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Maybe it was because we, sort of, shared a dog.
Maybe it was because he was in prison for doing what, in my opinion, was the right thing.
Whatever it was, he was there. In my head. A lot of the time.
When I looked at Coop, sometimes his image would flash up of him trying to make the dog sit. He totally did sit. And lay down. And come. Other than that, he was a wild freaking animal still.
When I saw that asshole cop cruising around, yeah, then too.
And, well, when I started watching reruns of Oz when I really, really hated watching violence, and the show was full of it, so I could only blame the fact that I knew of a real-life prisoner, and was a bit curious about life behind bars.
In fact, I had just gone off a pretty serious prison documentary show binge the week before Halloween.
Maybe that was it.
Maybe it was all the stories of all the men who had been abandoned in the penal system. Who had no one to write them. Who had no updates on the outside world.
What can I say, I was always a sucker for that type of thing.
So I sent him a picture of the costume my sister had made for Coop - because she was quirky like that - and sent it off, not expecting anything.
One could say I was a bit, well, floored when three days later, I got a letter back.Autumn,Thus far, no one has been crucified to the gym floor.
We got that going for us.- EliHe wrote me back.
He even referenced the show I mentioned.
Granted, it was only two sentences, but it was a response. And, I felt, maybe a bit of a cry for help. If he was responding to me, a complete and utter stranger, then maybe his family had disowned him, or just slowly lost touch.
He was trying to reach out.
I just figured... what harm could it do to keep in touch, right?
I mean, maybe I had laughed at the people who kept prison pen pals before, thinking it was a little strange to keep up a relationship with someone you never met who was in for a violent crime.
I guess I never fully understood it.
Until I was faced with it too.
If someone who was locked up for five years needed some lifeline on the outside, and you were the one holding it, could you really hold back from tossing it out there?
I knew I couldn't.
At first, I always started mine with comments about Coop and the occasional talk about some prison TV show or even the weather. But before long, once he seemed to loosen up a little - and once I did as well - they were just letters.
I learned the names of the prisoners he talked about and what their respective 'hustles' were, noting that all the ones he mentioned seemed to have legit businesses, not selling drugs or prostituting themselves. I jokingly asked what his hustle was, if maybe he was the in-house Hallmark Card writer.
In response, he sent me back a folded-up piece of sketch paper.
With me on it.
I was sitting outside the coffeeshop, leaned back in my chair casually, frappe in front by my chest, straw in front of my lips like I had just taken a sip, my mouth curved up in a small smirk, eyes dancing, hair kicked up slightly in the wind.
Like I had been when I had been watching him and his crazy ex.
And, God, it was good too.
It was better than the art I had on my walls that I paid an arm and a leg for at a gallery featuring local artists. It was leaps and bounds better than the portraits my family had had commissioned of my sister and I growing up, shelling out thousands of dollars for work this man could do inside concrete and barbed wire from memory.
That was insane.
I wondered how he used it to make money, and even told him about wondering. He'd informed me that prisoners would pay a pretty penny for family portraits to have in their cells, or to send home to family members. He even told me that he had designed a piece of artwork or two for tattoos, but that wasn't something he liked to do, saying that that was 'a job for another brother,' and I got the distinct impression he meant his own. He was careful to never speak of them - his family. I didn't know - and didn't feel it was my place to ask - why.
So, instead, we stuck to more neutral topics like prison life, like TV, movies, and music. Like the weather. Like what businesses were popping up in and around Navesink Bank since his departure. When I had once mentioned She's Bean Around, his response had been almost immediate, though we usually went weeks or months between letters.
