When Regular Guys Land in Prison: Chronicle One

The Legend of Tim Toomey

We had been at the Federal Correction Institute in South Carolina for over a year when the transfer bus brought us a gem that would change our lives (and our view of society) forever. New inmates come into the housing units before count time, and after count they make their awkward, angst-filled initial appearance on the unit floor so that select members of their own race (federal prison is extremely segregated) and geographic region from which they hailed (it is secondarily segregated by geographical origin) could welcome them and orient them to the ins and outs of the prison and our housing unit. (And to pretend they cared if they were a snitch or not)
Ace and I did not subscribe to this, as we felt no urge to welcome new people to prison. These sort of concepts were foreign to us, and we were somewhat criticized for our lack of camaraderie. Not that the idea of camaraderie was foreign to us, but the sort that was directed towards strangers in prison whom could be anything from a child molester to a rapist or serial killer was bordering on lunacy to us.
So when the middle-aged, scrawny man with shoulder-length, straw hair walked through the open door of our cell, we glanced at each other briefly as he greeted us. In our cell.
"You guys know what they got for chow tonight?" he asked.
He was Jeff Foxworthy, but the wino version.
"Err...not sure," I said.
Ace was now digging in his locker to avoid eye contact. I could read his thoughts: Why is this guy in our cell?
"Someone said they had beef stew," the man said. "How is it here?"
"No clue," Ace barked. "Someone around here can tell you!"
The man was unfazed by my cellmate's directness.
"You guys been here long? How's the commissary?"
Before I had time to consider a proper brush-off, he was back at it.
"How're the cops about getting ink here?" he asked. He flashed a tiny upper-arm tattoo. "Gotta get my sleeve finished."
I stared at the guy. Ace slammed his locker door and locked it.
"What about the yard? They got a nice track here?"
The guy's voice was deeper and more gruff than his slight frame would imply, like an old mobster that had smoked cigars since he was a teenager. And he was trying to show off his knowldge of the feds. He didn't care about the things he was asking.
Ace blew past us, and out the door. He was more rude than I was, and I immediately envied him.
Without the smallest trace of dejection, the man said: "What's up with your celly, man? He got a stick up his ass?"
"He just doesn't warm up to people easily," I said.
Was I abstractly saying that I did?
"Yeah, that's cool. He seems like a cool dude. So how's the visits here? It easy to sneak shit in?"
I would be shocked if this guy ever got a visit, let alone a visit from someone willing to sneak in contraband for him.
"I don't know, man, I only go out for visits every few months. I really don't like 'em to be honest. Makes me miss freedom too much."
"Yeah, I know what you mean. Visits are tough shit."
Could this straggler actually have a wife or a girlfriend? Curiosity got the best of me.
"So who comes to see you?" I asked.
"My sister'll come. Couple of my boys'll come."
I didnt believe a word of it. I was tired of this guy.
"So where you from?" he asked.
"Listen, I gotta make a phone call, but I grew up in Maryland, right outside D.C., but I live in Raleigh now."
His eyes went wide. "You're kiddin'! Me too, man!"
I chuckled. "You mean you're from Raleigh, or D.C.?"
"I mean guilty on all counts, man! I grew up in P.G. County outside D.C., and moved to Raleigh twenty years ago!"
I was not one who subscribed to the geographic hooplah of the fed system, but I was pretty surprised.
"I'm from Montgomery County."
"Aw, the rich county. That's right next to P.G. County! What part? My sister lives in Gaithersburg."
"That's where I'm from," I said. "Gaithersburg."
I laughed. Everyone always called Montgomery County the rich county.
"So how long you been in Raleigh?"
"Just a few years before they locked me up. About to go to the halfway house there in a few months."
"Oh, that's a sweeeet house! I've been there a few times, man. I camp right around the corner from the place. I know everyone that works there at the halfway, man. The staff all love me and I can do whatever I want. I max out on this violation next month. When you get there I'll come rollin' up and get you out on passes. I'll give you my iPhone number before I leave, just hit me up. If not you can always find me on Facebook."
"So where do you live in Raleigh?"
"Aw shit, all over. I'm homeless. Not by plight or nothin', by choice."
I was perplexed, but even more amused. "So you're homeless, but you have an iPhone and a Facebook page?"
"Hell yeah, man! I make a good living as a panhandler!"
I laughed. "So that's your job? Panhandling?"
"Yeah brother, Raleigh's a great city for it. I make a couple hundred a day. People love givin' money to the homeless in Raleigh. And the weather's so much nicer than Maryland."
I went to the door of the cell, looked for Ace out on the tier. I caught Lew, the "red bearded Jew" (a completely separate blog of its own) walking by.
"Lew! Do me a favor and tell Ace to come here. He's in the computer room I think."
"Wha-wh-wh-what makes mm-m--m-me your gopher boy?" Lew stuttered.
"Just get him for me, man. And come back with him so you can hear this."
I knew that would do the trick. As long as Lew felt included, he would do anything. Most of prison was psychological tact (yet another blog altogether), and Ace and I often laughed at how transparent dudes were. Low self-esteem was rampant among criminals; not all that surprising when one considers that crime is often committed in an effort to stand out and fit in.
I turned back to the dude. "What's your name, man?"
"Everyone calls me Toomey. Tim Toomey."
"Cool, man. I'm Brent." I shook his hand, a disappointingly limp handshake. I never understood how guys could have a limp handshake. "I want Ace to come hear about what you do. He'll love it."
Toomey chuckled, easygoing. "No problem, man. People trip out when they hear my story."
"So you're on violation? Where'd you do your time?"
A violation was essentially a violation of parole, which in the feds is technically a violation of supervised release. It is the same as parole, but with the feds it is five years of supervision added to the end of your sentence, instead of the old concept of parole, which allowed a guy to do part of their sentence on the street, under supervision. I once heard a guy on a prison bus ask: "Hey why don't the feds give suspended sentences like the state system?", and another guy responded: "They do. That five years of supervised released that's added onto your sentence at the end, that's the same thing as a suspended sentence!"
Touche.
"I did time everywhere, man," Toomey croaked. "I did twenty-three years in the feds and twenty years in the state system in Maryland."
I stared at him. "How old are you, dude?"
"I'll be sixty-seven next month. I get out two days before my birthday."
He pulled out his prison ID, which had a guy's birthdate on it right below the word INMATE. I looked at Toomey's.
I was stunned. Utter disbelief.
"Dude, you look forty!"
Ace walked in a second later. Lew the red-bearded Jew was behind him. His real name was Jason Lewis, and he wasn't actually Jewish.
"Ace!" I said. "How old is this guy?!"
Ace looked at him begrudgingly. "I don't know, fifty."
I laughed. Ace was trying to be rude, and it backfired.
"Dude he's almost seventy!"
Ace shot him a look.
"And he's homeless, but has an iPhone and a Facebook page and gets money panhandling!"
I watched Ace's spirits lift. Lew stood by in his usual guarded state. Ace was his best friend and idol, and Ace also tortured him.
"I got a twitter account too," Toomey said. "I was tweeting on the way down here about turning myself in. So all my friends would know I'll be off the cloud for awhile."
Ace grinned, filled with a renewed vigor. "So your homeless?"
"Yep. By choice. There's a band of us, we all have tents and camp in different spots all over the Raleigh area."
Ace looked at me, smiled. "That's your home boy!"
Ace was from Philly, and perpetually teased me for moving to the South.
"More than you know!" I said. "He's from Maryland also, the next county over from me! He did twenty years in the state and twenty in the feds."
"Twenty-three in the feds," Tim Toomey corrected.
Ace, still smiling at me, said: "Your TRUE homeboy. He's like the older version of you!"
I wanted to tell Ace off, but I didn't want to insult Toomey. Instead I gave him a meaningful smirk. He was gonna get it when Toomey was gone.
"Think about it," Ace continued. "He's from D.C...like you. He did a long bid...like you. He moved to Raleigh...like you. He is doing another bid...like you!"
"I'd already done the math, thanks."
Ace laughed. Lew laughed, just because Ace did. I shook my head and chuckled.
"He said the halfway house in Raleigh is sweet," I told Ace.
Ace was going to the halfway house in Philly in a matter of weeks, and it was common to wonder about how the halfway house was that one was going to. Inmates spent the end of their sentence in a halfway house, up to twelve months, but usually three to six months. The amount boiled down to four things: time spent in prison, conduct in prison, space available at the halfway house, and one's case manager at the prison. Our case manager was a black, racist, flamboyant woman named Ms. McLellan whom all the black guys had dubbed "Nicki Minaj" (yet another blog, and a lengthy one), and the short story was that Ace and I were not getting the amount of halfway house that was standard.
"You're so lucky," Ace said. He looked at Toomey. "The halfway house in Philly's right in the middle of the North Philly hood."
"Those are the best!" Toomey said. "Halfway houses in the hood are usually wide open!"
"I told you!" I said to Ace. "That's the way Baltimore's halfway house was, right in the middle of the hood, and it was so sweet."
Ace grimaced, not sold. Later he would come to find that Toomey and I were spot on.
"So tell 'em how much you make panhandling," I said to Toomey.
Toomey said: "Aw, man. I make a couple hundred a day in Raleigh, easy. Raleigh's sweet as bear meat."
Lew laughed. On his own. He stopped when he saw that Ace wasn't laughing, only because Ace wasn't from the South. I wanted to tell Lew that it was okay to find stuff funny that Ace didn't.
Ace looked at me. "Dude we gotta become homeless people!"
The funny thing about it was that Ace wasn't all the way joking. I knew he was picturing us as homeless people, panhandling all day and then driving off in a Benz like that dude in the movie, "Don't Be a Menace to South Central while Drinking your Juice in the Hood". (Don't go watch it. Old throwbacks like that are only funny if they have some inkling of nostalgic value.)
For the next month Ace and I (and by proxy, Lew the red-bearded Jew) cherished Tim Toomey. The only downside to Toomey was that he was the most longwinded person we had ever encountered. He would come into our cell while we were reading or working on our movie scripts and he would talk until WE were blue in the face. Unfortunately his face would never turn blue, and the guy never stopped talking. He would talk about how the girls loved him, how he had 'em lined up. He would talk about all of the nice things he had, and all of his followers on facebook. We would often find ourselves praying for count or lockdown time so he would have to go back to his cell and we would have peace and quiet.. He was actually very knowledgeable and well-read (I guess who wouldn't be after 43 years in the hoosegow?), and he even gave us a few good ideas for our scripts; as well as boatloads of useless "fun facts". The problem was that it all came with too much of Toomey's personal agenda, including his political and social ideology.
To our relief, after a couple of weeks Toomey found a friend from another unit that never tired of listening to his rhetoric, and the two sat out on the bleachers in the rec yard and basked in the summer sun while Toomey gave his thesis on life as we knew it. We often elaborated on our appreciation of this as we walked the track in the afternoons and passed Toomey and Meatball on every lap (Oh yeah, we gave Toomey's friend the nickname "Meatball", though I cannot recollect why. I can only say that the name had great merit to us, even if Meatball hated that we called him that...which only encouraged Ace).
Every time we would pass by them we would chant, "Too-mey! Too-mey! Too-mey!"
Toomey became so accustomed to it that he would raise his hands and fist pump in victory each time we did it.
None of us ever really believed that Toomey made as much money as he said or lived the life of grandeur as he claimed, but he had planted a seed of wonder in our minds, and that was enough to keep us gravitated towards him. He truly became a kind of legend to us.

Toomey got out before us, as anticipated. Ace followed, and then me. I went to the halfway house in Raleigh and, though it was indeed as sweet as Toomey had promised (It was not strict at all, and a person could spend a great deal of time at home versus at the facility), I never saw Toomey. I actually wondered if this homeless man would come waltzing in to the halfway house one day and begin hugging the staff and march me out to a lunch at the steakhouse around the corner...his treat. It didn't happen, though.
I had been at the halfway house for a couple weeks and had made friends with a girl named Dana, a pretty blonde who told me it was her fourth time at the halfway house. something flashed in my mind as I spoke to her one afternoon.
"Hey, you've spent a lot of time here...You ever run across a dude they call Toomey?"
Her face lit up. "Tim Toomey! Of course I know Tim! I just saw him earlier today!"
I laughed. "You went to see him? Where?'
"I see him all the time! He's camping out behind the Walmart up on 401. He always has me bring him steaks from the restaurant I work at." She lit up. "Tim's got this big ass grill, cooks for everyone at the camp. They all get fucked up all day there. So how you know Tim?"
I laughed. "Yeah, we called him Toomey. I was at Williamsburg with him."
"You should come up there with me tomorrow, see him!"
I thought about that. I usually got off work and went to my mother's house, showered, and then I barely had time to make it back to the halfway house before curfew. On top of that, I had a good idea that Dana was trying to get me to have relations with her. She was a pretty girl, but guys at the halfway house had talked about how she had been with other guys at the place...
"If I have time," I said. "I'm normally so pressed for time when I get off."
I did "friend request" Toomey on Facebook as soon as I got a phone. His posts were hilarious, and for all the nonsense I recalled him speaking of, he seemed a legitimately successful "Homeless Person".
Months have passed. I was released from the halfway house in September, and I have gained better employment since then. I recently went to a large writer's conference in Atlanta, and four reputable literary agents are at present reading a book I wrote while incarcerated. I have a beautiful fiance now, a woman with two children under the age of ten whom I live with. I just bought a new car and a new truck, a jacked up Nissan 'Off-Road" edition, heated leather seats and a DVD player. The kiddos were enjoying the luxuries as we pulled into a shopping center yesterday, immersed in a movie on the screen, when my fiance laughed a sympathetic laugh.
"Awwww. Look at that lady hugging that homeless man and giving him money."
The kids looked and said something positive about it, but I couldn't see because we had already passed. I told them the story of Tim Toomey, and how one had to be careful about things like that. Micaela, my fiance, gave me a look.
"I'm serious!" I said with a laugh. "It's not always what it seems."
When we came out of the store and drove away, we pulled up to the stop sign at the end of the shopping center.
"There's that homeless guy," Micaela said.
I looked over at the guy. I should have already known, because that's just how life seems to unfold.
"Ohhhhhhh shit," I said. "No freakin' way."
Micaela shot me a narrow-eyed look, something deep inside of her was already putting it all together.
As I jumped from the truck and ran over to embrace the man in torn, ragged clothes, I laughed because I wondered what the kids were thinking in the back of the truck.
"I'm not giving you any damn money!" I told Toomey.
Tim Toomey smiled. "I don't need your money, bro. My sister's in the store there right now, spending the hundred-dollar gift card some lady gave me a couple hours ago."
The legend lives.