School seems to be an important topic in this story, and not just during Craig’s time at camp. Throughout his life, the idea of school, whether as an instrument of learning or just the physical place where he spent time, has been integral to who he has become. On the good end, it helped him forge the curiosity to want to learn more and grow. And it was because of school that he met many of the people he leaned on for support during his incarceration. On the opposite end, it was school that drew him to Arizona in the first place, where this part of his life got away from him. And in between, it was at least the idea of school that helped him begin steering his way through the prison system.

Arriving at the complex in Florence, Ariz., to begin his stay on the farm, he actually compared the start to the first weeks of being at a new school. He had to adjust to all the new faces he met. Like any new kid, he was leery, cautious of everyone in the Central Unit. It was a 5 yard. He was assigned to Building 4, where he bunked in the B run in cell 17. He knew nothing, no one. Did what he was told and tried to keep his head low as he took in the surroundings, such as they were. Mundane. Monotonous. Repetitive. Unbending.

The setup was such that it even felt like a school, he said. You have 500 kids all put together in a building, but individually, you only see a relative few in the hallway or in your class at any one time. Your exposure is limited, with a small handful of individuals really. Everyone else is on the other side of the facility, or they’re a different age, grade, separated from you physically by a small space but yet existentially more like on the opposite side of the ocean. The younger ones don’t mix with the older kids. He said it’s the same at camp. You start with a small group. First it’s your bunkmate, the main person you need to figure out, quickly. What’s he like? How’s he to deal with? You settle in on a working relationship, because you have to. Have to. And then, you meet your cellie’s friends, who he hangs out with. The circle starts to expand. It happens pretty quickly, and it needs to. You have no time to piss around. You want to find out who has table manners and who you can tolerate being around in the chow hall because you’re going to be with them every day, every god damn day going forward.

So Craig figured it out pretty quickly, just like he did back in the Park. First, at Ralston Elementary, and then when he moved on to middle school at Franklin, and eventually to South and North campus for high school. This time was different though. This time it wasn’t just a little anxiety of being a new kid at school. It was trying to figure out how to interact during every waking moment with convicted criminals, people who weren’t just as scared as you were when you first entered, but instead, were ready to exploit any part of your relationship that they could from the beginning if you weren’t ready.

The key was to find the ones who matched what you were looking for, how you were going to live your life.

“As you build relationships with neighbors, you start to figure out who’s a scammer, who’s a hustler, who’s a gambler. You kind of get a core group of six, eight, 10 or a dozen people you normally associate with. You know what they’re up to, know what you can or cannot share with them, for whatever reason. You learn their personalities. You don’t have to be on high alert, so you can kind of relax. Back it down a couple notches. The longer you’re at a place, it’s sheer repetition and your immediate group will end up being 30 to 50 guys.

“What goes with that, when new people come on the yard, they see that. And you see that when you’re new. They get along, but you see a force field around them that kind of says, ‘They don’t want to talk to me.’ They already know how to be comfortable, how to have interaction. Sometimes, it works out, and you get folded into that group. It’s kind of an interview process, for a lack of better phrase.”

Over a long time, he said you start to get a comfort level with a core group and know how to trust and interact with them. It turns into a “mindless monotony of interaction” where nothing they say or do is going to surprise you since you know them well enough. They become predictable. Select the right group, and you can be quite relaxed.

But there is always the chance that someone new can enter the picture and throw that natural balance out of whack. That’s something to guard against, hold fierce to your standard of who you want to be around, who you allow to associate within your circle. And it’s not easy.

“Over the years, you learn to listen to your animal instinct about whether you can trust someone. Society trains us to not listen to that, to our detriment. If you listen to that animal instinct, learn not to prejudge, you’re going to be right 90 percent of the time. You can tell, ‘Yup, they want something. I knew it all along.’ ‘Oh, yup, there it is. They want to borrow, but will never pay you back and it was the only reason he came to talk to me.’ Sometimes you’re right, sometimes you’re wrong, but you have to listen to your gut instinct.”

Building that core group wasn’t foreign to Craig. He had been through it before. Since junior high, he had surrounded himself with a specific circle of friends. Some through sports, some through class, he found himself part of an interesting clique. Rush and Carlson were both there with him at Franklin Middle School. They were new to him, but playing football together helped build a chemistry that made them relatable, understandable. They became comfortable for him. He understood what interactions should look like, what finding a middle ground should feel like. In the Central Unit, it was just that he was now dealing with people who did not have the same social skills or makeup like the friends he learned to meld with growing up. It was a new type of person he had to deal with as he went from near-implicit trust of the ones he encircled himself with to an always-guarded anticipation of “I should have known that was coming” with each new ‘friend’ on the inside.

As fast as he could, he took in the processes, viewed the surroundings, assessed the people, all of this with the purpose of starting to understand the lay of the land. It was an open dorm. He could see everything everyone else was doing, and they could see what he was doing. Day in, and day out. They, meaning the collective group around and nearby his bunk, knew everything about how he went about his business, because in effect, they were a part of his business as they literally were witness to his every move. They saw it, smelled it, heard it, felt it. They may not have been able to read what he was reading, or listen to what he was watching on TV – yes, they had their own TVs in their bunks, which I would have never believed, and which we will talk about more later – but they could still feel his reaction to such things based on his emotional state when he was done reading or watching. The people around you understand you, break you down, study you, catalog you. That’s a cue card he had to mentally tuck away in the front of his mind, keep it always on display. It may be meaningless, or maybe it’s something they digested a little more carefully, a teeny, tiny nugget to hold onto for another day. In the end, they all notice what you do, how you do it, and how you react to others. Nothing goes unseen.

But that cuts both ways.

There is always a guy who is in charge, formally or informally. Frequently, he’ll come around, or send someone around, to ask if you can help someone out.  Why would someone need help? Too often, it’s because he couldn’t help himself, doesn’t know how to care for himself or take care of his business. Maybe he lost money in a card game. Pissed it away with drugs. Or alcohol. These aren’t any easier to lay off of just because you’re inside. No, this isn’t a 12-step program by any means, and there’s plenty available. Plenty. So too often, when a guy needs help for whatever reason, it is because has has had to pay someone off and he didn’t have enough left over for himself. Sometimes it’s the guy next to you. Sometimes, it’s you who goes around to others to collect for him.

“You’re in bed next to the guy, you can see in his locker, you see he has no soap, no deodorant, nothing. You take it on yourself to go around. ‘We need to help him.’ Sometimes it’s the impromptu guy who comes asking for the same reason.

“But you also see who helps and who doesn’t help. There’s some real pieces of shit like anywhere, and you know what, if you didn’t help Joe out, I’ll remember that. Two months from now when you need something, it’s, ‘Fuck you. I ain’t helping you.’ You’re in a fishbowl. You see what they do, and they see what you do.”

This happens everywhere. Each time you move, you start over, learning to deal with the characters you have on this run, in this cell block. You begin the interview process all over again and it’s always the same. The inspection period, the evaluation, the sideways looks. It’s not easy moving from school to school when you’re growing up, facing those cliques, those teenage, bitter, hormone-driven rages against others not like you. But that’s like amateur night at the strip club when facing these assholes in prison, who are more like professional-level ‘adult entertainers’ who take no prisoners, every pun intended.

Managing that transition every 15 or so months — he was moved 12 times in 18 years, serving time in 11 facilities — is not natural. It took focus, determination to stay on task as he maneuvered through the system, going from a 5 yard, to a 4, and then five trips through 3 yards, until hitting the best possible assignment he could hope for, 2 yards for his final six placements.

Along the way, he had to work on his prison persona, how he was perceived. And he had plenty of opportunities to interact with others and show what he wanted them to see, but also to view the way they presented themselves.

“It’s how you handle things as an individual and really help people that shapes how they see you. Some people just hustle the system, but it didn’t take too long to figure them out. Your conduct, everybody judges you by it. They don’t care what society says about it; everybody does it. The things you see people do in restaurants, a grocery store, the gas station, you judge them for it. You drive to work, you see the same cars every day. Some are jerks, some are polite. You work with the polite, and cut off the jerks.”

That’s a pretty simple comparison. We all do that. When’s the last time you judged a driver based on what you considered their asshole maneuver, and then rolled up next to them to only see they looked like someone completely different? Every person does it. The difference here: Craig, during his stay on the farm, had to do it every day, over and over, just to keep track with who he could trust and who might be a risk to his well-being, whether now or 6 months down the road. Because it could make a difference in more than how his day went. It could decide whether he even saw the end of that day.