Lambs of God
by David Parker Jr.

Twice a year, Angola Prison opens its doors and puts untrained men in pits with giant, pissed off bulls to the delight of Louisianans. This year, Dave Parker Jr. attended, and got too fucked up to finish his piece for NOLAFugees.com.

Sitting in the long line of traffic snaking its way through the picturesque country outside St. Francisville, it’s easy to imagine that we’re all on our way to a music festival or a county fair of some kind. At the gas stations off the side of the road, families pull over in their minivans and kids tumble out to use the restrooms and restock junk food. In our own minivan, we’re drinking malt liquor and playing the Worst Case Survival Board Game. We are five slightly stoned New Orleanians out for a Sunday drive, heading to the Angola Prison Rodeo.

“How do you detect fly larvae infestation in human skin?” one of my companions asks.

I answer, “B: By the red irritated ring on the skin.”

“No, that’s ringworm you fool. Drink.”

I take a drink, and we turn off the main road and onto the Angola Prison entranceway. “Hide the bottles in the cooler,” the driver directs, and we smile sweetly as we roll through the heavily guarded checkpoint and past the rows of chain link fence and razor wire. We park the minivan in a freshly-mown field and step out into the cool overcast afternoon.

Strictly prohibited inside the rodeo fairgrounds are alcohol, weapons, cameras, and cell phones. We drain our open bottles of liquor, leave behind our coolers and our telephones, sever all ties to the outside world, and walk through this final chain link gateway into the world of inmate cowboys, handmade prison crafts, and Lamb of God Christian riding troupes in their white satin robes. “Dude, try the boiled peanuts,” says our driver who has already hit a nearby booth.

They’re excellent boiled peanuts, and we wander among the food vendors. The Angola Lifer’s Association sells snowballs. Booths by Vets Incarcerated, the Angola Jaycees, the Dale Carnegie Club, the Angola Drama Club, and of course the Forgotten Voices Toastmaster club sell everything from pork chop sandwiches and blooming onions to candy apples and souvenir caps. At the end of the row a giant bouncy castle throbs with hurtling screaming laughing children. “They’ve got freaking Toastmasters in here,” says our driver, walking up with a mouthful of funnel cake now. “This is so strange.”

If the food vendors aren’t enough, there’s the craft fair. Inmates hang on the inside of their chain link pen and haggle with us over prices on handmade jewelry, leather goods, paintings, religious symbols, toys. Rows of wood furniture – tables, chairs, rocking horses, gun cases and handmade grandfather clocks – stretch out before us, as if it were a retail furniture warehouse. Hand painted yoyo’s and toy boxes have Sponge Bob Squarepants and Dora the Explorer smiling up from the tables with slightly insane expressions on their faces. And around every corner, behind every snowball stand and at the end of every row, is the dull shine of metal fence and barbed wire.

“Dude, it’s time,” says our driver through a mouthful of boudin ball. “The Rodeo’s starting.”

If nothing else, the fact that inmates are willing to play Convict Poker proves that daily life at Angola is pretty shitty.

The Angola Prison Rodeo adopted the official Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association rules in 1972, but there is still a sense of the macabre as you watch the main events, such as “Pinball” where inmates stand inside hula hoops laid on the ground and wait for a rampaging bull to knock them, one by one, out of their small circles. Or “Convict Poker” where inmates sit at a poker table, waiting for yet another rampaging bull to come hurl them out of their seats. The headlining spectacle is an event called “Guts and Glory” where a large group of inmates is turned loose in the arena with a large bull. Pinned to the bull’s forehead is a poker chip worth hundreds of dollars, and the inmates race around the charging bull, trying to get close enough to snatch the poker chip without getting creamed on the point of a horn.

If Louisiana were acknowledged as the independent nation it is, our incarceration rate would be the highest in the world, and C-Murder would be one of our country's top sellers, live from JPP.

It’s not like we aren’t used to prison themes in our daily lives back in the city. Louisiana has the highest incarceration rate in the nation. One out of every 120 Louisianans is locked up, which means that if Louisiana were a country, it would have the highest incarceration rate in the entire world. We see inmates clean up debris on the sides of our highways. We see inmates like C Murder entertain us with music videos filmed in Jefferson Parish Prison while the artist waits trial for – what else? – murder charges. We see inmates adorn New Orleans with murals such as the giant D-Day scene at the New Orleans World War II Museum. We see inmates, taken by the holiday spirit, arrange entire lighted sections of City Park’s “Celebration in the Oaks.”

We even see ordinary citizens locked up with great regularity. I have so many friends that have spent the night in OPP for misdemeanor offenses that I can tell you ten or so different techniques for choking down one of their famous smashed baloney sandwiches. “Roll it up tight,” said my friend Vince who made the mistake of ducking beneath a police barricade taking a shortcut home from Jazz Fest last year. “Then close your eyes and pretend it’s a breakfast burrito.”

Then the Lamb of God Riders come flowing...waving to the cheering crowd.

Taking our assigned seats, the five of us munch happily on fresh pork cracklins. The Angola Rough Riders barrel around the arena on their stallions, kicking up dirt and flying along in tight formation. Then the Lamb of God riders come flowing out in their long satin robes, waving their Christian banners, all smiles and slender wrists, waving to the cheering crowd.

David Parker Jr. is completing his M.F.A. for UNO. This is his first article for NOLAFugees.com