Under the Radar (Fiction. Totally. Really.)

"Any drugs, weapons, ammunition, cell phones, or cash more than forty dollars?" she asks with clipped monotone honed from years of repetition. "Nope," you say. "None of that," you say. "Just writing stuff," as she shoves the tub along the stainless steel table and motions you through the metal detector, her eyes already on the next person in line for the sally port. You meet the trusty, and heavy, tub on the other side and replace the top, put back on your watch, pocket your car keys, and hang your ID badge back around your neck. The lanyard has some religious logo on it. You don't know what it is and don't ask, but it gives you a little bit of cover. The tub is your portable classroom. You are the itinerant teacher/workshop guy. You are going to a maximum security "four yard." You worry that the men in the workshop will be the victims or perpetrators of gang violence. This is a serious place, and you are a smuggler in it. You smuggle books, writing pads, dictionaries, Writer's Markets, pens, literary magazines, and other paraphernalia of writing into the prison, where you distribute it. You also carry out inmate writing, type it up, make copies, bring it back, talk about it, collect the revisions, and then submit them to a prison writing magazine. You then take copies of the magazine back in after it's published. You mail copies to family members, libraries, writing programs,  Men benefit from this work, in big, if subtle, ways. It's illegal to do this, but you have made peace with it and you accept the consequences of your actions. Many of the staff know this. You get the wink and the nod or just a shrug and "whatever." You believe they know what is good for the men in the workshops, and they look the other way. If you end up in an orange jump suit on the other side of the wires, that is the price you pay. A guy's gotta do what a guy's gotta do.