After I surveyed the room, my two new roommates introduced themselves to me, and filled me in on the way things worked.  I had never met these guys before.  The younger kid was Andrew, and the thin older fellow told me his name was Mac.  Andrew had been locked up because he got caught skipping work to get a haircut, and Mac was being investigated for some kind of unmentioned problem with another inmate.  He didn't look too comfortable talking about it.

The first things they showed me was what we did to get privacy when we needed to take a crap.  Basically, you tied one corner of a bed sheet to the bedpost, and stuck the opposite corner into a small hole in the wall, securing it my jamming a pencil stub in the hole afterward.  That gave you at least a semblance of privacy.  It was also understood that you would push the "flush" button instantly upon making any even partial deposit in the bowl, to try and minimize the odor.  The air in the cell was stale and old, so I could easily imagine the potential for foul smells to hang around heavily like incense. 

Meals were delivered three times a day through the slot, in closed plastic boxes.  If you wanted coffee in the morning you needed to be crouched by the door waiting, because if you didn't put your plastic cup up on the slot shelf the instant it was opened, the CO would say "nope, too late" and knock it back inside empty.  Otherwise you were given tiny packets of drink mix, or milk cartons, or both.  Andrew advised me to always save my milk cartons "for nighttime" - I had no idea what he meant.  Showers were twice a week, at which time you'd be given new clothes.  To get to the shower they had to handcuff everybody in the room, and then lead you to the showers that way one at a time.  Exercise was an hour per day, but I was advised to turn it down.  Since we were the only three non-violent inmates, we'd have to be kept separate from the others, and it just pissed the CO's off to be bothered by it.  Instead, as long as we turned exercise time down, they'd be more likely to toss a few more paperbacks through the slot the next time they emptied one of the other cells.  I could write letters a stick them in the side of the door, but had to leave them unsealed.  I would not be allowed a phone call until I'd been there a week.  All my stamps were in my property, which I would have no access to, and commissary was closed for inventory, but Mac said I could borrow a couple of his if I wanted. 

There isn't that much to tell about life in the Hole.  You sat there, bored, or napped, or tried to read.  I was feeling rather claustrophobic, and my stomach burned constantly.  I was depressed and didn't want to eat, but tried to force myself to.  After I'd been there about a day, they dropped a paper into our room addressed to me.  This was my "notification" which informed me I had been locked up for "investigation".  That was the worst way to be held, because they could keep you for up to 180 days without any specific charge.  If they locked you up for a "shot" (a charge) they had to adjudicate the shot within seven days.  But investigation could drag on basically forever.  In fact, I'd heard about men who were left in the hole for 180 days, brought back out, and then locked up for further investigation hours later.  I didn't want to consider that possibility.  The thing was, there wasn't anything I could do about it.  They weren't even trying to squeeze me for information, since they already knew what had happened.  All I could do was wait.

I wrote a letter to Heather, and tried my best to explain what was going on.  I didn't need to be careful about what I wrote, because I had no fear of the staff reading my letter, since I hadn't done anything wrong in the first place.  I also asked her to call my father and stepmother to let them know I was safe.  I knew that when I didn't call Heather for a week she would start to freak out.  We had a specific schedule we followed on phone calls, and even if she wasn't home she'd hear part of the automated voice announcing my call on her answering machine.  Instead, this time she'd get nothing but silence.

I tried to sleep during the day when I could, because it was hard to sleep at night.  Any time a guard opened or closed a door it was very loud, echoing down the hall.  Besides that, and the yelling from adjacent cells, there was the milk carton game Andrew referred to.  This nightly "fun" was inmates stomping on their empty milk cartons whenever it finally got quiet, making a loud popping BANG noise like popping a paper bag filled with air.  So every time you started to drift off, you'd be jolted awake by another "gunshot" out in the hallway.  Nice.  The food was cold by the time you got it, except breakfast which was usually lukewarm.  However, that was actually an improvement from usual, because the SHU was the only place you received hot breakfast anymore; they had switched to cold cereal seven days a week elsewhere because of budget cuts.

We talked now and then, trading stories.  I didn't have very many good ones to tell, but Andrew told all sorts of wild ones about his days on the street, none of which I believed.  And Mac talked in detail about how he had been horribly burned, and almost died, doing HVAC work in the prison.  He had scars all over his torso, and was involved in a multi-million dollar lawsuit against the Bureau of Prisons.  The way he told it (and others confirmed it later), he was pretty much guaranteed to win because his supervising CO on the HVAC detail had decided to tell the truth, admitting he had told Mac a valve was turned off and locked when it reality it was still mistakenly turned on.  They also both talked about many of the other inmates I had met, or would meet later, discussing who had ratted on people in various cases.  The conversations were illuminating, and more fun than staring at the walls...but I wanted to get the hell out of there all the same!

After I'd been there about four days, Andrew was let out.  That night, Mac was sitting quietly, looking upset.  I asked him if anything was wrong, and he looked at the floor.  "Look Doug, you seem like a nice guy, so I want to tell you something.  When you get out of here and tell people you were locked up with me, you're going to hear all kinds of stories.  Believe what you want, but I'm telling you, the homo stuff isn't true!"

Mac then related to me a long, confusing story about how he ended up in the hole.  It had to do with this one odd inmate who he'd befriended, and who was always getting picked on.  The details didn't make a lot of sense, but basically (in Mac's version anyway) Mac had stuck his neck out for this kid, and somehow the kid had stabbed him in the back and then, when Mac confronted him about it, gone to the staff and claimed Mac had tried to sexually assault him or something.  He was almost crying when he told the story; it was like a father talking about the son who had betrayed him.  I kept telling Mac that I believed him, but really I was just hoping he'd go to sleep and stop talking about it altogether.

Finally, after seven long days, I heard them call out my name.  "Kent, get your stuff together, you're coming out."  I shook Mac's hand goodbye and waited for them to come get me.  Lo and behold, it was Mace who had come to collect me and bring me back.  First there was a bit of excitement, as he forgot to have me change out of my jumpsuit.  We were about to round a corner and head outside when he suddenly pushed me back in a panic.  "Holy crap, if the guy in the tower sees you walking around in that jumpsuit, they'll think you escaped, or are taking me hostage."  He wasn't joking around, he was genuinely scared.  Apparently the jumpsuits are only used in the hole, in order to make it obvious if somebody somehow breaks out of there.  Once I changed back into my normal prison clothes, he transported me back to the front office.  On the way, Mace told me that while I had been locked up, my stepmother had called frantically trying to find out why I hadn't called to check on my ailing father, who in the interim had been hospitalized once again.  They'd let her know that I was safe and in good health and in the Special Housing Unit, but they were not permitted to provide any other information.

Mace told me that when word reached him about her phone call, he personally had gone down to the SHU to talk to Mr. T.  "I've dealt with plenty of cold sons of bitches in my time, but this guy is one of the coldest.  He will be back eventually, but I want you to know what kind of a man he is, so you don't try to involve yourself with him, and also so you don't try to get back at him.  Just stay clear.  I stood there and let him know that your father was in the hospital, and may be dying, and that he didn't need to admit anything.  All he had to do was tell us that you hadn't given him those sunglasses, and we'd be able to release you back to population and you could call and check on your father."

Mace pulled the Jeep up to the front parking lot.  "I told him that, and do you know what he said to me?  He looked me right in the eyes and told me `He doesn't give a shit about his old man, because if he did, he never would have stolen those sunglasses.'  He didn't even blink.  That is one cold son of a bitch."