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Trey R. Barker

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All About The Snickers

He’s a residential burglar.

When I was a journalist, I would absolutely have written “an alleged residential burglar.” But he’s been in my jail now for weeks and while he says he didn’t do it, he did. (And no, I won’t say, George Bush-like of Harriet Miers, “Trust me.”) Too many times I’ve heard him talking with other inmates about what kind of loot he got, how he got in, etc.

He did it.

And yet yesterday, he didn’t do it.

Could have. Could have absolutely gotten away with it.

In my jail, commissary day — when the inmates are allowed to buy certain items — is extremely small; a few sheets of paper and an envelope for letters, a few candy bars, a soda, some lotion or playing cards. This guy bought two Snickers bars.

I gave him one too many and then moved on my way.

Fifteen minutes later, he called me back over and handed me the extra Snickers. “You gave me this by accident,” he said.

There must have been a shocked look on my face because at least one other inmate started laughing. “What?” I said, fairly well dumbfounded that he would hand it back.

Because in my jail, Snickers and Hershey bars are gold. Not as food…as money. Inmates buy and sell anything and everything they have — their meals, their blankets, their books, sometimes their pictures — and Snickers and Hersheys are the coin of the realm.

Call them poker chips, too. Basic ante is one bar and the betting goes up from there.

“You gave me too many,” he said. “It’s not mine. I didn’t want you to have to pay for it if you came up short on your inventory count.”

I stood for a long moment, my addled brain running through all the different scams I thought this might be, might turn into.

In the end, after seeing something approaching honesty on this guy’s face, I handed him the candy bar back. “I appreciate you letting me know about it.”

He shrugged. Eventually, looking probably as befuddled as I had moments earlier, he took the Snickers.

“You keep it,” I said. “For letting me know.”

I still don’t quite understand it. He’s in a cellblock with a bunch of guys who do regularly cause problems. He is a bit of a problem. Suddenly he gives back a 50 cent candy bar I would never have known about?

I refuse to believe any sort of jailhouse switch in morality, it just doesn’t happen that way usually. Maybe, like the character Red says in Stephen King’s ‘Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption,’ he did it just to feel normal, if only for a little while.

Maybe this guy, who probably will go to prison for breaking into Mr. and Mrs. John Q. Public’s house, just wanted to be a regular guy for a little while. Maybe he wanted to see something other than suspicion on a guard’s face.

Screw it. Maybe there was a scam and I’m just not smart enough to have it figured out.

Art and Artist, Hypocrisy 101

I noticed my own hypocrisy with Toby Keith.

Hypocrisy? Perhaps double-standard is a better characterization. Either way, I’m not sure I’m happy with it.

Music means a great deal to me. Long before I wanted to be a writer, I wanted to be Alex Van Halen. Then Neil Peart. Then Larry Mullen, Jr. There are times, even at 38 years old, when listening to “The Unforgettable Fire” or “Moving Pictures” or “2112” and banging on my drumset that I still want to be those guys.

But as much as music means, I find I’m not much of a fan of country. Much of the music I like, and the vocal harmony of the old time country, the musicianship of bluegrass. But I have a hard time with much of the hard-right nationalism and religion of country artists. I don’t like songs that tell other countries it’s the American way to put a boot up their ass if we don’t like what they say.

I tend to think of those artists as hard-right politically (and yeah, I tend to think of them as a monolithic group, with no differences in degree or thought). They vote red state, worship red state, celebrate and educate red state, eat and sleep red state.

Worse, I see them celebrate going to war. Doubly so Toby Keith, who has made a vast American fortune reminding people we’ll put a boot up their ass (witness his horribly titled album “Shockin’ Y’all”).

I stay away from his music because I don’t like his politics. I gravitate toward U2 and Sting, Peter Gabriel and Rush, because I dig their tunes but also because they are where I am politically. Oddly enough, being both a Texan and in law enforcement, I am a lefty. I am a liberal.

Here’s the problem. Toby Keith has a fabulous new song out. “As Good As I Once Was.” It’s about getting older and not being quite as quick on the draw or quite as tough as in the old days. Great lyrics, hysterical video, bad politics.

Now the hypocrisy: I tell myself not to worry about the politics when I’m listening to that song. Separate art from artist, I tell myself.

Except, I don’t tell myself that when I’m listening to U2. I revel in their politics, their world view. It is my seeming selective application of ‘separate art from artist’ that concerns me. Why do I usually ignore that advice, then suddenly follow it when it’s some whose politics I don’t agree with?

Tricky question, that. Hypocrisy? Cheap rationalization? Or massive over-analysis of a fairly petty issue?

It could be as simple as wanting to hear a good tune and ignoring the politics unless I happen to agree with them. After all, I lean more toward the Barbra Streisand side of politics but can’t stand any single song she’s ever done. With her, I don’t separate art from artist, I separate self from Streisand. (Okay, it’s a cheap joke, but you get what I’m saying.)

I have no answer for this, if there even needs to be one, I just find the question an interesting one to explore. For now, I’ll continue digging Red-State Toby’s new song and I won’t worry about the politics because chances are pretty good our votes would cancel each other out anyway.

The Relativity of Success

Perception is everything.

There is a place I want to be as a writer. It’s not a dollar amount (give me millions and I’ll probably still work at the Sheriff’s Office because I dig the job), it’s not number of books sold (sell hundreds of thousands and maybe those numbers become cement shoes, weighing you down with an audience’s expectation), it’s not the number of times I’m asked to be a guest of honor at a mystery convention (though the free beer bought by younger writers wanting to crack open the secret code of success might be fun).

It is the ability to write what I want to write, almost regardless of content.

There is no purity there, just as there is no purity in the First Amendment. “Congress shall make no law…abridging the freedom of speech….” But of course you can’t yell fire in a crowded theater (or movie in a crowded fire house quoth Steve Martin).

But I want to get to a place where it matters less, where I can, for the most part, do what I want to do, write the kinds of stories I like. Those tend to be violent and fast, ruled by characterization more than plot; James Crumley, Jim Thompson, Victor Gischler, some of Dan Marlowe.

I met a writer recently, a man I’ve admired for some time, whose books have kept me great company over the last couple of years. He and I got into a conversation about success. We didn’t call it that, but that’s what it was.

To me, he is quite successful. He’s finishing up a three book deal with a major publishing house, his first novel was nominated for an Edgar Award, he signs lots of books for lots of people at lots of bookstores and mystery conventions.

And yet, his sales have not been particularly great. First of all, that shocked me because I thought they were good. Not brilliant, but not bad. I figured quite a few people liked his books.

Not quite the case. He said there had been good critical review, just not much in the way of sales.

And yet I thought of him as knocking on the door of wildly successful. Big publisher, bringing out book after book, hard and soft; hey, that and a shot of tequila, a Corona back, and a plate of nachos and that’s a damned good day.

But the evidence said otherwise. I don’t find his books in that many chain bookstores and more than a few independents are without him on their shelves, too.

So why did I think he was burning the world down?

Because he’s higher on the publishing food chain than I am and from where I stand, that looks — at least superficially — more successful. But might it be, that since his books tend to be more violent and gritty, more edgy, than mainstream mysteries, that his success has to be defined differently? Does his content mean that he has to measure everything with a smaller yardstick…call it a half-yard stick?

It could be that his style of writing, which I so admire, will never have mainstream acceptance. Look at Jim Thompson. Even with the revival of recent years, lots of mystery fans have no clue who he is.

This writer defined his version of success for me in our conversations. I think it’s a new definition for him, too. He said if his publisher dropped him, it would be sad but not earth shattering. He’d gotten much further than he ever thought he would when he was writing the first book and he was pretty sure there would be smaller presses out there who’d keep his material on the market.

And he was cool with that.

Perception isn’t quite everything, but it’s close. My perception of him was as a fairly successful writer moving his way up. Now, it’s of a writer more attuned to the song in his head than the chant of mainstream readers.

He is in the place I want to be: writing what he wants to write, almost regardless of content.

Three cheers for him.

Dead Again

There is another dead one.

This one I do remember. Heavy-set, close-cropped hair, vaguely befuddled. He was sentenced to my jail for ten weekends, convicted of possession of controlled substance. I believe his drug of choice was heroin, I don’t remember for sure.

He played me like a cheap xylophone. Seemed like a decent guy. A guy who’d made a mistake, but who realized it, who wanted to get it behind him, get on to the next thing. Worked for a medical service and it was a good job. Decent pay, good benefits. The man was a veteran of the Iraqi war, a medic in the desert, patching together military and civilian alike, anyone who bled and hurt.

I guess he couldn’t find that same help for himself. Or maybe he got lost while looking for it. Or maybe he thought the skag was the help.

Ten weekends and on the ninth, he got nailed. Fourteen and a half pills secreted in his shoes. He swore the pills weren’t for him, that they were for the other inmates, that the other inmates had pressured him into the smuggle. That could be the truth. That could be part of the truth.

Could be bullshit. Like I said, he played me but good.

Said all the right things, did all the right things. Never caused any problems while he was incarcerated. Never gave me grief over the millions of details most inmates give me grief over (food…plumbing…mattresses…jail uniforms…heating…cooling…phones…commissary…innocence…guilt)

The day he got popped for smuggling contraband, he got charged. Went from nearly done with a relatively minor charge to the beginning of a charge that would — no question — land him in prison for at least years. He finished his ninth weekend but couldn’t leave because of the new charge. A day later, he managed to bond out, $100,000 or ten percent cash. His girlfriend brought a bundle of cash to the jail and he went home. A few days later, he was back for his final weekend, no longer saying the right things to me. In fact, no longer talking to me much at all.

Then he was gone, waiting for trial.

A few days ago, he OD’d. I don’t know on what, toxicology hasn’t yet come back from his autopsy. Maybe heroin. Maybe sleeping pills or pain pills.

Two dead now. The man who killed himself after beating an officer into the hospital, and the smuggler. For thirteen months, my first thirteen working at the Sheriff’s Office, nothing like this happened. Now, suddenly, two former inmates are dead in less than a month.

I won’t even try to answer their deaths mean, I have no idea. I’m not even sure what the question actually is. All I know is that these two guys, these two mopes or shitbags or perps or lost souls, whatever you want to call them, are dead and I keep on truckin,’ jailing people, releasing people, warehousing people.

It’s my job.

The Man’s Picture

I can’t remember the man.

I’ve looked at the picture maybe a thousand times. Thick-necked, short-cropped hair. Brown. Eyes too far away to tell the color, and cast sideways anyway. Head slightly down, as though somehow embarrassed to be in this particular picture.

It’s a mug shot.

I didn’t book the man into the jail, but I did deal with him for two days before he made bail, and I can’t remember anything about him. Not his voice, not his smell, nothing. I didn’t even remember what he’d been arrested for.

When I looked up those charges, Saturday’s affair made a bit more sense. Arrested in early March for domestic battery and violating an order of protection.

Two Saturday’s ago, he got arrested again. Driving under the influence. He managed to make bail on the charge before he ever even got to the county jail. A few hours after that, he got arrested again. Violation of an order of protection.

Less than an hour after that, he lay dead, a bullet to the head, his own finger on the trigger.

But before he killed himself, before the Illinois State Police called out their SWAT team and their helicopter, before all the K-9 units in the county came out, before damn near every police officer in Bureau County raced to Spring Valley, before all of that, I heard the scream.

Short, less than a second. Garbled. I couldn’t understand any of it. But somehow as clear as the mythical summer days when I was a kid.

The dispatcher at the Spring Valley police station screamed into the radio, desperately calling for help. At the Sheriff’s Office, we heard that call. More to the point, our dispatcher understood it and immediately ratched up a response.

“10-33,” she radioed to every cop in the county. “Officer down.”

The man, whose face and picture and stay in my jail I can’t remember, had attacked the arresting officer, had savagely beaten him, and then battered his way out of the holding cell. He also managed to snatch the officer’s gun.

He fired once.

We didn’t know until later it was a suicide. At the time, with the single officer at the station covered in blood, with the dispatcher screaming for help, all we knew was there had been a shot.

Bureau County is a small county, only 35,000 people. Spring Valley is our second largest town at about 5,500 people. We are not Chicago or L.A. We are not New York or Miami or even my hometown of Midland, Texas. Our last killing was more than a year ago. Before that, the last had been in the last century. Things like this don’t happen here.

Except they happen everywhere, all the time.

The man I can’t remember had been waiting for transport to my jail. That freaks me out pretty good. Would he have fought with me? Would he have done as much damage? More, maybe?

And yeah, the entire thing scared me…continues to scare me around the edges. Every day I’m in that jail, I do the same thing the Spring Valley officer did. I do all the things he did and he ended up in the hospital. But this is my job and in spite of that ever-present threat, I dig it.

I just wish, as I still sometimes look at his picture, I could remember him. I wish he didn’t so easily disappear into the sea of inmates’ faces.

White Trash Week

White trash swamp meet? White trash flea market, maybe?

This week, in my little town of Princeton, IL, people are going through each other’s trash, pulling what they want, tossing it into their broken-down trucks, their rust-stained station wagons, and taking it home. NO doubt they are spreading it out all over their garage floors and gloating by incandescent lamp light over their treasures.

But perhaps I’m being cynical and mean-spirited. Yeah, that’s probably it.

Every spring, the city allows people to clean out ANYTHING they want: furniture, paint, old oil, tires, swing sets, clothes, whatever. Pile it by the curb, the city says, and we’ll take it away for you. It’s pretty cool, actually. A chance to completely clean out and clean up and all for free. No taking it to the dump yourself, no coughing up a few bucks per car load of crap, no feeling like you’re hurting the environment by tossing out all the shit you never should have bought in the first place.

Instead, let the city do it. Out of sight, out of mind. You’re not actually dumping it, the city is, hence not your garbage, not your environmental problem.

But what makes me laugh, and creeps me out just a little around the edges, is the garbage hunting. Cars literally drive up and down street after street, looking at everything piled in front yards, pouring over everything, every torn shirt or frayed bra, every stained mattress or scratched DVD of Alyssa Milano’s “Embrace of the Vampire.”

Last night, I couldn’t get off the block, couldn’t get past the pile-up in the middle of my block. Two cars parked on their respective sides of the street and between them, a Gremlin (I shit you not) and a Chevy truck, all four side by side, lined up waiting for Evil Knievel to blast his ass over them on that red, white, and blue motorcycle.

I don’t know what those people were looking at, what they were collecting, I simply realized I was stuck in traffic in a town of 7,500. More than that, I was stuck in traffic for TRASH!

LuAnn tells me that Aurora, the ‘burb of Denver where we lived for ten years, did the same thing except the garbage was piled in the alley. Maybe, but I don’t remember it. And I sure as hell don’t remember people staking out piles of garbage like those whack-jobs already standing in line for Star Wars Episode III tickets.

And yeah, I have thought of two, maybe three, different stories, each based on this odd ritual.

Actually, it would make a great scene in the play I’ve always wanted to write: “White Trash Parade of Homes.” Maybe, someday, when I’ve nothing else to do, I’ll write that freakin’ play. But not now, not today or tomorrow or the rest of this week. After all, I’ve got all kinds of new toys sitting on the greasy floor of my garage and I just bought a brand new incandescent bulb. I’ve got some gloating to do.

A bloggin’ virgin

An odd thing, a personal blog.

After all, it is both borne of, and feeds, the ego. Why else would anyone assume the world gave two shits about what they had to say? I am no expert in anything, my opinions are not universally trusted (nor always even trusted in my own household), I don’t get paid to offer up witty sayings.

And yet here I am. A new website with the shrink wrap barely off, and a blog to go along. Ah, the feeding of the ego.

But that isn’t so far from why people write, either, is it? To be a writer, to assume — again — anyone gives a crap about what you write, what you have to say, takes quite an ego to begin with. Actually, to write for publication, takes quite an ego. To assume people care about what you write, and to assume you can write well enough to get published in a legitimate venue, takes that ego. People who write for themselves, who journal, don’t generally care what anyone thinks because no one will ever see it.

Yeah, I write for publication and yeah, I’ve got an ego.

So, as an accessory to the website, I wanted a blog. Just for the occasional posts. I won’t update 1,459 times a day, I don’t have that kind of time (though I do wonder where people with that kind of time get that kind of time). But sometimes, I will have something I want to rant about, to explore, to ask, books — or whatever — to expose.

Or just to hear my own voice (or see it, really).

For now, here are two books to try. One is older, but recently issued in a mass market format with a kick-ass cover. BURN, by Sean Doolittle. A hip crime novel, written by a hip guy. Congrats, too, to the man for becoming a father for the second time. The second is Thomas Zigal’s THE WHITE LEAGUE. Very cool exploration of the darkness of New Orleans and racial politics and murder and honor debts.

All right, that’s it for now. Thanks for giving me some of your time. Check out those books.

About Trey

“Trey ain’t such a bad guy.”A jail inmate, charged with murder. Murderers, thieves, junkies, those … Read More

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