It was important to look and act confident, and he worked hard at it. Conner had the reputation as the “dump site” of medium security prisons. It was a tough place, tougher than most, and Dennis asked himself over and over how and why he had been randomly assigned to the place.He was herded through the admissions procedures and given the standard lectures about rules and regulations, then assigned to a two-man cell with bunk beds and a window through which he could see the outdoors. Like Ron, he was thankful for the window. He’d gone for weeks in Ada without seeing sunshine.His roommate was a Mexican who spoke little English, and that was fine with Dennis. He spoke no Spanish and wasn’t in the mood to learn. The first overwhelming challenge was how to find brief moments of privacy with another human always within arm’s reach.Dennis vowed to spend every possible moment working to free himself from his sentence. It would have been easy to give up. The system was so heavily weighted against the inmates, but he was determined to prevail.Conner was overcrowded and known for its violence.
