The corner

It was October 1988. I got out of my 1975 station wagon and stepped across the gravel parking lot off Spring Street in Richmond, Virginia. I pulled on my old herringbone tweed jacket and buttoned it against the lingering fog and damp that rose up from the nearby James River. The Virginia State penitentiary’s 40-foot wall loomed grim and daunting, mottled with green mold and rust streaks like a painting composed of my fear, a visual accompaniment to the queasiness I felt.