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232 ˜ A Work of Hospitality, 1982–2002
As I passed by, he quietly called out, “Hey! Come help me get
dressed.” I stopped and told him to come out into the light.
He did, and I recognized him as the one who had given us so
much trouble last summer. But now he wasn’t flaunting his
bulging muscles, or loudly threatening me. Instead, with his
head hung down, he quietly asked me to help him get dressed.
It became apparent that he had been beaten and stripped.
Blood flowed from a gash on his head. I told him to wait while
I went inside to get some peroxide and bandages.
When I came back and cleaned his wound and bandaged
his head, he kept asking, “Why are you helping me Why are
you helping me Don’t you know who I am Why are you
helping me” I told him that I was helping him because he
needed help and because he had asked for help. And I told
him that I recognized him as the one who had caused us so
much trouble and been so threatening back in the summer.
I helped him pull up his pants and zip up his jacket and
put on his coat. Then I put the blood-soaked cap back on his
head. He told me about the shame of this beating—how the
man who had done it to him must be down at the liquor store,
flaunting his strength and glorying in the weakness of the
beaten. He told me of the grief of living in a cat hole in the
frigid winter, with no family or friends to turn to. And then
he walked off into the darkness.
˜ ˜ ˜
When my friend came into the visiting room, I could see that he had been
beaten badly. Both eyes were blackened and swollen, his nose and cheeks were
puffy, his forehead was bandaged. Though my friend struggles every day to live
in peace with his fellow prisoners, he had suffered a seemingly unprovoked attack.
His face was beaten, his nose and cheek cracked. The back of his head had
been split on a steel door, his back lacerated by wire.
As we sat and talked, my friend told me of some of his grief. He was in
physical pain, and he felt pain for the man who had beaten him, who was now
being threatened with violence from other prisoners. My friend worried about
the pain of separation from his friends if prison officials decided that he should
be moved to a different cell block. Finally, he told me of the grief of his mother’s
death. After a long illness, she had died on New Year’s Day. My friend could not
attend her funeral.