Until I open the mailbox door and see, right before my eyes, my self addressed stamped envelope.
My eyes light up and I jam my hand in the box, catching a finger on the edge and causing it to bleed a bit but I don’t even care right now. Jerking the envelope from the tin contraption, I skip back into the house, literally skip, as I hum On The Good Ship Lollipop.
I race into my room, tossing my backpack on the chair, and dive onto my bed as I carefully open the letter, making sure to keep the envelope intact as I have a feeling I might want to hold onto this. Something tells me it’s going to be good, although I’m not even sure why I have that feeling.
As I read the last word and my attention slightly shifts from the letter back to the present moment I realize my heart is pounding. I made a mistake in how I formatted the letter and it resulted in an inmate receiving it.
Goosebumps cover my body and I think about all the psychological possibilities for my paper, but those quickly fade. Much more important is a different kind of feeling for this man. He seems…not like I’d expect an inmate to seem. Something about him seems more genuine, caring, and tolerant than anyone in my real life. I wonder if he’s had so much time locked up to be retrospective on everything and it’s made him more calm, thoughtful, and caring about others than the boys my age. And I also wonder where I can find more about him.
I race to my phone and Google his name. It takes a while, as the case was so long ago, but I’m pretty sure I’ve found him.
Seems he was sentenced to life in prison for arson…a forest fire which burned out of control for days, resulting in billions, with a b, dollars in damage and the loss of lives. He claimed he was homeless, living in the woods and sometimes when it rained, would sleep on the front steps of a deserted vacation cabin to avoid catching pneumonia. He testified he never actually entered the home, only sleeping on the porch where the blaze was suspected to have originated. There’s even a picture of him, or more accurately a mug shot.
He’s handsome, very much so, but he’s also only sixteen years old. He’s younger than me by two years, and if my math is right now he’s forty. Good grief, this all happened before I was born. He’s been locked up a lot longer than I’ve been alive. Suddenly the ‘prison’ that I call my life, because of my parent’s restrictive ways, doesn’t seem so bad after all. I’m still not happy about it, but I need to stop using that word. This man knows what it’s really like to have everything taken from him.
But why is it, for the first time in my life, I feel like giving him something that no man has yet to take from me?
I shake my head, trying to shelve the idea and continue reading.
It seems he saw a woman in the area where firefighters think the fire started, and she was ‘burning something.’ Despite not much of an attempt by anyone to track down this woman, the public defender quickly advised him to plead insanity. James refused.
Then they tried to offer him a plea deal. And he refused that too, saying he wouldn’t confess to something he didn’t do.
I admire his courage and everything, but it didn’t seem like he was going to get a fair trial. And he didn’t. His whole court case lasted a mere two days and he was thrown behind bars on the third, sentenced to multiple lifetimes in incarceration.
A tear trickles down my eye as I continue Googling as much as I can about his case. As much as I love watching crime shows I love it even more when innocent people are found to finally be innocent, and they walk.
Maybe my mind is too warped from viewing too many of these types of programs, but I feel like I’m not too bad at spotting a real bad person from one who just hasn’t had a fair shake. And it sure seems like someone needs to shake some sense into the judge and jury who convicted him so quickly with what seems like little evidence if you can even classify it as evidence.
From what I can see he was homeless, an orphan, and found in the wrong place at the wrong time. No prior convictions or anything, but yet he still served as the perfect scapegoat. I roll my eyes and Google the list of prosectors California has had over the years, and sure enough, my suspicion is confirmed.
Election year and the prosecutor wanted to show they were capable of doing their job and to bring justice to everyone after this horrific event. Jeez, can you use more buzzwords in a speech, I wonder as I watch a super old Youtube video on the case.
I roll over onto my back and think about what James’ life must be like. A lot of emotions rush through my head but there’s one in particular that really surprises me.
Possessiveness.
I feel like his story, what he might share with me in these letters if he’s able to get them out of San Quentin, are going to be too personal. I feel a certain protectiveness of him, which is strange as I’ve always felt like I’ve needed someone to watch and protect me.
Even looking at his picture from when he was so young it’s clear to see he’s athletic, built, and tall with very broad shoulders. I imagine all the rage he must have pent up for being locked up for something he didn’t do, and how he could unleash that whenever he wanted.
And I doubt he’s been allowed any conjugal visits over the years. Imagine if he…if we…oh my.
But aren’t prisoners manipulative, some of the greatest sociopaths on earth? I need to be careful and keep these letters at a distance, not revealing any personal information about myself. He already has my home address.
I swallow hard, realizing I made a dumb mistake. I should probably just let it go now and not write him back. He’ll forget me soon enough and this will all blow over.
Or I could get my pen and stationery and write him back, and open a Mailboxes Etc. tomorrow to receive his letters.
I need to do this for my school project in order to graduate, right? That’s what I’m telling myself at least, but I know that this is so much more.
And it’s time to find out more about him, and that starts with… I swallow hard. Revealing more about myself.
To a convicted felon.
5
James