A Knock at Midnight(97)
Moments later, Corey walked out of the prison in a gray prison-issue sweat suit, smiling wide, his swagger getting stronger with every step he took away from that building.
“He’s baaa-ack,” I called, joy in every syllable.
“I don’t even know how to feel right now!” he called back. He was walking faster as he got nearer to the car, but his stride was smooth, confident, like he’d never been locked up at all.
“You should feel amazing!” I said. “Look at you!”
“So that’s what a Caddy truck looks like, huh?” Corey said, taking in the Escalade. In his voice was almost a childlike sense of wonder. This would be the first car ride he’d taken in nearly eighteen years.
“Hey, Corey,” I said. He was only a few steps away now.
“What’s up, Brittany, the best lawyer eva!” Corey said, and hugged me so tight I almost lost my breath. He raised his hands in the air. “We back! We back, baby!” Corey’s contagious ardor for life had survived sixteen life sentences.
The Federal Bureau of Prisons gave me limited time to transport Corey from New Jersey to the halfway house in Los Angeles where he’d start his new life. At the airport, Corey navigated a sea of people, bright lights, and terminal signs. I watched carefully as he handed the TSA agent his prison-issued identification to ensure the agent did nothing to offend Corey’s dignity. In these first moments of freedom, tenderness and grace are of utmost importance, and I was ready to intervene if anyone dared to disturb Corey’s first steps as a free man.
Diddy spared no expense for his best friend’s homecoming. There was a silver Range Rover awaiting our arrival at LAX, equipped with a driver with strict instructions to deliver Corey to the halfway house. Corey was thrilled, but as we got close he didn’t want to be seen pulling up in a luxury SUV. I understood why. It was important to him to finish his journey on his own terms and with humility. We had the driver park a block away, and Corey and I walked together through a cool L.A. evening to the front doors of the halfway house.
A halfway house is just that—a place of suspended animation somewhere between dehumanizing prison conditions and a semblance of freedom. Corey touched my arm and we paused a moment outside. I could see him steel himself for the indignities he had just left behind, the institutional mind games, the power trips. Once inside, there was familiar prison processing, forms to fill out, regulations to follow. Corey was again reduced to his prisoner number, 17061-112, a stark reminder that he was still in federal custody and would be for almost an entire year.
But he was no longer in prison.
After lots of questions and background checks, the halfway house relented and gave Corey a twenty-four-hour pass to visit his best friend, and so we had a feast at Diddy’s house the day after Thanksgiving. Diddy was like every loved one I’d ever seen welcome one of my clients home. After years of pain, held breath, and disappointment, Diddy was like a kid at Christmas. He’d planned this day with unbounded excitement. He called me several times beforehand to make sure of the foods Corey wanted for his first meal home, the music he wanted to hear. “Britt, which do you think Corey would like better for the ride over?” he asked anxiously. “A black Maybach or silver?”
“Always bet on black,” I said.
So Corey and I rode to Diddy’s house in the back of an elegant black Maybach, sitting on butter-soft seats and taking it all in. The L.A. sunset splashed over the entire sky, and palm trees lined the road.
Corey turned to me. He had shown no emotion but elation and joy all day, but now there was something else. “Britt, I want to thank you from the bottom of my heart. I know the sacrifice you made, even if nobody else does. Another minute in there would have killed me. Then you came along. We are connected forever. Forever. I owe you my life. There are great things to come. Believe that.”
When he finished talking, he lifted his glasses to pinch the bridge of his nose, eyes closed a moment, overwhelmed with emotion. Then he leaned forward to the driver.
“Would you play ‘You’re Next in Line for a Miracle,’ please?”
As Shirley Caesar’s soaring voice hit every soul-stirring note, I looked over at Corey and saw with crystal clarity what mattered to him, what kept him going, and just how strong he was to have survived eighteen years in prison. I had literally just watched this man walk out of prison with what I thought was nothing. But I was wrong. It turned out Corey left prison with something profoundly valuable: a treasure chest of survivorship.
The gates to Diddy’s place opened and the Maybach slid down the driveway toward a white mansion. Real pillar candles lined the drive, each one carefully lit. Just in front of the mansion stood Diddy, arms outstretched, welcoming his friend home. Corey leapt out of the car, and the two men hugged so tight that I am sure both of their feet left the ground. Two brothers, reunited after twenty years. It was like watching a mirrored reflection of the same person. My heart filled to see such a giddy display of Black brotherhood. They had the same laugh, the same swagger. “We back! We back, baby!” It was glorious. In that moment, I knew Corey Jacobs would be okay.
* * *
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A WEEK LATER I was in a different car, heading in a different direction. Rolling, luxuriant fields of blue grass stretched out on either side of the highway along the way to the Federal Medical Center in Lexington, Kentucky. The emerald expanse of Kentucky’s famous Thoroughbred farms ringed the landscape, complete with picturesque herds of glistening mares swinging over the hills, their foals by their sides. Statuesque old oak and blue ash trees lined the roads and peppered the fields on the way to the prison.