While the remainder of my bus trip was tedious, exhausting, and seemed to be eternal, it was actually rather uneventful.  I grabbed a sandwich in Little Rock, and managed to get a few hours sleep between there and Dallas.  We arrived in Dallas about two hours later than scheduled, and I’d had it drilled into my brain that any late arrival would be considered a serious violation of the travel policy.  So I canned the number I had for the halfway house, but the woman who answered didn’t seem to care one way or the other.  “Just get here as soon as you can, that’s fine.”

I tried to call Heather too, to hear her voice - and to see if she had calmed down from the fit she’d thrown the last time we spoke.  I got her answering machine, left a message, and headed out to the street to find a cab.  I was quite familiar with this part of downtown Dallas, having ridden Greyhound in and out of the station countless times when I worked for AmeriFleet.  My only real concern was finding a cab driver who could figure out where we needed to go; my directions were pretty simple, but since they’d come off the internet I had no way of knowing whether they were correct or not.  Also, Hutchins is a bit out of the way, so it was possible a cab driver would not want to go that far when there was no return fare available. 

There were two cabs waiting on the street.  I approached the first one and climbed in the back.  “I need to go to Hutchins.”

“The Halfway house, huh?  It’s fifty bucks since I can’t get a fare back.”

Obviously I wasn’t the first passenger to climb out of the bus station heading to the halfway house.  And I suppose that doesn’t say much for the town of Hutchins when the only reason anybody wants to take a cab there is to report to a Halfway House.

As it turned out, my directions were not entirely correct, but only because of a major change off of Interstate 45.  The halfway house was supposed to be located about two blocks from an exit, but that particular exit no longer went east and west; the connection to the west had been closed permanently.  So instead we had to take a different exit and work through a few side streets.  Apparently this change had taken place a number of month earlier, as the cab driver knew all about it.

The area we were driving in was rather empty.  There was a gas station/convenience store and a house or two, but that was it.  Then we turned right and hit the correct street, and I could see the layout was quite isolated.  There was a water tower on one side of the street, with a huge overgrown field.  On the left side of the street there were three buildings: one was a typical small commercial building housing some company or other.  Farther down the street was a propane company called Blue Rhino, with small and large tanks everywhere, and trucks moving around – it seemed rather active.  In between, there was your typical sterile-looking brick buildings, pure government: the Dallas-area Halfway House, administered by the Volunteers of America (who weren’t volunteers, of course).  It could have passed for a small medical building, except for one fenced-in area with a basketball hoop which could only be accessed from inside the building itself.

I was home…at least my new home for the next six months.

The front door was open, and I walked in.  The lobby area was rather quiet, although I could hear a television somewhere in the distance.  The standard-issue institutional tile made up the floor.  There was a small sofa to the left, and to the right a large desk with two windows, similar to something you’d find at the Department of Motor Vehicles.  I approached the window nervously and was happy to see a rather pleasant and unintimidating woman behind the window.  I gave her my name, my prison ID number, and my social security number, and she asked me to wait at the couch.  “Do not speak to anyone until I have processed your entry,” she warned.  Fortunately that wasn’t much of a problem, as I think only one or two people walked by in the meantime.  One, I noticed, was a female…this reminded me that the halfway house was co-ed!  I would actually see living, breathing women again.  Somehow though, this didn’t seem like such a big deal.  After all, the only woman I really wanted to see was Heather.  And I suppose I had already made the mental jump that I’d see plenty of females now that I was going to interact with the outside world.  I know that for some halfway house “clients” (as we were called) this is a major event, but it wasn’t for me.

Eventually the staff member brought me into a large room, which she told me was the visiting room and television room.  She proceeded to ask me a few questions, mainly to confirm information she already had in her paperwork, and then she went through my belongings.  I gave her the two prescriptions I had been taking, so she could put them in the medical closet and have them officially dispensed to me; they were just Zantac and some antibiotic, but I could understand their desire to keep access to prescriptions limited, as well as the need to make sure they were only taken according to instructions.  I didn’t think there would be an issue with any of the personal items I was carrying with me, as they all had come directly from my time inside prison, but as it turned out there were three items she confiscated.  The first was my big bag of plain M&Ms.  “Clients cannot have food, because no food or drink is allowed anywhere in the facility except for the mess hall and the snack room.”  She told me I could have somebody pick them up when they came to visit.  I could understand the no food rule; bugs were always a major concern, especially in the warmer Texas climate.  But the other two items she confiscated really confused me: my nail clippers and toenail clippers.  “These are held up front, and you can come sign them out when you need them.”  I wasn’t about to be argumentative on my first day, but it seemed a bit silly that they wouldn’t allow me to keep the same pair of nail clippers I’d had in prison, especially when I had disposable razors which, when broken open, could cause a lot more damage.  Oh well; this would not be the last halfway house rule I’d think was pointless or counterproductive. 

After having me sign some forms and giving me a list of rules and policies, she showed me around the rest of the facility, which wasn’t much.  Down one hallway were the female bedrooms, mess hall, and administrative offices.  I guess they felt safer keeping the females (who accounted for about 25% of the population) closer to the powers that be.  In the central part of the building, where the two main hallways and the entranceway intersected, you could find the snack room, the medical closet (which was where they dispensed medication from), the library, and the laundry room.  This was also the area where the large entrance desk was located, as well as the visiting room.  This left one long hallway for me to explore on my own: the hallway with all of the male client bedrooms.  The staff member handed me a key, which she said was for my closet, and gave me my room number and bed assignment.  It was clear she wasn’t interested in walking down that hallway, or wasn’t supposed to do it without a male staff member, or both.  So I set off on my own.

Immediately on the left was a door marked Employment Services, which I’d been told was where the Employment Counselor had her office.  Then on both sides of the wall were about eight payphones, each requiring 50 cents per call.  These phones were meant to be our contact with the outside world; call phones and phone cards were not permitted.  I guessed that the Halfway House got some kind of percentage on the amount of money spent, but I couldn’t be sure.  There was one regular free phone “clients” were allowed to use, but it was at the front desk, and meant for phone calls to locate employment only – nothing else.  I’d soon learn the was often a line to use that phone, so for simplicity’s sake it would often be worth it to drop the 50 cents into the payphone.

I walked down about half of the hallway, and found my room on the left.  Opening the door, I entered an 8-bunk room; 4 pairs of bunk beds.  My bed was #7, which was the top bunk immediately on the right.  The rest of the room was pretty much empty.  There was a small table with a sink in one corner, and some folding chair scattered about.  A small television, belonging to one of the clients, sat on a chair between two bunks.  I located my closet: it was quite small, but it would have to do.  It was meant to hold all of my personal belongings for the duration of my stay.  Nothing was to be left out in the open.  There were also two other doors in the room; the one on the left led to a small room with two toilets and a sink.  The one across the entranceway led to the two small showers and another sink.  Every bed was empty, but appeared to be used by someone.  So while I’d traded down from a prison “range” with 40+ inmates to a small room with 8, I still wouldn’t be getting any privacy in this place.  I shrugged; it was only for six months, and I’d be at work much of the time.  How bad could it be?

I’d been informed that a client orientation was being held the following day, so I had nothing to do until dinner time around 5pm.  Heather was already at work, so there was no reason to call her.  And I didn’t want to fork over the long distance charges to call anybody else.  So I did something I’d been dying to do for three days: a took a long, hot shower.  I cleaned myself up, shaved, put on some fresh clothes (my choices were limited but I planned on asking Heather to bring me some in the next day or two after work), and climbed into bed.  The bunk was a solid metal frame style, with no springs underneath, and the mattress and pillow were very thin.  But it wasn’t much worse than what I’d been used to from prison, and the room was quiet.  Exhausted from the long journey, emotionally and physically fried, I closed my eyes and quickly dozed off.  As I drifted away, I thought about all the things I needed to do over the next few days: get Heather to bring me some clothes, get plenty to eat, find a job – ANY job for the time being, and be sure to obey all the rules of the halfway house.  I’d just keep to myself and the rest should be easy.

But, as I had learned to expect, accomplishing goals when involved in the Federal prison system is only as easy as the staff and administration want to make it for you.  And I was soon to learn that the rules and attitudes of those around me were not designed to make life simple.  In fact, some of them seemed specifically designed to make it impossible to succeed!  Like in prison itself, my goals in the halfway house would have to be changed from “achieve goals and progress” to “survive and count the days until I’m out of here.”