Two Chocolate Truffles

I removed two chocolate truffles from their crenelated paper nests and placed them in a small Ziplock baggie. I put the baggie into the side pocket of my black jeans, my loosest pair of pants. Then I pulled a long blue turtleneck sweater over my head. The sweater extended halfway down my thighs. I examined myself in the mirror. Were there any suspicious bulges or folds at my hip which might alert the guards to my hidden chocolate contraband?

I knew that Del, who visited Linda regularly, had smuggled a burrito into the prison visiting area by hiding it in the front handwarmer pocket of her hoodie. The guards didn't pat-search visitors, and Del and her burrito passed through the metal detector, no sweat.

Del had told me that after she and Linda were seated in the visiting yard, it was simply a matter of waiting until some of the other women and their visitors were eating the crappy vending machine food (including crappy frozen burritos), then pulling out the burrito and handing it to Linda when no guard was looking.

It worked for Del, but still I was paranoid. Del knew the ropes; she herself had been locked up at one time and had been visiting Linda for many years. I was relatively new to the scene. And I knew breaking the rules had consequences. If I were caught bringing in contraband, my visits with Linda would be terminated—maybe for six months, maybe a year, maybe permanently.

Then again, if Del could get away with a carne asada burrito dripping with guacamole and salsa...

I ran my hands down the side of my sweater, making sure the truffles didn't protrude. Then a final check in the mirror. Okay. Ready to go.

I had been visiting Linda at the Federal Corrections Institute (FCI) in Dublin, California, for about a year. She was in the 11th year of a 40-year sentence—the culmination of four trials and three convictions, including "conspiracy to change U.S. foreign and domestic policy through violent and illegal means." The conspiracy charge was related to a small explosive device that detonated in the cloakroom of the U.S. Capitol building, followed by a written communique, Communique No. 3 to be exact, put out by the Armed Resistance Unit on November 7, 1983.

Tonight we bombed the U.S. Capitol building. We attacked the U.S. government to retaliate against imperialist aggression that has sent the marines, the CIA and the army to invade sovereign nations, to trample and lay waste to the lives and rights of the peoples of Grenada, Lebanon, El Salvador, and Nicaragua, to carry out imperialism's need to dominate, oppress, and exploit.

The communique continues for another two pages. To my ears today, it sounds bombastic and unlikely to change any hearts or minds. But it does not sound untrue. (The device did explode, damaging the cloakroom, but due to careful planning—it was detonated at night when nobody was expected to be in the vicinity—and perhaps some luck, nobody was injured.)

I had met Linda when a friend and I became interested in political prisoners—in particular, leftist women political prisoners. My friend and I started a correspondence with a couple of these women; the correspondence turned into visits and friendships; and something special clicked between me and Linda. We fell in love. At first, Linda tried to discourage these feelings. "You don't want to become involved with a prisoner," she said. But I persisted. I broke up with the girlfriend I had been living with and started visiting Linda every weekend. We never had a minute alone, but we were allowed to kiss and hug at the beginning and end of each visit. Mostly, we spent the six hours of each visiting day talking and getting to know one another.

Now, with the two chocolate truffles hidden in my pocket, I drove east from Oakland on the 580, over the foothills, and down into the early morning fog of the Livermore Valley. I exited at Dougherty Road, drove past the Sherwin-Williams paint store, turned right onto 8th Street, and pulled into the FCI parking lot. A few minutes later, Danny's red Camaro pulled into the spot next to me. A minute after that, Ron pulled up in his black Ford Bronco. It was 7:30 AM and drizzling. The visiting line wouldn't form for another hour, so I motioned both men to get into my car to wait.

Danny and Ron and I had a bond: our lives were intimately intertwined with someone in prison. And we visited our someone every Sunday.

Danny was tall and lanky, his pale face pock-marked with old acne scars. He worked in a print shop and rented an apartment not far from the prison. His life consisted of two things: work and visiting his wife.

Ron was robust, tanned, and about fifty. He wore over-sized tortoise shell glasses and a tweed sports coat, and he had the upbeat, slightly smarmy demeanor of a salesman on commission. I didn't know where Ron lived or worked or if he had a job at all. Ron was chatty and entertaining, regaling Danny and me with stories of flying drugs in from Central America.

"It's so freakin simple," Ron informed us. "If you know how to fly a small plane, which I do, it's a piece of cake to land under the radar on certain Florida beaches. Plus, half those DEA assholes are on the take anyway."

Ron had met his wife during the Bureau of Prison's brief experiment with co-ed incarceration at FCI Dublin. Apparently, a spate of pregnancies motivated the BOP to end the experiment. Ron said he had "pulled some strings" and been released, and he was still working on it for his wife. In the meantime, here we were on a drizzly Sunday morning, fogging up the windshield of my car and keeping a close eye on the clock.

Ron, Danny, and I also shared the bond of determination to be at the front of the visitor line. We talked about, laughed about, and complained about the hapless visitors who, if we didn't arrive early enough, stood between us and each precious minute of our visiting time. The worst were families with kids. A family with kids could take ten (or more!) minutes to be processed.

"You'll have to lock up those candy bars in one of the lockers over there, Ma'am," a guard would explain. Tick, tick, tick. "No, you can't bring in that entire box of Pampers." Tick, tick, tick.

Just as annoying were first-time visitors.

"No purses allowed, Miss. You'll have to put your ID in a clear plastic bag." Tick, tick, tick. "I'm sorry, Sir, no open-toed shoes allowed... No, you can't go in barefoot. There's a Walmart a few miles away where you can..." Tick tick tick.

Thus, Danny and Ron and I arrived an hour before visiting started so we could stake out our place at the front of the line. When the door to the visitor processing building opened, we were ready. Even before being asked, I laid out my clear plastic bag with car keys, ID, and max $20 in change on the high counter for the guard to examine. I took off my jacket and laid it next to the plastic bag. Today, I just hoped the truffles concealed in my pants pocket and covered by my long sweater would not be noticed. I stepped into the metal detector, raised my arms from my sides, and waited. Neither Danny, Ron, nor I ever caused trouble or delay. We built up good will with the guards by being courteous and making their job easy. Which is why I felt semi-confident about the hidden truffles. Emphasis on semi.

Sure enough, I breezed through processing and was buzzed out to a paved walkway where a guard stood waiting to escort me into the visiting room.

We classified the guards according to four key characteristics: smart, stupid, ambitious, and lazy. Thus each guard fell into one of four categories: Smart-and-ambitious, smart-and-lazy, stupid-and-ambitious, stupid-and-lazy. The worst were stupid-and-ambitious. The best were smart-and-lazy. Our favorite guard was smart-and-lazy Miss Murphy. Miss Murphy was heavyset with wild, bushy red hair. She laughed a lot. When Miss Murphy was on duty, Linda and I might be allowed some slack to sit closer together, or even to hold hands without reprimand.

Another guard we liked was Officer Jackson. Jackson was young and Black, and he made it known through offhand comments that he had progressive politics and was sympathetic to the political prisoners.

"I know Miss Evans was just trying to do right," Officer Jackson once said to me as we walked along the cement pathway to the visiting room. He didn't look at me when he said this—as if, perhaps, he had said nothing at all.

But today, with two chocolate truffles in my pocket, neither Murphy nor Jackson was on duty. No such luck. Today the duty officer was Miss Z. (Her last name was actually long and Slavic and mispronounced so often that she eventually told everyone to call her Miss Z.) Miss Z was small and slender, her hair pulled back tightly off her face into a ponytail. She fit the dangerous category of smart-and-ambitious. And she seemed to have it in for me and Linda.

"Evans!" Miss Z would shout, "Move away from your visitor. Two feet apart at all times!"

It bugged me that Miss Z ignored the same infractions committed by straight couples. But whatcha gonna do?

Today, when I entered the visiting room, it was empty except for Miss Z at the front desk and Danny waiting for his wife at one of the round wooden tables scattered throughout room. The visiting room was spacious and high-ceilinged. The floor was scuffed linoleum, the walls painted beige. Against one wall were stacks of white plastic chairs. Mounted in the center of the ceiling was a mirrored disco ball that was actually a set of cameras watching the action below and transmitting the video to a bank of monitors in a control booth somewhere inside the prison. On one wall was a glass door leading to the visiting yard. The yard was essentially a large square of lawn enclosed by high wooden planter boxes. Beyond the planter boxes was a cyclone fence topped with razor wire.

The visiting room was quiet now, but soon it would be filled with rambunctious kids, babies crying, and families playing cards, talking, hugging, and eating crappy food from the vending machines. Finally the door to the prisoner side opened, and a guard escorted Linda in. As always, she was wearing beige prison-issue slacks and shirt, white prison-issue sneakers, and today, her own turquoise enamel earrings dangling beside her wavy blonde hair. Earrings were the one "outside" item still allowed by the prison administration.

We both waved, grinned, hugged. Then we grabbed a couple of the white plastic chairs and took them out to the yard.

The yard had one tree—a large willow with long drooping branches full of feathery leaves. Even though it was still chilly out, we headed straight for the tree. We called this "our spot." I imagined the willow's leaves provided a cloak of privacy. Which of course they did not. Between the cameras mounted on the side of the buildings and the guard trucks circling the compound all day, there was no true privacy in the yard. But on the real side, the willow did provide shade against the blazing Valley sun.

"I've got a surprise," I say to Linda as soon as we're seated on our white plastic chairs under the tree.

"Yes!?" she says, eager for anything new and not prison-related.

"It's a secret. I'll tell you later."

She smiles and shrugs. "Okay."

But I can't keep a secret that doesn't really need to be kept, so I wait about ten seconds, then reveal in a voice just above a whisper, "Truffles. I brought you truffles."

Linda wrinkles up her nose. "What? Mushrooms?"

Oh, right. Sometimes I forget: Linda has been incarcerated since 1985. Before that she lived in a tiny, clandestine, urban guerrilla organization. Before that she lived in a back-to-the-land lesbian commune in the Ozarks. Before that she was in Weatherman-SDS, demonstrating against the war and traveling to North Vietnam to receive American prisoners of war. And before that she was a kid growing up in Fort Dodge, Iowa. An interesting life, for sure, but not one that ever included chocolate truffles.

"No, not mushrooms," I explain. "They're chocolate. Dark chocolate. Like those chocolates in a box you get for Christmas, but better. Way better."

Just then, Miss Z comes out to the yard on her rounds.

"Hello, ladies."

"Hello, Miss Z," we both say.

Miss Z nods, scopes out the yard, then goes back inside.

Over the next couple of hours, as Linda and I sit under the willow and talk, more women and their visitors come out to the yard with their white plastic chairs. By noon the yard is buzzing and busy. I go inside to the visitors' bathroom, which is not camera-monitored, remove the truffles from their Ziplock bag, and switch them from my pants pocket to the pocket in my jacket. I then buy some crappy vending machine food and load up on napkins. Back at the willow tree, I slip the truffles to Linda under cover of a napkin. She pops one into her mouth.

"Yum. Good," she says. "You want the other one?"

And that, ladies and gentlemen and others, is my girlfriend in a nutshell.

"No." I shake my head. "I can get them anytime."

Linda smiles and pops the second truffle into her mouth.

I visited Linda in prison for the next four years, but I never smuggled in anything again. It just didn't make sense to put our precious visits at risk for the minor enjoyment of two chocolate truffles. Del, on the other hand, kept the contraband burritos coming. She was never caught.

Eventually, Danny's and Ron's wives were both released from prison. Danny called me at home to tell me his great news. His wife had moved into his studio apartment, and they now were looking for a one-bedroom further from the prison but still close to his job at the print shop.

On January 20, 2001, Linda Sue Evans was pardoned by President Clinton on his last day in office. She was released that day. We moved in together a couple of months later, and have lived together ever since. One thing I've learned during these past two decades: it turns out Linda actually isn't much into chocolate. She prefers coffee ice cream for dessert.