"You'll know when they come out, because they'll ask you for a cigarette," Chris Wills tells me.
Wills, a sandy-haired 20-year-old, is the only person sitting in front of the jail who isn't waiting for someone to be released. The others — an older woman carrying an infant, a petite young woman with an "I love my boyfriend" T-shirt, a maintenance man dressed in blue — stare expectantly at the dark glass doors of the jail's lobby. Meanwhile, Wills, who lives up the road, tries to read a few more paragraphs out of a Bible perched in his lap.
"It's quiet," he says about his spot on the blue HART bench. "It's the only place I can sit down and not get bothered."
For a guy who claims he's never been inside, Wills is fairly knowledgeable about the jail's inner workings. He knows correction officers rarely release inmates before sundown. He can spot the men who went into the joint without shoes or shirts by the blue plastic versions they come out with. He can tell if they're homeless by the direction they walk up Orient. (Right means they're probably headed to Christ Like Ministries, a drug and alcohol rehab shelter.)
"I recognize a lot of people from hanging out here," he says, barely looking up from his Bible. "I'll see someone and then two weeks later, see him again."
He laughs and adds, "They come back here like they left something."
Jail, someone once told me, is like a one-night stand. What gets you there might be fun, but the aftermath is filled with regret. And maybe even an infection.
Jerry Justice (his real name), whom police rousted from his Odessa home in early September on armed robbery, carjacking and drug charges, found out the hard way. During the 32 days Justice spent in the slammer, he caught a staph infection.
"Everybody has staph," the 24-year-old says, a bandage still on his arm where the infection entered an open wound. "It just takes something to trigger it."
Justice shuffles through the paper bag issued by the jail containing his jacket, letters and newspaper articles.
"I lost everything," he says, chronicling his arrest and the ensuing troubles: He lost his job, his family won't speak to him, and he hears someone broke into his house and stole his TV and computer. That was before his landlord evicted him.
Now the most serious charges of robbery and carjacking have been dropped and he's not sure where to go.
"I ain't tryin' to stick around jail, dog," he mutters.
Joe "Chico" Hernandez swaggers past Justice toward Orient Road, catching a break in the rain to walk to his home in Seffner. Like a good portion of the 205 inmates released today, he spent the night doing time for domestic violence. A fight with his girlfriend gone awry, he says.
"I'll never go back to that mutherfuckin' place," he yells, walking in the middle of road as cars swerve around him.
And the girlfriend?
"Her either!"
"I had a couple beers and it was raining out, and I slid through someone's fence," confesses Chris Stephens, released after a night in the slammer. "They weren't too happy about it."
Stephens rips open a shrink-wrapped bag containing the metal earrings and cell phone he went in with. Next to him, another man in a white muscle shirt pulls two watches, a phone and a huge silver chain necklace out of his plastic bag.
"They said I was the ninth or 10th person to smash through that fence," adds Stephens, 19.
He turns on his phone and makes the first call to his mother, who posted his $500 bond (she also posted the bond for a prior paraphernalia charge).
"I know, I fucked up," he says to her over the phone. "I'll face the repercussions of this."
Silence.
"Well, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to fuck up like I always do."
Roger Dale Ross sits on the curb with his head hung low. The rain starts to pour again.
"I don't have anybody here, man," he laments. "And I'm just stuck here, dude."
Ross, 28, has spent the last 40 days serving time for failing to appear for a court date and petty theft. Originally from Tennessee, he was in Bradenton for his mother's funeral when cops pulled him over and informed him of his warrant, outstanding since his last visit to Florida. They released him today for time served.
"This has been one complete fucking nightmare," he says, running a hand through his buzzed hair.
Ross says he spent his cell-ridden days tattooing himself. A bent and sharpened staple served as his needle; soot and water for ink. On his right arm, he tattooed "Dawn," his wife; on his left, "Honkey."
Anxious to get back to truck in Bradenton and make the ride back to Tennessee, Ross makes his rounds of the former inmates, asking to borrow a phone so he can call his wife. Finally, someone lets Ross borrow a cell and he pushes buttons frantically. When his wife answers, Ross' voice changes.
"You miss me, baby," he coos into the phone. "You miss me? How much? You want me home? You need lovin'? Want me to spank you?"
Then the aspiring country singer croons into the phone a song he wrote while locked up:
"I'm goin' to change my waaays of doing things 'round here. I'm turning over a new leaf, and I'm goin' to get myself in geearrr."
This article appears in Oct 10-16, 2007.