I sat quietly in thought for a few minutes before telling Jason that Deanna and I would sleep there that night, then say good-bye to him in the morning. There was no chance of him going with us because he was the only pillar of stability in his home. His mother, Gail, was unstable and suffered from schizophrenia; she might take medication for a period of time and improve, but once that happened, she frequently stopped taking it. She might tell Jason she was going out for a few hours and return several days later. If he was not there to take care of his two younger brothers, they would go feral like the Lakeshore dogs. He truly did have to be like a father figure to them, and I was always impressed by how competently he handled the task. Most people twice his age couldn’t do the job half as well. He left to go make supper for them.
The moment he was gone Deanna and I fell upon each other. Next came a mystery that I have never found the key to. Somehow, we were found.
For the last half-hour the sky had grown steadily darker, until the sun that had scorched us earlier was no longer visible. It signaled not the approach of night but the coming of one big, God-almighty storm. The wind picked up until I was absolutely certain a tornado would arrive at any moment. The sky was black as night and the wind continued to howl and blow so fiercely that it seemed the trailer would roll over, but not a single drop of rain fell.
The wind suddenly stopped. It didn’t die down, it just stopped all at once. A really bad feeling rippled up my spine. I stopped what I was doing and cocked my head to the side like a dog listening for a strange sound. “What is it?” Deanna asked.
I waited seconds before reluctantly admitting, “I don’t know.” All I knew was that my every cell had just been flooded with the fight-or-flight feeling, and I had a terrible sense of urgency.
“Then pay attention to me,” she said.
As I leaned forward to kiss her I heard glass shatter. “Shit!” I hissed as we grabbed our clothes. Even though I knew it was pointless and the jig was up, we still attempted to hide. It was a cop. Instead of opening the door and walking in, he felt the need to smash in a window and fulfill some sort of SWAT team fantasy. He later lied and said that we had busted out the window. He was a real piece of work—about four and a half feet tall, with the sort of mustache you see only on cops or seventies gay porn stars. He was the kind of guy who needed a badge and gun just to stop people from laughing at him. He found us almost immediately and started jerking us around.
As he was escorting us out the door, Deanna’s father approached. He put his hand on my shoulder and began breathing hard, as if he were having trouble restraining himself. I looked straight into his eyes and grinned like a jackal. I wanted him to know he could do nothing to me that was worse than what I’d already been through. The cop pushed him away and said, “Relax, just let me handle it.” He backed off and the cop put Deanna and me in the back of his car before returning to talk to her mother and father. I noticed that even her older sister had come out for the occasion, and I gave her my most charming smile.
While we sat in the car Deanna held my hands and said, “Whatever happens, you have to come find me.” I promised that I would, no matter what. She kissed me then, like she had seen the future. It was the last time we would ever touch. Another cop had pulled up, and they split us up, putting her in his car. She blew a kiss at me and waved good-bye as it drove off.
* * *
I arrived at the Crittenden County jail on the outskirts of West Memphis, and was escorted to my suite. It was a dark, dank cell that smelled like feet and corn chips, a tiny space with a brown solid-steel door. There was no entertainment except for the graffiti, which covered every square inch of the walls. I was amazed at the things people had thought important enough to write there. For instance, someone thought it vital that the world know someone named “Pimp Hen” was adept at certain sexual maneuvers. I felt a bit like an archaeologist in a tomb.
I was left alone for what I estimated to be two or three hours, but it’s impossible to really tell time in a place like that. It’s a form of mental torture, and I only knew that it seemed like an eternity. I kept wondering, Where is she? Is she in this building? Do they have her in a filthy hole like this one? The graffiti offered no answers to these questions. I was pacing like an animal when a guard came and opened the door, motioning for me to follow. I was led to an office in which sat a bloated, corpulent man with beady little rat’s eyes. Jerry Driver, juvenile officer for the county, and I came face-to-face for the first time.
He had a pleasant-enough attitude as he introduced himself. He started asking questions and I answered honestly, thinking there was no reason not to. He asked why we were in the trailer, and I told him we had run away because her parents wouldn’t leave us alone. No, we didn’t know where we were going, and no, we didn’t know what we were going to do once we got there. We figured it would come to us in time.
This is where things started getting weird. The smile never left his face, which looked like folds of uncooked dough. “Have you heard anything about Satanists around town?”
I thought that a bit odd, but answered, “No.”
He continued to press on. “You haven’t heard anything about Satanists, plans to commit sacrifices or break into churches?” Those beady little rat’s eyes gleamed at me, like he was really starting to get off on thinking about this stuff. You could tell something just wasn’t right about him.
I was pretty certain I would have remembered a roving pack of bloodthirsty devil worshippers if they had passed me on the street while chatting loud enough about such topics, so I told him, “I’m pretty certain I haven’t.” He seemed to be considering something as he chewed his bottom lip with tiny, yellow-stained rat teeth. Finally he shifted his obese bulk to pull something out of his desk.
I could practically see his whiskers twitch as he said, “What can you tell me about this?” The object he held was Deanna’s little green diary. I wanted to reach out for it but knew it was pointless. I didn’t answer his question, knowing that it would be futile.
“Where is she?” It was my turn to ask questions. He told me she was being held at a women’s detention center in a town called Helena. He watched me closely as he said she had had “psychiatric trouble” in the past, and her parents thought it might be best if she was sent for treatment. She was being held until tomorrow, when she would be transported to a psychiatric hospital in Memphis. This was news to me. I knew nothing of any past “psychiatric trouble.” It may not even have been true, because I would soon learn that nothing he said was trustworthy. I didn’t know that then, though, and I sat there seeing images of Deanna in an insane asylum. All I could picture was the Anthrax video called “Madhouse,” in which everyone wore straitjackets.
I was told I’d spend the week in Craighead County jail, in Jonesboro, about an hour north of West Memphis, where someone would come talk to me. Jerry Driver himself drove me there. Everyone wore an orange jumpsuit that said “Craighead County” on the back, and you slept in a cell. There was a dayroom where inmates played Uno with an ancient deck of greasy, creased cards. Time seemed to come to an absolute standstill. Later I discovered that it made no sense for me to be there, because anyone else who had been picked up the way we were would have received nothing more serious than a warning, or a year of probation at the most, before being sent home. Deanna and I were being put in jail because Jerry Driver was not finished with us.
One day during that week I was escorted to a small room in the back of the courthouse to see a mountain of a woman who looked like she applied her makeup with a spatula. She talked to me for about an hour, then gave me a test, which consisted of showing me flash cards, before telling Jerry Driver, “We have a bed for him.” I was puzzled about the meaning of this until it was explained that I, too, would be going to a psychiatric hospital within the next few days. I suddenly saw myself in that “Madhouse” video.
I was left in the jail while they made arrangements for me to take a vacation in the nuthouse. I had abou
t three days to wait for my transportation, and during that time I continuously paced from one end of the cell block to the other. There were about ten to fifteen other guys there at any given time, and I would later learn they were all typical jailbirds. I say “typical” because over the years I’ve had the opportunity to observe many people behind bars, and most of them have a tremendous amount in common. Greed, anger, frustration, lust, hatred, and jealousy, all housed in one body. I’ve always come to the same conclusion—it’s no wonder these guys are where they are.
There’s not much to do in jail, so one day I thought I’d call home and check in. My mother had known about my plan, and she had even given me a little money, saying that if I needed anything I should call. She was at the courthouse when Jerry Driver argued before a judge that he should be allowed to keep me in jail until my court date instead of allowing me to go home, as any first-time offender would have been permitted to do. I called my mother to see if perhaps she knew more than I did. I was in for quite a shock—it had been a dramatic week for everyone. My father was back.
It seems that my mother finally came to her senses and gave Jack the boot. It wasn’t like she had much choice, either, because my sister had made accusations against him concerning molestation. Social Services sent a representative, and they informed my mother that Jack was not to be in the house under any circumstances. Records show an investigation was conducted but I’m not aware anything conclusive was ever found or decided on where that was concerned.
After Jack was gone—and by gone, I mean that he moved to another trailer on the next street over—my sister started calling people, searching for my father. I never asked her why and she never explained. Joe was in Arkansas visiting his family, and he and my mother were talking about getting back together. I was stunned. It felt like the whole world had been turned upside down overnight while I was sitting in a cage. Under other circumstances I would have been ecstatic, but right then there were other things on my mind. I’d given Deanna my word that I would find her, but time was slipping through my hands. I was beginning to feel that I would never again know what life was like beyond those walls. After being locked in a cage for weeks, the thought of ever getting out became one of those things that are too good to be true.
My mother and father came to see me the next day. There was no way to touch, and we had to talk to each other through two-inch-thick bulletproof glass. My father hardly recognized me. When he and my mother walked through the door I heard him ask her, “Is that him?” We were allowed to talk for fifteen minutes, they on one side of the glass and me on the other. That’s not much time to get reacquainted, but my father promised that he would be part of my life from then on. The guard then came and told them it was time to leave.
I look back now and find myself filled with a tremendous amount of anger at how unjust it all was. The punishment for a first-time breaking and entering charge and an accusation of sexual misconduct didn’t fit the crime by any stretch of the imagination. All I did was walk into an abandoned trailer. This made no sense.
At my court date a couple of days later Jerry Driver recommended to the court that I be put in a mental institution, which he told my parents and me was the alternative to holding me in jail for nine months until going to trial. At the time, it didn’t seem logical but it did seem like the lesser of two evils. I was given my clothes and told to get dressed. If you’ve never had to wear jail clothes, then you can’t comprehend what it’s like to finally be able to put your own clothes back on. It takes a while to get used to. The jail clothes are designed to strip you of any identity and reduce you to a number. You don’t even feel like a human being when you’re wearing them. You have no dignity.
The four of us traveled in Driver’s car, and it was a long ride. It took several hours to get from Jonesboro to Little Rock, where Charter Hospital of Maumelle was located. He restrained himself from asking more insane Satanist-related questions in front of my parents, but I could tell it almost caused him physical pain to do so. Every time I looked up I saw his beady rat’s eyes staring intently at me in the rearview mirror. For some unknown reason he had visited my mother while I waited in jail, and asked her if he could see my room. She let him in and left him back there alone. He told her that he was “confiscating” a few things, even though that was blatantly illegal. He took the Goya-like sketches from the walls and a new journal I had started. (It was in a funeral registry book, morbidly enough.) He also took my skull collection.
It sounds kind of odd to have a skull collection, but I’ll explain. There’s a hard-packed dirt path behind Lakeshore that the local youth would wander on. It doesn’t go anywhere specific, just sort of meanders around a small lake and a few fields. I often found odd pieces of the skeletons of possums, raccoons, squirrels, birds, and even the occasional dog or cat that had died out there. I began collecting them because my teenage mind thought they looked cool. I’m not the only one, and I’ve never denied having questionable taste when it comes to interior decorating. The oddest thing Jason and I ever found was a beer bottle with two tiny skulls inside. The problem was that they were slightly too large to get out of the bottle. We spent hours trying to figure out how they got in the bottle in the first place.
At any rate, Jerry Driver took my personal possessions as “evidence.” Evidence of what, he didn’t say. I wouldn’t know this for quite a while, as it would be some time before I ever saw Lakeshore again. For now, I was on my way to the funny farm.
By the time we arrived, all the other patients had been put to bed. It was about ten o’clock at night and the place was silent. My mother and father had been completely convinced by Driver’s authoritative tone, that this was Driver’s right and they had no choice in the matter. They sat in a small office giving my personal information to the woman in charge of filing paperwork on new patients. The process took about thirty minutes, and Jerry Driver sat silently listening to everything. I was exceedingly nervous, never having been in such an environment before. The only thing I had to base my expectations on was the jail I had just left, so I was expecting the worst. To me, as to my parents, Driver’s authority was not to be questioned; I believed he was a legitimate cop. None of us understood that we could protest or contest his decisions. We were simply operating out of fear of the consequences—and in the meantime, without knowing it, our rights were never explained to us and were taken from us without our knowledge.
A nurse came to escort me through two large doors, back into the heart of the building. My mother was still answering questions as I left—was I allergic to anything, my birthday, family history of illness. Nothing about my mental state or behavior. Beyond those doors, it wasn’t nearly as nice as the lobby we had just left behind, but it was also no chamber of horrors. The furniture appeared to be made of plastic, so if anyone vomited or pissed themselves, there would be no stain. It possessed the added bonus of only needing to be hosed off after the occasional fecal smearing.
I was told to sit at a small table, where I was introduced to a tall, thin black guy named Ron. He looked through my suitcase, wrote down everything I had, then showed me to a room. There were two beds, a desk, a chair, and a small wardrobe. I was alone; there was no one in the other bed. I’d been through so much stress and trauma during the past few weeks that I immediately fell into a deep sleep, which lasted until morning.
The days there began with a nurse making wake-up calls at six a.m. She’d turn on the lights and go from room to room telling everyone to prepare for breakfast. Everyone would get up, take a shower, get dressed, and perform whatever morning rituals the insane carry out in privacy. We’d then march down to the dayroom, sit on the puke-proof couches, and stare at each other until seven o’clock.
On my first morning there were only three other patients. The first patient I saw was a blond-haired girl who was sitting with her back to me and singing a Guns N’ Roses song. I looked at the back of her head for a while, until I became curious about what she looked like. When I c
ould no longer take the curiosity I walked around in front of her. She looked up at me with ice-blue eyes that seemed either half asleep or fully hypnotized, and she smiled. By her gaze alone you could tell that something just wasn’t right with this picture. She seemed happy, and rightfully so, as she was being discharged later in the day. Her name was Michelle, and she told me she was there for attempting suicide by swallowing thumbtacks and hair barrettes.
Soon a second patient entered. He was wearing Bermuda shorts and flip-flops and could have easily passed for Michelle’s twin brother. I never knew what he was there for, and he was discharged in less than three days. The third patient was a young black guy who seemed to be the most normal of the trio. He went home the next day.
If I had any fear of being left alone, it would soon be laid to rest. Patients began to come in on a daily basis, and soon the entire place was full. I had to share my room with an interesting young sociopath who was sent there after being discovered at his new hobby—masturbating into a syringe and injecting it into dogs. The entire ward was a parade of bizarre characters.
We lined up every morning and strolled down to the kitchen for a tasty breakfast of biscuits and gravy, orange juice, blueberry muffins, hash browns, scrambled eggs, toast, sausage, and Frosted Flakes. The insane do not count carbs. The food was delicious, and I enjoyed every meal. Conversation around the table was never dull and covered such topics as who had stolen whose underwear, and whether or not Quasimodo had ever been a sumo wrestler.
Once breakfast was over we walked single file (in theory) back down to our wing and had the first of four group therapy sessions for the day. At this session you had to set a daily goal for yourself, such as “My goal for the day is to learn the rules,” or “My goal for the day is to deal with my anger in a more constructive manner than I did yesterday.” This task made everyone irritable, because it’s hard to come up with a new goal every single day, and you couldn’t use the same one twice. Your last group session would be right before bed, during which you had to say whether you had achieved your goal, and if not, then why not.
Life After Death: The Shocking True Story of a Innocent Man on Death Row Page 14