By Bonnie ZoBell
Nate Jordon’s extraordinary new chapbook The Weekender holds nothing back but takes us right inside a jail and fairly slams us—no, not up
Nothing is held back inside the Merced County Corrections Facility. Sure, there is the cheek spread and full cavity search we’ve all heard about, but here we’re told in a human tone and in a voice every bit as angry as we’d be. And there are some other rather nasty searches of personal areas as well. Can you imagine sixty men in one locked cell filled with almost nothing but bunk beds, only a few inches to even walk to the door? Bad enough if it were just regular folk, but with some of the crazed and pent-up men described here, scary is putting it mildly.
If you’ve always wondered what it would be like inside, this is the book for you, especially since the writing is so elegant and spare. Jordon’s not going to flower things up for you. The book is full of compelling details that paint a very clear picture.
There is plenty of irony. Take, for instance, the fact that some of these inmates are only coming in for the weekend because they have forty-eight hour sentences or because they’re only serving weekends. Yes, they’re thrown right in there with the murderers and rapists waiting to be transferred to prison. So here they are, these weekenders, ready to do their duties, pay for what they’ve done. They arrive for their lock up in plenty of time—no one wants to anger The Man, then are forced to stand outside in the freezing cold for four hours until jail personnel has the time to bring them in.
Expertly conveyed in the book is that these guys may be rabble rousers, breakers of serious laws, men who may live by their own passionate moral codes—even some jerks who did something stupid—most of them have humbly turned themselves over to a higher authority and are here in earnestness to pay for what they’ve done and get out. The ridiculous things they’re asked to do, the food they’re required to live on, makes even the more sedate among us truly fume.
Excellent book! Read it now. Read it here: The Weekender.
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