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Watermen Behind Razor Wire
SOURCE: | By Richard Furno - The Washington Post - December 29, 2007 TOOLBOX
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"It's kind of a spiral. The more people leave, the more some other people leave," said the Rev. Rick Edmund, pastor of Smith Island's three Methodist churches. Fewer residents mean less demand for shop clerks, waitresses, teachers.
Hair works in a medium-security compound. Assaults on officers are said to be rare there. But the air is full of menace.
And Hair, more than her grandmother or her uncle, already seems to have breathed in a little bit of the prison.
"Ever since I've been working here, I don't like being around crowds," she said. An officer in a crowd of inmates could be in danger. "I hate going to the mall."
Then there's the profanity. On Smith Island, cursing was rare. In the prison, it's almost as common as punctuation.
"If I do use it, I feel so bad," Hair said. "I'm like, 'Lord, forgive me!' "
Back on the island, Hair used to work at the crab co-op, picking lumps of meat out of sharp-shelled crustaceans. Maybe it doesn't sound like fun to a mainlander, but now -- on guard in a cellblock -- the memory makes her wistful.
"You're sitting there, picking with all the women, and they're laughing, carrying on," she said. "Here . . . it's not very fun. But it's not supposed to be."
