Chapter 1

My debt to society, the sons of bitches called it. Did I borrow the pot or somehow damage my neighbors by using it? What a load of horseshit! I got my ass busted by DEA thugs, arrested, charged, tried, convicted, and sentenced to LIFE in a federal prison for “trafficking in narcotics”. As if that stuff was for anything but my own personal use. I was just smart enough to stash it up (or dumb enough, in hindsight) so that I wouldn’t risk my freedom on each buy.

Look, I enjoy pot. That’s just a fact. It was bad enough that the stupid Congress had to outlaw the wonderful weed. Then they had to get really full of it and set mandatory minimum sentences for mere possession of marijuana as part of their “War On Drugs”.

Don’t we have enough enemies without declaring war on narcotics? Terrorism, at least, IS a real threat. Drugs, on the other hand, include everything from cough syrup to heroin.

Well, I had been in a federal prison for five years of my life sentence when the Great Pulse struck. I don’t have any use for anarchists and they fucked up the country (and the rest of the world) with their EMP strike. However, they inadvertently did me a personal favor. You see, the new governments of the various parts of the former USA didn’t always share the absurd views of their predecessor: the often unconstitutional Government of the United States of America.

I had lost my cowardly wife, Megan, to this whole drug bust thing. Even though she used some of my pot for herself, she divorced me to salvage part of our marital assets from “civil forfeiture”, another unconstitutional action of Uncle Sam that would make the Founding Fathers spin in their graves. I ended up with nothing, while that greedy bitch saved her share. Where the hell is the justice in that situation?

I heard somewhere that she later got caught driving with half a bottle of gin in her system. Now that was some karma! She lost her license, spent a few months in county jail, and had to go to rehab for alcoholism. That’s still a far cry from what happened to me. She endangered everyone on the same road as herself and got a virtual slap on the wrist. I, on the other hand, smoked some harmless weed and got sent to a federal hell-hole.

I also lost a five-figure job as a registered nurse, which was the same occupation that my ex-wife practiced. That was how we met. Well, she may have cared about her patients, but she proved completely callous about her own husband. My nursing license was revoked and I had to work in the prison sweatshop, making ball bearings for less than minimum wage. There is no inmates’ union, after all.

That was my life for five long years. I had adjusted to it, up to a point. I fucked a cellmate who later got released. That didn’t mean that I got laid frequently. In fact, anyone who tried to rape me got his ass kicked. I was mostly nice, but vicious about that issue. My fellow inmates soon learned to leave me the hell alone.

I otherwise made no trouble and got a reputation as a good, hard-working, and even well-educated prisoner. The guards looked down at me, but they didn’t have an excuse to do anything about it. I made a point of not giving them one. They just didn’t like my attitude of smoldering resentment toward the system.

I had no chance of parole since it was a federal prison and I knew it. The Reagan Administration’s policies and Congress’s mandatory minimum sentences, as well as the Crime Bill of 1994 (thank you, Joe Biden!) sealed my fate. I would never leave prison alive.

19 August, 2010, U.S. Penitentiary, South Charleston, WV:

“Ralph Henry Walker, wake up!” the guard shouted.

I got startled at the sound of a “screw” interrupting my Sunday morning sleep. Why the hell were they bugging me? I had behaved myself lately, hadn’t I?

“Yes, that’s me and I’m up! There’s no need to sound like my mom,” I retorted.

“Come with us to the Warden’s office. Something major has happened, not that I have to like it,” the corrections officer smirked.

“Then it’s good news for me, I take it,” I taunted him.

“Shut your smart mouth, prisoner,” he ordered me.

I got quiet, not wanting to provoke him too much. If there was good news, after all, I didn’t want to blow it by mouthing off to the prison staff. I walked into the Warden’s office, past the other cells full of ignorant, sleeping convicts.

“Sit down, Mr. Walker. Something big has happened to you,” the Warden instructed me.

He was a tight-lipped, raspy-voiced, chain-smoking bureaucratic jackass with a plain blue suit: talk about cliché!

“What is it?” I demanded, sensing a chance to probe him.

“You’re a free man. It’s as simple as that,” he told me.