Authors: Jon Cole
So Let It Be Written
It’s been said that there is no such thing as coincidence, and I believe that. I feel that coincidence is only a concept which we grab onto in order to comfortably explain a complex chain of events, people and emotions that are somehow related and then inexplicably come together at a particular point in time. Calling it a coincidence helps us deal with the often surreal character of these things coming together suddenly.
Case in point: In the heart of the Ozark Mountains of Arkansas sits the tiny Union Baptist Church that my paternal grandfather helped to build and often preached at shortly before he had gone off to the Second World War. Leaving behind a wife and five children in his rural mountain home on the other side of the world, he was killed shortly before the Battle of the Bulge. In the town square of a small village in the Saar region of Germany, a German sniper, shooting from the steeple of a village church, had found his mark.
Our family knew the details of this story because seven years later, shortly after I was born, my father was a young lieutenant sitting on a bus headed for somewhere in Washington, DC. Across the aisle from him sat an old Army sergeant who continued to stare at him conspicuously.
Finally the Sergeant spoke, saying, “Excuse me for staring at you, sir, but you look exactly like my former company commander who was killed in Germany. You even have the same name.”
Located at the end of Soi 2, just down the lane from where Jean Marie, my lovely Monterey childhood friend and International School Bangkok classmate had lived, was the Second Baptist Church of Bangkok. The preacher of that church was from Arkansas and had previously been, incredibly, a part-time pastor at that same tiny Union Baptist Church which my grandfather had built in the midst of the Ozark Mountain foothills. This pastor would sometimes come to visit the prison on Saturdays, along with other menfolk from the congregation of his church in Bangkok.
I availed myself of the opportunity to attend one of their services at the prison school building just outside of the foreigner section. But it wasn’t to fulfill any spiritual needs: the only purpose was to meet up with a German prisoner from the foreign section so as to organize the purchase of a small quantity of ganja. The ganja was to be delivered the following Sunday on the food cart that traveled between the two cell block sections delivering the special
farang
white rice and soup. While preoccupied and in whispered conversation with the German about reefer arrangements, I heard a distinctly familiar voice which I recognized from the distant past. It caught my attention like a slap on the face. I looked up in slack-jawed astonishment and saw a tall, gangly old black man who spoke with a ridiculously strong Southern accent, almost like a speech impediment. I had thought of this gentleman over the years and had always regarded him as a quasi-oracle – or at least a harbinger of things that would come to pass.
Now he was standing before me performing a lame magic act wherein he pushed a scarf into his fist saying, “For each kindness or insult, you will receive repayment sevenfold.” He then pulled out seven scarves from the other hand. Most in the room hid their sniggering.
Being familiar with the consequences of karma, I knew already what he was trying to say was true and, in spite of the poor quality of his pathetic presentation, I did not laugh. I believed him also because I knew him. Yes, he was the same man who, over twenty years earlier, as a US Army first sergeant had given the orientation speech at the airport, informing the newly arrived GIs on our flight how they were expected to behave as guests in Thailand.
The next day when the foreign prisoner’s food cart rolled into The Garden, a weighted plastic bag of beautiful Thai ganja at the bottom of the large soup tureen was retrieved and delivered to the German cabin. The Germans dutifully portioned out the amount owed to the American house for arranging the cart pushers’ cooperation in the endeavor, and everything in the world as we knew it was most copacetic.
The following Thursday was the normal day for the embassy para-consul Marcia to visit. She had the latest news from the State Department concerning the progress of the US–Thai prisoner transfer treaty which was starting to look like a sure thing. I was the only American still waiting for an answer to a petition for Royal Pardon, but she had no word of hope for me regarding that. As soon as the treaty was ratified though, I would be one of the first Americans to be transferred back to the US federal correction system – if I applied for the transfer.
Late in the afternoon on that next Friday, a message from the building chief was delivered to the American house by a blueshirt. The instructions were for me to begin collecting my belongings because I was to be moved.
The blueshirt laughingly said, “Maybe you go Dan#7.” (That infamous punishment building for violent prisoners.) Before I could ask him to repeat himself, he handed me a pass for the visit area. The Embassy para-consul was visiting again, calling only me to a one-to-one meeting.
The rare unscheduled solo visits from the embassy were usually only for the purpose of delivering bad news. Perhaps a family member had died, maybe your petition for a Royal Pardon had been denied or, more likely, additional US federal charges had been filed for any number of previous transgressions. During the long walk to the visit green, I had difficulty dealing with the myriad possibilities of what the bad news would be. It was as if my sordid life was suddenly flashing before my eyes as I started thinking that some old incident from the past had finally caught up with me. There was a seemingly endless list. I consigned myself to the fact that karma was going to slap me down again and had already fully accepted it.
Before long, I had passed through the multiple gates that brought me to the second to last gate, located at the visit area. Just beyond it stood the gate of main entrance to the prison. It was “The Mouth of The Crocodile” as some Thai prisoners referred to it. Upon Royal Command, that mouth would open up and disgorge you.
Upon arriving at the visit area and reading the look on Marcia’s lovely face, I knew what she had to say. My throat tightened and for the first time since my arrest at the Bangkok airport, my eyes began to flood with actual tears.
As I turned away from her, trying to compose myself, I heard her speaking with a heart-warming Arkansas accent and saying “You are free … His Majesty The King of Thailand has granted you a Royal Pardon.”
When I did not respond because I could not, she said “It’s over now, Jon … The Thai people have forgiven you.”
And then the words of a crippled Thai man who had lived in a tiny hut at the end of Soi 18 came to mind: “Only your heart/mind and The King can make you free.” Now I could fully appreciate what Pee Lek had tried to explain those many years before.
Going Home
On the day I left The Garden on my way to freedom, it became very apparent where one’s true alliances lay. Following the example set by Big Bob, I had already told the building chief that the American house now belonged to Ollie. The Chief said “I see you” and smiled.
When I left the American hut for the last time, Ollie slipped five $100 bills into my hand and admonished me to not spend it on dope, which made my young friend Andy Botts laugh.
As I made the rounds of the tiny foreign prisoner’s island to say goodbye to those whom I had come to know over the years, the reactions were very disparate. The young underling Chinese prisoners for the most part ignored my farewell gestures and even avoided eye contact. Their elders, however, offered their hands in mature, if begrudging, respect.
On the way across the prison yard to exit the gate of Building #2, I caught sight of my cell mate Didier. He didn’t say a word, but kissed me on both cheeks in the French manner. For my part, I said nothing to him because I did not really know what to say.
At the main gate of cell block section #2, Bubba Hollywood, the Spaniard Mariano and my other French cell mate, Jean-Yves, were waiting there to exchange farewells, which simply consisted of handshakes, sad smiles and nodding of heads. Again, no words were spoken since everything that could be said had already been said.
Following the rounds of farewells, I was escorted by a blueshirt to the chief of Central Control Building. He congratulated me for receiving a Royal Pardon and instructed me to kneel before a picture of The King to pay respect. I assure you that I had no problem whatsoever with that humbling gesture of gratitude.
From there I was conducted to the second-to-last gate. I had been dismayed that I was not able to say goodbye to my old friend Sompong and so it was a pleasant surprise to find him sitting there on the bench outside of the vice warden’s office laughingly acting as if he owned the place. I still have no idea how he knew that I was leaving. However, I had learned over the years that the
gao laaeo
could know and arrange almost anything within the prison – except their own freedom.
For a long while, Sompong and I sat and joked and laughed. This ended when a police officer arrived to escort me through the last two gates. Before leaving, Sompong suggested that I should bow and smile at the vice warden sitting behind the desk inside his overly air-conditioned office. I followed his advice and was pleased to see that my smile was returned.
As I exited through the next gate in the custody of the policeman, Sompong, who was by then walking back into the bowels of the prison, called to me over his shoulder. In Thai, he shouted, “Don’t think too much.” These were the exact last words I had heard from Pee Lek twenty-two years earlier, and finally I understood the deeper meaning of this phrase. At its most beneficial level, it meant “Do not dwell on this”.
It’s rather hard to describe how it felt to walk through the last gate of Klong Prem Central Prison and find myself standing outside of its walls. Even though I was stone cold sober, it was the greatest high I had ever known.
The deportation process proceeded exactly as it had been described in Fuller’s notes following his release: I was first transported to the nearest police station outside of Klong Prem, then to police station adjacent to the airport, and finally to the immigration jail.
But before we arrived at any jail, the police officer transporting me to the nearest police station took my suggestion and stopped at an air-conditioned restaurant, where we enjoyed a lovely, professionally prepared meal with a tall glass of almost frozen Thai beer. I was happy to pick up the tab.
My guard also allowed me to make a telephone call. I called Joy to share with her the news of my release. Her barbershop employee said Joy was out of country, to the Canary Islands. Though I spoke with her by phone a few weeks later, I was never to see her again.
At that nearby police station, I encountered another coincidence: the police captain waiting there was the same captain who had been in charge at the airport police station those many years before, the one who had tried to scam me out of my bail money. He pretended not to know who I was. Nonetheless, after I offered him some small tribute, he had me passed quickly through the transfer process and I was taken to the airport adjacent police station that same evening. Once again, I was sleeping in the close proximity of females. After years of trying to sleep despite the noise of snoring male prisoners, I found it a profoundly soothing experience to drift off to sleep with the sound of the soft sibilant voices of the female detainees coming from the women’s cell.
A few days and some small amount of paperwork later, I was taken to the immigration jail to undergo the final deportation processes. The cells were huge but still extremely overcrowded, with inmates of many different nationalities. Most were petty thieves or simply those who either had received no help from their embassies in regards to refreshing their passports and/or had no money to pay the fines for overstaying their visas, much less buy an airline ticket home.
Dan, the Irishman fighting extradition to the States on racketeering charges, had already spent months at the immigration jail before getting transferred to Klong Prem to await the outcome of his hearings and he had shared with me the name of a guard to speak with. Upon arriving at that final facility, I asked for this guard and told him that I was an associate of Mr Dan. From then on, almost anything was possible. The guard arranged a large comfortable sleeping space for me within the crowded cell, which made it apparent to all that I was under his special protection. He would come check on me in the cell multiple times daily bringing food and drink from outside.
Marcia came to visit me at the immigration jail, where she told me that arrangements had been made for me to come to the American embassy in the custody of an immigration officer to obtain a temporary passport, which was good only for travel to the USA.
Ironically, one of the American pedophiles I had had the misfortune to meet earlier was already there in the same large cell awaiting the completion of his final extradition paperwork. He had been beaten and robbed of everything he owned and was relegated to a small corner of the lockup. Marcia requested that I should look to his well-being, which I reluctantly did in spite of my personal animosity for him. But it didn’t take a lot on my part; simply sitting with him and carrying on a short conversation accomplished the desired result. The others left him in peace.
Over the next two weeks, Dan’s guard escorted me once to the embassy to pickup my passport, another day to get a haircut at Joy’s barbershop, and another day to the Super Star Bar in Patpong to eat shish-kabob, which was comped by an old acquaintance of mine, Frank, who happened to be the manager of that establishment.
Strangely enough, at the end of each outing, I was content to return to my bed at the immigration jail lockup. I found that too much freedom at one time was almost a stimulus overload. One prime example: Dan’s guard had suggested at each outing that we should visit a house of prostitution. Oddly, even though this had been a frequent daydream of mine during the years of my incarceration, it now seemed an unwelcome exercise.
It was shortly before dawn and a soft though earnest monsoon rain was falling outside. Due to nervous anticipation, I had not slept all night because this was the morning of my departure. Dan’s guard, per my request, had brought me a bottle of Mehkong, some Sprite, a lemon and some ice.
A dozen or so other prisoners were pretending to be asleep when the night shift guard opened the cell and called my name. I exited and walked away down the corridor as the cell which I had just left erupted into a fight over the pillow, towels and bedding I had left behind.
The rain began falling in ridiculous torrents as the sun rose. The police truck arrived to take me to the airport. Looking out at the rain, the guard at my side said, “Maybe you cannot fly today” and laughed. I couldn’t fully share his humor at that point.
When we pulled into the airport and parked, this same guard put handcuffs on my wrists and marched me through the departure check-in with very little hesitation. When we reached the terminal gate of the departure lounge, he removed my handcuffs in full view of my fellow passengers and ushered me into the waiting room.
Even though most of the other passengers at first averted their eyes, when I looked around, I was conscious of the stares. I think that I had felt more comfortable the first time I had walked the prison yard.
I found a seat some distance from the others and stared at the floor until we were called to board the plane. Just outside the door of the 747, I inhaled one final breath of free Thai air and made my way to my assigned seat – which was, fortunately, a window seat.
In my mind, the last twenty plus years of my life flashed before me. It was as if an era had passed almost without notice until the thrust of the airliner’s jet engines pressed my back against the seat and my thoughts back into current reality.
I sat looking out the window and shivering in the air-conditioned cabin with my shirt still damp from the Thai rain. Only too briefly I saw the deliciously wet shimmering early morning mosaic landscape below. Then the view was obscured by the low-hanging clouds and was gone. Even though I was now free from prison and “going home”, my emotions were hugely conflicted because I felt like I really had no “home”. I only knew that I was leaving Siam. Once again, and more than ever before, it felt as if my heart was being torn from my chest.