Leftovers

Fear

I'm standing in the blockhouse, gazing out over the enemy's approaches. You can just feel the fatigue, the constant vigilance taking it's toll. There's something like fear permeating the place. It may not seem fearful now, with the dry grass and parklike river bank to the north and south, the relentless Mississippi at your back, the mild two story facades of banks, fabric stores, and a fast food restaurant or two to the west, but Fort Madison was once a fearful outpost, a tentative, unsuccessful feeler placed out on the westward event horizon of the ongoing expansion of anglo civilization into the wild unknown territories of Iowa and Missouri. And now, standing in the blockhouse, part of a larger restoration/recreation of the original fort, you can still feel something amiss.

There's something amiss about a mile north of the blockhouse, too, though it's under control, or at least severe restraint, since that's the location of the Iowa State Prison at Fort Madison. I was in prison all morning, and then they let me out for lunch. I didn't really want to eat with the guys, and besides, they never serve anything I like. I was in prison last night, too, and have to go back. A short stay. One and a half days.

Kind of a short prison sentence. "I sentence you to one and a half days in prison," said the judge. Only the judge wasn't a real judge, it was a humanitarian spirit, or a conscience of some kind. Some aspect of my personality, saying, "you, go to prison for a couple of days and teach tennis."

I had heard from the guy who strings most of the tennis rackets in Burlington that he had recently strung fifteen rackets for the Fort Madison prisoners. That told me that there were actually players inside the walls. I was the only certified tennis pro in Burlington at the time, and was teaching at the country club and in the city-sponsored tennis program, too.

That's when the humanitarian/conscience/judge spoke up and I found myself calling the recreation director for the Fort Madison prison. It took a number of calls, but I finally located the guy, and we set up some group lessons for the prisoners late in my summer stint in Burlington.

The only problem was that you couldn't just teach one lesson in the prison. If you taught just one there might be a riot. And it's not because they are demanding students, it's because they don't let all of the people out of all of the cells at any one time. You only get out to exercise when your "Yard" gets out. So, if you teach tennis in the Fort Madison prison, or any prison as far as I know, you have to teach it to all of the Yards, or one Yard will hear about it from another Yard, and you'll have the first ever in-prison tennis riot, because one group got more job perks than the next.

So I had to teach a group lesson on Thursday night, one on Friday morning, and two on Friday afternoon. After work at the Burlington Golf (and tennis) Club on that Thursday I drove the twenty miles down to the prison, fully aware of the contrasts I was living through in one day in going straight from the green and whites of the country club to the institutional grays of the prison.

I had already visited the place once, met the activities director, looked over the courts, and met a few prisoners. I expressed my concern to the A.D. that sometimes I have to grab a student's arm or move them around physically to get them in position for a shot. I wondered if these guys would be bugged by being physically moved or not. He didn't think it would be a problem. "Fine, then," I thought.

As I left home on that Thursday morning, my girlfriend sat with me as we both wondered why I was doing this. I didn't really know. It just seemed like such an unlikely thing to happen. That those guys would get any tennis instruction. The unlikeliness of it all attracted me. Not only was it a creative idea, it was my creative idea. Creative people like to see their ideas happen. Only this idea meant that I personally had to put myself in a fairly unusual, potentially dangerous situation. And usually my creativity is employed in things designed to keep me out of danger, financial or otherwise.

The other thing, and you have to be a control freak tennis fanatic to understand this one, was the artistic horror generated by the thought of a whole prison full of guys trying to play tennis the wrong way. I didn't need to know what laws they'd already broken. I just wanted to be sure they didn't get away with using the wrong grip, or too much wrist, or swinging at their volleys instead of punching them.

Just because you broke the law doesn't mean you get to break the RULES.

Plus there was something compelling about a captive audience of people who were showing an interest in MY GAME, to the point that they were wearing the strings out of a bunch of antiquated wooden rackets. It's the "every good boy deserves favor" syndrome. And even though those guys weren't good boys anymore, according to the legal system, they were showing the kind of thing that a teacher of any kind dreams of: enthusiasm for the subject.

So I did the time in prison.

Otomowoc lies asleep on a bed of ferns in the forest. As he sleeps his spirit is somehow awake, conscious, but his body seems to him as if separate, a heavy, resting mass. He feels his own heartbeat, he feels the muscles, twitching, repairing the long walks, the running hunt, the crawling, silent observation of the white man. As he lies in silence, a dream floats up, the colors of the northern lights, with elk running through the sky colors, and Otomowoc chased them, but soaring, floating like the wind, hunting from above, and just then the coolness, the freshness steals in and the dream thunders off and his soul is pulled toward cool morning air, the early morning air that wakes the birds and the outdoor sleeper, and Otomowoc props up one elbow in the dawn only to see that Blackhawk is already up.

"It is a good day," thought Otomowoc. "My first war day, starting with a hunting vision."

John Black stirred. There was a terrible smell. He woke with a shock. He didn't want to wake up. He wanted to sleep for years. At least for a full eight hours, unlike the four hour maximum that their now round the clock watches required. But there it was, his bedmate's sock in his face again. He quickly buried the offending sock and it's live foot occupant under the crude blanket. Private soldiers inside the stockade of old Fort Madison in the Spring of 1837 slept two to a bed, with their heads at opposite ends. The beds were small, and two sets of shoulders side by side took up more space than one set and a couple of stockinged feet.

John settled back down for a precious moment of rest, and then he remembered, jerked awake, grabbed the leg next to him and shook it. "Jack, Jack, wake up!" "What is it, damn it, What?," said Jack, barely conscious. "You were supposed to wake me for my watch!" "I did wake you, you turtle headed Virginian, you must have fallen back to sleep." "Damn," thought John, "you know what this means... more outpost-building duty."

Fort Madison was not the best of forts. But Blackhawk really liked it, because, to be honest, it was a pushover. The fort had been built without much consideration of the tactical terrain, since the inside of the fort was easily visible from a high hill to its immediate west. And Blackhawk's raiding parties were fond of occupying that prominence and shooting with gun and bow down into the helpless fort.

Blackhawk himself claimed the distinction of having shot the fort's flag right off the pole.

That's what the new outpost was for. The fort's commanding officer decided to counteract the tactical problem posed by the westward prominence by building a small outpost up on the hill, connected to the main fort by a long runway bordered by stockade poles.

Everyone took turns on the building project. But punishment for infractions such as being late for your watch could include an extra duty assignment out on the outpost.

The first evening of teaching went fine, I had camped out for the night in my van in a nearby state park, and came back the next day for the final three sessions. I was gratified that the Thursday evening went well, especially since the Activities Director had told me that those guys were the ones in "protective custody." I figured that those guys must be the toughest crowd, since they evidently needed special scrutiny of some kind.

As I sat down for a few minutes between sessions, the A.D. and a few prisoners struggled to explain the real meaning of protective custody. It turned out that those weren't the tough guys, those were the guys needing protection from the rest of the prison population, the real tough guys, i.e. - the guys I was working with now. "Oh," I said.

When Blackhawk's braves approached the fort, it didn't take long to assess the situation. It was obvious to anyone that the fort as it had been was useless, a simple target practice opportunity for his braves. But now the white man's soldiers were trying to do something about that. But they hadn't finished. So now the workers themselves would be target practice.

John was tired. Jack was tired. They both were on construction detail, after all. They weren't the only tired ones. Everyone in the fort was near exhaustion. The constant vigilance, peering out through tiny slits by day, never knowing if some lucky first arrow was going to slip through and pierce your eye, stopping only at the inside back of your cranium. Or straining your vision into the night around the fort, seeing things, not seeing things, and sometimes really seeing things, indians on the attack, with just a moment to raise the alarm before you had to be firing.

They worked, but they worked slowly. In the heat of the afternoon they finally all took a break. Three had been working while one stood guard. The outpost was about eight feet square, with no roof yet, and it was fitted with holes in the walls for shooting out and for surveillance. One sat inside while the other three lounged around outside.

John sat in the doorway and wondered how he had gotten himself into this. It wasn't as if the army paid much. Oh, it was grand to wear the uniform back in Virginia and to look grim while courting the girls at a public celebration of some kind. But it all seemed to have less meaning out here on this god forsaken western outpost. He had hoped to be an officer someday. Maybe when he got back east he would be, because of his brave adventures west.

"If I get back." he thought. "If any of us get back." Three of his fellows had been killed last week when they went out on a hunt. He had been on the burial detail. They had all been stiff and swollen when found, and it was only with the greatest difficulty that they were finally planted underground.

Just then John wondered what he would do when and if he got back East. The officer idea had faded away. He never wanted to do such an expedition again. Officers had wives, and some had them with them on outpost, even here in Fort Madison. But those wives were sad, worried looking creatures, whose lives were also now in question. No, I wouldn't want to be an officer, now.

Strangely, John couldn't think of anything he wanted to do now. He was unable to imagine what he might do next in life. He had finished school, joined the army, and just now he realized that unless he started something new, he had basically accomplished all of the goals he had set for himself.
Suddenly he felt a kind of lightness, or freedom, as if it didn't matter what he did next. His fatigue seemed to melt away at this insight. He yawned, stretched, and leaned back against the door jamb. Then he looked up at the blue, cloudless sky, and smiled a little, contented smile, just at the moment he received a bullet through the forehead.

Since it was Otomowoc's first killing raid he was both excited and afraid. He was not afraid to die, he was afraid that he might somehow show cowardice, or fail to shoot straight. Or not get to be among the warriors who actually do battle with the white man. It didn't bother him, thinking of killing the white man. He was not a man, he was an animal. And not even a brave animal, hiding in his wooden huts, afraid of every sound, afraid to walk free, living and surviving on the open range.

He lay a few bow lengths from Blackhawk as they watched the three stockade builders and one guard. The slack preparation of the four soldiers was like a group of partridges just waiting to be harvested. Blackhawk motioned a few braves to the right, and sent Otomowoc, with another group around the back.

They had made it undiscovered through the trees and underbrush west of the outpost, and waited in position south of the little building for the sound of Blackhawk's first shot. Otomowoc felt his lance, slippery with sweat, in his left hand, and his bow in his right hand. He didn't know if the sweat was from the heat or the excitement, but he didn't care. He wiped his hands off in the dry summer grass.
Suddenly the shot came, and he jumped up, along with two other braves. Then a second shot blasted the air, along with a scream of pain, the yelling of fifteen braves, and excited cries from inside the outpost.

When they reached the outpost, two soldiers were down, a third was on his knees with three arrows stuck in him, but the fourth was still inside the outpost. Bullets started flying through the air from the big fort. Looking through the holes in the wall, Otomowoc could see the fourth soldier right by the hole he was peering through, just as the soldier raised his gun to shoot out of the open door. But Otomowoc reacted without thinking and rammed his spear through the hole in the wall, deep into the side of the soldier's chest. Then two other braves ran in through the outpost door and it was all over.

"Damnation!," said the commanding officer of the Fort Madison garrison. "I lost four men in less than ten minutes!" That was the final reason for the end of the first Fort Madison, since plans were made that night and executed shortly after to dig a low trench one night all the way from the fort to the Mississippi, through which the entire garrison escaped by boat before sunrise.

Otomowoc lay in rest on his stomach, in a forest, ten miles north and west of Ft. Madison. He held the scalp of his speared victim in both hands, stretched out in front of him. He turned it over and over. They had given him the scalp for making the first blow, though it was perhaps the knives of the others that had finished the job

He hadn't been a coward. He hadn't missed out on the battle. He hadn't been afraid to die. But he also hadn't been prepared to kill. To watch the light fade out of the eyes of a creature that a few minutes before had been a man, after all, a being with thoughts and dreams and some parents far away who would never see him again. He hadn't expected to see the white man that way, but when he got close, the youth and death fear of his victim got through.

He felt somewhat sick about the days events. The other braves had whooped and loudly celebrated his victory. But Blackhawk had said nothing.

Now Blackhawk came over in the night to where Otomowoc lay, and sat down. Blackhawk watched him for a long moment, and then reached over and took the scalp out of Otomowoc's hands. Blackhawk then took a small piece of deerskin from his belt, wrapped the scalp in it, and put the bundle near Otomowoc's weapons.

"Today," said Blackhawk quietly, "white soldier die. Other day, we die. To be soldier is sometimes to die. Even so, first kill sometimes not seem good. Easier to be like me, and see soldier kill children and women and friend Lost Bear. Then you do not feel very bad about first kill, or even feel much about first ten kills. Make good killer, then."

"Maybe I will be good killer someday," said Otomowoc.

"Yes, maybe you will be good killer. But maybe then you will be like Blackhawk, and never feel again."

Most of the guys were pretty civilized about their tennis lesson. I showed them a basic forehand and backhand, explained the logic and timing of the net rush, and introduced the volley. The only thing I did wrong in hindsight was to show them the volley using the "punch" technique.

My punching analogy works great with kids, who love punching my palm with their bunched up fists, after which I put a racket in their hands and have them repeat the motion with the racket for an effective volley motion. But with the prison tough guys, inviting a punch was somewhat risky.

First of all, punching ability can be a valuable skill in prison, and some of those guys had an overdeveloped ability to snap my hand back in the direction of parallel with my arm. As it turned out, one of the recently recruited tennis players was a former golden gloves participant, and a few of the others were merely karate experts.

I guess it's pretty rare that anyone shows up in the prison and says, "hit me," even if it was only my hand. I quickly learned to hold my arm up straight, so if they did punch the hand solidly, the whole arm would get pushed back, not just the wrist. And by the final class, this became a verbal rather than a learn by doing analogy.

I also felt that there were one or two guys it was really not safe to get too close to, and I admit to walking down the row one time, checking everyone's grip, and getting to those guys and veering around them, saying, "There, I see you've got it."

I don't know if that was fear or wisdom. But I do remember being in awe of those guys. Which may be surprising, but I felt like they must all be amazingly tough to survive in such an environment. Nothing in my background has given me any training for dealing with such a combative setting.

But it may have been somewhat brave for me to go there at all, since a prison brings out some interesting reactions for me, a mild claustrophobic, to overcome. Still, if I were in prison for some bizarre reason, other than the fairly bizarre, temporary act of teaching tennis, I would want to be in that nice, mild, protective custody group. And preferably in solitary confinement away from even that group. I think I could deal with the closed walls of the prison better than the unique, closed society of prisoners.

Several prisoners thanked me strongly for my clinics. One, named LaVerne, who wore white tights, eye makeup and a scarf, said he'd been there for fifty years. Several others among the hackers, choppers, and out of control power hitters, were actually reasonably good players.

One young man had beautiful strokes, natural athletic smoothness, and I encouraged him to play a lot more. Then the prison champ lined up to serve against me, only to have his quite formidable serve blasted back by him in a fortuitous moment, which suggested skills on my part that are maybe still being discussed around the table at Fort Madison Prison. Fortunately I didn't have to show that I could do it again. Stop while you're ahead and all that.

Yes, for lunch I left the prison and drove south through town, looking for the old fort. I finally found the place, toured the museum, the grounds, and every building. I climbed up and looked out of the blockhouse. And somehow there was fear there, in the building. It seemed clear that this was the fear of maybe fifty soldiers, officers and wives, trapped in this fort for months.

And it seemed somehow the measure of the unsuitability of these people for that place and time, that out here in the middle of a beautiful wilderness they had to wall themselves off, to bring a little replica of the walled cities of Europe with them in order to feel safe. While outside those walls, the indian ranged freely up and down the west bank of the Mississippi, attacking forts at will, protected only by a bow and arrow, an occasional gun, and a knowledge of flora, fauna, and the lay of the land of what would someday soon become Iowa.

But the fear I felt in the blockhouse might not just be the leftover, imaginary fear of the old fort's defenders, since, as the museum handouts explained, this wasn't the real fort, but a complete replica which was built elsewhere and moved to its present location and reassembled.

So the fear left over in the blockhouse might not have been the emotional ghost of a hundred and fifty year old minor skirmish in the relentless, destructive westward growth of the European version of this continent, but the collective fear of the fort replica builders, since the entire thing was built in the Fort Madison Prison yard by the residents, and when it left the prison, never to return, it was still haunted, somehow, just like me, by the time spent in prison.