"Mac"

Mac was a physically small guy: about five feet four inches and maybe 115 pounds soaking wet, after a full meal. He was also a kind of irritating guy; you know, sort of like that little cartoon dog that runs around Spike the Bulldog, panting and jumping and making every effort to kiss up. Mac would buzz around the Big Dogs like a mosquito, landing anywhere he could to get their attention and doing any and all favors to win their approval. As often as not, the attention Mac ended up with was a punch in the nose to shut him up, but that never seemed to faze him. The black eyes he constantly sported from his numerous “falls in the shower” were more like badges of courage to Mac’s way of thinking. He wore them with pride.

This desire Mac had for running with the Big Dogs and being part of whatever pack he could find was what ended him up in jail in the first place. Mac was the perfect foil, the fall guy, the quintessential sucker who was always the one left holding the smoking gun or the stolen wallet. He was in and out of jail on a regular basis for shoplifting or stealing gasoline or panhandling on the Courthouse Square. His charges were mainly annoyance crimes until the fateful day he fell in with the group of White Supremacists.

I doubt Mac even knew what a White Supremacists was. He certainly did not know what they stood for, or what it was all about. In our little corner of the world there are not a lot of people of color to begin with, and so most of the Skin Head faction has to content itself with talking the talk more than walking the walk. Mac could do that; talk. He could say anything he needed to say, promote any belief that was necessary to help him fit in with a crowd. Any crowd. Mac just wanted to belong somewhere.

As it turned out, he happened to join a group that was very happy to take him into their fold. They saw the benefits of having a little dog like Mac to run circles for them and they made immediate use of him. Their victim was a couple whom they perceived to be Jewish, although this was pure speculation on their part. Their plan involved arson. Their patsy was Mac.

Mac’s role in the event was to secure gasoline and then stand guard while the Big Dogs went about setting the house on fire, at least that’s what I gathered from conversations with Mac later on. He didn’t understand why his group of new friends wanted to burn someone’s house down and he had no earthly clue what a Jew was, but it all seemed pretty exciting at the time and Mac felt proud that his new pals were all so pleased with him.

Once in the jail, however, those terrific new pals no longer wanted anything to do with their little dog and the blame for the entire arson incident was placed directly on Mac’s narrow shoulders. Mac was not seasoned in big time crime and was certainly not worldly in the ways of defending himself. Yes, he bought the gasoline. Yes, he helped watch for intruders while the fire was set. Yes, he knew it was wrong to burn someone’s house down. But when he was asked why he helped with the deed, he just looked rather blank. In truth, Mac really had no idea why.

“Because they was Jews,” he told me when we talked one afternoon.

I probably frowned slightly, “What’s a Jew, Mac?”

Another blank, puzzled look. Mac shrugged, “I dunno.” He admitted. “Maybe they is bad people.”

“What did they do that was bad?”

Mac started squirming, reaching into his mind for a reply, “Maybe - maybe they did bad things.”

“Like what? What bad things did they do, Mac?”

It wasn’t my intention to make him uncomfortable; I simply wanted to understand what was going on in his brain. Unfortunately, I did make him very ill at ease and he began looking around everywhere except in my direction. I didn’t push him anymore but he kept thinking and twisting his fingers into the shirt of his uniform until the circulation was cut off. Finally he huffed a sigh and looked back at me with a glimmer of hope in his eyes, “I think they didn’t pay their phone bill!” he proclaimed.

So there you are. It obviously made perfect sense to Mac. People who did not pay their telephone bills were punished by having their houses burned down. An unpaid electric bill might warrant a public flogging. Failure to pay your taxes, well, probably a seat in Ol’ Sparky. Mac didn’t worry about those kinds of things, he let the rest of the world make such decisions and he just went along with the friendly flow.

I don’t think he even realized what was happening when his group of friends all testified it was Mac who lit the fires. He was too confused by the entire legal process to sort out who was saying what or how it affected him. He just knew he didn’t like jail very much and he could not understand why his friends did not want to be with him anymore. It’s hard to explain something like that to someone like Mac. As far as he knew, he had done what they asked him to do and he was not objecting to the consequences. It was puzzling to him that none of it seemed to matter now that they had all been caught.

Mac ended up facing his charges under the umbrella of mental instability. I never felt he was unstable; he was just extremely naïve and trusting and pretty darned innocent when it came right down to the brass tacks. People could easily disappoint him because he believed what was told to him. His disappointment and confusion over losing the “friends” who burned down the house was something he took pretty hard.

That disappointment and confusion didn’t last too long, though. It was only a matter of a few days before Mac found a new group of pals to hang with in the dorm. All he had to do to stay buddies with his new group was to steal a few candy bars from other inmates or take the heat when a rule was broken. He might suffer a few black eyes and a week or so in solitary for his acts of devotion, but it was worth it to Mac just to be a part of something. Just to belong.