File Under 'Chocolate'

File Under ‘Chocolate’

We all agreed that it was pretty amazing the lengths Sandra went to to help Samuel out. It couldn’t have been easy, as poor and handicapped as she is, to have created that beautiful, chocolate mess.

Samuel was here doing time along with the rest of us. We weren’t that bad, not that kind of criminal. Looking around the room, I think only one of us had actually killed someone. Mostly it was robbery. Even as robbers, though, we never had a shot at fame. Not like the guy in that play “Les Mis”, or any other famous work of art.

(Isn’t it funny how we learn things here that we’d never have seen out there in our real lives?)

But I wasn’t asked to tell our stories, only the story of Sandra and Samuel.

Samuel had come in about two years ago. He was a nice guy, strong enough that the bad ones among us left him alone. He’d tried an appeal, but couldn’t afford a decent lawyer, so that went nowhere. He was discouraged, seeing his whole life ahead of him ruined, all over one lousy car which actually didn’t run more than a few miles before the gas was gone.

Some of us tried to get to know him, and one or two succeeded – me included. We each had our own tales of woe, and mine resonated with his, so we got on okay. We ate meals together, played cards, walked the yard and sometimes even laughed at a particularly awkward story.

He’s a reader, that Samuel. He’d chew through a book and then tell me, and the others, about it, usually while we walked around and around the fence. At first he read what was available here in our library. But he exhausted that list in six months, so he wrote to Sandra: could she send in books for him?

The warden reviewed the letter just as he reviewed any letters going out or coming in to the prison. He came and paid Samuel a visit. Seems like he worried over whether reading books was a cover story for something else. But Samuel convinced him that he only needed reading to make the time pass. So he got his wish.

Sandra was his girl. She worked one job or another, making ends meet, saying she’d wait for him. She had almost nothing, and money for books was not in her plan.

She received his request and let his letter drop to the floor. She told him later, which he related to me, how sad his request made her: how could she help having nothing herself?

Samuel apologized to her. He hadn’t considered how tough this would be, but then added that he had no one else to ask. She’d looked up at his face and promised she’d do what she could.

A few weeks passed and then a package – a large box – arrived for Samuel. It had been opened and inspected as part of the routine. The yellow sticker on top told us that there was nothing suspicious inside. The box was heavy. The guard, Mr. Charles, who carried it in and set it on the dining room table in front of Samuel, groaned a bit and then stayed nearby, curious to know what was sent in.

Books. Maybe thirty books! All paperbacks, all kinds of stories, all a bit dogeared but each one intact. On top of it all was a letter, written by Sandra.

I hope you enjoy these stories, my dear. I wasn’t sure what you’d already read, so I did a lot of guessing. Most of them I chose because they’re thick and I figured it would slow you down. Maybe next time I come in to visit you can tell me what you’ve been reading. Share them with the others, please. I don’t know when I’ll be able to send in more…

The letter went on to explain how she’d taken on another job to make the money for the books. It wasn’t a lot of added hours and she’d enjoyed it. Working at the little bookstore around the corner, sorting and filing books a few hours at a time, took her away from a lot of her other troubles. The owner had been sympathetic to her story and invited her to work and stay as long as she’d wanted. Once or twice she’d stayed all evening, sitting on the floor admiring book after book. The owner had had to push her out the door, explaining that, no, he couldn’t lock her in for an all night read.

She ended her explanation with words which encouraged Samuel. She was finding a book or two for herself. One of them was a cookbook on desserts. A cook she was not, but the pictures made the results from the oven impossible to resist.

I decided I’m going to add a few more hours a week to my work at the bookstore because then I can buy the stuff to make something from that cookbook! I promise I’ll tell you all about it. If it comes out good, I might even bring you some. Love, Sandra.

So, Samuel had more to read, and more to share. Only a few of us were interested. There’s more than one guy here who can’t read at all and lots who wouldn’t tackle several hundred pages even if he knew it would pass the time for days in a row. But I was interested, so I got to look in the box, too.

I won’t bore you with what we each read. Some of the titles Samuel had heard of before, mostly not. Me, I just tried each one. If I couldn’t get into it in the first couple of chapters, I’d put it aside and reach for another one. Sandra had done a good job, trying to guess what her man would want. She did the guessing based on their conversations once a month in the visiting hall.

Once a month was all she could afford. It meant buying a bus ticket here and back home again. And, unless she rode all night long on the red eye, she had to pay for a motel, too. Of course they couldn’t touch each other, but they could see through the glass. The policy here was that you could talk to your visitor all afternoon, as long as you obeyed the rules before, during and after each visit. So they talked. In order to stay away from discouraging topics, they talked about books.

And Sandra added in her new topic: cooking. It was going well and her tiny pantry space was beginning to fill up with ingredients she’d need over and over to bake.

Two months back she brought a paper bag. The guard checked it out while she stood by with a little smile on her face. She was proud of what she’d made and wondered if the guard would be able to resist the temptation to try a sample. He’d looked up after pawing through the contents and it seemed to her that a little boy was looking out through his eyes. But, no, he did not ask.

He passed the paper bag through the slot and the next guard carried it over to Samuel who was waiting in chair behind the glass in the visiting room. She sat down on the other side, as usual.

Samuel looked at her and spoke a soft, warm greeting through the handset. She replied with equal warmth. Then he looked into the bag. He closed his eyes and inhaled deeply. More than a little smile, his face lit up. A soft, warm greeting rose from the bag into his nose.: chocolate chip cookies! Even before he could open his eyes, a tear ran down his cheek.

How did I know all this? Well of course he shared all the details even as he handed out a sample to each of the four of us in his little reading club. What could be better than a home-baked chocolate chip cookie?

The next month she repeated the process, this time with chocolate brownies. She couldn’t bring them in a metal baking pan: it wasn’t allowed to leave something like that with a prisoner. But she’d arranged the individual brownies on a cardboard sheet, inside a large paper bag. She knew it didn’t matter that the brownies were not sealed in from the air: their little lives would be over within minutes of her saying goodbye to Samuel.

And this month – well, you know, it was just two days ago – she brought chocolate cake. Not just one slice or two slices, but the whole cake! She’d written a note and put it on top of the cake in the box. It explained to the guards that the cake was on account of Samuel’s birthday – they could even check in his file. She’d put in the box, too, a set of little candles and a birthday card. Would they be so kind as to light the candles on the cake whenever it was appropriate? And would they convey to the inmates in Samuel’s group that they might sing to him? And she’d allowed as to how there might be enough cake for each guard to have a sample, too. After all, they’d have to check that there was no contraband inside! That last part she left out of her note – I added it here as a joke. She knew better than to arouse suspicions.

The cake was delicious! That woman must have a natural gift for baking. She’d only been at it for a few months and this was wonderful.

Unfortunately, her extra little surprise had been discovered.

It had been more or less innocent. She’d tried hard to come up with a way to send a message in to Samuel without it being screened. She had written a love note in the birthday card and no one but Samuel had noticed the additional details coded in the picture on the card. Yes, he’d be careful to cut the cake and offer pieces to the guards, one by one, handing them slices from the left side of the masterpiece. The right side would provide pieces for himself and his friends.

The cardboard which held the cake was, well, not just cardboard. There was an extra layer – not in the cake but in the cardboard, and secreted inside was a set of simple, plastic, undetectable lock-picking tools.

Everyone enjoyed their slice of cake. Who doesn’t like chocolate cake? The prisoners all ate at the same time since the candles had been lit on the cake in the mess hall after dinner. Yes, they’d sung to him. It sounded both awful and great at the same time. The guards watched as the candles burned down, making sure that they were not somehow fuses to a large, chocolate cake bomb. After Samuel blew them out, he carefully cut slices, handing them to the guards on paper napkins. Then, other slices to his friends. There were eager faces all around.

The chocolate was great. The icing and the cake really were great. The inmates rubbed their tummies and smiled. The guards rubbed their tummies and groaned.

Then each of them fell asleep, sliding to the floor or slumping over their desks.

As soon as he saw this, Samuel quickly peeled apart the cardboard, peeled off the tools and headed for the door.

The rest of the story you know. The warden is allergic to chocolate.