At home

The Meinzers live in the jail. The homely brown sandstone structure, erected in 1887, stands amidst the mesquite in the middle of Benjamin, pop. 224, the seat of Knox County, Texas. Black iron bars still cover its windows. Some have saw marks where long-ago prisoners tried to escape.

Inside, a braided Indian bridle hangs from a pillar, and steel wolf traps dangle by their chains from the mantel. A wood-burning iron stove provides the only heat. It burns eight cords or more of firewood every winter, Mr. Meinzer says, but the house remains cold. The ceiling of unfinished oak, some of the furniture crafted from weathered barn wood, and a bleached cow skull on a bookshelf all imply their owner's stern frontier values. "I think about the people who built this jail, how many tons of rock they hauled in here with wagons and mules," says Mr. Meinzer .

He's sitting on a couch near the stove, his long legs stretched before him, crossed at the ankles. He's dressed as he always dresses, dark cotton shirt and jacket, faded jeans tucked neatly into calf-high, laced-up hunting boots. If he were outdoors, a brown slouch hat or knit cap would cover his dark, graying hair. He wears glasses now. He's 48 years old, but a good 48, slender and flat-bellied. He's smoking a fine cigar, sipping a glass of cabernet.

"They used primitive tools," he says. "But you look at the edges of this building and they're absolutely perfectly straight." It was his ex-wife, Sarah, who really wanted the jail, he says. "All I could see was just a horrible amount of work. But I went along with it, and now I'm glad I did, because of its historical significance to this community." They married in 1978, bought the abandoned jail, full of rats and cockroaches, in the early '80s, worked three or four years on it and moved in. "We put so much work into it, I thought, "Well, my God, I'm not leaving here,' " he says.

But Sarah did. Their divorce was final about six months ago. "That's probably a result of my being so focused on my work," Mr. Meinzer says. "I let too many things slide. Sarah is a good woman." Sarah now lives in Lubbock, where she works as a therapist.

Their relationship is still an amicable one, he says, and Sarah remains close to their sons, 16-year-old Hunter and 14-year-old Pate, who batch it now with their father. When Mr. Meinzer is away on a shooting trip - a frequent thing, often for three or four days out of the week - the boys go it alone.

"I worry about them," Mr. Meinzer says. "They're at the point when they need their pop around. They're solid boys. They're real independent. They take care of themselves quite well. And they have two grandparents here. But hell, kids will be kids. If they need to ask me a question, I need to be here. Kids at that age can make decisions that aren't exactly good."