go to Georgetown. I will be able to start there in the spring. I just have to make it through the semester.

I limp through the rest of my coursework, saved by the fact that I’ve taken most of them before.

In the absence of memory, I run the possibilities on a loop.

Maybe it happened in my room.

Maybe it happened while I was passed out in bed.

Maybe this was revenge for peeing in someone’s room during another drunken somnambulation.

Maybe it was a prank gone too far.

But “ha ha, we did this to you!” would let me in on the joke. There is malice in Omerta.

To think that it may have happened on my floor and in my bed and by my peers?

It means that I am not safe in my new home.

Worse still, for a nineteen year old kid who is establishing kin outside his family, it means something that takes years to fully arrive:

I am not liked.

The conversation with my Dean ends up being a short one.

So you don’t really know where or by whom?

No. It probably happened on my floor. People are being weird. But it is just not clear. I’m thinking I should just leave.

Hamilton says that they will reinstate my scholarship. I could go there this spring.

That would probably be a good idea.

I nod.

It doesn’t occur to me to ask if there are other options.

Okay, so I’m leaving school.

Okay.

My Dean doesn’t offer any.

Click there to go to the next installment —> Coma

Start at the beginning → Superpower

Two white kids occupy one of the cells adjacent to ours. They make an odd pair. The tall and lanky one has long, greasy hair that straggles over his bad acne and thick prison-issue eye glasses. The other has the face of a cherub on an oversized body. His crew cut makes a dash over his wide, scared eyes- at any moment verging on deluge over his porcelain skin and ruddy cheeks. Tail calls them: Tweedledee and Tweedledum.

Tweedledum paces the perimeter of the pod incessantly pleading his case to anyone that will listen. Everyone hears snippets as he walks past.

Probation hold, driving while under the influence, fifteen day transfer…. At worst, he’s looking at thirty days in jail.

Tail’s happy to lend an ear and offer advice. But you know he’s getting ready to eat this kid for lunch.

Even still, there are times where Tail’s patience wears thin.

Boy! Sit!

You realize you are only looking at days?

People here are looking at years.

Remember how I told you that you have to have a Lakota heart?

He thumps his finger hard on the boy’s solar plexus.

That starts here.

You gotta quit whining.

Get strong.

He sweeps his arm across the room.

Look around!

You see any of my people sniveling?

It’s true. The Lakota don’t complain. Jail seems all too familiar — even for the young bucks.

Each time a new batch of inmates arrive it’s all dap ups and chest bumps. Jail just another rite of passage. A reunion at the bottom of the ditch.

Wang? Wang? Wang?

The garbled voice of the adults on Peanuts.

I step out of our cell and towards the control desk. .

The guard juts his chin toward the line of prisoners forming at the exit to the pod.

Wang. Arraignment.

Joining the line, I follow the inmates through a maze of elevators and unmarked doors. It’s Monday, so there is a back log of people needing to be processed.

At an open door, a man with a shiny, shaved head confronts us — droning while handing each of us a yellow copy of our charges. His dispassionate monotone worn flat from repetition. Days, months, years on the job.

Rise when the judge enters. When the judge reads you your charges and asks what you plead, you are to say ‘not guilty’. This is only a formality not necessarily what you will or should plea in court.

Wait. Wait. What?

But Slick Bic makes it clear that there is no space for questions.

I follow the herd in and wait to be called to the front of the room. There, through an overhead monitor, I face Judge Erickson for the first time. An older man with white hair and a squared jaw. Through the monitor and over his reading glasses he peers at me and then back down at the file.

Mr. Wang, the grand jury has charged you with two class three felonies: Possession of a controlled substance over 10 pounds and possession or a controlled substance over 10 pounds with intent to distribute. Each or these holds a maximum penalty of fifteen years and $30 000 fine. How do you plead?

Not guilty.

Do you have any questions?

I have scrabbled on the back of my indictment some notes which tumble chunkily out of my cottoned mouth. I hear myself say “travesty of justice” in reference to me getting caught with a car full of drugs. In front of eight incarcerated Lakota men.

Judge Erickson’s jaw doesn’t budge.

Due to the severe nature of this crime, I’m setting your bail at $100 000 cash or surety. The gavel falls.

Next.

Back in the pod, Tail is waiting —pacing and rubbing his giant palms together.

Well, Wang? How’d it go?

I read my charges from my yellow sheet and tell him my bail.

Ohhh shit. Two class 3s? A hundred Gs?

He lets out a low whistle.

You in it now, cousin.

A hundred G’s?

That’s ten to walk.

And you won’t get that back.

Gone.

He shakes his head, almost smiling.

Half these fools in here can’t scrape together two, three grand.

You sittin’ on a hundred?

He squints at me.

Time to lawyer, Waaang. You can call ’em collect.

After lockdown, I ask the control desk for the phone book.

He pushes forward the chunky tome - the section I seek marked by a ragged dog ear and smudgy finger prints. With my own, I follow the crumbs.

“Attorney”

“Criminal Defense”

Tail gave me two names: Lawrence Kline and Bruce Ellison.

I call Lawrence Kline first.

A recording plays and asks for a message.

Straight back.

Eye-contact.

Enunciation.

I provide a clipped summation, hang up, return to my perch, and wait.

Wang? Wang? Wang?

The cell door clicks open.

I poke my head out the door.

The C.O. juts his chin towards the entrance.

Lawyer.

I peek around the frame to see a man in a dark brown trench coat. Tall and drawn thin, cleft chin, brown walking shoes, leather satchel. He reminds me of Pryzbelewsky from The Wire.

Firm handshake.

Eye contact.

He’ll do.

He directs me into one of the side rooms of the pod as he warns me that, although not admissible in court, it is quite possible - even probable - that our conversation is being recorded. Sensitive material should not be spoken out loud. He takes out a pad of paper.

So… tell me what’s going on?

I pour out the abridged of my arrest, only stopping after I’ve relayed the issues that I’m having with reaching people because of collect calls and cell phones.. While talking, I wave for him to hand me the pad and I write down a list of safe phone numbers and emails that he can use.

As I start to dive deeper in detail, he raises a hand.

Retainer first.

I slide the paper across the table.

Contact one of these people. That will get the ball moving..

Starved for human contact, I drag out our conversation. Ask him where he went to law school. As it turns out he went to Georgetown Law.

I lean in.

I spent my first couple semesters of undergrad at Georgetown.

Oh cool! Why’d you leave?

I lie.

I felt like I needed to be in a smaller school.

Lawrence Kline assures me that, although he’ll be out on vacation for the upcoming week, he’ll reach out to my people and, once payment is arranged, he can get to work on next steps.

Feel free to check in with my secretary for updates from time to time. Meanwhile, try to write down everything that you can remember. Even the smallest details will matter. You’ve got plenty of time. Use the time to keep at it.

We shake hands and he knocks firmly to have the guard let us out.

The guard pats me down and I reenter the pod floating on hope.

Tail concurs.

Oh, yeah, Wang, Lawrence Kline’s a good one! He’s going to cost you plenty but he’s one of da best. See, Ol’ Tail wouldn’t steer you wrong! Anybody else and that’d be costin’ you two trays for sure.

I’m smiling and nodding as I rise to my bunk, lie down, and exhale.

Click there to go to the next installment —> Omerta

You don’t ever really think that it will happen to you.

Even as you hear and repeat the command shouted down from the top house “put on your survival suits”, you will still pause and take a look around.

Dark green water has begun to pour up into the galley cabin from the fo’csle. Gear on deck sloshes around. Out beyond the stern, a hatch cover floats away. Images so strange that they don’t register it as being real.

But it’s the sound that lands it home. This piercing wail that matches the severity of the pitch of the boat itself. Sound, a sudden sputtering cough, and now the sickening absence of sound as forward motion slows.

Alarms sound everywhere.

And then those go quiet too.

The Shodan is going down.

The F/V Shodan was an old Marco. It was our skipper Todd’s starter boat and one that he never outgrew. Forty seasons of fishing. A former karate teacher, Todd named her after the first level of black belt attainable. But, as the years passed, instead of graduating to another level, Todd kept modifying the Shodan. He added protractible stilts to keep the boat upright during beach landings, added cameras to monitor the engine room and lazarette, a top house so he wasn’t exposed to the weather when fishing. The Shodan was dense with years and years of improvements and gadgets. Through trial and error, the boat had become an extension of Todd himself.

Todd was a young 70. Fishing kept him young. Generous at heart and communal in spirit, the old sensei had seen the fishery evolve from a rag tag fishery to the ultra competitive industry that it is today.

Older now and soft and wide in the middle, it always surprised me how much scrambling around he did on the boat. Todd wasn’t afraid to get his hands dirty in the engine room or wedge himself under a bunk in the foc’sle to find a spare part.

Always friendly and ready to offer a drink, Todd’s top house had been dubbed the “Hookah Den” - partly for the fact that there was plenty of plush seating to recline but no space to stand. To get up into the top house, Todd had to perch precariously on the corner of the galley table. Every time he scrambled up there, I held my breath as I watched the table flex under his weight - the boat teeter-tottering in rough weather.

I had heard him take a tumble off the table once and, terrified, I bolted in from the deck to see him sprawled out on the galley sole limbs akimbo.

Todd chuckling himself as he gathered himself.

“Well, I guess I can cross that off the list for this season”.

Wild places called to him. Before becoming parents, Todd and his wife had spent ten years teaching in the outer villages that stretched along the Aleutian chain. Remote and desolate places like St. George’s Island.

Rather than have a harried pre-season, Todd arrived in Dillingham earlier than everyone else in the yard. In the quiet and as the preseason services started to become available Todd readied his boat and tinkered on his modifications. By the time we, the crew arrived, the boat was ready to load groceries and launch.

With all the projects done and fishing at least a week until fishing might open, Todd had Round Island in his sights. Tundra fires from an errant lightening strike rendered the downwind air quality in Dillingham hazardous to breath. Even more reason to spend the rest of the preseason exploring. Covid had also made us a little bit more socially averse.

With towering spires and cliffside bluffs that loom over four hundred foot drop-offs, Round Island is already special. But Round Island also serves as the summer haul out for male walruses. Having mated, while the females stay with the pups on receding pack ice, the males sun themselves until their open capillaries turn their skin pink. Sated, they lounge in the sun like German tourists, some too spent and sun drunk to even make it all the way out of the water before passing out.

Round Island is about as hard to get to as any place. In 2022, there were officially three visitors to Round Island which along with the two biologists that summer on the island and monitor the walrus population, made the official count of people visiting the island five. This year, the four of us would make it six. To curry favor with biologists, we brought a bag of satsumas … and a bottle of whiskey.

Hiking along the waving grass on the spine of ridge with six hundred walruses braying 400 feet down at the water’s edge, we might as well have been stomping around trying to figure out how to invent the wheel.

My iPhone Survived the Sinking. This was on it.

Having spent a couple days exploring the island, we weighed anchor and set off to find an anchorage closer to the fishing grounds. It looked like we would be on short notice soon and Todd wanted to be within striking distance should they spring an opener on us.

The Shodan back deck consisted of Aron, Ari and myself.

Now Aron and I could have NOT gotten along in another life. In fact, the first time that we met I thought of him as brash and unrefined. A New Yorker transplanted to Costa Rica, Aron was a private chef when he wasn’t fishing and, ironically, so was I. And our styles couldn’t be more different. He was straight ahead steak and potatoes - Bada Bing Bada Bang and he would tell you how and why his food was so good. I, on the other hand, preferred to execute things that were more creative or more elegant in execution and listen to people enjoy their food.

A former crabber, Aron was a hammer by nature. He would approach every problem with brute strength and, if that failed, he’d find a tool to get more leverage. I was smaller, more cunning. Mechanical advantage and stamina were my game. I’d take a minute to plot before starting a project. Aron would just tear right in.

In spite of these differences in approach and there being too cooks in one galley, we had developed a mutual respect and trust that comes with toiling together on the back deck of a boat and watching each other perform under duress. Through shitty weather and physical exhaustion, Aron and I wordlessly pushed each other to pick faster and always had each other’s back.

Drift gill netting is unique in that every fish caught must be removed from the net by hand. It is labor intensive and, in a high volume fishery, such as Bristol Bay, there is little chance for rest. Picking fish with another experienced picker feels like this deadly tango. Fish are passed between participants as moves are set up by one but finished by the other.

Aron and I had developed our own wordless communication which was beautiful in its efficiency and brutal in its execution. We could see the net coming over the drum and instinctively knew what to pick ourselves, what to leave for the other guy and what to adjust to set the other guy up success. Trust.

Ultimately, game respects game.

The other deckhand was our greenhorn, Ari. A baby-faced nineteen year old and a philosophy/ physics double major at Bucknell, Ari was mostly onboard to bleed fish - which is what it sounds like. After the fish are picked, their gills are cut and they are bled out to prevent bruising. Ari plays rugby and reads in his free time. He’s thoughtful and strong and knows when to put his head down and when to ask questions.

A tradition evolves on the back deck. After every set. As we ready the boat for its next task, reset or deliver, the three of us would share a quick fist bump.

As the season moves into full swing for what will be a record bay wide harvest, we have developed the steady rhythm of a well-oiled machine. Everyone finds their role and pitches in extra where needed. I keep an extra set of eyes on Todd - as much to glean from his 40 years of experience as to make sure his youthful mind didn’t demand too much of his 70 year old body.

Mind says, Yes.

Body says, No.

By July 8th, we have fallen into a steady program of deck loading the boat and delivering. A deck load is where the boat is filled beyond the hatches and fish is loaded on deck in spare brailer bags. In any other season, two or three deck-loads would be great. We’ve been doing it for a week now. Sometimes twice a day.

Of course the were the usual mechanical issues that popped up - a Pacer pump that needed to be replaced - more than once and this or that. But between the experience of Captain and crew we could problem solve with alacrity and, more importantly, never miss any fishing time. Any of the bigger issues that we’d dodge, Todd would exclaim in his jovial way:

Well, I guess we can cross that one off the list!

Fishing in the Bay can feel like this constant flirtation with disaster. We push the gear, we push the boat, and we push each other trusting that we have the resourcefulness to fix things when they break and the physical reserves hidden in that tank that’s only accessible when you’ve reached the end.

Just the day before, July 8, we had delivered what we called an “Easy 13”. Glassy waves, sunny weather, and the gear coming back fast and heavy. Easy picking, smooth delivery, a solid meal and a lick of sleep before waking up and doing it again.

Today is different though.

Sideways rain, a steady hard wind, and four to six off seas. We were maneuvering near the beach with a heavy onshore breeze. We had picked up a “hard 12” but, in spite of only having an hour of sleep, spirits were high.

How could they not be?

Our hatches were stuffed again and there are couple of brailer bags on deck bursting at the seams with salmon.

Another day, another deck load.

Reflexively, we start readying the deck for delivery.

Deckload.

Deliver.

Deckload.

Deliver.

It’s what we do.

But the loud hailer shakes us from our reverie.

Okay, boys, let’s get ready to make another set.

Maybe Aron and I exchange a quick glance.

But, we are quick to shift to full support.

Okay, so Jefe wants to make another set. Let’s load the old girl up!

As the net pays out, I set up a couple more deck bags for the young buck, to bleed and pitch fish into. We also add boards athwartship to keep fish from sliding back towards the stern. As much as possible we want to keep our weight forward.

Almost as soon as the whole net is paid out, we start hauling it back.

It’s plugged with fish.

The new deck bags are full and so we start just packing all four deck bags chock o block.

Instead of setting up another row of deck bags, we keep picking and just pitch fish over the bin boards.

We’ve done a delivery like this before. Where loose fish were contained between deck begs and under reel - essentially keeping them trapped and centered in order to prevent free surfacing and causing a threatening list.

Aron and push each other to keep up the pace as we sing and bob our heads to a steady mix of old school hip-hop and reggae. Although the stern feels kind of heavy, I stay focused on the simple steps in front of us. Keep picking. Get the net back. Then worry about next steps.

But I’m myopic to a fault and the red buoy could never seem so far away.

Unbeknownst to the deck crew, Todd has been on the radio with our partner boats to see if anyone could swing by and take the rest of the net. His ‘quick top off set” has turned out to be much more than that.

Obliged to help out, the Alia offers to come as soon as they’ve finished picking up.

In the meantime, we keep picking… and fast.

Aron’s energy has started to flag and he’s starting to lean on force and just tear through meshes which drains his energy even more. Subtly, I start pulling the more tangled fish onto my side. Speed means everything to me, now, as any net that remains in the water continues to fish will add to our load. The faster we get it back, the LESS fish we’ll be dealing with.

By the time Alia arrives, the buoy is within reach and it no longer makes sense to pass our net to them.

Instead, they cheer as they circle us with their boat and snap photos as we victoriously flex for the shots. Our stern is crazy low.

The will be the most fish that the Shodan has ever had on board.

The buoy back on deck, we fist bump and start securing the deck to make the run in to deliver.

Ari heads below to check the valves and reverse the flow of our deck hose should we need to evacuate water.

We’ve already put in the stern plugs to keep water from backing into the stern as they dropped beneath the water line.

Concerned by how heavily we list to the port, we have Alia try to tie up alongside but the Shodan is listing hard enough that our top house might crack their windows so we opt out. We can take this delivery in ourselves. We’ll just take it slow. The weather has come down quite a bit since we started fishing today.

We start making weigh and as the Alia peels off to go find another set.

On the back deck, we take steps to center and secure what we can. Instead of setting up another row of deck bags towards the stern, we decide to set up another row of deck bags ON TOP of the most forward bags that we have.

It’s a scramble to set up and then physically exhausting to pitch fish UP and into the bags but it controls the fish from free surfacing AND moves weight forward with the hopes of lifting up are stern.

From the back deck, I remember hearing Todd throttle upwards and I surmise that he’s hoping that the forward motion would help drain the stern - the water now deep enough crest the tops of my Xtra Tuffs. I can feel cold seeping into my pants and moving down into my boots. Soggy doggies.

My myopia keeps me looking for next solutions. I scramble to find a perch on one of the forward deck bags and look over the deck.

Things that I don’t normally register as buoyant are starting to come free. I watch our buoy float away. A hatch cover. The deck mats.

The pitch of the engine begins to rise.

Over the loud hailer:

Start pitching fish overboard!

We scramble down from our perches and begin to pitch. Fish that we had just pulled on board are two at a time tossed over board. Our forearms jelly from the effort of getting them onboard, we are now fueled by adrenaline. There’s probably 8000 lbs of fish on deck. 4000 of it loose.

We put our heads down and start grunting through the task. Slipping and sliding amongst the sloshing deck.

You guys need to put on your survival suits…right now! Do not fucking wait.

Even as I confirm the command by repeating it, the words do not seem real. I’m too focused and too calm.

We scramble over the fish and squeeze past a full deck bag that partially obscures the cabin door. The safety orange survival suits are tumbling through the overhead hatch and onto our heads.

Pulling the galley door shut, I see another fish hold cover floating away. The flat light gray contrasting against the dark, oily green of the sea that tries to swallow it and then spits it back up.

Ari is taking big breaths and blowing out hard.

I get his attention as I hand him his suit.

Young Buck. We are going to be fine. Look! There’s already a boat headed our way. We’ll only be in the water for a second.

We’ve been in these suits already. It’s part of every preseason ritual to shake the musty neoprene suit out of its bag and to monkey with the strobes to get them working. If you change batteries, it’s a good habit to write the month and year on the battery with a Sharpie. Is there a whistle and a mirror tethered to the chest? Has the zipper been ripped up and down with bees wax worked into its teeth?

Moldering and stinky, maybe we’ll try them on and do our best Gumby impressions. I’m usually loathe to deal with the suits because my other preseason projects feel more pressing. Today, I had gone through the suits together with new kid.

The galley doesn’t have enough space for us all to unroll and don our suits at the same time so, while Aron and Ari try get theirs on, I take an extra fifty seconds to drop down into the foc’sle, pluck my phone and passport from my bunk and drop them into the chest pocket of my pullover rain jacket. There’s a snap pocket there that folds over kind of like a dry bag. Presumably to keep your ciggies dry.

It’s weird to remember that I felt guilty about going down there and grabbing anything. It somehow felt…selfish.

Now, I’m propped up and sliding the suit up and over my boots and over my rain gear. In all my years, I’ve never pulled an immersion suit OVER my foul weather gear - never even imagined it. It’s hard to do. My hands, after pulling 20 000 lbs of fish on board, can barely grip the suit and, now, with the mitts pulled OVER my picking gloves, I have the dexterity of a neoprene lobster and I can’t get the hood over my head.

I can’t get my hood on.

Aron and Ari are looking away trying to discern where they are going to crawl out.

Hey! I can’t get my hood on over my head!

The whine of the engine too loud for them to hear me.

I start to panic.

Ari, please. You have to help me. I can’t get my hood on!

I’m surprised at how much my voice sounds like I’m pleading. Ari turns and quickly helps me muscle on my hood.

We standby in anticipation as the boat pounds along with the engine screaming its displeasure at being pushed harder than it has ever been pushed before. In a last ditch effort to save the boat, Todd has pointed Shodan towards the nearest sandbar and with throttles down all the way, he attempts to run the boat aground.

But then there’s that sputtering, choking cough and a chasm of nothing that follows as the boat slows to a sickening halt and then begins to succumb to the pull of the sea on her stern.

From the open hatch above us, Todd’s voice:

Now’s the time guys. Abandon ship. Abandon ship.

I follow Ari as he vaults out the galley window and tightropes up the gun’l to the bow.

Aron forces open the foc’sle door and scrambles over the net bags trying to ignore the dark wall of water that flows in behind the open door.

The F/V Maggie B swings up alongside as her crew scrambles out onto the back deck.

Jump in and swim to the stern!

Jump in and swim to the stern!

Ari jumps and is immediately swept away by the current.

SWIM! SWIM!

And to me

JUMP! JUMP!

I look around to see that I will not get caught in the rig of the sinking ship.

And then, with a lobster claw hand, pry my hood open to release air and jump in feet first.

On pure adrenaline, I’m probably paddling hard before I even hit the water. At the Maggie B’s stern, I find a handhold cut into the stern of their boat. A swarm of hands reach over the rail and help me scramble aboard.

As I tumble onto their deck, I can see Aron tightroping along to the bow readying to jump.

Ari’s caught up to the boat and out of the water and is helped over the rail.

Now Aron’s safe too.

From the deck of the Maggie B, we watch Todd scramble out and onto the roof of the top house. The Hookah Lounge. The Shodan sinking beneath his feet. His red survival suit contrasting against the slate sky. He almost looks proud up there. So proud that I’m relieved when I see him finally commit to the jump.

Recovering our breath and sopping wet on this strangely unfamiliar back deck, I reach over and touch Ari’s leg and put a fist up in his face.

You good?

He bumps me back and nods.

Yeah. I’m good.

Aron and I make eye contact and exchange one by air.

It takes all hands to help Todd up and over the stern now.

Well, I guess we can cross THAT off of our list.

We watch as he watches the Shodan sink beyond her antennas. Forty years of memories becoming a time capsule.

I peel off my survival suit and ignore the crew of the Maggie B as they encourage me to come inside where it is warm.

Too shy.

After being on the Shodan alone for so long, it feels weird to be on someone else’s boat. Surreal.

Too polite.

I don’t want to get their cabin wet with my soaking clothes and rain gear.

Someone brings out a hot cup of tea which I spill all over myself with a shaky hand.

Adrenaline dump?

Cold?

All.

I duck into the crowded cabin and, immodestly, strip out of my wet cloths. A stranger hands me some sweats and a sweatshirt.

Now safe, we start trying to find words to explain and understand what happened. For the strangers on the Maggie B. but, even moreso, for ourselves. It’s the first telling of a story that we will construct and reconstruct over and over again trying to wrangle some sense of it.

When the high water alarm sounded, Todd recounts seeing water pouring UP and INTO the engine room. This would indicate that the hull was breached from below. Having a lot on board, played a role in our sinking but something structural gave way. Even though we had the deck hose set up for extraction, with the rate that the water was pouring in, we were overcome much faster than we could have made a dent with deck hose in reverse.

Amazingly, my phone works and I start shifting into “next step” mode. I record our position so we know where the boat went down. I take photos of us taking alcohol swab tests and record the results with time stamps. The skipper of the Maggie B gives Todd $500, so I get his mailing address for reimbursement. We make a call to the Coast Guard to let them know that we are safe.

The Maggie B takes us to the tender which we were trying to deliver to and the tender continues taking deliveries until they are full. From there, they bring us to the nearest town, Naknek, a twelve hour run away.

A hastily assembled care package arrives from the Maru, a boat in our radio group. A bar of dark chocolate, 4 white claws, a pair of wool socks some ashwaganda hot tea mix and a ukulele. Never before had I felt more seen by a gift.

When we left our home port in Dillingham, we had packed everything that we thought we would need for the next six weeks. We have just lost our workplace, our shelter and all of our belonging. Destabilized and land sick, we wobble off the dock in a town that is not our home port

Baby steps and big steps.

We buy toothbrushes and toothpaste and have a moment as we brush our teeth all together for the first time and, most likely, the last time ever.

We call loved ones. Insurance companies. The Coast Guard.

We assemble outfits from the lost and found at the laundromat. A change of clothes from the one’s we have on our backs.

Although the community is unfamiliar, word has spread about our fate and helping hands appear from everywhere. A loaned vehicle… a place to stay…. This is a fishing community and they all know the risks and have taken them. We could be them.

Word comes from the fishing grounds that, at low tide, Shodan’s top house is exposed. Mind you the tides are 28 foot in difference. At high tide, she is totally submerged.

Todd finds a helicopter pilot willing to take us back to Shodan on the afternoon low tide. Aron already has a flight home arranged. We drop him off at the airport and then split up to stage for our trip back to fishing grounds. We leave Ari to stay with a friend. He’ll fly home shortly. I start working on trying to find wetsuits for Todd and I, so that we can be dropped in the water and swim back to the boat. Failing that, we end up flying back to Ugashik in our still damp survival suits with a change of clothes double bagged and triple knotted in a couple of construction grade garbage bags hippy tech. My wallet and phone are packed in a Ziplock and brought along for the ride as well. I keep them close from now on. Things that made the crossover from life to another. All the more valuable because they were the only things that made the transition. They feel chosen.

The flight back to Ugashik takes only an hour. Depending on the conditions, the helicopter will either land on the nearest sandbar and Todd and I will swim back to the boat or it will hover above the water closer to the boat and we will splash down and swim back to the boat from there. At this point, I’m more excited than scared and really focused on looking after Todd. After forty years, losing the boat is like losing a family member. I press the pilot for details - rotor downwash, noise when the doors pop open, anything else.

I’ve never jumped out of a helicopter.

We touch down on the water upwind of the boat and the pilot hovers as Todd and I egress from either side and slide off of either pontoon. I paddle around to accompany Todd as we make our way to the boat, mindful to be the last person out of the water this time.

The weather overnight has ravaged Shodan. Blowing out all her windows and flushing anything not tied away.

Inside the galley, only four inches of air remains overhead and Todd and I alternate stealing breaths of air and then holding our breath as the air gap disappears with each passing wave - the upper layer tasting of diesel. And then there is the fridge, too big to just float through the doorway, it slams around in the cabin like a dead body.

The suits are too buoyant to swim into the foc’sle. The water too full of silt to see anything. We will return empty handed but for some items recovered from the top house. A briefcase full of paperwork, Todd’s phone which miraculously still works (iPhone!) and, mostly importantly, an aluminum mug that his son had made for him out of the metal scraps from when Shodan was built.

We get a stout line through the eye of the bow cleat should a salvage operation need something to tow on and then we swim to one of our partner boats who is circling us and filming.

We will spend a meal and on a raft up with our radio group. Some have known for most of those four decades. It’s still hard to know what to say. We are then dropped off on another tender which will finish loading and then take us on another twelve hour ride to Naknek. There we can catch a flights out to where we need to go.

On the overnight passage, I try to get some sleep. Restless, I wander over to find Todd working on a jigsaw puzzle left out by the tender crew on the galley table. We nod and sit in silence for a bit. When we do talk, I try to steer the conversation towards future plans rather than play the tape stuck in auto-reverse.

Todd is wistful and realistic. He’s 70. Maybe this was a sign to retire. 40 years is a long run. But it’s such a tough way to finish. Restarting would be just as tough. Finding a boat or salvaging this one. Dialing it in….

I gently counsel him not to make a hasty decision that he feels like he has to hold himself to. There will be time.

Sleep on it.

But I also know that sleep doesn’t always come.

In the dark, we replay the tape.

The chance to edit never comes.

Back in Naknek, I make a few phone calls and send a few texts while Todd makes arrangements to fly home.

I plan to keep working.

I’m already here.

I want the money.

But, moreover, I need to get over the fear.

Four days later, I’m pounding along on another boat in borrowed clothes with a huge stone on my chest as I watch the aluminum flex from inside the hull. That thin sheet of aluminum that separates us from the sucking cold, dark and green.

This boat is a semi-soft landing in that I’m working for a friend whom I’ve worked for before. He understands the situation and I’ve already warned him that I might be a little bit “tender”.

But then we start fishing.

Set the net out.

Get it back.

Deliver.

Make a meal.

Steal some sleep.

Make coffee.

Repeat.

It’s what we do.

For now, the myopia works.

There will be time to stare into the void later.

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If this opened something for you, Brother Wang goes deeper. It's a serialized memoir about invisibility, prison, forward motion, and what happens when stillness finally comes.

You can go to the first installment by clicking on the first installment —> Superpower

Start at the beginning → Superpower

How do you get through, Chris?

How do you survive?

First you get quiet.

Then you watch.

I’ve been practicing this for a long time.

My mother often tells this story.

In her lilting English.

We had started with a new babysitter. The neighbor’s girl. You were probably three or four. David hadn’t been born yet so you were still the baby. Your brother, Brian, always spoke up for you.

“Oh! Chris is hungry.”

“Oh! Chris is tired.”

When your daddy and I came home from dinner, I was going to pay the girl. Was looking for some money in the dining room cabinet. You said something to me. And, oh, she hear you speak and burst out in crying.

She say, “Oh, Mrs. Wang, I’m so happy for you! I thought Chris was a mute!”

You always make me worry the most.

You never learn how to ask for what you need.

I’ve started sitting meditation during the lockdowns. It’s the only way I’ve found to arrest the looping tape in my head. The spinning out of control on all eventualities. My breath the only place to go.

Even at night, the fluorescent lights remain on.

Relentless.

In half-Lotus on my bunk, I mention something about it to Tail.

He firehoses his response:

Why do you think I got this bunk down here?

You need dark?

Tie that shirt around your head.

Ain’t no lights out here, boy.

Dangerous things happen in the dark.

You’re in lock up now.

Why do you think our toothbrushes are so short?

Why do you think there ain’t no toilet seat.

Why do you think everything is bolted down?

Inhale.

….Everything they do is about reducing da threat.

Exhale.

Why do you think that they force sterilized my people?

Inhale.

You know that ain’t pepper in the shaker.

That’s salt peter.

Exhale.

That shit’ll make you sterile.

Inhale.

Look it up!

Most of the men here are Native Americans. Maybe seventy percent. The young guys all seem like gang-banger-wanna-bes and the older guys are more like Tail. Dried up and tired but still hustling to stay on top before the young bucks undermine the order of everything.

Tail calls the Latinos on our pod “‘dem Mexicans”. He has little to do with them. Three of them are actually Mexican. Busted for transporting a van full of marijuana - they lay low and keep to themselves.

The other “Mexican” is Honduran. Just a boy. When I ask him what he’s doing here in Spanish, he looks alarmed and then delighted. Maybe he has never heard a Chinese guy speak Spanish.

Ilegal.

Estabas trabajando?

Si, washing dishes in a restaurant but I didn’t get caught at work. I got caught stealing a CD from Kmart.

He shrugs his shoulders and shakes his head.

I’m here because of a $5 CD.

Y ahora?

I wait to get deported.

How long will that take?

Un mes, dos meses mas? I just wait.

How long have you been here?

Tres meses? Maybe I home in another three. I don’t know. I just wait.

Has anyone come to see you or offer help?

No. My friends are too scared.

What will happen when you get home?

Shrug.

They let me go. I stay with my grandparents. Save money and try to come back again.

I want to ask him “why?” but catch myself.

The Honduras he flees is a world away from the one where I visited. Following a Canadian girl down the Lonely Planet trail from Guatamala. After three days of riding a chicken bus sitting next to a little boy puking in a plastic bag, I plopped down next to her on a beach, licked the salt off her shoulder and then we ducked off to cuddle in a hotel that shared a shaking wall with a bar named The Bucket of Blood.

An inmate slides into the table where I sit. Hair shorn so close that I can’t tell if it’s blonde or red. Freshly arrived and too eager to talk. He tells me he got busted for selling synthetic marijuana - “Spice.” I wrinkle my nose and look up.

I don’t think that that’s illegal.

Nah, it ain’t. But I’m in the Air Force and got busted on the base. My C.O. sent me here to punish me.

I thought C.O. meant “Corrections Officer”.

Yeah, here it does, where I’m from it’s “Commanding Officer” but it might as well mean both.

When he tells me that he saw my arrest on the news, my stomach drops. I can feel my face go glowering red. It hadn’t occurred to me that it would be public.

But, of course it would.

I feel shame - but for my capture not my crime.

The hot, sticky exposure.

The judgement of others.

But, truth be told, if I’m getting out of here, there’s an order of steps.

Exposure.

Shame.

Aid.

Freedom.

No skipping.

I used to love to wear stripes.

In the summer before I entered fourth grade, we moved from the suburbs in Central New York to rural Vermont . My father was pursuing a second Masters degree in engineering —Large Scale Integration the science of cramming thousands of circuits on a single chip. The same chips that fed the impending personal computer revolution to come. For one school year and two summers, our family of six moved into a three-room duplex in the Singing Wood Estates.

That summer my three brothers and I played football and built forts with the boys from our condo development. As the third of four brothers, I was used to folding myself into the pack. Small but rough and tumble, I could play tackle football with the older boys and was wily enough for kick the can.

When school started, I found I was the only Asian boy at the Orchard School in South Burlington. That’s when getting dressed became hard.

My mother still kept in touch with some of her old school friends who had also made their way to the states. One of these “aunties” had twins named Chris and Clark. They lived closer to New York City and were a year or two older than my oldest brother. They always seemed cooler and smarter than us. They could play rock roll songs by ear on both piano and guitar while we were still stuck in classical piano lessons. Journey vs. Brahms.

My parents were frugal. We never lacked… particularly when it came to education or food… but most of my cloths came as hand me downs. Every six months or so, a bundle of preppiness would arrive in a box from an upstate suburb of New York spilling out with little alligators, tigers, striped rugby shirts and white tennis shorts. While my two older brothers got the pick of the litter, there were still gems that filtered through.

Still, now, in the mornings I froze. No amount of roaring or spanking from my father could get me dressed in time for the bus.

Eventually, my father imposed a simple clothing schedule and posted it on my wall.

Monday: Buffalo Bills hoodie, maroon Toughskins

Tuesday: Green and yellow rugby shirt, brown cords

Wednesday: Green shirt with the tiger, blue pants…

In the winter of fourth grade, no one at home seemed to notice that I appeared to gain a few pounds. Underneath the outfit prescribed by my father, I wore one of my own choosing. Either the yellow and green velour rugby shirt or its blue and red twin.

I liked the way stripes broke me up.

The soothing texture of the plush velour.

At school, I’d step off the bus and slip straight into a bathroom stall. I went in as one person and came out as another.

But I didn’t want to be Superman.

I wanted to disappear.

To go in as Chris and come out as Clark.

But, in the glaring white of that New England winter, with the snows drifts piled high on the roadsides, blending in grew harder.

Even beneath all the layers, I was receding deeper.

Click there to go to the next installment —> Floating on Hope

This has been a quiet process—writing, releasing, and not always knowing where it lands.

If something in it connects with you, I’d be grateful to know you’re out there.

Subscribing is one small way to signal that.

It’s free - for now.

This is Entry 4 of an ongoing serialized memoir.

Start at the beginning → Superpower

To my right sits a Native American kid. He notices me the least. 20s? 30s? It’s hard to tell. The circle wire rims add wizened years but his face has nary a wrinkle. He sits as still as an undisturbed pond. A pony tail, plaited into a long thin whip, draws a wet dark line down his back. He could be hovering a couple of inches off the bench.

I look for a way in.

There isn’t one.

Slunk low further down the bench are two white guys. One has some bloody pimples rising off his face like a chain of volcanic plumes. His pants are slung so low that the cuffs wrap around the heel of his orange Croc knock offs. I drop in on their conversation looking for a point of entry.

Parties, drug deals, arrests, cars, rims, girls….I have a million questions to ask - but the trajectory of my experience doesn’t cross the orbit of their conversation.

So I sit.

And I listen.

And try to compose my own still pond.

Eyes narrowing, I let my ears feel their way around the room. A door buzz open and clicks closed, keys jangle, a pair of soft-soled safety shoes squeaks over the linoleum. The swish of scrubs, the clinks of leg chains, the incoherent wailing wafting out from the drunk tank, the glowering hum of fluorescent lights, the voices in my head trying to run out on all possibilities to their ends. It all plays at 11 until it melds into the slowed riffling of my breath.

One.

One.

One.

And still the thump thump thump of my heart.

WAAANG. WAAANG! WAAANG?

The “A” dragged out long and flat like the orange space powder that my mom fed us when we were kids.

The sight of it spelled out — WANG — too strong to resist.

More tong than Tang.

It’s a short “a”.

Step forward.

Hold out your arms.

On it an orderly stacks a pair of gray, worn and pilled woolen blankets, some white sheets, a plastic mug containing a toothbrush - the handle half the length of a normal one, a ketchup sized packet of green toothpaste gel, two more pairs of pink underwear, two pairs of pink socks and two pink t-shirts.

A door buzzes open.

The orderly pushes me through with his chin.

Click.

It locks behind me.

I’m in a hallway of unlabeled doors.

A closed-circuit camera eyes me from its corner perch.

I wait.

Then give the Cyclops a hard look back.

Welp?

A pair of doors slide open. I step in and feel my stomach surge as I’m swept upwards.

At the apex of its throw, the doors slide open and I step into another hallway of doors. No labels.

Another camera.

Another pause.

A faraway buzz and a click and suddenly the sucking roar of forced ventilation through the crack clicked open door. Beyond it, the tinny distorted, blare of an overworked television speaker and the voices from within that rise and fall like waves crashing on the shore.

The force of expectation draws me across the threshold.

Eyes forward, I make my way to Control Desk at the head of the room.

I can feel the eyes.

Me: fresh carrion, carrying my blankets, cup, and toothbrush with my spare socks and tightie-pinkies balled up and balanced awkwardly on top.

The counter of the control desk comes up to my chin.

On high sits the guard.

He’s careful to ignore me.

WAaaNG? WAaaNg?

I raise up on my toes and try to wave my pile.

WAaanNG!?

In that mid-Western flatness.

Trying out my name like he’s chewing on a new flavor of gum.

Now the heads that haven’t turned are.

WANG!

You’re in 12.

My eyes run along the heavily painted cinder block walls. Two levels of cells with steps and a catwalk along the second level. Cream, grey, stainless steel, linoleum- everything neutral and hard like a dull blade.

I move toward the cell door labeled “12”, my orange Croc knock-offs scritch with each step. I start to wonder how I’m going to get the door open with with my arms full of crap. But, when I get to the door, there is no handle.

I look back at the island, in time to catch the guard quickly glancing away and busying himself shuffling papers.

From across the pod, the rude scrape of a chair and a lanky man rises and strides towards me in a path that arcs past the control desk.

C.O.! C.O.! Open me 12!

The door “clicks” as the mechanized lock releases and the door shifts slightly ajar. The Giacommeti slows as he approaches and waves me into the cell with a sweep of his arm.

Inside, I turn quickly to keep facing him. In the cramped space of the cell, I can smell a tooth rotting in his mouth.

What’s up Waaaang? I’m Tail.

A catcher’s mitt of a hand engulfs mine hanging out limply from under my blankets.

You don’t look like you’re from around here.

I nod.

Ha ha! Just passing through, huh?

Nod.

Well you’re from here now, boy!

He slaps his thigh, laughs, and in one continuous motion gestures and half bows as though presenting Showcase Number 2.

Welcome home, Waaaang.

Our cell is a five foot by ten foot closet. At the far end, bolted to the floor, is a stainless steel desk and stool illuminated by a narrow turret style window. By the door squats a short stainless steel commode - a sink and toilet combination. No toilet seat. No partition for privacy. Two plastic bunks cantilever out from the wall. The upper one clearly unoccupied. Still I wait to put down my pile.

Yup. That’s my bunk down there. You’re up top. Make sure your feet don’t touch my rack when you climb up.

I stand on my toes and lay my bundle on top of the flaccid vinyl mattress. The padding squashed and spent in the center from so many suspended bodies.

I turn one of my flat sheets into a fitted one by tying a knot in each other. Pulling the sheet around the mattress before tying the last corner to get the measurement right.

Tail, observing from below, grunts his approval.

I learned that trick from Ben Le. Ben got his start on tall ships working on the Tole Mour which, after years of running medical trips to the Marshall Islands settled into Kaneohe Bay in Hawaii and hosted programs for adjudicated youth. Ben probably learned it from one his youths.

A buzzer sounds and our cell door clicks open. Through our door, I can see the inmates heading back to their cells. Tail pushes the door back shut. It reengages with a mechanized “click”.

Lockdown.

I stay seated up in my bunk, feeling the protection of my perch.

What are you doing in here, Waaang?

I was stopped on the highway with some weed.

Ha. Likely story. How much weight?

A few pounds. What are YOU doing here?

Tail rubs his giant hands together and begins to unspool yarn.

Yo. I’m kind of a legend around here. Was on the run for 20 years before they snagged me. Hiding out. Laying low. I should write a book about how to go on the lam. They got me for writing a bad check. Forgery. But, shit, once they open up that pipeline there’s gonna be a whole bunch of other charges. Just you wait and see. They’re gonna put me in the Max.

Investments? Yeah, I’ve got investments. Mexico. New Mexico. Once I’m out of here, it’s ON. Right now, my people are looking after my woman and she’s looking after my dogs.

I’m descended from a long line of medicine men. My father, my grandfather. They put me in some Hollywood movie once. Back when AIM was popular and white folks wanted to know more about us Indians. Marlon-Brando-Dances-with-Wolves-shit. They wanted someone that could sing the old songs. They recorded me too. Made some sort of album but I don’t remember the name. I was put up in LA in some famous movie star’s house. Everybody wanted to find their noble warrior. Yeah, that was a long time ago….

Tail’s machine gun chatter provides me easy cover for me to disengage. There are so many things that I need to figure out. How to reach a lawyer. How to let people in both directions that I’ve been arrested. How to survive.

Trust no one.

Lockdown ends with another buzz and click and the pod stirs back to life. Inmates rush out to grab the remote and take the commanding of the television or to reclaim abandoned hands of Spades. Tail breaks his tangent suddenly and strides away.

A flow of inmates have started circling the perimeter of the pod in shuffling steps. Counterclockwise. I take a deep breath and step into the flow.

The pod is a concrete trapezoid, arranged around the control desk where the guard perches. Two levels of cells line the walls, a metal catwalk running the second tier. A television drones over bolted tables. In one corner, three pay phones. In another, a concrete room they call “the yard” — a basketball hoop with a concrete sky.

I move deliberately but casually. Not in a hurry. Not desperate. I’m both. On my third lap of the pod, I peel off at the pay phones, wipe the mouthpiece off with my shirt, pin the handset between my shoulder and ear and press “0”.

A series of clicks and beeps followed by…

To make a collect call…

more clicks and beeps. I dial the number I have memorized and wait.

After a pause, the line goes dead.

I go through the same routine again.

Pressing buttons, following prompt.

Dead line.

I try a different number.

Same result.

The guy waiting in line behind me recognizes my look of puzzlement.

Yo, Dawg, you can’t make a collect call to a cell phone.

Wait. What? All I know are cell numbers.

Can’t you call your parent’s land line or something?

My mom just moved.

Besides, I am NOT calling my mom.

He shrugs and holds out his hand for the phone.

At the high counter of the control desk, I ask to speak to someone who is in charge. The guard just glares back.

I’m in charge

I lean in to explain how I need access to my cell phone because I don’t have a way of reaching out otherwise.

Enunciation.

Eye contact.

All he sees are stripes.

Is there a way that I can get access to my seized phone just to get some phone numbers?

The guard averts his eyes from my gaze. From behind the counter he produces a form in pink, yellow and blue triplicate and, without looking up, slams it down in front of me. A miniature golf pencil left behind - trembling on top.

“Inmate Request Form”

Make sure you press hard enough to get through all the layers.

In neat block letters, I write out how I got stopped on the highway, leaving out any mention of drugs, and, if I can just get into my forfeited cell phone, I can find some numbers to call and get the ball moving for getting out of jail.

At the control desk, the guard takes my request hands me the pink copy, wheels his chair to the back end of the island, and tosses it into a looming stack of similar forms.

Thank you for reading.

I’m curious to hear what stays with you after this entry.

Click there to go to the next installment—> Becoming Clark

Start at the beginning → Superpower

The cruiser slides down the curve of the ramp like a boning knife along a rib. Underground, I’m led into a shallow room with three, low, painted, cinderblock partitions. I can see into the adjacent room through the thick-paned safety-glass partially obscured by the embedded grid of wire.

INTAKE.

Orderlies in blue or maroon scrubs rush around. Swaths of motion and color bisected by the brown and black uniforms striding with the unhurried lines of authority. With flushed cheeks and bodies like soft-boiled eggs, the orderlies clutch their files clad in blue nitrile gloves and eye goggles.

Universal protection.

As if criminality were communicable.

A man is getting booked in the booth adjacent to mine.

He’s still- tottering.

A dusty pile of mumbles and unkempt hair.

The absence of teeth pulling his lips into a schwa.

A blonde and buzzed-cut cop questions him in the slow, deliberate way one reasons with a child.

The skin fade at his neck scrubbed clean and pink.

Aftershave reeking of disdain.

So you’re drunk and you’re hanging out with guys that are also out on probation? C’mon Mervyn, you should know better than that. Why go back there if you knew that she was itching to fight? Anybody would know that your sister’s place isn’t where you want to be hanging out. Now I’ve got no choice but to call your P.O. about this?

Mumbles perks up enough to shake his head and mouth a barely audible:

Nooooo.

You know that your P.O. is going to have to violate you for this.

Another officer adjusts his jangling keys and then slides into the seat across from me.

I meet his gaze.

Wire rims.

Watery blue eyes.

Salt and pepper hair shaved high and tight.

There’s that smell again.

He runs me through administrative hurdles.

Last known address?

Allergic to any medications?

On any medication?

Do you do drugs?

Enunciation.

Eye contact.

Posture.

Word choice.

I hate myself for trying to draw such a clear distinction between my assimilated, colonized self and the drunk guy with no teeth.

I hate myself but know why I do it.

Survival.

Tell me something that you are looking forward to?

I look up.

Squint.

It’s just to make sure that you aren’t a risk for suicide.

Now?

Here?

Amongst the snowing ashes of my former life?

…the food?

It’s his turn to squint.

Satisfied that I’m not trying to overstep, he glances over the wall then leans in.

You’d be surprised. Some people are here just get out of the cold. It’s their only chance for a warm bed and three squares.

I nod.

Umm sorry… I’ve never actually been arrested before. This is all too surreal. What do I have to do to stay safe in here?

The chair squeals as he leans back, folding his arms behind his head.

Yeah, you don’t look like you’re from here.

There’s going to be a lot of people that seem like they’re trying to help you out.

Jailhouse lawyers.

Trading help for food

…or favors.

Just remember: they’re all in here for a reason.

Everybody is guilty of something.

Everyone is looking for an advantage.

Keep your head down.

You seem like a smart enough guy.

You should be okay.

Trust no one.

After fingerprints and photos, I’m steered into a cramped stall of a bathroom lined with tall sheets of scratched stainless steel. The warped walls bend and distort my reflection. A small, window-sized trap door slides open and a pair of hands pushes through a stack of folded cloths.

Get changed.

Knock when you’re done.

On top of the pile are a pair tighty-whities and a t-shirt —both dyed carnation pink.

I lift the pants by the waistband and let the wide black and white striped pants unfurl. “PENNINGTON COUNTY JAIL” stenciled in red block letters down the right leg. I strip naked —removing my oxford shirt, casual gray slacks, and my practical square-toed leather shoes and then pull on the pink undergarments, the wide black and white striped bottoms and tops, the pink socks and the finally the orange Croc knock-offs.

In the scratched fun-house reflection, I mean mug myself.

Not very convincing.

I’m still scared.

I tap on the metal trap door and step back.

No reply.

I knock a little bit louder.

Bam. Bam. Bam.

Nothing.

I knock harder.

The walls shudder and flex.

BAM. BAM. BAM.

Still nothing.

Pit sweat.

Heart stamping.

I ball my hand into a fist.

BAM! BAM! BAM!

Still nothing.

I raise my fist to knock again — but before I make contact, the metal window snaps open. Faceless blue hands reach in and snatch my clothes.

I’m sorry, I didn’….

The window guillotines shut.

Concussive quiet.

The door opens with a soft suck.

A man in maroon scrubs waves me out with his blue hands and gestures me towards a bench along the wall.

Five men are already seated there—nobody moves to make space.

Click there to go to the next installment —> Press Hard Enough to Get Through All the Layers

Start at the beginning → Superpower

I take a deep inhale and will myself to be calm.

I run through my half lies wishing that they were all true.

I’m just a law abiding, conservatively-dressed, Asian man passing through South Dakota. In the back?

Camping gear. Duffels full of clothes.

I have a summer job as a private chef.

Yah sure, it’s April, I’m heading out early to visit some friends in Chicago and then to help my younger brother work on his house.

The vagus nerve emerges from the brainstem down the full length of the torso. The longest and most widely distributed cranial nerve, it innervates all of the organs including the heart. By using my abdomen to take deep inhalations and then by exhaling slowly and completely, I can drop down into deeper states of relaxation and awareness.

With the red and blue lights spinning around me, I begin drawing out my exhales like I’m pushing them through a straw.

Long sips and slips of breath.

Still, my heart ripples the blue pinstripes on my shirt.

A shadow slips from the cruiser and strides up the shoulder. The body oddly canted to compensate for the slope. Black fatigues. Matching ball cap pulled low. Mirrored aviators. A bullet-proof vest truncates his arms and barrels his chest. More SWAT than cop.

He leans in the opened passenger window.

Drivers license? Registration?

I hand what papers I have across.

-cursing the hand that trembles.

The car is new and I haven’t had a chance to print the new insurance card.

That’s awright. I’ll trust you on that one, bud. Do you mind stepping back with me to the cruiser? I need you to verify what I clocked you at with the radar gun.

I crunch my way down the gravelly shoulder.

Legs unsteady.

The cop puts me in shotgun, presses the door closed behind me and swaggers around to the driver’s seat. The car shaking as the dog in back lunges against the heavy grate partition - whining and wagging. Tail thudding.

Black fatigues begins his spiral inward as he casually asks me about my comings and goings. I feign boredom and annoyance and play through my planned story.

Just enough detail to be believable.

Just enough truth so that I can remember.

Yup, Santa Cruz is on the coast. Yes, I know how to surf. Sharks? Nah. They’re actually around most of the time but really don’t bother with people. I guess you just try not to think about it too much.

Did I stop at Mt Rushmore?

The cruiser shudders coitally as a line of cars whooshes past.

Nah. My dad took us there once when we were kids. It was cool but once was probably enough.

Even now, I can hear that disembodied voice, my voice, receding.

Captured by the dash-cam.

The dog’s breath rolling down the back of my neck.

Listen, I’m going to cut you some slack and write the ticket for five miles over the limit.

I perk up.

Catch a breath.

He’s letting me go?

But then he continues.

Chris, as you can see, I’ve got a K-9 with me. We are a drug interdiction unit. I’d like to use Koda here to search your vehicle.

I fall back into the script. I’ve had plenty of time to rehearse this moment.

Yeah, I hear ya and totally understand. I’m kind of in a hurry though — trying to make it to Chicago before nightfall. Besides, I don’t want you to go tearing through all my stuff. So I’m going to have to say no to the search.

Okay. Well, I don’t need consent to run him ‘round the perimeter.

He opens Koda’s door and clips on a long lead.

Sits him by the rear bumper and says something low.

Then he starts Koda around the car.

Koda jumps where he points - sniffing and scratching in excitement.

Back in the cruiser, I take a deep inhale and then deflate.

Koda! Here!

Here!

And here!

Shuffle and point.

Scratch and sniff.

If I were innocent, I’d protest the dog’s nails on the paint.

They complete a circuit.

I catch a sip of air.

Another round.

Point and sniff.

Shuffle and surge.

Still nothing.

The man in black fatigues escorts the dog around the car for a third time.

Could this method of vacuum packaging become the new tried and true?

Third pass complete, he sits the dog and has a word.

Is the search over?

I begin re-orientating.

Kick my feet and push towards the light.

Lungs screaming.

Air, earth, decaying leaves, burning trash, sour apples, cinnamon… bodies of land like bodies of lovers have a scent unique to the individual.

But then they start another pass.

So does highly cultivated marijuana.

After I bail out of jail, when it becomes available, my lawyer and I review the dash-cam footage. Bruce zeros in on the moment that directly preceding the dog’s passive alert.

He points out how it happens on the front passenger side of my car.

In the blind spot of the dash cam.

How we cannot see if the cop’s signaled the dog to sit.

How the dog alerts at the front of the car while the marijuana is well in the back.

With an expert witness or two, we could have a strong argument for a faulty search. We could win but, if we went to trial and didn’t win, we would burn up any goodwill from the DA and judge for putting them through the fight. It’s a deeply personal call.

California plates.

Heading west.

He knew he wanted to search you before the radar chirped.

His trap sprung, black fatigues unclips Koda in the back seat then swings my door open.

Step out.

Cuffs squeezed on, he sets me back in.

From shotgun, I get a front row seat to the methodical disemboweling of my car.

With all the camping gear spilled out onto the shoulder, he goes to hoist one of two large, yellow North Face duffels.

It comes up funny.

Stuffed full.

Too light.

Split between them are fifty-two pounds of carefully trimmed, cured, weighed, and vacuum-sealed cannabis.

My breath gets shallower as I fold inward.

Looking to implode.

Disappear.

But the bracelets pull me back.

Hard metal over flesh and bone.

Squared edges on round.

Bags unzipped and spilling with the contraband exposed, black fatigues slides back into the driver’s seat and casually casts out a widening net.

Well now, Chris, the ball’s in your court.
You see? We don’t like to have the traffic stop end right here.

You have information we want—about where this came from and where it’s going.

I’ve arrested people in the past that cooperated to the fullest extent and, I’m telling you, they haven’t seen a day in jail.
Probably had more than you have here.

You look like an educated guy.

So you know this isn’t California.

What you’ve got—

you’re probably looking at a max penalty of twenty-five years.

That’s why people cooperate.
Because they don’t want to be prosecuted to the full extent of the law.

It’s up to you, Bud.

We can have an agent come down and meet us.
Or—

if you don’t want to talk to us,
I can take you to jail.

A lawyer?

I disagree.

I’ve been doing this for eleven and a half years and I know the District Attorney.
She’s tough on drugs and crimes like these.

This is South Dakota.
We don’t have medical marijuana and stuff like that over here.

Now’s the time to do what you’ve got to do if you’re looking out for you.

If you speak to a lawyer first—
the DA?

Well, she’s not going to take kindly to that.

I’m telling you, I disagree.

If it were up to me, and I had a choice,
I’d rather put law enforcement on my side
than a defense attorney between us.

It’s up to you.
I don’t treat anybody differently here.

You made a bad decision.

We can turn you into a C.I.
and have you finish delivering these.

I’ve seen it before.

When you’re dealing with drugs like these,
everybody flips on everybody.

What side of the advantage do you want to be on?

What side of the advantage do I want to be on?

Maybe I crack a smile.

Taste the twinge of iron on my tongue.

For I know something the man in black doesn’t.

I’m an expert at keeping secrets

and lying to cover them up.

Can you even remember it happening?

Sleeping in a car.

Flying down the interstate.

A bluebird, spring day.

From within a dream, you feel the car surge then slow as the driver eases into the next lane to leave room.

Flashing blue and red lights.

A car already pulled over ahead.

Your head swivels to follow the scene.

Bags and boxes spilling out behind the open trunk.

Maybe your brain registers something.

A flicker of dread.

Empathy.

Or nothing at all.

You suck in a bit of drool and turn back into your dream.

Meanwhile, someone’s life is flashing before your eyes.

Click there to go to the next installment—> Intake

When you move around the country with large amounts of drugs you have to come to believe that you possess some kind of superpower.

A gift that shepherds you past the piercing eyes of scrutiny and back amongst the flock of the innocuous.

Perhaps it’s your light-hearted affability or distracting attractiveness.

Maybe it’s overwhelming confidence or sheer will.

You could smell good or just be non-threatening - unremarkable enough to pass.

My superpower was invisibility.

Fluid in presence and forever in motion.

Perhaps you couldn’t see me.

Maybe I just wasn’t there.

I first went to sea at nineteen and kept going back — high wire tippy toeing along the continental edges.

Forever leaving.

Finding comfort in isolation.

At sea, I could just disappear into the vast flatness of the open horizon - featureless in every direction but down.

Be like water?

I was vapor.

Scentless, silent and skilled with my hands - I could be whomever you needed to see. National merit scholar, commercial fisherman, chef, sailor, builder, drug mover…. I slipped over borders and in between social classes. A month or two at a time, I could connect, play my role, fit in — and then move, traveling light and dragging a damp cloth across the slate to start fresh.

By my late thirties, I had enough money and momentum to stop hustling for the next job. I could glide through transitions. Months surfing in the tropics or trekking amongst ruins in Central and South America.

On paper it was freedom.

But something felt wrong—

a ringing in the ears,

a twinge in the gut.

I should be happy.

I should be content.

I am not.

At family gatherings, amidst the clinking glasses and dishes, stories would be passed - fluid in their retelling. Dramatic pauses practiced to capture shrugging smiles or slack-jawed awe. Smoothed and polished like lucky stones. Tell a story enough times and it becomes true.

Mythology.

Eulogy.

Oral history.

Listening to these stories I’d feel increasingly alarmed at the gaps in my own recall.

My memories a carousel of slides spinning. The chunky clicks and clacks demarcating the space between desire and aversion.

A swallow.

A blink.

Why am I not remembering?

What can I not forget?

How do you use the backs of your eyelids to see?

Perhaps there is an epigenetic quality to invisibility. A lucky stone, worn smooth and passed on through generations over five thousand years of written Chinese history - where political rule has long been about control. Confucianism, the reigning “ism” of Chinese philosophical and political thought, stressed conformity to hierarchy, discouraged dissent, and emphasized subordination of self to duty and collective harmony. The Emperor ruling by a “Mandate of Heaven”.

Civil service exams, the primary means to social mobility, tested candidates on Confucian texts, poetry, history and administrative skill. With filial piety at its core, Confucianism stressed virtue in rulers and loyalty in subjects — the terms written by those who ruled.

Honor your ancestors.

Respect your elders.

Obey your parents.

Study the system.

Pass the exams.

Climb.

Keep your head down,

Work hard.

Survive.

The Chinese arrived in America in two distinct waves.

First lured by the 1849 Gold Rush, they played a central role in completing the Transcontinental Railroad in the 1860’s. With slavery abolished, America needed cheap labor. The Chinese were willing to work hard — and for less. They kept their heads down, didn’t complain and, in the ultimate subversion, ended up thriving where others faltered.

Dad used to always say:

Take the jobs that no one else will take but do them better than anyone else could.

As the railroad crossed the Plains, the Chinese laborers broke off, opened mercantiles, and planted roots that grew into thriving communities. Chinatowns.

But this new visibility bred contempt. Under sustained pressure from white labour unions, the U.S. passed the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882, for ten years banning the immigration of Chinese laborers and explicitly denying citizenship to those already here. This grip tightened over the next three generations - eighty-some years - squeezing those that remained into isolated and diminished islands. Rendering them into atoms.

Invisible.

It was only when the U.S. saw China as a possible ally against the Japanese during World War II that the borders cracked open. Later, in 1965, the U.S. Immigration and Nationality Act abolished racially based quotas altogether in an attempt to fill a skilled labor void in the rapidly expanding American economy. And there the Chinese were again, waiting and willing to do the jobs that others wouldn’t or couldn’t. This was the second wave of Chinese immigration to America.

Riding along were my father and mother — teenagers. Independently of each other, they bundled up their dreams and took a leap of faith across an ocean, trusting that the momentum would carry them and the generations that followed.

They arrived on student visas. My father studied engineering in New York City. My mother came to attend a religious school in Stillwater, Oklahoma. At my mom’s port of entry, family friends shanghaied her, insisting that a backwater missionary school in Oklahoma was no place for her. She stayed, finding work as a draftswoman for Baltimore’s department of public works.

Ever wonder at the infinity of improbabilities that made your very existence possible? Choices and chance spun into some wild metamorphosis - ancestors who crossed oceans, fled wars, found opportunities, buried their dead, planted seeds, nurtured hopes, smiled at the right person, risked dreaming … and suddenly, there is you - the universe shining through your eyes.

Unfathomable.

And yet, here we are.

My father loved America. A haven where discipline and education uncovered opportunity. An avid reader fascinated with history, my father overloaded our shelves with biographies and books about war. Eisenhower, Teddy Roosevelt, MacArthur, Lincoln, Nixon, Reagan, LIFE - Goes to War. I can remember flipping through the pages and pages of charred limbs and deformed faces. I’d linger over the chapter on spy craft and ogle the gadgets. A pen that shot a bullet. A shoe that was a phone. We had a leather bound set Encyclopedia Britannica on a shelf above our TV and a mounted globe of the earth which I would spin. The oceans black rather than blue. The bottom shelves were filled with a complete set of National Geographic. The painted plywood sagging under the canary yellow weight of the discovered world.

Hidden amongst the hardcovers were the softly bound, simply leafed and stitched Chinese texts and an ever growing stack of Chinese newspapers. Despite going to Chinese school every Sunday, these remained indecipherable and mysterious to me But, even in Chinese school, the basis for all learning were aphorisms and stories with morals. Education and entrainment combined into one.

Although soft spoken in public, my father commanded the respect of his Chinese peers. I remember a photo of him as president of the Chinese Civic Association. He’s wearing blue knit vest with bold yellow and red squares on it, his head full of jet black hair that matched his glasses frames, microphone in hand. He gestures at a chalkboard while the crowd leans in.

My dad similarly held the respect of his coworkers at IBM. He could grind down and then solve problems where others would get stuck and relent. He went about his work without celebration or vainglory. His humility, at first virtuous, may have started tasting sour as he watched himself get repeatedly passed over for advancement. The anchor to his department, his co-workers were happy to take credit for his work while letting him remain at the bottom of the ladder.

Keep your head down.

Work harder.

Survive.

Life within our home was another matter. It was behind closed doors where my father ascended to the Mandate of Heaven. His rule absolute. His presence felt. His words unquestioned.

You could hear them echoing throughout the house even when he wasn’t there.

Insistent whispers.

Work harder.

You can do anything you put your mind to.

Silence is golden.

Don’t waste time.

Family first.

Duty, Honor, Country.

You Can Do It.

Part bark.

Part bite.

The soft voice.

The heavy hand.

The shaper of memory.

But, alas, Dad’s been dead for years now.

And the cop’s blue and red lights are flickering around the insides of my car.

In my rearview mirror, I can make out two heads.

One of them is a dog.

Fuck.

Invisibility doesn’t work on dogs.

Author’s note: Some names and identifying details have been changed to protect the privacy of individuals.

Click there to go to the next installment —> Hiding in Plain Sight