God, the Devil, and the Warden
The greatest ordeal of Andy’s life, he claimed, occurred while his mother was being committed to the nursing home. Andy knew that his mother had gone crazy, and that the nursing home staff was close to ejecting her from the facility and sending her to a psych hospital, but he was busy with his own problems. He was on his way to talk to God and he wasn’t planning to come back from the visit. He was sentenced to time in jail while his mother had been committed, and his crime was possession of marijuana. It was while he was in jail that Andy decided that he was going on a hunger strike. “Either I am going to find my purpose in this life, or I am going to die,” he said to himself.
Andy didn't tell anyone about his hunger strike while he was incarcerated. On the first day of the strike he was awakened by the guards who were ordered to take him to his Parole Board meeting. They tried to feed him breakfast, but Andy refused, preferring to pace in his cell until transport came to get him. The guards made him shower, dressed him, handcuffed him, and then escorted him to the meeting. The Parole Board was friendly, but uncommitted towards him. It was a quick meeting and when it was over the guards made him take off his civilian clothes and then re-dressed Andy in an anti-suicide smock, commonly referred to by the prisoners as a “turtle suit.” He fought putting the suit on, so the guards tasered him. As he was rolled into the suit, Andy thought that if he kept fasting then it would take about twenty days to become comatose. If he could resist any nourishment, then in about forty days he would become a martyr. Then, for reasons that had never been explained to him, the guards redressed Andy back into his civilian clothes and then put him on a bus. He was being removed from the jail and he was on his way to prison.
Prison might be a welcome relief. After all, there was nothing that he wanted to eat and no one who he wanted to see. There was no car that he wanted to own or any house that he could imagine living in. He was done. So why not have the government pay for his room and board while he stewed in prison. If his hunger strike worked and he died in prison, Andy hoped that one of the lawyers in the family would sue for wrongful death. He laughed at his own joke; suing a for-profit prison to take away their profit. All that he had to do was to not eat for forty days.
The act of starving yourself is deemed suicidal by the prison system and the warden responded to Andy’s suicidal tendencies by putting him in solitary confinement. The warden refused his counselor’s request to send Andy to a psych facility by saying, “We do not pass along our problems to other units.” Andy was left to starve himself in a small cell. As the days went by and the fast continued, all Andy wanted to do was sleep. Meanwhile, his body began to wither from the lack of nourishment as it began to feed off itself. After the first two weeks of the fast, when there is no fat left to burn, the body begins eating away at the muscles and vital organs for energy. When this happened to Andy, he became delusional and he began to hallucinate.
He had a dream where he was ushered into the darkness but saw light at the center of his field of vision. As his eyes cleared, he could no longer see the dark, and he knew that he was in God’s presence, and the Almighty was angry with him. “Why are you here?” God said in a tone that marked his disappointment in his acolyte. “I left you in good stead.” In return, Andy became testy with God. He stood up, in his hallucination, and said, “I did what you told me to do.” He was angry at God. “I never asked you for anything!” This was true. In all his days in solitary confinement, and even in his years of trying to find his purpose in life, Andy prayed the rosary, but he didn’t ask for any favors. God, wanting to end this altercation, stated “You stand accused of living a wasted life.” Then, suddenly, from somewhere behind him, Andy heard Satan laughing, saying, “I told you that you should have put a comma there.” It was a joke by Satan because there are no commas in Hebrew. God laughed too, and said, “I got you,” and then a band of angels appeared to usher Andy out through the Pearly Gates. He woke up in his cell, crying.
Meanwhile, the warden decided that Andy’s case was beyond what his prison was equipped for and reversed his decision about keeping Andy in his prison. Andy was ordered to be moved to the psychiatric hospital. If he wouldn’t eat, then a tube would be inserted into his nose for forced feeding. The guards put Andy in a strait jacket so that his arms were strapped down to his side. Then they put an anklet on him and, at the end of the anklet, there was a wire that was attached to a taser, just in case Andy decided to get violent. The other inmates looked at Andy, as he was being dragged from his cell to transport, with a mixture of fear and amazement. Here was the half-starved crazy man that they had heard so much about, and he was literally being carried away by the guards. The inmates gave him plenty of room to pass once they saw his scraggy beard, his arms strapped to his side, and a taser attached to his leg. Andy looked like the prophet that he always wanted to be; his eyes burning as if they were on fire and his face racked with intensity. In reality, however, no religious would be in a strait jacket and no prophet would be carried away by guards.
And then Andy decided that his ordeal was over. His intent was self-harm with the goal of killing himself. But Andy had seen the face of God and that alone was enough for him to end his hunger strike after twenty-one days. The driver of the bus that was to take Andy to the asylum found his prisoner sitting in the holding area eating the lunch that had been offered to him. “Andy Clark?” said the driver who had to take role before putting the prisoners on the bus. “That’s me,” said Andy, lifting his head from the plate. He couldn’t use his arms to eat the sandwich because they were still strapped down in the straight jacket. The driver was confused. “It says here that you are on a hunger strike.” Andy replied, “Was! I was on a hunger strike but am not anymore. Can I have that other sandwich if no one else is going to eat it?” Starving himself was an act of pure defiance but Andy had thought that he had taken it about as far as he could. He was a control freak and the ordeal would be over only when Andy said that it was over.
After the hunger strike it took a couple of days before Andy could have a bowel movement, and when he did his shit had turned black; and that was about all that he had to show for his trip to crazy town and his showdown with God, the Devil, and the warden.
No comments:
Post a Comment