Ministry

to the lost ones

I had been a Stephen Minister for almost seven years when I learned that listening can be a form of excavation. An inmate at Green Haven Correctional Facility in Stormville, New York had specifically requested one of us. Not a chaplain. Not a priest. An ‘after’ person. A layperson trained to sit in the wreckage of other people’s lives.

His name was Chuck Armstrong. He was seventy-three when I first saw him. More than twenty years into his sentence. The file they allowed me to read was thin, as if the paper itself did not want to remember. Convicted in the early 2000’s. Life without parole. Rural farming property in Poughquag, New York. There are words that settle differently in the body when you read them. So it was with the words ‘pig farm’.

Green Haven rose out of the countryside like a fortress that had forgotten its original war. Downstate Correctional Facility closed in 2022. The influx of incarcerated men had turned parts of Green Haven into something strained and overfull. H Block, I was told in passing, bore the worst of it.

Chuck had spent time in the Special Housing Unit over the years. Windowless isolation for twenty-three hours a day. It was during those days in H Block he would describe with a quiet intensity that unsettled me more than any raised voice could have. “They put too many ghosts in one hallway,” he’d said.

Our meetings took place in a small cinderblock room. A bolted metal table divided us. A camera watched from the corner of the ceiling. Before he spoke of anything meaningful, I gave him the speech I had memorized. “I’m not clergy,” I told him gently. “I’m a trained lay minister. There are limits to confidentiality. If you disclose certain things, especially unreported crimes. I may be required to inform authorities.”

He watched me with pale, unblinking, studious eyes. “That’s why I asked for you,” he said matter-of-factly. I thought he misunderstood. I would come to learn that he did not. I asked him on that first visit if I could pray for him. He advised me that others needed my prayers. Not him.

He spoke of prison. Of the Special Housing Unit, where the absence of sound becomes a sound of its own. Of counting cracks in the wall. Of conversations with himself that lasted hours. Of H Block, where the noise never stopped. Metal doors slamming, men shouting endlessly.

“You’d think isolation would be worse,” he said during our third meeting. “But H Block… that was where the walls got thin.” I leaned forward to clarify, “thin?” He nodded and continued. “Like something was leaning against them from the other side.” I assumed he meant other inmates. Overcrowding. The press of bodies and tempers. He smiled faintly.

“Not everything that presses is alive,” he said. It was during our fifth visit that the ground seemingly shifted. We had been speaking about his farm. He described it in loving detail. The low wooden barn, the mud that never quite dried in spring. The orchard behind the pasture that had long ago stopped producing decent fruit. “And the pigs?” I asked. “They ate well,” he answered.

Something in the way he said it made the room feel smaller. I reminded him again of the camera. Of the guard just outside the door. Of my obligation to report certain confessions. He nodded. “I know what you are,” he said. “You’re a door.” I interjected, “I’m a listener.” “A door listens too,” he replied. “Before it opens.”

He leaned forward, the light carving hollows into his lined face. “I killed more than the ones they convicted me for,” he said. The words did not come with thunder. They arrived like dust settling. I felt my pulse in my throat. “Do you understand what you’re saying?” I managed to ask him. “Yes.” He answered. I then said, “you understand what I have to do?” He answered quickly. “I’m counting on it.”

The silence that followed seemed to stretch, thin and brittle. He did not describe the acts. He never did. Instead, he described weather. Sunshine, snow, or rain that came down in sheets. The way mud can swallow a boot whole. The sound pigs make when they sense something unfamiliar. “They’re curious,” he said gruffly. “They’d come close. They’d investigate.” My stomach tightened.

“Why are you telling me this now?” I asked. “Why not tell a lawyer?” His nostrils flared and he said “Lawyers’ lined their pockets off of me. Never did me no good.” He looked up at the camera, then back at me. “Y’know, they’re digging again.” I didn’t understand at first. “Developers bought the property,” he continued. “They’re gonna level the barn. Put in some new houses. A whole mess of ‘em. Real nice ones.” My skin prickled.

“Frost heaves the earth.” He said, “and men with machines… they don’t know what they’re turning over.” I reported the conversation that afternoon. I used careful language. ‘The inmate made statements indicating involvement in additional, unreported homicides. I am aware of my status as a missioner, and the limits of privilege.’

There is a particular coldness in institutional gratitude. The prison administration thanked me for my diligence. They assured me the matter would be investigated. Three weeks later, a small article appeared in a regional paper.

Human remains discovered during preliminary excavation on former agricultural property in Poughguag. Authorities exploring potential connections to an inmate currently serving time.

I read the article twice before realizing my hands were trembling. When I returned to Green Haven, Chuck looked almost serene. “They found one,” he said. “You knew they would.” I answered. “I hoped.” He said. “Hoped?” I asked. “For a long time,” he said, “I thought being forgotten was the worst thing that could happen to a person.”

“And now?” I queried. He tilted his head. “Now I think being remembered might be worse.” More remains were found over the following months. Not at all intact. Not all identifiable, but tested for DNA. Each discovery was a quiet tremor that rippled outward. Families contacted, old missing persons reports reopened. And still, Chuck talked.

He told me about the pigs’ intelligence. About how they could distinguish between routine and disruption. About how they would grow agitated before a storm. “Animals sense things,” he said. “Long before we do.” I sat up straighter in my seat, “guilt?” I asked. He chortled softly. “No. Hunger.”

It was during our fourteenth meeting that he spoke of H Block again. “You know why it was worse than the Special Housing Unit?” He asked. “Why?” I questioned. “In SHU, you’re alone with yourself. In H Block, you’re alone with everyone else’s secrets too. Walls that thin… things pass through.” I didn’t understand, so I asked, “what things?”

He looked at me for a long time. “Voices,” he said finally. “Faces.” A chill slid down my spine. “Faces of whom?” He did not answer directly. “They started lining up,” he’d said. “In my head. One after another. Like they were waiting their turn. The ones that’d seen me coming, and were already gone” I asked him, “to be confessed?” He shook his head and answered, “to be acknowledged.” The red light on the video camera blinked. The guard shifted outside.

“I picked you,” Chuck said quietly, “because you can’t keep me.” The words struck harder than any shouted accusation. A priest could have invoked clergy penitent privilege. A sacramental seal. A wall of protection. But I was trained, not ordained. My ministry existed in a complicated intersection of pastoral care, prison policy, and mandatory reporting law. I was a listener with a leak.

“You wanted this reported?” I asked. “Yes.” He answered. “Because I don’t want them knocking on my cell door at night anymore.” He exclaimed as the air in the room seemed to thin. “Who?” I asked. “The ones who never got away.” He answered. I told myself he was manipulating me. That this was an old man’s attempt to control a narrative from behind bars. And yet. In the weeks after each new discovery, I began to dream.

On my final visit, I told Chuck I would be resigning from the ministry. He did not seem surprised. “You’ve carried enough,” he said. “I was supposed to bring comfort,” I replied. Chuck nodded knowingly, “that you did.” I was surprised to hear that and asked him, “to whom?” He considered that for a few moments and answered. “To the lost ones in the ground.” The answer lodged inside me like a splinter.

“I believed confession led to repentance,” I said softly. “It leads to revelation,” he corrected. “Repentance is optional.” The guard opened the door before I realized the hour had ended. As I stood, Chuck spoke one last time. “They won’t find all of them,” he said. “But they’ll find enough.” I asked, “enough for what?” He answered, “for the walls to thicken again.”

I left Green Haven for the last time that day. I resigned the following week. I offered no details, only that I felt called elsewhere. It’s been a few years and even now there are nights when I wake to the faintest impression that someone is standing at the foot of my bed. Not visible, not tangible, but present. In the dark, I find myself whispering names I do not know. Not because I remember them. But because someone, somewhere, does.