Freedom     "Anyone here ever seen The Graduate?!"     This was the cry of a desperate man. He got no real answer. He never got a real answer. Just the clink-clink-clink of three dozen hammers poundin' rocks in syncopated time.     "What about Poltergeist?! Anyone seen Poltergeist?!"     It was Chicken Wire Jimmy, so named for his feather-light bone structure. He was a desperate man, like we all were. Desperate for anything. We all wanted freedom, sure. But it's the little things a guy gets most desperate for – a well-done steak, money, a good lay, a cold drink. Or light discussion of cinema. Everybody wanted something.     Take, for example, Brickwall Davis, the meanest mother of the whole lot. Got that way cause he loved his mama's cooking. That's all the guy ate, breakfast lunch and dinner. Claimed her potato salad could feed nations. When he got in the clink he said he'd rather eat rocks than the slop the warden dished out. And that's what he did. Out on duty he don't even need a hammer, just a knife and a fork.     "The Maltese Falcon?! Anyone?!"     They were tough times.     On a gang, you either make it or you don't. Sink or swim. Most sink. We had a fella come through, name of Kevin. Already a bad sign - you can't break rocks with a name like Kevin. I bet a name like Kevin can't even pick up a hammer. But still, somehow, this guy named Kevin comes sashaying in. He's acting real friendly like - wants to make a good first impression, you can tell. Trying way too hard, too. Well what does this little butterfly do next? He goes around to all the guys and asks them to write their birthdays in his little pocket calendar. It was so, in his words, "We won't ever miss one! It'll be like a constant party! And the best part is nobody will be left out!"     We don't call him Kevin anymore. He's now Krawdad, and he's three spots down the line from me. And you know what? He was right. Sometimes what we're desperate for is a contraband cake made from brown sugar and canned oranges. And to not feel left out.     Everyone feels it though. When you're out here, pounding your spine into dust under the Mississippi sun, you feel it. Ain't no cake, no matter how many matchstick candles it's got, is gonna make a man feel at home here.     Truth is though, everyone's got a reason for being on a gang. But everyone's got an even better reason for not being on a gang. It's a matter that transcends concepts like 'guilty' or 'not guilty.' Blind Boone, for example, had the hands of a supermodel. It was a tragedy seeing them going to waste out there in the hot sun. Mudslide had an allergy to rocks. They made him balloon up to fifteen times his normal size. Each night we'd have to pop him just to get him into the mess hall.     Old Alabama Hawkins was maybe the most tragic. He had lost both of his arms in a mill when he was twelve years old. Then, when he was twenty two, his left leg fell off. And still, he was stuck on a gang. They never did let up on the old man, not once in sixty years. But, somehow, at the end of each day he managed to crack more rocks than any one of us.     And me?     Well, shit, I might just have the best reason of all of them. You see, the truth is, I'm not even a prisoner. I'm a 20 year old white kid from San Francisco. As I write this it's 2006. I don't even know if chain gangs still exist. The only prison I've been inside is a national monument and, I'm pretty sure, the subject of a Thomas Kinkade painting by now. Sure, I've seen O Brother Where Are Thou? Hell, I even have the soundtrack. But that's hardly reason enough. Besides, I've never even been to the South!     Yet, somehow, I'm stuck here. Blind Boone on my left, a little Mexican fella named Twitch on my right. Chicken Wire at the end of the line, making us feel guilty because Gone With The Wind is a "classic." The warden on his horse, coming over to probably tell me to stop talking to you folks again.     The way it's always been. The way it always will be. End Back