Shakespeare Saved My Life Read online

  Yeah, I was gonna miss all that when I turned to teaching full-time on campus.

  CHAPTER 63

  “Cool”

  I saw you on TV last night!” one of my students on campus blurted out in the middle of my admittedly dry review of common grammatical errors in freshman writing. All heads turned away from me and to the girl in the back row. “You was in prison!”

  So much for grammar. That kind of “lecture interruptus” happened pretty frequently, at least once every semester, because the two MSNBC Lockup episodes that included a segment on my program aired frequently in reruns—most often at two in the morning, when my students should have been writing their papers, not watching prison documentaries. As soon as they heard the word “prison,” the students’ attention could not be easily returned to grammar. I had to take a little detour from the day’s lesson to field the usual questions: Is there a guard in the classroom? (No.) Are you alone? (Yes.) Are you scared? (No.) After a brief description of what I did, they always concluded with a collective “Cool!”

  The president thought my work was cool too. Not the president of the United States—the president of the university, which, to me, was much more important. President Dan Bradley and first lady Cheri Bradley attended one of the Shakespeare performances and, like everyone else, they were impressed with Larry. A key component of the university’s five-year strategic plan was community service, and I was providing it, along with excellent media coverage for the university. It couldn’t hurt to have the president’s support when I submitted my application for tenure—or so I thought.

  “Service won’t get you tenure,” cautioned my colleagues in the English Department. It didn’t matter how impressed the president was; he wouldn’t even get to see my application if it was rejected by my department.

  Reactions to my work in the department were as varied as the faculty in that large unit. Some of my colleagues sent me clippings of newspaper articles about my work, with collegial comments: “Great work, Laura!” Others expressed their views that prisoners don’t deserve any kind of special treatment, educational or otherwise. Most of them were just too busy with their own work and, honestly, I was too.

  My boss’s publications included a highly respected five-hundred-page grammar manual, and even though he continued to be skeptical about prisoner rehabilitation and resentful of my hours spent on off-campus service work, he was growing impressed with Larry’s own voracious appetite for knowledge—not just of Shakespeare, but grammar, too. Every week, in the middle of our Shakespeare work, Larry would throw out questions to me like, “Why’s it called a semicolon?” Or “Does an acronym have to spell out another word, or can it just be initials?” With the prison’s approval, my boss donated a copy of his book, personally inscribed, to Larry. When I presented it, Larry was visibly moved.

  “Aw, man,” he said. “This is such a big deal. Thank you. Thank him.” He clutched the book in both his hands, hugging it, and added, “I’m going to read it—all of it!” And he did: all five hundred pages. All grammar.

  CHAPTER 64

  Timeline of Anxiety

  Despite Larry’s written response to the scene in which Macbeth murders King Duncan, the murder he was convicted of was the one topic that we never discussed. And I never asked. After visiting the scene of the crime, I had wanted to try to bring it up but never felt comfortable doing so, especially in front of the other prisoners.

  We finally had that conversation years later, when he was no longer in segregation. We were sitting side-by-side, in an empty classroom in the general population area of the prison. No other prisoners were present. Not even a guard. Just me and Larry.

  By then, I had rejected the idea of writing an article about Shakespeare. Instead, I was working on a book about Larry. His was the “silenced voice” I thought I would find in solitary confinement, and he did have something important to say. I began tape-recording our conversations with his permission (and the prison’s). He agreed to talk openly about anything in his life—even, eventually, this.

  He started to speak, then hesitated, bouncing his leg, drumming his fingers.

  “Yeah, man, I don’t know. I’m uncomfortable.”

  “Do you want me to turn off the recorder?”

  “No, I don’t mind that,” he replied. “I just don’t want you to…”

  “To what?”

  “To, I don’t know, man, not like me anymore.” He laughed nervously. I knew it was a difficult topic for him to relive and that he was using humor to deflect his discomfort.

  “It’s okay,” I assured him. “Go on.”

  I felt relieved that he was not offended by my questions. Despite his displaying a good deal of hesitation, I was impressed with the candor with which he related his recollection of the events leading up to the murder. He described how nervous he had felt that night driving around with the others looking for trouble.

  “I’m trying to remember the state I was in,” he said sincerely. “What my thoughts were, how I felt.”

  He described the different levels of anxiety that come before, during, and after any criminal event. He referred to the stages as a “timeline of anxiety.” He told me that he felt the same thing every time he stole a car or broke into a house—even when he stole that first ice cream cone as a kid.

  “My heart and mind felt like—it’s a bad analogy, but it’s all I can think to describe that weird state—it was almost like being drunk at an exciting party. No, it’s better described as hyperventilation. Sit in a chair and lean towards your knees, take fifty deep breaths quickly.”

  He started to demonstrate.

  “After you stop—that is how you feel. You do have a presence of mind, but then again you don’t. You’re predominantly functioning on instinct. Up until the deed, you’re choosing which primitive instinct to follow: fight or flight. At the deed, you’re functioning on either one. So all of the logical behaviors you would expect from someone at this time are really unrealistic expectations.”

  That made sense to me, and it seemed like an important observation on the nature of criminal behavior: one that criminologists—and potential victims—need to know.

  “I remember hoping that we would not find anyone out that night,” he continued.

  As I listened to him piecing the moments together, I tried to re-create the events in my mind: a group of teenagers driving around the dark Muncie streets in the early morning hours…a lone college student walking his girlfriend home… the treelined streets…the alley. The images were all clear in my mind. Too clear.

  “After a while, it was starting to look like we would not find anyone out,” Larry continued, “and I was really happy.” He paused for a moment, and started to speak again with more difficulty. “But then…but then…”

  But then the group spotted Christopher J. Coyle leaving a party, walking a female home—so that she would be safe. Newspaper accounts state that he was abducted, driven to an alley, robbed, and shot.

  I didn’t want to urge him to discuss the shooting. Instead, I wanted to learn more about his reaction.

  “Tell me,” I said softly, “more about the ‘timeline of anxiety.’ What were you feeling at that moment?”

  “I remember having no control, no control of thoughts or anything like that. You’re just kinda at the mercy,” he replied. “That’s the peak of the anxiety. Any more and I imagine a person would pass out.”

  Four teens ended up being charged in the shooting; however, when I read over the newspaper accounts, I found nothing that seemed to suggest—beyond the shadow of a doubt—which one had actually been the killer. Larry had entered a guilty plea in the courts, but was he really guilty? Given his psychological instability at that time, I wondered, could he even know?

  “No matter what,” Larry replied. “I feel responsible for the life of this man.”

  Finished, he looked at me for a reaction.

  “That’s good,” I said, referring to the honesty, not the deed.

&nbs
p; He nodded. “You know, this is the first time that I’ve really come face- to-face with this. I’m at the point now that I just have to surrender to the reality that this deed is, and will always be, a part of me. I will never be able to separate it from myself. But, man! What an ordeal!”

  Unlike Macbeth, he had dared to “look on’t again.” Getting convicted killers to “look on” their deed again is an important step to keep them from killing again. That’s precisely what we had been doing through our work all of these years.

  I had one more question that I thought he would be able to answer.

  “If this isn’t too personal…?” I asked.

  “Go ahead,” Larry answered. “I mean, where else can we go?”

  “Could the kid have done anything to save his life?”

  “No,” he replied immediately. “’Cause you’re just kind of, not numb, but just…I don’t know what. Numb. I don’t know what other word to use.”

  “Nothing could reach you?”

  “No.” He thought for a bit, then added, “Well, it’s so hard to say. You can’t see anything else. You can’t even ponder anything else. It’s crazy, but it may be the clearest mind you’ll ever have, there’s no disruption, no thought coming in or nothing. You’re not even thinking. You’re just on this weird freakin’ beeline kind of behavior, man! So I would say no for that reason. But maybe if the guy had a different behavior, then it would trigger a different behavior. Like, if there’s another trigger, then yeah maybe I can see that.”

  “Did he try?”

  “Not that I remember. See, this is the weird thing: I know things were said, but I cannot tell you for the life of me what was said. I know things were said, ’cause I know that there’s noise; when I’m back in the car and back in the moment, I know there’s noise.”

  “What about leading up to that unreachable state? At that point—”

  “Yes! The answer is yes. Can something trigger a different behavior? My thought is we’ll jump out and start shooting, but him getting in the car changes my whole approach, so something can trigger a different kind of behavior.”

  “In other words, something surprising or unexpected could redirect you. So if the kid had done something unexpected—”

  “Man! I wish he woulda!”

  “You sound like Macbeth: ‘Wake Duncan with thy knocking! I would thou couldst!’”

  CHAPTER 65

  Media Celebrity

  It was the summer of 2008. With each passing year, the Shakespeare program was garnering more and more attention through local, national, and even international media stories. The prison’s public relations director sent out announcements of all of our work and arranged for each interview. Each summer’s performance of the play adaptations written by SHU prisoners made the front page of the local papers. “He did not even know who Shakespeare was,” was the caption under a photo of Larry. The story was picked up by the Associated Press and reprinted in more papers than I could keep track of. National Public Radio did a lengthy feature story. MSNBC spent a full day with us, from which it created two segments for its Lockup and Lockup Raw programs. Even the international scholarly publication The Chronicle of Higher Education devoted its centerfold spread to our work: “Where Daggers Are Only of the Mind.”

  All of the coverage was glowing, showing both the prisoners and the prison in a positive light, recognizing the life-altering value of our work. “Indiana inmates drive home lessons from Shakespeare,” read one Associated Press headline. “Inmates using the arts to send kids a message,” read another. A front-page story in the local newspaper drew the attention of the lieutenant governor, who sent me a note saying, “I want to commend you for what you have accomplished with these inmates. It appears they have learned so much about life, choices, and control. Congratulations, and I look forward to hearing about many more people benefitting from your program.”

  We were often featured in the Department of Corrections website and publications as well, and I was even presented with the prison’s Community Service Award given to its volunteer of the year. My mentor, Father Bob, quoted Shakespeare as he described the program to the audience at the awards ceremony: “The quality of mercy is not strained. It droppeth as the rain from heaven.”

  When the Discovery Channel, which had filmed the reenactment of the attempted escape from the SHU in 2000, started to plan its return visit to Wabash, the prison’s media director told the producer to call me. On the phone from Australia, he asked me to tell him all about the Shakespeare program. He was the same producer who had done the reenactment of Larry’s hostage attempt ten years earlier.

  “Oh, wow!” he said when I told him that I was working with a prisoner who had spent ten years in isolation.

  “Oh, wow!” he said when I told him that this prisoner was now the leader of the Shakespeare program.

  “Oh, wow!!” he said when I told him that this same prisoner was the star of that earlier Discovery Channel episode. With his previous experience at the prison, the producer had a very good view of what a tremendous transformation Larry made. He determined that he wanted to plan an entire hour-long episode just on Larry and his work in the program.

  Even Hollywood came to central Indiana. A couple of independent producers wanted to do a full-length feature film on the Shakespeare program with the focus on our greatest success story: Larry. As we escorted them out of the prison, after two full days of filming interviews with Larry, the assistant superintendent pulled me aside.

  “Be careful,” he warned me.

  “Of what?” I asked.

  “Jealousy.”

  CHAPTER 66

  Cell Phone in the Cell

  All good stories have unexpected plot twists, and this one is no different. It is not a linear tale of a bad man who, after reading Shakespeare for a few years, became a good man and did everything right for the rest of his life. True, Larry did everything right for several years: Almost immediately out of segregation, he was given the first job in his life, in the prison factory, and did so well that he was quickly promoted to line boss. As he promised, he enrolled in college and maintained a perfect 4.0 grade point average—the only prisoner I know to ever have done so. He sent his weekly paychecks home to his mom to put into a savings account for his graduate school tuition. And the Shakespeare workbooks he had written were being used by hundreds of students each year: in the SHU, in the prison’s college classes, and even by my law-abiding on-campus students. (Having finally achieved tenure, I was teaching advanced undergraduate and graduate-level Shakespeare courses, using Larry’s workbooks as the main textbooks.) And he was the star of all of the media interest. It was, in Larry’s own words, “the best time of my life—without question!”

  So, what happened? Was the pressure of so many successes, the first real successes in his life, too much? Was the jealousy of the prison population, whether inmates or officers, a factor? Was he set up? In any case, just when he was at the top of his game came word that he was in trouble: a write-up.

  “A write-up?!”

  That was my reaction when the officer told me the reason Larry was not going to be able to come to our session that evening.

  “Are you sure?” I asked, trying to peer over the desk at the paper that the officer was consulting. “Larry—I mean, Offender Newton—hasn’t had a write-up in four years!”

  The officer shrugged like it was no big deal, but it was: four years is a long time to be free of any kind of prison infraction. For Larry, it was the longest trouble-free time in his life.

  I was stunned, but reassured to learn that, after Larry’s early history of violent offenses, this incident was not violent. Nor was it a Class A offense. It was possession of a cell phone, the most popular infraction among prisoners: a Class B offense. It carried only a six-month “time out” in a disciplinary unit, after which the offender returned to general population with all of his privileges. But in Larry’s case, he lost his job, his college career, his freedom, his phone calls, hi
s family visits, and, above all else, his Shakespeare program—all this despite two full years of exemplary good conduct since his release from the SHU into general population, and two years free of infractions prior to that. At the most productive time in his life, he was suddenly put into an idle cell house, surrounded by prisoners serving disciplinary sentences. Even more than the SHU, it was, for him, a dangerous environment.

  The next two years would bring Larry back to where he had been before Shakespeare: back to SHU…and back to the brink of suicide.

  CHAPTER 67

  Back to Seg

  While Larry was sitting in G-house, the disciplinary unit, I was in the next building, the YIA unit. I was sitting with a group of those whom Larry called “kids in need,” showing them our Romeo and Juliet adaptation called Tybalt Must Die! The video clearly captured the interest of these kids with short attention spans. Even better, those who declined our invitation to view our video in the cell-house dayroom were pressing their faces against the little windows in their cell doors, eager to see what was going on.

  All of the top administration of the facility were in attendance, giving me enthusiastic greetings and glowing comments. Of course, there was media coverage as well, guaranteed to be favorable. A prison photographer was taking photos for the Department of Corrections website. It was a great day for the Shakespeare program, and Larry’s leadership role really came through in the video. Each scene ended with him raising his challenging questions (“What is Tybalt really after in seeking Romeo’s life? Is it murder—or is it something else?”) that were designed to help these incarcerated teens turn away from their pattern of violence before they ended up like him, in prison for life.

  “He’s something, isn’t he?” I said to the YIA manager.

  “He’s back in the SHU,” he replied. “He was transferred this morning.”