KIT REED

ON THE PENAL COLONY


Notebook found in candy bin
General Store,
Old Arkham Village, Arkham, Mass.

FRIEND, IF YOU ARE READING this, I am already dead. I, Arch Plummer, am giving
this notebook to Hester Phyle with instructions to burn it as soon as she knows
Gemma and I and our friend are safe. The truth must out. Unspeakable secrets
fester here. Atrocities. If the three of us don't make it, Hester knows what to
do. The horror must be exposed!

If we make it, Gemma and Laramie and I will hold a press conference and blow the
lid off this place. If we don't, Hester has promised to leave this where you
will find it. Whoever you are, the future depends on you.

If you pulled this out of the barrel in the General Store instead of Olde
Arkham(TM) candy corn or packaged pemmican or arrowheads or that cornhusk doll
your daughter wanted, then Gemma and Laramie and I are already dead. I beg you.
Call The Times and Hard Copy now. Leave no stone unturned. Contact the network
anchors whether or not they can pronounce the language. Bring The National
Inquirer.

"And on your right note the authentic 18th-century architecture. Every house in
Old Arkham Village is more than two hundred years old! Now count the
windowpanes. Every window is 12 over 12."

"Mom, can we leave now?"

"Quit hitting your brother!"

"I want to watch TV."

"...paints made from natural substances. Blueberries. Buttermilk. Now, the
village tavern. Our colonists will be happy to answer any questions you have."

"Harry, that one is smiling at me."

"It's his job. Don't get too close." Dad lights a match and winks. "Watch this."

The "colonist" rips off the flaming wig. "Eeeowww!"

You come for the day and you say "Ohhh, quaint." You have no idea' what's really
happening just below the surface in our idyllic colonial village, deep in the
Massachusetts hills. Underneath the mobcaps. Underneath the Earth. You're malled
out so you bring the kids, drop your candy papers and Zip-loc sandwich bags,
deface the property, take your snapshots and go. You cart in foreign guests to
impress them with your nation's heritage -- 18th-century houses and shops; oh,
wow, these things are old! Or you bring Gran because she is old.

Or something shakes loose inside you and starts rattling around. You get hungry
for your past. Not necessarily your past. A past. Any past. Some commercial
visionary resurrected all these old buildings and moved them here to supply an
early American past for all of you late Americans to enjoy even though you never
had one. At twenty bucks a pop, it's your past too.

So you pack up the kids and throw grinders and a sixpack of brewskis into the
cooler and come rolling our way as if this is some kind of Colonial mecca, God's
own solution to two problems: crime and rootlessness. Well I can't tell you
about rootlessness -- who cares whether your great-greats hit Plymouth Rock or
Ellis Island or rolled in hanging from the axle of a truck? But I can tell you a
thing or two about crime.

"... scheme for a model prison." Bullfinch Warden hocks; the sound is heard
clear to the back of the tram. "As our country's leading penologists you can see
what we have accomplished here. Forget license plates. Forget telemarketing and
Readers' Clearing House as revenueproducing activities for prisoners who turn
back the proceeds to the state. We are at the apex here. The prison of the
future. Convicts as capital."

Crime? You want to see crime? This place is a crime. Maggoty food and floggings
in the picturesque village square, torture so deep that you never hear the
screams. Murderous trusties, sadistic screws. But what do you know anyway, you
stuff home-made gingerbread into the kids and buy them the thirteen-star flag
and you lead them onto the scaled-down replica of the Bonhomme Richard and you
go, "Oh, wow, these are my people."

You trudge through the landlocked whaler, humming to the canned gabble on the
Auditron, and no matter where you came from, you're all, like, these are our
forefathers. You get to feeling all-American even if you just landed on a raft.
Correction. Early American; you ride Paul Bunyan's blue ox and you bong your
knuckles on the genuine authentic half-sized Liberty Bell and if the screws
aren't looking maybe you try to scratch in your initials, but only a little bit,
and you feel as American as hell.

And, wuoow, you think, what a cool solution to America's problems. Punishment
and restitution, all in one place! Symbiosis. Patriotism and profit. Plus
rehabilitation, us hard-timers in tricoms or aprons and mobcaps answering your
stupid questions about beef jerky and squareheaded nails. And we are so fucking
polite! You push a button and the National Anthem plays and the replicated flag
goes up over the to-scale replica of Fort McHenry. Your heart swells up like the
Barney balloon in the Macy's Day parade and you're like, America, wow!

"Note the presentation. It's based on a revolutionary new concept. It's not what
you're doing, it's what it looks like you're doing that shapes society. Hence
the ideal village. Happy villagers."

Happy! What do you care about us? What do you know?

You see us sweating in our period costumes and you think, fine. Hardened
criminals working their way back into the fabric of American life. How
heartwarming. When they get out they'll be all-American, yes!

"I don't know, I turned the other way and the prisoner just..." The guard
produces two bloody ears.

"Shut up, they'll hear you."

"But Warden, what are we going to do?"

"Shut up. The state examiners!" Bullfinch Warden snarls, "Get him out of here."

"He's so deep in solitary that..."

"Not the perp. The tourist who got hurt. We can't have this getting out."

You think we look charming. If you think about us at all. Hester lays out
bayberry candles and you get all mushy: I love America. Delightful. You note the
glint in the 12-over-12s that us hard-timers clean every day at dawn and you get
all proud. American ingenuity. Quaint.

Well, you don't have a clue. See, you can watch us cobble or pot until you get
bored and then you can buy your barley sugar sticks and take the Ethan Frome or
Hester Prynne shuttle back to the Molly Pitcher or the Crispus Attucks Parking
Lot and get in your RVs and go. We stay.

I could tell you about charming. I could show you the underside of cute. Old
Arkham Village is our nation's heritage all right, but it's not what you think.
Rehabilitation, sure: let cons do time in pretty-pretty early America. Whittle
by the fireplace with the mantel painted in authentic imitation
cranberry-and-buttermilk paint, except we can't have knives. Press criminals
through the all-American grid. They come out the other side like potatoes,
mashed. Homogenized. You can mold them into anything you want. It's America all
right, America straight out of Lizzie Borden by Simon Legree. We, your model
prisoners, live by the numbers. Bullfinch Warden has thumbscrews and a gift for
hurting people so the marks don't show. Then there are the trusties with their
Red Devils and their cattle prods. And at night, stalking the catwalks in our
dormitory hundreds of feet below Betsy Ross Lot 3, the screws.

"Honey, let's fuck here."

"Eeek, what would our forefathers think?"

"Our forefathers are off duty. The place is closed."
The tourists are lying together on the greensward. A noise comes out of the
ground like a great, communal groan. She leaps out of her lover's arms with a
shriek. "Ernie, somebody's listening, let's get out of here!"

I AM WRITING in my own blood, by What light sifts through the bars in the
subterranean part of Old Arkham Village that you never see. This is our home
nights until dawn, Thanksgiving and Christmas, when even public parks in the
State of Massachusetts close.

And if we look all right to you in the daytime, bowing and smiling, answering
your questions in 18th-century quaint -- well. You don't see the hidden
monitors, trusties ready to rat if the smile slips even a half inch. Sonic
barriers at the perimeters and electrified razor wire in the woods. The anklets
and the belt.

I'll come to the belt.

Meanwhile, my credentials. To prove that this is no political tract and
definitely not a gag. It isn't even a cry for help.

It's a record of how things are. What it's like in this tarted-up, chintzy,
early American penal colony, me to you. I, Arch Plummet, am a lifer here in Old
Arkham Village; for years I have been your friendly village blacksmith,
answering your stupid questions as I hammer horseshoes and craft cheesy rings
for your kids out of genuine, authentic replicas of 18th-century square-headed
nails. You've seen me pull glowing metal out of the forge and bong horseshoes
into shape to the voice of Jason Robards reading, "Under the spreading chestnut
tree..." The Village Blacksmith, piped in here on a loop, and you've seen me
hammer them on to the Percherons' hooves and finish them off with the hasp while
on the same loop some old mid-American broad named Jo Stafford belts out "The
Blacksmith Blues." Well I could tell you a thing or two about blacksmith blues.

Right, I am the village smithy. For my crimes. If you knew how many times I've
heard that track or what would happen to me if I trashed the speakers or tried
to walk away from the racket, you'd understand. Burn scars on my ankles where
the anklets zapped me; mossy cracks in my skull from the beatings in solitary
and beginning marks around my waist from the belt. I am a lifer.

A life sentence to Old Arkham Village, when all I did was steal a loaf of bread.

Okay, okay, it was a Lexus, but I didn't know about the toddler in the back
until we reached Cuernavaca, by which time the only logical thing to do was send
the ransom note. I never laid a finger on him! I bought him the Pancho Villa
scrape and matching Mexican hat and put him on the bus home before I even mailed
the note. And here I am with the hard-timers. Quiven the decoy duck carver
(murder One), and Roland the town printer (arson). Gemma the gingerbread maker
(crime of passion, don't ask; her husband was shtupping her mom), sweet Gemma,
whom I happen to be in love with -- and Laramie the cobbler (armed robbery,
which I happen to know was a frame).
"It is well known that society's dregs are recidivists beyond all hope of
rehabilitation." The warden fills the 18th-century meetinghouse, roaring like a
frustrated warthog, and thirty visiting penologists flinch. "If we are going to
warehouse them, let's do it creatively. There is no enterprise without its
profit."

If you find this. When you read this. Know this. Everything I've done I did for
Joanna. And Quiven. Because of what happened to them when the only wrong thing
they did was fall in love.

See, when the screws turn us out of the rack and march the work details out four
hours before Old Arkham Village opens, nobody cares who walks next to who in the
double line. Hard-timers, all of us, groggy from the pills, belching oatmeal and
miserable in our pointed shoes and scratchy linsey woolsey period costumes,
shambling like the dead.

The screws are zoned out on these grim mornings; hung over from the orgy and
bitter about being stuck on the predawn shift. Nobody notices if you're marching
with guys from your tier or sidling closer to the women in the foggy dawn, and
if you do collide with her -- Oh, Gemma...if Quiven collides with Joanna! -- if
you mutter to each other under cover of the guards' shouting and get to know
each other, everybody thinks what you to say to each other leads to zilch. The
vise of a maximum security prison is too tight for love.

But Quiven got close to Joanna and fell in love anyway.

"Mommy, that lady doesn't like me."

"Of course she does, dear. It's her job."

"Then why is she crying?"

"Shut up. Shut up and eat your horehound drops."

I DIDN'T EVEN SEE IT happening; I was conditioned to march on, like Pavlov's
dogs or the chicken that dances on the electrified turntable, softshoe like
crazy to keep from getting shocked. Want to break and run? Want to kill and
burn? Light some weed or relieve yourself behind a tree? Forget it. We look free
to you, but we are not. Hidden by the costumes, there are the anklets, with an
extra added incentive for us. Under the shirts and leather jerkins, we wear the
belts.

Electronic control. Now and ever. Day and night. We prisoners are reined in
tight. We eat rotten meat and weevily bread and belch misery and resentment; we
crawl out of boxes on these dank mornings and break rocks before we don our
costumes for the Early American Card Shoppe or tickety-boo little Scrimshaw
Junction, folding our hands underneath leather aprons and putting on prim
Colonial smiles. But what do you tourists care?

We look all right to you.
"And to keep order we give them the illusion of rehabilitation. That they are
learning new careers. Movement is not action, but we make them think it is. A
true belief in movement can prevent action," Bullfinch Warden says.

Appearances. Happy colonists. Model prisoners. If you look at all, you don't see
past the costumes and bland faces, but there is rage.scorching the sweaty gauze
under our wigs and murder in our hearts. Be careful what you do when you come
into our shops and houses; be careful what you say! Rebellion etches the insides
of our bellies; pry open our jaws and you'll see fire. We mean to destroy
Bullfinch Warden, but you happen to be closer. Beware. We could just rip a hole
in your face.

Some days one of us forgets himself and strikes out or makes a break for it, but
it never lasts long: the belts. The monitors. The drugs. No sleep. Debilitating
food.

By the time you come at ten A.M. we're so deep into it that we look right at
home in the confected past. And if Quiven and Joanna fall in love and begin to
plan, I don't guess it, so how could you? I am in love with Gemma, but it's only
since the auto da fe.

Quiven was in love with Joanna. He couldn't leave it alone. Notes dropped in
with the laundry, sweet Gemma slipped Joanna's notes into the pockets of his
fatigues for her, and in the men's supply room Laramie Beckam did the same for
Quiven. Quiven and Joanna had seconds to cherish and devour each other's notes;
the screws turn out the beds and check the toilets on the hour. Their love fed
on messages in the code desperate prisoners send, endearments tapped out on
prison pipes. They kept in touch! Love grew on the most insubstantial
communication veiled looks, endearments murmured in line; one day I saw Quiven
and Joanna lock fingers. I whispered, "Careful. You'll get hurt!" but a trusty
heard me and instead of working at the smithy I logged the twelve hours until
the park closed with my head and hands clamped in the village stocks. I tried to
warn him!

"But let's face it, ladies and gentlemen. These people are animals. We are a
warehouse here. Good penology is optimizing it."

Quiven knew it would kill them both but he was in love. Still, love might have
died of starvation if Bullfinch Warden hadn't caught Joanna dreaming over her
spinning wheel: a complaint. Family of Latvians, in the hand-worked shirts and
aprons with the lambs embroidered on the front. When lovesick Joanna was too
distracted to answer their hundred questions they went to the warden for a
refund. Mind you they thought he was the historic curator. Yeah, right. "We come
so far. She look asleep!" They claimed the hostess in Cotton Mather house was
not only dumb, but deaf.

The next day Joanna was ashen and drawn. Bullfinch Warden had activated her
anklets. Not bigtime torture, just enough voltage to keep her on her toes. Safe.
But seeing Joanna suffer drove Quiven nuts. It was around then that we had the
Indian corn pudding riot, with Quiven standing up on the table in the dining
hall and us chanting and banging our cups until they zapped all the anklets and
belts and we fell out senseless from the pain. When we came to, Quiven was in
solitary and we were under lockdown on short rations, bread and water and fried
pork rinds, don't ask.

It wasn't bad food that drove Quiven. It was compression. When he cleared
solitary he was assigned to the Old Stone Jail. Then he heard Joanna scream.
Fury drove him to crack the leg irons and wrench off the cell door. Compression
sent him out of the jail and across the Village Green to Cotton Mather House. He
went in spite of the fact that the belt's secret workings intensified as he got
farther from his designated post.

Quiven was in agony by the time he reached Cotton Mather house. Screaming Joanna
was bent backward over her spinning wheel by a sexcrazed tourist in a FUCK ME
I'M AMERICAN T-shirt and an International Harvester cap. In spite of the teeth
of pain Quiven pulled her away from the horrified tourists and took her
upstairs. Security programming sent a couple of jolts into her anklets to keep
her in place but love overrode the pain.

"Oh, Quiven," she said, or so Gemma reports.

Quiven looked at her with his own death written in his face. "I love you." They
both knew that this was not only the first time for them, it would be the last
time.

It was excruciating, but they didn't care. The anklets wouldn't kill her, only
scar her, and when push comes to shove in prison, it is the moment you strive
for, not the terrible aftermath or punishments to come.

So Quiven and Joanna locked themselves into a bedroom where they murmured and
touched for as long as they could manage until the gnawing scorpions in the belt
overrode even Quiven's compressed love and grief and he fell out of himself,
never to return.

"Because of its nature, a democracy is obligated to pretend to rehabilitate. To
work, rehabilitation has to be voluntary. Since it is mandatory it never works.
Therefore, the state's only obligation is to make it look as if we have tried."

By the time Bullfinch's cadre in their Revolutionary war uniforms broke in on
them, pain ruled. Quiven was dead. And Joanna? Joanna had gone so far back
inside herself that not all the thorazine in the world could retrieve her. She
was lost to us.

No deed goes unpunished and nothing in prison passes without note. Bullfinch
took off the belt and strung Quiven's body up in the underground cellblock. He
made us file by to see the exact cost of rebellion. They hung him upside down,
so we walked by cranksided with our heads resting on our shoulders so we could
see into his face.
"Sometimes you can only teach by example. That's why the state gives us the
death penalty. Sometimes the example itself is more powerf-al than the threat of
death."

Bullfinch Warden actually said, "Look on my works, ye mighty." '

And we saw. Incised around Quiven's naked waist by the constant jackhammering of
a million tiny needles was the warning: LOVE IS DEATH... FREEDOM IS SUICIDE...
FREEDOM IS SUICIDE... LOVE IS DEATH, words chasing each other around and around
dead Quiven's waist, a warning to us all etched in pain, and if the needles
penetrated Quiven's vitals, it's a testimony to physical strength and to tile
power of his love that he had his moment with Joanna before his heart faltered
and he died.

In case you're interested, Warden Bullfinch wasn't about to leave it at that.

He stood up on the catwalk while we filed past what was left of Quiven and he
made a speech. I'll spare you the details. It was worse than the anklets and the
belts, and the punchline? Instead of sending Joanna to Quincy for retrial,
Bullfinch Warden was conducting a witchcraft trial, a special event for the
Labor Day Weekend visitors to Old Arkham Village, us on time-and-a-half rations
since prisoners are never paid, and the state makes overtime provisions when
they need you around the clock. The trial was slated to take place in front of
high-ticket audiences at special evening showings so we could continue with
business as usual during the day.

"The lessons we teach here are for the ages. They are lessons for us all."

But what do you care? You loved the trial. It went live on CNN. Hard Copy came
in on it, along with Inside Edition, and Ted Koppel interviewed William F.
Buckley Junior on the witch hunts of the 1950s in a special Nightline telecast
direct from here.

Because you thought it was contrived just for your entertainment, you even loved
the auto da fe. It's a good thing Joanna was already catatonic; she didn't feel
a thing. At least we don't think she did, although Entertainment Tonight
reported agents from William Morris and CAA were trying to sign her up on the
basis of her performance, up to and including her dying screams.

And because you were excited and distracted by how real the flames looked and
how eloquently Joanna writhed, and because the screws were busy keeping you from
mobbing the stake, Gemma's body and mine touched in the crush: "Arch." "Gemma!"
We fused, bonded by instant love. And as reflected flames licked our faces and
we moaned in the heat, my friend Laramie Beckam, who knows every duct and pipe
in the bowels of our underground cellblock because he is a trusty, Laramie fell
in with us and we hatched the plan.

"The only effective facility is the maximum security facility. It has to look
civil from the outside, but it must shut off all possibilities of escape."
Now our plan is complete. We've assembled civilian wardrobes and kited them over
the electronic barrier. After I plant this note I give the signal. Laramie
starts the fire in the paint locker. By the time it's extinguished he's shorted
out the E-barrier and we're out of here. And if we don't make it; if they see us
escaping in spite of the fire and confusion; if they shoot us dead, no matter.
It's better than one more day in the smithy, with Gemma suffering behind the
Visitors' Center desk or giving her monologue on Colonial spinning in the
repaired and refurbished Cotton Mather house.

"Effective prevention is predicated on the impossibility of escape."

Quiet. You don't hear me. If our plan works, you will never read this. Instead
you'll see me on all 1,000 Primestar channels, telling our story to the world.
All that remains is to slip this account into my jerkin and, when the shift
changes and the screws march us, the early detail, to the holding pen to draw
breath before they put us back into the Colonial petting zoo, I'm going to slip
away. I'll stick this notebook into the cornhusk doll barrel in the Bayberry
Candle corner of the General Store. Although Hester is afraid to come with us,
she's volunteered to risk her life if necessary to preserve this testament. At
my signal that we're home free, she'll destroy it for our own protection as well
as hers.

Live free or die.

We go tonight.
with thanks to Paul Mercer

She lives in Connecticut and travels widely; it was presumably during her
American travels that she hit upon this puritanical notion for prison reform.
Perhaps you'll bear it in mind during your summer vacation...