Oct. 18, 1998. Eddie McGee wakes in Tara's arms. Her belly, warm and swollen with their baby, presses into him. Eddie loves trips to the baby doctor. The grainy sonograms, the shadowy womb movements, the flutter of their baby's tiny heart fill him with a strange wonder.

It is Sunday, Eddie's birthday. He is turning 20. It is the first birthday he has celebrated out of confinement since he was 11.

In prison, there are no birthday cakes or songs or anything. Just another day down the drain. For Eddie, 2,373 days dripped into oblivion, an entire adolescence gone drip, drip, drip.

But on this day he is free, or so it feels as Tara slips into a pretty flowered dress and sings Happy Birthday, and he knots a tie, and they walk a few blocks to St. Mark AME Zion, a small church with walls so white they shimmer. A barrel-bellied preacher thunders about the saved and the unsaved:

"Who is going to stand for God in the midst of an evil day?" the preacher asks. "If you are that tree planted by the rivers of water, we must ask the question: What kind of fruit are you giving? How sweet is your fruit?"

Eddie caresses his Bible and considers the question. How sweet is your fruit?

On the walk home, he and Tara are loose, and he mugs and jokes, and the street echoes with her high laugh. Eddie can always make Tara laugh.

They talk of his birthday plans and the night ahead. Eddie wants to party, maybe get a cheap hotel room with the boys and let loose. On this day, he's beyond worrying about his probation rules, which forbid alcohol or drugs, and he revels in freedom, in the glorious absence of indifferent guards or anyone at all who can tell him how to be.

And so Eddie McGee heads to Cordova Mall. He hits Dillard's at full stride, as if he were old Mr. Dillard himself. He cuts dismissively past Perry Ellis and Gant. Ah, there it is -- Polo by Ralph Lauren. Eddie knows fashion. He picks a pair of Polo chinos, a matching Polo cap and a shirt from the Polo Golf Collection -- "wear tested by PGA tour golfers."

The bill comes to $149.

Eddie hasn't held a job in months.

He pays cash.

Back at Tara's house, Eddie's birthday dinner is shaping up. Tara's father has the deep fryer spitting in the yard, and the air smells of mullet and french fries and baked beans, and a battered stereo thumps away on the porch. In his Polo birthday duds, Eddie digs into a plate of mullet. He eats like he shops, with manic fervor, as if afraid someone will yank the plate away. He has put on 40 pounds since he got out 10 months ago.

There is talk of moving the party to a motel. Eddie disappears up the street for a few minutes, toward the corner where the dope dealers hang, and when he returns a friend leans into Eddie's ear.

The police, he tells Eddie, are looking for you.

“Who is going to stand for God in the midst of an evil day?” the preacher at St. Mark AME Zion asks on Eddie’s 20th birthday. “If you are that tree planted by the rivers of water, we must ask the question: What kind of fruit are you giving? How sweet is your fruit?” Going on, the preacher shouts, “Each one of us has to make a conscious decision where we are, or who we are going to serve.” On this day, in this church, Eddie hears. But will he listen?

Eventually, the write-offs get out.

Kids judged beyond rehabilitation, kids considered too violent, too mean -- one by one, they are called to the prison gate and released upon our world.

In the past six years, some 6,000 teenage felons were released from Florida's adult prisons. About 95 percent are male. About 60 percent are black. About a third committed violent crimes.

Nearly 1,600 returned to Tampa Bay neighborhoods after spending formative years joining prison gangs, making shanks, getting raped and fighting for survival, or just for the hell of it.

In 1991, at age 12, Eddie was a write-off. He was part of a new trend of punishing kids as adults, which is why the St. Petersburg Times profiled him in 1993 when he was the state's youngest inmate.

Today, Eddie McGee is emblematic of a different set of questions: What happens when the write-off gets out? On average, teenagers in Florida's adult prisons are released after two years. How does a teenager marinated in failure make his life a success? Is he scared straight, or just plain scary?

How sweet is his fruit?

With 3,100 teenagers now locked up in Florida's adult prisons, the answers will ripple beyond individuals to families and communities. This is why criminologists are starting to study kids in adult prisons. One fact stands out: About one in four Florida inmates released by age 20 is arrested within two years -- the highest failure rate of any age group.

Against this backdrop is the story of the youngest inmate and his perilous journey to freedom. For Eddie McGee -- a smart kid with sharp instincts -- it is a journey of bewildering choice and consequence.

July 27, 1991. Eddie McGee walks into the Dixie Cleaners in Pensacola and points a semiautomatic pistol at a clerk. He is 12, barely 5 feet tall.

"Don't move or I'll shoot," he says in a squeaky little voice.

He runs off with $200, which he hands to a 19-year-old who sent Eddie into the cleaners while he kept watch. They're arrested the same day.

Prosecutor Marci Goodman is assigned Eddie's case. She can't figure out what to do with him.

This isn't his first offense. That was at age 9 when he broke into a shed. At 11, he and a friend cased a gun shop, snipped the alarm wires one night and stole all the guns they could carry.

He also made honor roll, played on the Little League all-star team, joined the Scouts and was in a church youth group -- all despite a criminal father and alcoholic mother. In the state's one effort to rehabilitate Eddie, he spent four months in a juvenile program and flourished.

Goodman isn't ready to write the kid off to prison. She wants Eddie to go to the Arthur G. Dozier training school for juveniles in Marianna. There he would get a year of intensive counseling.

The state's juvenile bureaucrats say no. They insist he's too young for Dozier. They suggest a less rigorous program, one for kids Eddie's age.

This time, Goodman says no. She imagines Eddie, out after a few inconsequential months, pulling the trigger at the next Dixie Cleaners. So she cuts a deal with Eddie's lawyer -- 10 years in prison, then seven years of probation.

The deal is accepted by Judge Joseph Q. Tarbuck, a conservative who once ruled a killer was more fit to parent than a lesbian. Their daughter, he held, should "live in a non-lesbian world."

Too young for Dozier, Eddie -- all 126 pounds of him -- shares a cell with a 21-year-old at Brevard Correctional, home to 900 of Florida's most dangerous "youthful offenders" -- that is, inmates under 25.

"He's a squirt in a big boy world, doing everything he can to keep his hands over his butt," says Andy Gravina, Eddie's classification specialist at Brevard.

On May 16, 1993, the Times runs a front-page story about Eddie, "The Youngest Inmate." Prison officials, inundated with calls, pull Eddie out of Brevard and send him to Dozier. "Who really wants to write off a 14-year-old?" asks one prison official.

At Dozier, Eddie has his own room and a "house parent." The kids are his age. Dozier officials promise that if he behaves and tries hard in school, he'll be released May 9, 1994, less than a year away.

Eddie becomes a star student, jumping several grade levels. He tutors slower kids and tells harrowing prison tales. "Many days I'd just get quiet and let him talk," says his teacher, Elmore Bryant.

Dozier sends mostly glowing progress reports to Judge Tarbuck.

May 9, 1994. Eddie does not go home. Dozier tells him that state prison officials put his release on hold.

Eddie dives back into his studies. He gets his high school equivalency certificate in November 1994, then a regular high school diploma, and then asks to take college correspondence courses. Dozier refuses to pay for them.

Eddie asks if he can get a job outside the fence, like other Dozier kids, and pay his own way. Roy McKay, Dozier's superintendent, refuses, saying he can't "take the risk." Eddie, 16, is put on a maintenance crew at Dozier, which pays 30 cents an hour, not enough for college courses.

In September 1995, during a fight in his cottage, Eddie is accused of assaulting a house parent. Eddie denies it, but McKay nonetheless requests Eddie's transfer back to adult prison.

Oct. 18, 1995. It is Eddie's 17th birthday, his 1,544th day of confinement. The state of Florida marks the day by giving Eddie a ride back to prison.

"It's me and you again, kid," Andy Gravina tells Eddie back at Brevard.

Eddie is a model inmate, big enough and wise enough to avoid trouble. He learns consumer electronics, takes a course on "life skills," and another on "anger management." In 1997, with less than a year left on his sentence, Eddie is sent to a Pensacola work release center where inmates hold regular jobs.

Eddie is hired as a custodian at the Rodeway Inn, a trucker's motel. His boss is a mercurial white-haired man who berates employees, Eddie included, to the point of humiliation.

"I won't let anybody work for this man now," says Maj. Leonard Pouncey, who runs the work release center.

But Eddie has his reasons for staying at the Rodeway. "I used to leave my job," he says. "I sneak all the way across town, my side, to come visit my friends on the Avenues. My brother come pick me up."

Raphael McGee, 17, Eddie's little brother, is nicknamed Rock, a fitting moniker for an alleged player in Pensacola's crack trade. Rock's purple Cadillac convertible keeps pulling into the Rodeway.

One Saturday morning, Eddie is summoned to the work release entrance. He is handed a check for $1,281.24, his earnings from the Rodeway Inn.

It is Jan. 24, 1998. Eddie, 19, is free at last.

First night of freedom.

Eddie and Rock drive to the Player's Club, a low, gray building with Playboy bunnies painted on the entrance. Inside, a disco globe twirls over a dance floor where the strippers work.

The Player's Club is notorious -- a violent drug den, police say. You can't get in without being frisked by bouncers. Rock loves the place.

Eddie's probation rules forbid him from going to bars. He flashes a cousin's driver's license and sails in, dressed entirely in black. He wears gold rings and a charm -- homecoming gifts. He feels like a debutante and he's welcomed as a hero, a proud young brother unbowed by the white man's prisons.

Most everyone here has a story of police harassment, to the point it doesn't matter if the cops arrest the right people. They are seen as relentless, overzealous, lacking all sense of proportion. In the Player's Club, packing a 12-year-old off to an adult prison for a $200 stickup lacks proportion.

Sipping cognac, Eddie feels intoxicated by freedom. He basks in the embraces, the handshakes, the how-you-doin's, the offers of money "to get you on your feet." Eddie talks non-stop when he's excited, and words burst forth like Fourth of July fireworks. He is incandescent, even in the wee hours, when he and Rock and their crew get supremely stoned.

Some weeks later, Eddie would buy a T-shirt listing the "Player 10 Command-ments."

The first commandment: "Thou shall not snitch."

The more Eddie thinks about cleaning toilets at the Rodeway, the more he wants a break. I deserve it, he tells himself. "I ain't had me a day of fun in my life all those years," he says. "Then I got to get right out and just get right back to work?"

Eddie reels from possibilities long denied. For years, his days were rigidly choreographed by the state of Florida. Now he is the choreographer, or so it seems. Rules are at a distance. He can get out of bed and do anything, go anywhere, see anyone.

"I really just want to live, to be a man," he says.

Eddie picks the easy route for a Player wannabe. He joins Rock's crack business. They tool around in Rock's convertible and Eddie quickly parlays his $1,200 savings into $5,000.

Eddie tells himself the crack is a way to save for junior college, but he never gets to the saving part. He indulges in food, clothes, women, partying. Busy being a Player, he stiff-arms any creeping thoughts of consequences.

He can't think past the night's action, and he gets no ballast from his parents. His mother, Linda Mason, can't understand why anyone would write about him. "Eddie is not that important," she says.

Asked how prison has changed her son, she gives this assessment: "Well, he's not gay."

The Vanderhalls see potential in Eddie. They view him as a prisoner of war; it is a strength that he doesn’t seem damaged by confinement, that he is funny and upbeat. Tyrone and Teresa Vanderhall

Tara Vanderhall is a 17-year-old with a 1,000-yard stare that whispers hands off. As a child, when her father spanked her and her sisters begged him to stop, Tara took it in silence, no tears.

Only her closest friends know she still loves Winnie the Pooh.

"If she like you, there's something to like," says her mother, Teresa Vanderhall, 41.

On Sixth Avenue, the Vanderhall house is the center of action. That itself is a minor miracle. A few years ago, before the Vanderhalls moved in, the house was so decrepit it was condemned. But Tyrone Vanderhall, a man of energy and optimism, sees potential where others don't.

"Are you out of your damn mind?" Teresa asked him when she first saw the place.

"Teresa, look at these strong wooden floors, and these strong walls. This is a sturdy house."

It goes deeper than buying a fixer-upper. Behind his broad smile, Tyrone Vanderhall carries a conviction that urban renewal and the drug wars are subterfuge for white suppression. Excuses to knock down black homes, lock up black kids. He talks of organizing the neighborhood so "the damn white boys won't be riding herd on n- - - - - - so fast."

Undaunted by scant finances, they endeavored to transform their ramshackle home through barter and thrift. One day Tyrone is hanging wallpaper, and another day he is stripping a salvaged dresser. He is like a perpetual motion machine, the way he breaks off mid-sentence to take out an elderly neighbor's garbage, or suddenly decides to make applesauce for all comers. It's why kids gravitate to the Vanderhalls.

Eddie starts coming around, too. Tara gives her 1,000-yard stare. He bulls past. She gives the usual kiss-offs. He doesn't retreat. "She liked competition," Teresa says. "You know, like, 'Oooh, this man fixin' to come back at me.' "

The Vanderhalls see potential in Eddie, too. They view him as a prisoner of war; it is a strength that he doesn't seem damaged by confinement, that he is funny and upbeat.

"He sure likes to talk," Teresa says. "In fact, he drives me crazy. 'Boy, shut up! Please, please just hush!' When he gets to rolling that tongue, that's it. I think he like to talk because he got somebody with him. He's not locked up by hisself."

Eddie comes by with little gifts for Tara.

"You like these?" he'd ask, holding new shoes.

"Yeah, I like them," Tara would say, super cool.

Tara likes having a guy spend money on her, and she is attracted by his enormous appetite for good times, by his frenetic need to be on the go, to the movies or out to eat or off to the mall. She's surprised by her feelings. Eddie, with his light, coppery skin and short, thick build, isn't her type. "I don't like light boys," she says. "I like nappy-headed dark boys."

One day Teresa finds Eddie and Tara asleep in front of the television. Tara has her arms wrapped tight around Eddie. Damn, my daughter has her arm around somebody, Teresa thinks.

Tara is pregnant by May.

Her father's response is swift and final: "We ain't about killing no babies."

Eddie doesn't run from the pregnancy. He begins to refer to Tyrone and Teresa as his in-laws.

A few months after Eddie's release, an old friend drops by. Derrick Kelly did time with Eddie at Brevard. "He was too small," Kelly says, recalling the first time he jumped in to defend Eddie.

Kelly fought so often at Brevard -- he stopped counting at 22 -- he was transferred to Belle Glade, one of the state's toughest prisons.

Kelly is thankful he finished his armed robbery sentence in Belle Glade. He learned hard lessons from men who will die there of old age. Kelly, who makes $6.25 an hour in a Montgomery Ward warehouse, still carries his prison ID card so if he gets to thinking about easier ways to make money, he can pull it out and ask, Do I want another one of these?

Works every time.

Kelly worries about Eddie. He thinks the years locked up with "young jits" froze Eddie in a dangerous immaturity. "He ain't really growed even though he done six years," Kelly says. "He ain't felt the wrath; he ain't seen the 100-year guys."

Kelly warns Eddie to stay clear of Rock -- "Your brother didn't do them six years" -- but Eddie resists the advice. How can he blow off his brother, his friends, all the people at the Player's Club who embraced him when he got out?

"That's the life that I came from," Eddie says.

"He thinks he's the neighborhood superstar," Kelly says. "He doesn't realize it's time to be a man."

In July, two cops, Stephen Rankin and Stephen Bauer, approach a Toyota that is blocking traffic. The driver runs, discarding a bag with $4,000 in cash and a small container with 57 grams of crack. Eddie, a passenger, doesn't run, saying he was hitching a ride to his house. He avoids arrest, but he's on thin ice.

A bigger threat to his freedom is his probation officer. If Eddie so much as skips an appointment, Robert Hemme can report this to Judge Tarbuck, who can send Eddie back to prison.

Hemme first meets Eddie on Jan. 29, 1998, and gives him a drug test. Fresh from his wild first night at the Player's Club, Eddie tests positive for marijuana.

Hemme issues a stern warning.

On May 5, Hemme gives Eddie another drug test. Again, he tests positive for marijuana. Hemme orders drug counseling. Eddie skips his sessions.

About then, Eddie shows up at the Rodeway Inn to ask for his job back. The manager says great and offers to sell Eddie an old Dodge to get to work. Eddie leaves for a test drive and never returns.

The manager declines to press charges, but Hemme lets Eddie know how close he is to disaster.

Fitfully, Eddie makes some changes for the better. He spends more time with the Vanderhalls. He does a few construction jobs with Tyrone. Despite being pregnant, Tara is determined to finish high school, and she pushes Eddie to think about junior college, about getting a job and an apartment where they can raise a baby.

"He has to try and do the right thing," she says.

As the summer of 1998 ends, and Tara prepares to return to high school, Eddie resolves to get a job. Teresa suggests Eddie come work with her at Daws Manufacturing, a plant that assembles tool boxes.

"Can you really get me a job?" he asks.

"All I got to do is go up and tell my supervisor that you coming and he'll make sure you got a spot," Teresa says. "But if you go, you're going to work, 'cause you not gonna make me look bad."

Eddie starts work on Aug. 19, earning $6 an hour putting lids and labels on tool boxes.

"He showed off," Teresa says. "That thing had the line backed up with boxes. He went to it. I was like, 'Man, look at old Eddie.' I was throwing thumbs up at him, and he was like (she puts on a big goofy Eddie grin) he did good. He did really good."

Eddie, normally a sharp dresser, insists on wearing his dirty work clothes around the neighborhood. He wants the world to see a working man.

In low moments, he had wondered if he was a prisoner of his past. On the floor at Daws, he plots escape. He imagines himself studying accounting, and he fantasizes of being pulled over because he knows the cops will ask where he works. "Most kids in this neighborhood," he says, "they can't say nothin'."

At the end of his first week, Teresa's supervisor calls Eddie off the floor. When Eddie doesn't return, Teresa goes to her supervisor.

"Where's Eddie?"

"Eddie had to leave."

"Was it an emergency or what?"

"I'd rather you ask him."

She finds him lying across Tara's bed with a stunned look. On his first day, Eddie gave a urine sample. It tested positive, so he was fired.

"For that short period I felt myself falling into the right slots," Eddie says. "I was working. I was getting up every morning. I was going to work. And I was feeling good about making it to work, and being at work.

"I was earning some money, and it was honest, and I ain't have to worry about nothin'."

A week after losing his job, Eddie pulls into a gas station. An unmarked police car pulls in behind. Cops rush him, guns drawn. An officer grabs his throat. "You got any drugs? Open your mouth."

Eddie laughs to show he's not scared.

The stop is part of a trap. Just then, other officers are searching for drugs at his aunt's house, his listed address. For a search warrant, police told a judge an informant recently bought cocaine at the house. On this day, they seize $743 and let Eddie go.

Still, Rankin and Bauer, the narcotic cops, think Eddie and Rock are "significant" players in the city's crack trade. Their snitches say so, and Eddie doesn't help himself with his choice of associates, his failure to hold a job, or his new wheels, a pearl white '87 Cadillac with tinted windows.

Eddie feels the heat, and a week after the failed search, he spots Rankin and Bauer tailing him. Eddie has $300 of crack on him. Rock by rock, he swallows all of it. The officers ask to search his Caddy. Sure, he says. They find nothing, but haul him to jail for driving without a license.

Bauer takes Eddie to an interview room. "McGee, you know what position this puts you in? This violates your probation. You want to help us out, we can get you off this," he says.

The crack is zipping through Eddie. His mouth is numb, his limbs rigid, as if he has rusted in place.

Bauer says it's only a matter of time before they catch him with drugs. He suggests it's Rock they're after, and if Eddie helps them, if he becomes a snitch, they'll help him avoid prison.

"Yes or no, McGee?"

Eddie obeys the Player's first commandment, and says nothing.

"All right," Bauer says, making the motion of washing his hands to say, you've had your chance.

Eddie bails out of jail that night, but he's playing a losing hand, and he knows it. He has made himself a target for the police, which makes him vulnerable to Hemme, his probation officer.

Tara worries Eddie is giving up. "He can do more," she says. "We supposed to be having a child in February. I want him to be here to see it."

On Sept. 24, 1998, two weeks after his arrest for driving without a license, the cops are watching Eddie and several other guys outside a crack house on Sixth Avenue. When Eddie walks off, a cop stops him to pat him down. Eddie has $70, no drugs. The cop tells him to take off his shoes. Eddie complies, but then tears free and takes off running.

He is arrested for resisting arrest with violence. The cops bait Eddie, telling him Hemme is writing up papers to charge him with violating his probation.

Between the first and fifth of each month, Eddie is required to meet Hemme at the probation offices. Eddie hasn't missed a meeting since his release. Now, out on bail, Eddie agonizes whether to go to his October meeting with Hemme.

Tara says go. Skipping will only make things worse. Eddie knows she's right, but his 20th birthday is weeks away, and he has not had a birthday in freedom since he was little. The idea of a birthday outside prison captivates him. If he meets with Hemme, he risks immediate arrest for probation violations.

Tara and Eddie argue right up to Oct. 5. Eddie skips the meeting and seeks refuge in the Player's Club and Cordova Mall, a place he finds oddly comforting. Here, he feels on equal footing with the world. Name brands are his tonic, a protective against prison blues.

He'll dash rack to rack, ripping through name brands, chewing furiously on a straw. The shopping sprees seem insane since it is clear Eddie's going to need every dollar for legal help.

"This is how I feel about myself," Eddie replies. "I say, while I'm here I'm gonna live like I want to live. I'm going to live every day for that day. I ain't worrying about if I don't get to wear 'em. At least I know if I choose to wear them I can."

Sure enough, Hemme sends Judge Tarbuck a report listing grounds for Eddie's arrest on violating probation -- his arrests for driving without a license and resisting arrest, testing positive for drugs, the failure to keep his October appointment.

Tarbuck signs an arrest warrant.

Two days later, in the shade behind Tara's house, Eddie reflects on his life.

"Other folks they may be at the middle of the ladder when they first born on this earth. Others, at the top. Me, I started at the bottom of the ladder, you know what I'm saying? And even though I've been in trouble and stuff, I'm not at the bottom of the ladder right now. I have achieved a lot of things that many folks haven't. I've got my high school diploma. I'm a certified electronic technician. I'm very educated.

"I want to go through the struggle, most definitely, because if you ain't been through nothin' you don't really know nothin.' "

It is the afternoon of his 20th birthday.

Eddie wears his Polo birthday outfit when he goes to court to face arraignment on a resisting arrest charge. Here, Eddie waits alongside Tara for the bailiff to call him into the courtroom. Once inside, Judge Joseph Q. Tarbuck chugs machinelike through his docket and Eddie sinks deeper into his seat, as if to vanish, before his name is called.

A few nights later, the police knock at the Vanderhalls' door looking for Eddie, claiming he's a suspect in an armed robbery. "The first time they see your face they gonna put the dogs out on you," Tara tells Eddie later. "That's what they said. No questions, no nothing. Just sic the dogs on you."

Eddie becomes a ghost, slipping in and out of Tara's house at odd hours, cutting through back yards. Late one night, he shows up shirtless and in shorts, all nervous energy, peering down the street. "Don't worry, man. They ain't closing in on me yet," he says, before disappearing.

Low on money, he and Tara kill time playing spades. They watch a TV program where the police read off people wanted for arrest. "The dude will tell you if you are considered armed and dangerous," Eddie says. "But I ain't seen my name on there."

Looming is Eddie's arraignment for resisting arrest. It seems a no-win spot -- go to court and get arrested, or don't and get charged with failure to appear, a felony.

On arraignment morning, Eddie lies in bed with Tara trying to pull back the minutes. He throws on clothes and walks to a pay phone to call for the time.

Eddie wears his Polo birthday outfit to court. He looks exhausted, nervous. Then he notices the name of the presiding judge.

"It's Tarbuck," he says softly to Tara.

Tara chews gum, her heart pounding. Eddie keeps shifting. His hands are cold.

At 9:02 a.m., Tarbuck sweeps into the courtroom and launches into a lecture about how he will jail anyone who fails to stay in touch with their public defender. When there's the slightest murmuring, Tarbuck raps a pen on his bench and barks, "Order in the court." Same old Tarbuck, Eddie thinks.

As Tarbuck chugs machinelike through his docket, Eddie sinks deeper, as if to vanish.

"Eddie Lamont McGee."

Eddie feels like there's a beam shining on him as he walks to the well of the court. He watches the bailiff. He knows if the bailiff moves behind him, he's not going home. The bailiff stays put.

A prosecutor says he's reducing Eddie's charge to a misdemeanor, so Tarbuck waves Eddie away, telling him to be in misdemeanor court in a week.

Eddie and Tara can't believe it. The cops have been hunting him down, and yet the very judge who signed his arrest warrant lets him walk free?

Eddie practically sprints from the court, as if Tarbuck might have second thoughts. The elevator is packed, but no way is it leaving without Eddie and Tara. With giddy smiles, they push their way in.

"Man, this world is crazy," Eddie says back at Tara's house. Tyrone Vanderhall thinks the cops are trying to provoke Eddie into doing something dumb. "They're trying to make you break and run," he says.

"It's f- - - - - up," Eddie says. "You go into court, and they act like nothing happened. . . . And I'm supposed to be wanted, armed and dangerous?"

Eddie opens the living room blinds. He pauses each time a car passes. He sits on a bike, as if ready to ride out at the first sign of the police.

"I done went in there and came back, but I know I got to face it," he says absently.

A week later, Eddie and Tara take a cab to the courthouse and run into Eddie's grandma, who's there for a hearing involving his cousin. "Eddie, what you done now?" she asks. The police came by her house the night before looking for him.

Eddie and Tara take the elevator to the third floor. The courtroom is locked. Eddie looks for a bailiff to let them in. Three police officers approach.

"Are you Eddie McGee?" one asks.

As they handcuff him on Tarbuck's arrest warrant, a cop mentions something about a robbery. "I didn't rob nobody," Eddie says, protesting. In fact, police soon rule Eddie out as their robbery suspect.

Tara, stranded, doesn't know what to do. She feels the baby. The day before, at the obstetrician, Eddie asked for a sonogram, though one wasn't scheduled. Tara can't face his absence. Her brain feels stuck. She wanders from the courthouse, looks for a taxi, then realizes she has no money.

Eddie, center, is escorted along with other inmates to Escambia County Jail, where he is held after being arrested on probation violations. “I wasn’t doing everything that was right, but I know I had made some changes,” he says.

"If I'm with a public defender, I ain't got no chance," Eddie says into the telephone.

He's sitting behind Plexiglas that divides inmates at the Escambia County Jail from visitors. Eddie wants a private lawyer, but he doesn't have the money. His family is no help, not even Rock.

"Everybody thinking I ain't fixin' to get no time," he explains.

Eddie tries to be optimistic. He wonders if Tarbuck will keep him on probation, or maybe give him a little jail time. He hasn't yet seen Hemme's report, which recites each failure, each run-in with the law.

"Unfortunately," Hemme writes, "after 6 years in prison, Mr. McGee has apparently failed to abandon the tendencies of his youth. . . . I recommend he be sentenced to the maximum."

Through Plexiglas, Eddie reads Hemme's report for the first time. He drops the phone. His head slumps to his chest. Tears run down his face.

"I wasn't doing everything that was right, but I know I had made some changes," he finally says. To him, the report is so unforgiving in its assessment of his life. "They don't see nothing but the bad."

The anger turns to bitterness, and the bitterness melts into despair. "They just trying to screw me again. They tryin' to hurt me. Oh, man."

The Oh, man is a wail.

Jan. 13, 1999. "We're here on the State of Florida vs. Eddie McGee," Tarbuck says, sitting at a table in his chambers. Eddie sits across from him, next to his lawyer, a public defender named Kelly Richards, who informs Tarbuck that Eddie pleads no contest to violating his probation.

She says a few things about how Eddie has "basically grown up in the system," then turns to Eddie. "Anything you want to say?"

Eddie stumbles from the start. "I know I have made some mistakes," he says. He stops. His eyes water. "I'm asking anything except prison," he says, trying. "I got a baby fixin' to come into this world." He stops again, choking tears.

Tarbuck jabs a finger at Eddie. "You were released from prison on that sentence on Jan. 24, 1998, weren't you?"

"Yes, sir."

"And you immediately began associating with the same people, the same type of people that you associated with when you were sentenced back in '92, didn't you?" Tarbuck asks.

"I, um, I associated with them because that's what I grew up in. I had nowhere else to go that I could live in. That's where I lived. And all around my neighborhood ain't no good."

Tarbuck ignores this. "And the probation officer tested you positive one time for marijuana?"

"Yes, your honor."

"And you finally admitted that you did use marijuana, and he told you, 'Eddie, even one puff of a marijuana cigarette is a violation of your probation.' And he told you, 'I'm not gonna violate you this time, but the next time I'm going to violate you.' Didn't he tell you that?"

"Yes, your honor."

"And what did you do after that? Smoked marijuana. After he warned you, you went back and you used marijuana again. And you admitted that to him."

"Yes, your honor," Eddie says quietly, his eyes rimmed red.

"Is there anything else?" Tarbuck asks.

Tyrone Vanderhall stands, a Bible in his hands. "The conduct of this young man, he's still redeemable," he begins.

"He's what?" Tarbuck asks.

"He's still redeemable, this young man," Tyrone says. Yes, smoking marijuana is wrong, but it isn't exactly a high crime, he says.

Years ago, Judge Joseph Q. Tarbuck, left, sentenced Eddie to 10 years in prison for a $200 stickup. Here, Tarbuck sends Eddie back to prison for violating his probation. “Here he does 6 years in the state prison, and what does he do when he gets out? He goes back to the same life that he led before he was sentenced. So how many chances should I give this man?”

"I believe in this young man," he says. "I ask you in the name of Jesus that you have mercy on this young man and that you give him one more chance."

"You know how many chances he's had?" Tarbuck asks. "You know that he was charged in the criminal justice system when he was 9 years old? He has been through every juvenile program the state of Florida has. I can't name 'em all. Program after program after program. Some he completed, most he didn't complete because he didn't follow instructions or did something wrong or eloped or wouldn't do what he was supposed to do.

"He's been given opportunity after opportunity to straighten out his life and here he does 6 years in the state prison, and what does he do when he gets out? He goes back to the same life that he led before he was sentenced. So how many chances should I give this man?"

Tarbuck is done talking. He gives Eddie another 17 years in prison, meaning Eddie won't see freedom again until the baby Tara now carries is in high school.

Eddie's shoulders sag. Tara, Teresa and Tyrone crumple. Teresa gazes out the window, her face the image of devastation, tears streaming. Tara, weeping and heartbroken, can't bring herself to look at Eddie as he is fingerprinted. They retreat from Tarbuck's chambers to the elevators. "This ain't right," Tyrone keeps saying, but the women are silent with grief.

The elevator opens just as a bailiff leads Eddie past Tara. They are inches apart. Tara still can't look at him. She steps into the elevator and slumps against the wall, and her parents follow, and the doors silently slide shut, and the Vanderhalls are separated from Florida's newest inmate.

Feb. 11, 1999. Tara gives birth to a healthy baby girl, TyJahnee Shaunti McGee.

Eddie is sent to Columbia Correctional near Lake City, five hours from Pensacola. He is scheduled to get out in 2013, just before his 35th birthday. For now, he works in the prison kitchen. He writes Tara four, five, six times a week. He buys a photo album for all the baby pictures.

He wonders if he can live off the memories of 10 months of freedom, or if they will drive him mad. In the night silence of his cell, he feels his life going drip, drip, and so he ends each letter to Tara by asking her to pray for him, to have faith that somehow things will work out for them.

Late at night, after the baby is fed and down, before loneliness sets in, Tara takes a moment to say a few words to God about her love, Eddie McGee.