Prison Pen-Pal and A Chubby Reb

It’s 7 am here and just growing light enough to watch the rain. The thunder has been a background noise since 3 am, at least that’s when my digital bedside clock started blinking after the electricity burped. I confess I didn’t hear the thunder until my bladder woke me later. 

Question: If I slept through the thunder, did it actually happen, since thunder leaves no puddles, no blown down limbs, no residual echo in the air?

Deep philosophy aside, I’ve made coffee, filled my new Mexican mug that smiles at me with a fun/scary face and sat down in Recliner #7 to enjoy the sound of the rain on the tin roof over the patio and write. My cup runs over. Honestly.

I mentioned in last week’s blog post that I have a new pen-pal. I’ll call him Bill. He is in prison in another state. My brother asked if I might write him. They know each other through a church program that allows my brother to teach a small group of inmates. I wrote, and Bill’s first letter back to me was half introduction and half prison poetry, something like cowboy poetry, I guess. That is, rough, but the meaning clear enough. It was more than enough for me to glean immediately that prison is NOT where anyone would want to live. I reckon that’s the point of prison, after all.

In Bill’s second letter he wrote that he is prison for “killing the man at work who touched my wife’s breast.” If ever a statement screamed for more details, that one does. Maybe in future letters he’ll elaborate. For now, I’m leaving alone the rest of the content of Bill’s letters because he and I are just starting this exchange of letters, and I want to ask his permission to share more.

By the way, we exchange paper letters, no email. One of the first things I’ve learned through Bill’s letters is to take nothing for granted about his circumstance. No internet, for instance. Even paper, pencil, envelope and stamp have to be bought from the prison store. So, no money, no communication with anyone outside of prison.  Moreover, since his prison doesn’t have paying jobs for inmates, his ability to buy anything in the prison store depends on funds being deposited in his prison account via a Paypal type program, that has a very high fee attached. Rates comparable to those of payday loan sharks. No breaks for the low-income families of prisoners in that “service.”

I’m cheating somewhat by loading each of my letters with a couple of old blog posts that somewhat serve to introduce me to Bill. As to what else I might write to a guy incarcerated for killing another man, you got me. I’m pretty much clueless, other than trying to find things in his letters that I can respond to. Does he want our letters to be all about him, or does he want to read about the world outside prison, the world denied to him?

Also, I don’t know what writing “voice” to have with Bill. Sympathetic? An older man to a younger man? Christian to Christian?  I just don’t have a feel for it, at all. He might as well be on Mars in terms of our commonalities. Yet, he seems willing to try, therefore, so will I.

Moving on to my novel writing, I’m happy to make a personal announcement. In my internet research for the chapters of Defiant Honor that I’m writing now, I’ve stumbled on a period photograph of a chubby Confederate soldier. Since I’m a chubby Civil War reenactor several weekends a year, I find myself sometimes joking with folks that real Civil War soldiers were skinny, not of comfortable girth like me, and like so many other middle-age American men who go out to play war on weekends.

The real soldier of comfortable girth who I found was actually General Robert E Lee’s nephew, General Fitz Hugh Lee. Fitz Hugh was a cavalry commander, and a good one, but a man who appears to have missed few meals, bless him.  Here’s the photo.

General Fitz Hugh Lee is in Defiant Honor for the day in 1864 when he sent two thousand of his dismounted soldiers to attack a fortified Union position near the James River, south of Richmond. It was an earthen fort manned by a brigade of US Colored Troops. It was the first battle for the African-American soldiers, and many people on both sides thought they would not fight well. 

In fact, the USCT regiments held the fortifications through an attack that last all afternoon. They inflicted substantial casualties on the Confederates before General FH Lee finally gave up the assault, after three bloody attempts. The success of the USCT brigade was much to the relief of the Union commanders. All that fits nicely into the action of Defiant Honor .

What I’m reading this week: I’m on the third book of a series of historical fiction novels about Vikings in Ireland back in the early days.  This one is titled The Lord of Vik-lo. A good writer named James Nelson self-publishes the series, even though he authors other novels through a traditional publishing house. That’s encouraging to “indie” writers like me.

Have a great week.