The Barn
By Robert Fell
photo by umanoide
It’s 4:00 pm and we’re rushed inside the decrepit open bay dorm, just like cattle. I am an inmate in a Florida prison. The dorm feels like a barn. A Florida Department of Corrections barn the USDA inspectors would cite for mistreatment of cattle.
Our barn was built over 40 years ago, prior even to my coming to prison. The barn has become old and worn down. Mold is everywhere. The windows won’t close, so every time it rains, water pours in. Same for the cold. We are forced to wear our sweatshirts and thermals to sleep. Rust is on our lockers, our showers, and our beds. The beds have metal slats spaced so far apart, our thin mattresses slip between the slats. The mattresses are worn to a mere inch thick. Their covers are torn and cracked. Pillows stink of the hundreds of others who have used these same ones. Four-inch spikes poke through the ceiling like the barrel of an AR-15. Toilets stink of piss and poop. Screens are torn, so mosquitoes harvest our blood each night. The spiders lurk nearby to receive a double dose of bug juice and human blood.
There’s 74 of us cows in this barn. After being counted, we’re rushed along a concrete path to the slop house, known by most as the chow hall. We are herded down a narrow path marked with a yellow line. If you step out of line, there’s a prison guard banishing an AR-15. She screams obscenities as she points the gun down from her tower.
Ranchers don’t threaten their cattle as our cow masters threaten us. Cattle are given plenty of time to eat. We are given five minutes. No normal person can wolf down a meal in five minutes. But they don’t see us as normal. To them, we are animals.
photo by annie spratt
Back to the barn we are herded. We are so used to the pushing and shoving that we act like cattle. In threes, we try to squeeze through a door made for one. We fight for space farting and mooing.
Some of my fellow animals seem content and happy in this barn. That’s what’s called institutionalized.
I have been in prison for 42 years. I made a mistake, but I am no animal.
Robert Fell graduated Cornell University with a Bachelors of Agricultural Science. He’s certified as a specialist vegetable grower in intensive growing methods and has over 5000 hours in facilitating other inmates and DOC staff in intensive farming methods. Robert is serving a life sentence for murder.
For more stories from the inside, listen to our 10-part prison series inspired by the men host Allison Langer taught memoir in prison. Click to listen to the series.
