We drove off in my brother-in-law Mike’s truck, headed for my parents’ house. The five-hour drive seemed to speed by, helped along by the celebration going on inside. We rocked the Texas-size pickup with laughter and excitement, questions and plans, the giddiness of finally feeling hope and promise and possibility. It was the drive home I’d dreamed of—for decades.
Walking into my parents’ home again was staggering, for a number of reasons. First, at long last, I felt safe—truly safe. At the same time, it was the beginning of my real understanding of how far I had to go in rebuilding my life. For now, the plan was for me to live in my folks’ spare bedroom—a sobering reality for a fifty-seven-year-old man.
It would be some time before my state compensation package would be worked out and I would actually have any money in hand. I fretted about being a burden to my parents, after they had done so much. I worried that I would have to ask the people I loved for money after they had already pumped so much money into my case—and put up with so much during my imprisonment. It all triggered small flashbacks to the shame I’d felt for my years of being a drain on everyone—emotionally and financially. I wanted to pick up where I’d left off, but I was a long, long way from being able to do so.
What I didn’t anticipate was that so many people, beginning with my family, were going to be so good to me. My sister Vicky and her husband, Mike, put an embarrassing amount of money in my pocket. My younger brother, Matt, repeatedly stuffed bills into my hand. My youngest sister, Patti, and her husband, Riley, were also generous to a fault.
I had been asked to do an interview with 60 Minutes, and the day I met with a representative of the show, I was also introduced to Caitlin Baker, the daughter of Debra Masters Baker—the other case where DNA evidence showed that Mark Norwood had been involved.
Like Eric, Caitlin had been only three at the time of her mother’s murder. The two of us really hit it off. She was so bright and so understanding—we both knew we shared a special, sad bond. But I was stunned when Caitlin gave me her MacBook, saying that, although it was a few years old, I might be able to use it. I was almost unable to control my excitement and gratitude. It was just another example of the sweet, sweet gestures extended to me by so many people in the free world.
Not long after, another person with a link to Caitlin’s family called, telling me a friend of his had seen my story on TV—and wanted to give me a fourth-row-center seat at a Willie Nelson concert, and a night at a beautiful condo on Town Lake. I even got to meet Willie himself backstage.
Frankly, this was becoming embarrassing—but every kindness, every act of generosity, even if it was just an open smile or a warm handshake—was reaffirming my belief in the potential for goodness inside each human heart. It can be hard to find—especially so in prison—but the people I met in the free world were redeeming my trust in humanity.
Topping just about everything else, a member of John Raley’s church gave me his “old” Chevy Tahoe. Really. After hearing my story, he just gave it to me. When I got the news, I closed the door to my bedroom and wept.
Each day in the free world seemed to erase another day of the darkness I’d endured in prison—and I was so grateful, so profoundly grateful.
A few weeks after my release, my father had a mild stroke. It wasn’t bad and he quickly began to recover, but for me, it was sobering. The fact that I was there—I was finally there—to help my mom, to do what I could for my dad, to at long last step in and be an active, accountable, participating part of my family gave me unimaginable peace. And it reaffirmed my belief that God’s universe runs on its own clock and its own calendar—that my long road to release was not simply a series of coincidences, accidents, setbacks, and eventual victories—that all of this was meant to happen exactly the way it did.
Within a few weeks of my release, I visited John Raley’s beautiful home in Houston—but not just to see John and his wife, Kelly. John had kindly set up the first meeting I would have since my release with my son, Eric, and his new wife, Maggie.
I’m not embarrassed to admit that I was nervous—very nervous. I so much wanted everything to go well. I also knew I had a long way to go before Eric could accept me as a real father again. We had to overcome years of lies, decades of misinformation about who I was and what my relationship with Chris had been—and the long, long separation we had experienced. The two of us had a great deal to get past, but I was desperate to begin trying.
I sat with John and Kelly waiting for Eric and Maggie to arrive, feeling something like a teenager with first-date jitters. When the doorbell rang, we all walked to the foyer. John opened the door, welcoming them.
Since my release, I had seen photos of Eric taken by my mother and sister Vicky. I had looked him up online at the Catholic school where he worked as an educator. I’d seen pictures of his graduation and shots of him at work and photos of the day he and Maggie were married. But in my heart, he hadn’t grown past the toddler who needed me or his mother to help him with virtually everything—a little blond boy who liked to hold my hand, talk to me while I worked on projects around the house, and sweetly fall asleep in my arms.
The man who walked in the door that evening had changed so much. I had changed, too—not just on the outside but on the inside. Seeing Eric was a bit like attending a high school reunion and vaguely recognizing a face—knowing you have a history with that person but being so separated by life experience and years apart that it takes time and work to reconnect.
I had projected so much onto this moment—and Eric had his own fears about meeting with me again. After all, he was still trying to rebuild the truth of his life. Now, here he was standing in front of an overly excited guy with gray hair—a villain turned victim, but still very much the man he had learned to hate. We shared a handshake that shakily morphed into a hug.
Sitting down in the living room, we chatted stiffly, and as I looked at Eric, I began to see small signs that I recognized as being part of our lost—but still in there somewhere—connection. We were wearing virtually identical shoes, and our pants looked like carbon copies. We’d each chosen almost matching shirts for our big day. And when I looked at his face, I saw Chris looking back at me—through all the time and all the pain. It was startling—and comforting. I struggled to keep my emotions in check.
As I talked to Maggie, I saw that my son had chosen a wife with the same stunning blue eyes and long dark hair as his mother. She was warm and kind, encouraging and easy to talk to. I saw Chris in her, too, and I was so profoundly grateful for her presence in his life. Maggie was pregnant, and it wouldn’t be long until their first daughter was born.
I didn’t know it at the time, but they had already decided to name their little girl Christine Marie, another way in which Eric and his wife kept faith with—and built their family around—his lost, mourned, beloved, beautiful mother.
I could feel myself talking faster and faster, as if sheer speed of speech was a way to make up for lost time. Finally, John had one of his brilliant ideas and ushered us into the backyard, where we sat on a wooden swing under a massive old oak. John must have turned the outdoor lights off when he went inside. Eric and I found ourselves sitting there alone in the dark, finally beginning to share a few of the moments we had been denied for so long.
The swing creaked as we talked on that fall night. We eventually found our rhythm and our common ground—chatting about the peccadillos and personal joys of our shared family. We couldn’t see each other’s faces, but I could feel him smiling. I smiled, too.
I felt like I had won the lottery. I would discover later that I had projected more onto that night’s conversation and first meeting than Eric had. For me, being with him was a homecoming—for him, it was the beginning of a long, dark, difficult chapter in a life that had already suffered more challenges than anyone deserved. Looking back, I recognize with regret that, while I was euphoric, he was struggling. In fact, his
understanding of his whole life was falling apart before his eyes.
Eric had not been told much about his mother. Her brutal death and my conviction in the case quickly became such a terribly painful part of family history that no one wanted to—or felt strong enough to—talk about it with him. Even at an early age, children sense that kind of family taboo, and Eric had grown up knowing not to ask—and not to look back—no matter how much he needed and wanted to.
As Eric and I have grown closer, I have been committed to doing what I can to fill in those blanks. I want to tell him as much as I can about Chris and how we had all lived together—so long ago—so happily and so full of hope about the future. That night, when he and Maggie said good-bye, I felt like we had made a beginning—we had scratched the surface of all that lay beneath the bare outlines of each other’s lives.
At the doorway, we hugged again. For me, my hug was a thank-you—and a blessed reassurance that, while we had a long, long road ahead, our journey had at last begun.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Each day that I woke up at my parents’ house was a fresh shock to my system.
The sweet silence that’s so much part of rural life was jarring to me. Sometimes, it was so quiet I thought I could hear the grass growing. I had spent decades successfully tuning out the chaotic cacophony of Planet Prison—now that I was living in a world so still and so peaceful, I felt overwhelmed.
My ears were no longer battered, but they seemed filled by the lack of sound that had been part of my life for so long. There were no slamming cell doors, the loud buzzers were gone, and the years of belligerent shouting had finally been quieted.
The constant, awful roar of anger that permeates every aspect of penitentiary life was gone, and it left a gap in my world that began to fill with extraordinarily beautiful sounds and sensations—simple elements of daily life I had gone without for years.
That first morning in my new bathroom at my parents’ house, I realized I could hear water gushing from the sink’s faucet as though it were a mighty river. The sound of it gurgling down the drain was almost deafening. I reveled in the muffled noise of my toothbrush scrubbing back and forth on my teeth. I could even hear myself flossing, for crying out loud.
But it was the sound of the razor scraping against my whiskers that really floored me. I hadn’t heard that for so long. I remembered hearing it the first time I shaved—or really the first time I actually needed to shave. Like so many teenage boys, I began shaving long before I had even a trace of a reason. Back when I was a teenager, when I finally heard that crisp scratch of razor on my burgeoning beard, it was a sign that I had arrived—I had become a man. It was the sound of taking care of myself, of caring about how I looked, especially to others. It felt that way to me all over again. I had missed it more than I knew.
Turning on the shower and hearing the gentle spray hit the porcelain tub and tile was a revelation. Behind bars, the showers were so different—they were institutional, crowded and loud, an ugly cattle yard for people accustomed to being treated like livestock—and it always seemed someone you’d rather not see naked was doing something no one should have to witness.
I saw older inmates knocked down on the slick shower floors, would-be musclemen strutting to intimidate or embarrass the female guards required to stand watch, and creeps attacking other inmates when they were at their most vulnerable. I remembered one unforgettable day in the shower in my early years, when I stood next to an older Latino man whose chest sported two giant tattoos of clown faces.
The man’s nipples served as the clowns’ noses.
The instant I saw this, I burst out laughing. The old guy glared my way. Someone informed me immediately that this was fairly common among men of his age who shared his background and social circles—and it wasn’t funny.
Who knew?
You could learn all kinds of things in a prison shower, but there was seldom a chance to embrace the simple joy of getting clean—to appreciate the feel of warm water on skin or smell the sweet scent of a fresh bar of soap. When a person goes without these elements of everyday life long enough, experiencing it all again can be mind-blowing.
I toweled off—with one of my mom’s wonderfully soft towels—while I listened to the coffeepot perking away in the kitchen and my mother quietly setting the table for breakfast. Through the bathroom’s open window, I recognized the noise of squirrels racing and scrambling about, vaulting through the trees and scavenging in the grass. The ethereal rush of wind through the leaves gave me goose bumps. I privately rejoiced in the persistent buzz of a hardworking bee having its way in my mom’s flower bed. When I heard the high-pitched hum of a mosquito sullying the beautiful Texas fall weather—man, even that sounded good.
This was music to me—the sound of normal life. I promised myself I would never again take any of it for granted. The intoxicating sounds, scents, and visual gifts of the natural world I’d been banished from—the familiar universe I had missed more than I dreamed possible—gave me boundless joy. I felt like an astronaut who had just come back after a decades-long trip to the barren planet Mars and was celebrating every second of his return to our lush Earth.
Of course, there were profound changes in technology that awaited me—and mastering them was a mixed bag. Because I had been locked up in 1987, I had never used a cell phone—never owned a personal computer, a CD player, a DVD, or any kind of GPS device. TV remotes were a complete puzzlement. What was different for me, though, was that I’d never had to struggle with the progressive nature of technological change. I hadn’t had the burden of walking around yelling into a heavy brick-size phone or stumbling through life with a balky PC that would swallow up a person’s work without a moment’s warning. I came in at the top.
The iPhone my sister gave me was my first brush with new communication technology, and I loved it. My first computer was a MacBook, and it is wonderful. The navigation system in my truck is voice activated, so if I feel lost, I can literally “ask” for help finding my way home.
There were moments when I did feel like I had stepped into the future, but the transition wasn’t nearly as difficult as it sounds. I felt like the generation before me had been the guinea pigs. I was the lucky beneficiary of everything everyone else had learned the hard way. I was struck by how digital systems seem to operate so intuitively. Apps were simple to download and understand. Wireless service was everywhere. To my amazement, I had no problem learning from online tutorials. And if I still needed help, there were plenty of people to ask. I could stop practically anyone on the street and get advice and answers.
Other changes in society were more layered and required different sorts of changes in me. For years I had avoided coffee, because what prison serves up as “coffee” tends to be a toxic, blackened, burned-tasting version of what everyone else knows and loves. Newly unleashed in the free world, I was amazed at the number and variety of coffeehouses that now dotted every portion of the landscape. This transformation into Latte Land didn’t make any sense until my niece Staci gave me a gift card and a snazzy coffee cup from Starbucks.
My first attempt to order coffee from the Starbucks menu was like being forced to fly a jet, but I have learned. Boy, have I learned. Now, coffee is a daily delight—and it tastes even better than it did before prison. I’ve discovered something for the first time—again.
I also had to relearn how to walk barefoot, because for twenty-five years my unprotected feet hadn’t touched the ground. I didn’t dare make contact with the floor in the prison showers or the cells. God only knew what kinds of diseases or debris lay waiting to ravage my unprotected soles. Early on, when I walked through my parents’ house without flip-flops, shower shoes, or my old prison pleather boots, I felt like I was marching around naked. The feel of the wood, the warmth of a streak of sun on the floor—it was all confounding and confusing, and somehow it felt wrong to me, even dangerous.
Equa
lly disconcerting was the fact that, for the first time in twenty-five years, I was able to get a good look at myself. In prison there are—of course—very few actual glass mirrors. Inmates had to make do with mirror-shaped pieces of polished metal or plastic commissary “mirrors” that offered fun-house-worthy reflections of their faces. Whenever I was issued a new ID card, I could see a photograph of myself, but that was one of the infrequent ways I got to see what I really looked like or how I had changed through the years.
Now, when I looked in a real mirror, part of me felt I didn’t know “that guy.” He looked like a very tired version of my old self and sported more gray hair than I’d expected. Mirrors are everywhere in the free world, and it seemed like “that guy” followed me all over the place. I’d see myself in the mirror in a restaurant lobby and, for a moment, feel like “There he is again!”
Slowly, but surely, I adjusted.
Food—all kinds of food, every kind of food—became a playground for me. My mother would ask what I wanted to eat, and I would always say, “Anything, anything at all.” I simply could not be disappointed, not after eating prison swill for so long.
For me, restaurants weren’t just sources of good food, they were locations for life-changing moments of insight. I began to constantly seek out new places that served up dishes or types of food I had never tasted. Sushi? Yes! Indian food? Why not? Italian tonight? Bring it on! A Brazilian steak house? Pull up a chair for me!
The sheer bounty available in the free world was overwhelming.
Not too long after I’d been released, my sister Vicky took me out to a casual place and we decided to have a go at the salad bar. I gleefully loaded my plate with greens, fresh tomatoes, cucumbers, various cheeses, mushrooms, chopped meats, salad dressings, and a big bunch of bread.
When we got to our table, I looked down at my plate—overflowing with so many of the foods I had missed for so long—and I had to fight as hard as I could to keep from breaking down in sobs. I hadn’t been prepared to be so emotionally shaken simply by the fixings I’d found on a particularly nice salad bar. For me, however, “losing it” over something small or seemingly insignificant was an everyday reality.
Getting Life Page 22