Macbeth for Murderers

By John Kerwin and Roberta Davidson

Macbeth for Murderers is a true story of how lives collide behind the walls of the Maximum Security Prison. The inmates include Rashid, a street-smart drug dealer; Jorge, a bitter man convicted of murder; Tommy, a modern-day Sundance Kid; William, rapist and murderer; and Jim, a murderer at nineteen. Fate, Shakespeare and two unlikely teachers, peel away their hard-core exteriors and reveal the men behind their violent crimes. Some will deserve a second chance, and some wont.
Roberta Davidson, an English Professor from the Ivy League, and John Kerwin, a television producer turned teacher, mingle in the sub-culture of the incarcerated, and their experiences provide a unique and truthful view of modern-day prison life.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Nov 30, 2005
• ISBN: 9781469113005

John Kerwin

Roberta Davidson is Chair of the English Department of Whitman College in Walla Walla, Washington. She has taught Medieval and Renaissance literature there for the last seventeen years, and, at the same time, taught part-time at WSP for five years. She and her co-author John Kerwin were recently married. John Kerwin, a television and film producer, director and writer, left Los Angeles to fulfill to pursue a second career in writing. He found the Pacific Northwest to be the ideal environment and lifestyle for that pursuit, and his experiences in Walla Walla resulted in Macbeth for Murderers.

Book preview

Macbeth for Murderers

Roberta Davidson

&

John Kerwin

Copyright © 2005 by Roberta Davidson & John Kerwin.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of non-fiction. The names of the people in the book have been changed in the interests of privacy, with the exception of the authors. While some characters and events are composites, everything in this book is based on fact.

To order additional copies of this book, contact:

Xlibris Corporation

1-888-795-4274

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Contents

CHAPTER ONE

Desdemona Goes to Prison

CHAPTER TWO

Inside the Dark Tower

CHAPTER THREE

The Mind of Evil

CHAPTER FOUR

A Dangerous Proposition

CHAPTER FIVE

The Criminal Hamlet

CHAPTER SIX

The Circle of Sharing:

Native Americans Behind Bars

CHAPTER SEVEN

Two Sides of the Corrections Coin

CHAPTER EIGHT

Riot

CHAPTER NINE

Henry V and the Convict Code

CHAPTER TEN

Macbeth for Murderers

CHAPTER ELEVEN

The End of a Winter’s Tale

CHAPTER ONE

Desdemona Goes to Prison

Oh God, oh God, oh God. Blood dripped from the man’s mouth on to the hard linoleum floor. I had just turned the corner from the stairs on to the Education floor when I saw Lamar chase a man out of a classroom. He caught him, then turned him around, pulling the bleeding man towards him while hitting him in the head and face. I sprang away from them. Stop it, kid. Stop it, brother, the old man begged. But Lamar ignored him, kept hitting him, his fist making wet, smacking sounds as it struck the man’s flesh. I tried to move towards them, but I couldn’t. My legs wouldn’t move.

Shut up ole man, you phony ass preacher fuck! Lamar stood up straight and kicked the old man in the ribs. The prone man made a sound somewhere between a grunt and a squeal.

Another body erupted through the classroom door. It was Rashid. He ran over to Lamar and stood between him and the fallen man, pushing him away.

C’mon mother fucker, this is stupid, Rashid said urgently. The cops are on it and the goon squad’s comin’ and unless you stop this crazy shit, stand up against the wall and wait for the cops, you’re goin’ down hard. Don’t argue with me. I know he called you ‘boy.’ We all heard it. We’ll back your play. Now leave him be.

Lamar glared at Rashid as if he wanted to hit him too, then took a step around him to give the old man one last kick. That one’s for all the brothers, he shouted.

About twenty seconds of real time had elapsed, although I felt as though I’d been standing there forever. I looked up and saw John emerge from his classroom. He braced his arms against the doorframe, holding back the pushing bodies of the inmates behind him. His deep voice reverberated through the hallway. Everybody back in your seats, now. Stay away from these guys. Guard—fight on the floor, fight on the floor! He shouted the last sentence, knowing the officer, on his rounds at another part of the floor, would hear him. I knew that the security camera in the hall was picking up pictures, but not sound. Although our own guard’s desk was empty, hopefully, in another part of the prison, there was someone watching.

Even as John called out, I heard feet pounding up the stairs behind me. I flattened myself against the wall. Rashid heard them too. He sprang back from the two fighting men and stood, back against the wall near the classroom doorway, looking as though he were at attention. Six men wearing blue uniformed shirts erupted out of the stairwell and filled the hallway. They swarmed Lamar. He disappeared from my sight under their bodies. Four more officers passed me, coming up from the stairs. They jerked the bleeding man up off the floor and slammed him against the wall, handcuffing his hands behind his back. Lamar emerged from the pile of bodies, looking dazed. He was spun around and thrown against the wall as well, handcuffs snapped on his wrists. Both men were marched past me back down the stairs, the old man moaning, blood still flowing from his nose. They moved around me like water past a precariously balanced rock.

Roughly thirty seconds had passed.

I thought the fight was over, but the real fight hadn’t even begun. Some days in prison are like that. One step forward, two steps back, if you’re lucky.

Walla Walla means Many Waters. The Native Americans who named this place once roamed the plains of Southeastern Washington. Here they found a peaceful valley nestled comfortably against the lush backdrop of rolling hills and the Blue Mountain range. Winter snows melt into gentle flowing streams that snake through the mountains and then cascade through the valley, forming the Walla Walla River.

In the early nineteenth century, white settlers founded the Walla Walla mission here. At first there was cooperation, but all too soon war and death entered the valley. There were slaughters on both sides, Native Americans protecting their hunting grounds and villages against the white men pushing through the west, bringing with them disease that decimated the tribes. Ultimately, after bloody fighting, the original inhabitants were forced to leave. The valley was taken over by the pioneers and farmers, following the Lewis and Clark trail. They found Walla Walla an inviting place to settle, raise lucrative grain crops and healthy families, insulated from the world outside. The valley’s violent past was mostly forgotten, and the path to Walla Walla was a pleasant, predictable journey leading to a safe haven. That changed again in 1887, with the arrival of Concrete Mama.

The Washington State Penitentiary was built and opened that year in Walla Walla. Even though it was removed from the town proper, the gray stone rock that formed its thirty-foot walls created a stark architectural contrast, a looming fortress that presided over the town, the gentle hills and many waters. The prison brought jobs, more than a thousand of them, and money into the town. It also brought another element, one that required massive walls, armed guards, concertina wire and death row—some of the most violent, hardened criminals in the state. The Penitentiary was known as the end of the line for murderers, many of whom walked to the gallows in the shadow of those gray walls. For these new inhabitants, Walla Walla was anything but safe.

Since that time, Walla Walla has experienced slow, modest growth. Wheat farmers still prosper, wine grapes flourish in its fruitful soil. Three small colleges support the economy, educating sons and daughters from all walks of life in Washington State. But, in the midst of this tranquility, Concrete Mama still presides over the town as the end of the line for violent criminals.

I’m an outsider here myself. I received my Ph.D. from Princeton University and moved west when I got a job at the small, prestigious liberal arts college, Whitman. I ignored the existence of the Penitentiary, as most people in the town do, apart from those who work there. I never would have prophesied that my personal path would take a sudden detour, putting me on a collision course with the murderers, rapists and thieves who inhabited that dark tower on the outskirts of town.

This state of mutual disinterest between the prison world and myself would probably have been permanent had not a yellow Labrador Retriever named Max come into my life one day in late summer. Max belonged to John Kerwin, a newly separated single father of two young boys. He’d been forced to find temporary accommodation, and had moved into the apartment complex where I lived, pink stucco bungalows reminiscent of the 1960s, placed in a horseshoe around a common lawn. There were rules against dogs in residence, but Max had been John’s dog for many years. When he was regularly smuggled into John’s bungalow, the rest of us who lived in the complex pretended not to notice. One day, inspired by a combination of warm weather and being cooped up inside too long, Max bolted through a loose screen door and I was the one who found him and returned him to his owner.

John is a Hollywood ex-patriot. He’d had a brief stint in the marines, gone to college, then enjoyed a career as a producer/director/writer and on-camera personality, first with NBC, and then with his own production company in California. In my eyes, his good looks and muscular physique cast him as a Marlboro Man type. So when he described his present employment, teaching media technology to inmates at Washington State Penitentiary, it sounded as if he’d picked the wrong door on some diabolical game show. Nonetheless, there he was; an ex-video producer applying his talents to educating inmates in the business of television.

John and I talked frequently about his teaching, and I decided that fall that I too wanted to try teaching inmates. I had to justify this decision to the people who felt at the time that I had lost my mind. My reasons were hard to explain. In the end, it came down to a combination of how sheltered my life had been, idealism, and perhaps a touch of mid-life crisis as I worried I had become just a little too comfortable with my job and my life. I felt I could afford to give a little more of myself to something worthwhile.

My shocked friends suggested a Joan of Arc complex, but the truth was simpler. I love the works of William Shakespeare. I believe in the power of his plays to connect on the level of emotional truth with all human beings, perhaps especially with men who have suffered and caused suffering for others. I knew John had discovered unexpected satisfaction in working with prisoners. I wanted to try.

Thus, one morning in January, armed with The Collected Works of William Shakespeare, all five pounds, one thousand seven hundred seventy-six pages of him clutched to my breast, I stepped out into the sharp, clear cold and got into my car. To get to the Pen, I had only to cross town, a trip lasting less than ten minutes. But in my mind, I was crossing the Rubicon.

The ride was short. I drove away from neighborhoods of neat, painted wooden houses with hedge-trimmed yards, past the shops and restaurants of Main Street that comprise the commercial section of town, over the railroad tracks and into the ghetto next to the Penitentiary where inmates’ families lived. The contrast was stark. This side of the tracks was marked by crumbling shacks, hanging-on-by-the-fingernails transmission repair shops with smoky fires in their back lots, junk yards scattered with rusty cars and metal debris.

The Pen loomed across the street, its parking lot at the bottom of a hill. Brown, winter grass covered a hillside into which the word PENITENTIARY had been plowed in letters large enough to be seen from the air. I parked my car in the staff parking lot, just one hundred feet away from the entrance, and looked up at the gray stone walls. Huge old red-brick buildings glared back through thick strands of fence and barbed concertina wire that wound around the twenty acres of the institution. It was an imposing fortress, the exterior of which was a natural barrier to curious visitors. I climbed a staircase to the guardhouse, and was passed through to the main building.

When I entered, a middle-aged, blond guard stood behind the desk, talking on the telephone. She didn’t look at me as I opened the door marked PRIVATE and I walked through it into the prison itself. On the other side was a functional looking hallway, like a hospital, barred by a series of electronic doors. I was stopped at three checkpoints for proper identification, and every time the doors closed behind me the tumblers clicked shut with a sound like fate, signaling my journey further and further inside.

By the pricking of my thumbs,

Something wicked this way comes;

Open locks,

Whoever knocks!

I passed through one final gate and showed my badge to the officers in the small booth that guarded the entrance to the Education floor. Finally, I was all the way inside. The stairs in front of me were shiny, red-brick tile and curved like a castle stairway up to the brightly-lit, white-washed hallway of the Education floor.

At the top of the stairway, I found myself standing among a horde of men resembling no other student body imaginable. Some were young enough to be teenagers, others were grizzled and unkempt, with tattoos covering most of their visible bodies, neck to wrists. An old man with a dirty gray beard down to his chest sat in a wheelchair and talked to a young man with only one arm. The young man gestured with his stump as he spoke. Loud male voices rang in my ears. Mother-fucker wouldn’t let me through the gate . . . Ricky got fucked up last night and he won’t be here… Fuck that shit. Here’s my class. Awright, later. Overwhelmed, I nearly bumped into a tall Native American man with a knife-cut scar stretching from one side of his throat to the other.

Most of the men were wearing jeans and white tee-shirts, standard prison clothing, although a few wore colors. The hallway was conspicuously clean. White walls displayed cheerful, brightly inked posters with inspirational educational mottos and torn-out magazine centerpieces of glossy cars. The gray linoleum floor was still slightly damp from scrubbing. Nonetheless, the air in the place smelled stale, as though it were not often circulated. Overlaying the scent of tired oxygen was the musky, almost rancid smell of men’s bodies.

I avoided direct eye-contact, acutely self-conscious that I was being watched. I studied the numbers above the doors until I found the room I had been assigned. I opened it and walked into a functional-looking classroom furnished with battered, dark wooden desks. It was a small, box-like space with neutral-colored walls, a linoleum floor, a blackboard and three rows of desks. I placed Shakespeare carefully in the center of the teacher’s desk, and waited.

Almost at once, four men gathered in the doorway. They looked Hispanic, their features resembling the sharp angles and prominent cheekbones of Aztec carvings. They entered the room as a group and formed a half-circle around me, standing between me and the door.

Hi, I said, as though I were used to being suddenly surrounded by convicts.

So what class are you teaching? The one who spoke, a young man in his twenties, had the intangible aura of a leader. At first, all I could register was the tattoo on his well-muscled forearm, a bleeding heart encircled by thorns. I saw he had another tattoo on his face, a teardrop beneath the corner of his right eye. John had told me that that kind of tattoo meant the man had spent at least five years doing hard time. He was no taller than I, slender, with his hair slicked back in careful waves, his tee shirt clean, his jeans pressed. Despite his size and neat appearance, he was menacing. His raspy voice had an unfriendly, mocking note and the muscles under his tee shirt looked hard.

Shakespeare, I replied.

Wha’? the leader asked me. The men grouped around him snickered. Who?

William Shakespeare, I repeated. Hamlet, Macbeth, Romeo and Juliet . . . 

Oh, yeah. That Shakespeare. Nobody understands him.

Maybe not yet, but they will.

You ever taught inmates before?

No, this will be my first time.

Who’s this Shakespeare and what can he do for me? another man asked me. If it makes no sense, I ain’t stayin’.

He’s a playwright and a poet, and if you give him a chance you’ll be surprised by how much you can learn from his work. He’s pretty popular, too. Hollywood is making movies of his plays and people are lined up to see them.

I might stay for that. You’re new, right? The second man asked. His conversation was a little like déjà vu.

It’s my first day, I admitted again.

It’s my ninth year in this… school, the bleeding-heart tattooed leader interrupted. I guess that makes me the expert and you the fresh fish…

He was scaring me, which I thought was his intent.

You’re right, I said, striving to sound cheerful, although I’ve never been called a fish before. Do you guys really use that expression: ‘Fresh fish’? I thought that was something they made up for the movies.

Most of these guys up here are idiots, the third man announced, ignoring my question. Hell, they can’t read their letters from home.

You’re wasting your time, lady, the leader announced, flushed. He looked even angrier than a moment ago. Maybe he had gotten the expression ‘fresh fish’ from a movie, and I’d embarrassed him. There’s only one reason why they’re going to want to take a class with you. Curiosity and JK.

I have fifteen students enrolled. I imagine at least one or two of them know how to read and are interested in the subject matter. But what is JK and what does it have to do with my class?

Let me see your classlist, and I’ll tell you who he’s strong-armed to be here.

So JK was a person. I had a good idea who. Thanks, but I think I’d rather discover that for myself.

Rodriguez! Is this where you’re supposed to be?

We turned our heads in unison to see John Kerwin, aka JK, standing in the doorway, his expression a blend of courteous inquiry and implied threat. So, I thought, John has been loading up my class roster. I wasn’t sure if I liked the implication, that my course was too unpopular to draw students otherwise.

My second realization was that Rodriguez must be Jorge Rodriguez, whom John had described to me. In a violent fight with his live-in girlfriend, Jorge had killed the woman with a knife. Jorge had called it self-defense, but the jury called it murder.

All of you guys taking this class? John asked.

His tone and look dismissed three of the men, but they left, smiling. For a moment, I felt relief at the rescue. Then Jorge sauntered to the back of the room and sat at one of the desks. He and John exchanged one of those long male looks that seem to promise mayhem in a friendly, generalized way. Then John turned to me, flashed me a smile, and asked, Having fun yet?

I’m fine, thank you.

Don’t let them rattle you.

Of course not, I lied.

Jorge smiled sourly and muttered something in Spanish.

John laughed and left. I wondered if I could wipe the sweat off my palms unnoticed.

Looks like I’m going to get to hear what you have to say after all, Jorge smirked.

Before I had time to think of a reply, fourteen more inmates appeared at the door, entered and sat at desks. The room filled quickly.

Good morning, I said, smiling. My face felt stiff. Let’s get started.

Good morning… Hello, all right, a couple of them answered. I looked around at my class. What a collection of subjects on which to prove my point that Shakespeare could work for all audiences! Their faces were hard and lined, even those of the very young men. Some looked like any group of students one might encounter in an adult education classroom. But others looked as strange to me as did the surroundings. Several were missing teeth, a couple had scars or other disfigurements, one man’s right eye didn’t quite open. Another had only half an ear on the left side of his head. His shaved skull was tattooed. Black students sat together on one side of the room, white students on the other. Hispanics and Native Americans had their own separate rows. Clearly, this room would not be a center for multicultural sharing.

I cleared my throat. My name is Roberta Davidson. I teach English Literature and Gender Studies at Whitman College, which is one of the colleges in town. I’ve been invited here this quarter to teach a class in Shakespeare’s plays.

I had constructed an introduction I hoped would work. The average educational level of inmates at the Pen was seventh grade, although technically the students in my class were required to have graduated from high school or received a G.E.D. I began by telling them a little of what we knew about Shakespeare the man, and about theater in the Renaissance. I explained that Shakespeare was called the greatest writer who ever lived. When we talk about people being cultured or educated, I noted, there’s no one who confers that status on us like Shakespeare.

When you finish this class, I told them, the one thing you and everyone else will have to admit is that you are intelligent human beings, capable of dealing with big ideas. I know some classes here give you certificates when you finish the course. Finishing this course is like getting an automatic certificate in civilization.

That was my big claim, part of the reason I’d wanted to teach this class to them, but as I talked, they stared right through me, giving me no reaction at all. All right, I told myself, this was going to be a little more difficult than I’d thought.

We’re going to start with Othello, one of Shakespeare’s best-known tragedies. The story is about perception and the emotions that push us into lies, betrayal and loving, not too wisely but too well. In other words, the way characters feel in this play is their version of reality, and it will be our starting point to analyze the play.

I had decided to begin with Othello for a number of reasons, but primarily because so many of my students had been convicted of crimes of passion. I thought the motivations of the characters in the play would be particularly accessible to them. I hadn’t considered, until I saw