Eggbert

An Interlude

I want to tell you about my dear friend Anthony, which requires going back to the summer of 2002, in Attica. I was twenty-five years old, had two years in prison, and despite all the horror stories, I was surprisingly well situated: cushy job as an office worker in the maintenance department, a cell on a quiet company with respectful neighbors, my brother had provisioned me with an army coat, blanket, and countless other necessities, many of which survive with me to this day; I was accepted into a crew and offered a spot at their table in the yard. But the guys at the table lacked a certain simpatico-ness. Being a social sort, I ventured around the yard.

And that’s how I happened upon Ant that summer night, leisurely sitting in the grass by the handball court. He was shirtless, tan, very fit. I walked up with the intention of saying, You seem like a decent sort who has things figured out. What I ended up saying was, “Do you surf?”

Right. A profoundly weird thing to say in a prison yard, like a page picked at random from a Berlitz guide to English. This All-American-looking kid with the blond hair and regrettable sleeve of forearm tattoos just kind of squinted up at me, and I realized how much of a jackass I sounded like. Imagining Jones Beach or the Rockaways, I doubled down. “I mean, did you used to surf? You look like you used to surf.” No, he did not used to surf, but he did smoke pot, so we did that.

Thus began a fast friendship, much of which consisted of finding week and smoking it. He also used heroin, while I’d been clean from that monster for over two years. Unlike other users, he didn’t offer to provide me with dope should I ever change my mind.

Before I ever told him how heroin led me to murder, he simply understood that I had a heavy past. He never asked me again and went to great lengths to shield me from his occasional use.

I got him a job in maintenance, and he was moved to a cell close to mine. We began to eat together, taking turns cooking. We sent rhyming notes back and forth; two of his survive: ‘To Horse, / You asked that I kite you / so just not to slight you / These words I now write you / Bring the pan down at chow / And this I do vow / the meal will be Kaplow! (the bomb, duh!) / Some cheese and macaroni / onions, garlic, pepperoni / I need the first two, homie / I guess that is all / So I’ll give you a call / when I’m done watching football… / From: Shit.”

And this one: “Gut, / Here’s a soda to go with the meal / But it’s secondary; here’s the real deal / I need me a pack to give to this kid. / If I don’t I just might have to pop off his lid / So do what you can to find me a pack / And I’ll do what I can to get it right back./ --Wrencher.”

We shared reading material, and he turned me onto “The count of Monte Cristo,” a story that a prisoner can’t help loving. It was also the genesis of a joke between us, modeled on the “Bill & Ted” line mispronouncing Alexandre Dumas as Dumbass. If he were to joke with me in a public setting, he’d say, in his thick Brooklynese, “Alex-an-duh.” His not calling me dumbass in front of others, even in jest, showed a conversational savvy that I appreciated.

Being close like that allowed us to be boys again. We were in our twenties; he was a couple years older and had a couple more years in on the twenty-five-to-life we were each doing. We moved as a team against a world of cutthroats, like Lord of the Flies, except the boys on this island had a taste for blunts. He was definitely Ralph, the fair-haired boy, and I was Piggy, deferring to him around the tougher, meaner boys. He was the more intrepid and sure of himself, the Huck Finn to my Tom.

Ant was everything we say we value in a friend. He was loyal and honest. He would jokingly stop me from being overly serious by saying, “Aw, hawseshit.” He was scrupulously even-Steven, ripping a sandwich or a joint right down the middle, then letting me chosse which side (I’ll note that equitable sharing is something I still struggle with). And he was caring, after a fashion, like when he offered to punch someone in the face for me.

He had poems written from when he was in the Box, while I was just beginning to write essays. Ant usually deferred to my knowledge of grammar, though I remember one editorial disagreement. He’d described a “myriad of” something, and I took out the “of.” We went back and forth, each looking for examples to prove our point, until I got on the phone that night with an authority on English usage, my grandma. When I returned to the table, I said, “No ‘of’ after myriad.” “Says who?” “My grandma, says who.” “OK.” Like that, he was mollified.

He was a good egg like that. Fun fat about Ant: he taught me how to cut hair, or more specifically, his hair. He would reassure me that it was no biggie if I didn’t do a perfect blend in the back. Ant is the reason I’ve been cutting my own hair all these years, and when someone inevitably gives me guff over the blend in back, I way what he would say “don’t’ give a fuck, I don’t gotta look at it.” (Except he really meant it.)

We kept track of each other third party, though our contact was sporadic. He was about to get married, then he wasn’t. In 2010, when I was transferred to Comstock and began working as a peer counselor in the ostentation room, I kept my eyes open for him. I also made inquiries among a certain type among the twenty-plus new weekly faces: white kid, knock around, a drug-hungry look. I’d ask if he knew Eggbert, the nickname Ant was given in childhood, which he let friends know, like a secret password. If you used Eggbert to ask about him, you were a friendly, and could trade in information; if not, you were likely someone trying to track him down because he owed.

And then one day in 2011 I walked past him in the hall. He was in a small group of men just brought into the prison, and quiet is strictly enforced in the hallways there, as he just cocked his head like this. Good ol’ Ant. His hair had thinned a bit on top, his face was more gaunt, but he looked great. I made a hug with my face, and brimmed with excitement. In several days he’d be in the orientation group I ran, so I began to tick off a checklist of what I’d tell him: how I’d earned a bachelor’s degree since we last saw each other, found my way into a writers’ workshop, where I placed him prominently in one essay, got sober, and married a lovely woman.

When the new group showed up on Monday, Ant wasn’t among them. I did my due diligence, and found out he got locked up over the weekend because of—wait for it—a dirty urine. Ant didn’t mind the extended isolation of the Box. He wrote poems and read and worked out, so he wasn’t scared of the department’s ultimate punishment. The prison within a prison was his backwards world vacation from general population. So back he went. Before he left, I sent him tobacco, deodorant, chocolate, and stamps, the prisoner’s care package.

Over the following years working orientation, both in Comstock and later here, in Prison C, I kept on the lookout for my old friend. A guy named Eric came through orientation and he knew Eggbert, his accent just as thick. I hung around Eric as he did pull-ups as if they were a religious obligation; he paced in front of the bar, worshiping his bicep and saying, “Like a fuckin’ onion.”

There were guys who confused Anthony and his brother, Joey, which often led to Ant fighting over a drug bill that Joey left unpaid. But Eric knew their backstory, and shared something more with me. Joey was bitten by a spider in Prison B around 2005, the medication administered to him caused his organs to shut down, and he died. Learning that, I reached out to Ant and offered my concordances.

Even through the distance of years I feel that platonic love, and it surprises me actually, because I’ve met so many people over sixteen years in prison. The question remains: why does he loom large for me? Perhaps because we got separated before we grew accustomed to each other. But I choose to believe there’s more to it. We came from different places and imagined different futures, but he was a true friend, a solid person. Maybe he’s firmly pedestaled in my pantheon of friends because I learned from him an important lesson for a newjack to learn, which was that I can live in prison, that I’d meet good people and make my own fun.

I think about him from time to time, wondering where he is, and if the years have been kind to him or cruel. Last I heard he was working in Prison B’s kitchen, staying out of trouble, which, for Ant, is a very relative term. If our paths cross again, I’ll tell him some of what I just told you, but I can already hear him reacting to lines like platonic love, laughing it off with a shove to my shoulder, and telling me, Aw, hawses hit.

Relax dude, I’m not a stalker or anything. That might make it into our next performance. As always, let me know what you think.

—A