Confessions of an Innocent Man

by David R. Dow

  And so I felt my freedom begin when Olvido, Luther, and Laura, who were there to meet me at the courthouse’s rear door, began hugging the breath out of me before both my feet had hit the ground. I tried to say thank you but I sobbed instead. Luther handed me a pair of jeans, a black T-shirt, running shoes, and socks. He said, Might be a bit baggy.

  Thus it happened that, as the sun was rising over Buffalo Bayou, I stood on the concrete slab at the inmates’ entrance to the Harris County courthouse, peeled off my prison garb, and changed into civilian clothes for the first time since the last day of my trial. Seven satellite trucks lined the street, reporting news of my exoneration as it occurred. All the major networks were there and even some from Europe. Olvido took in the scene for a moment, then held my face in her hands. She said, Rafael, I goddamn hate representing people who are innocent.

  That morning I was inmate number 0002647, a resident of the Polunsky Unit of the TDC, otherwise known as Texas’s death row. That afternoon, I was a free man.

  * * *

  • • •

  Sitting at the head of a huge limestone table in a room packed with fifty reporters from across the country, one from Mexico, one from Canada, and five from Western Europe, I had my first press conference. Most of the questions were inane. How does it feel to be out? Great. What are you looking forward to most? Walking around without handcuffs. What would you like to say to your lawyers? Thank you. How about to the people who are responsible for this tragedy? I dodged that question by thanking the new district attorney, but the reporter, a thin man who spoke with a French accent, followed up and asked the smartest question I got that day, and the only one I could not answer. He said, What do you think should happen to the officials who are at fault? That turned out to be a question I could not get out of my mind.

  Later I had my first celebratory beer. Olvido, Luther, Laura, and I sat outdoors at a bar on Main, and I savored a jalapeño cream ale from a brewery down the road. A black guy pushing a grocery cart and missing half his teeth stopped in front of us and pointed at me. He said, I know you. You’re President Bush’s kin, ain’t that right? Can you spare a penny or a dime? I patted my hip, but I had no wallet and no cash just yet. Luther handed me a five. I asked, Do you take paper money? and his eyes sparkled. I said, Good luck, chief. He smiled and said, Kin of the president. Right in front a my eyes. Check this out, people, kin a number forty-three. And pushed his cart across the street to a new set of tables.

  Olvido asked what I wanted for dinner.

  I said, What I really want is to eat dinner after it’s dark. You all decide where.

  We took the train east to a cavernous restaurant with thirty-foot ceilings and a hundred kinds of tequila I was too scared to try, but the owner sent over a tray with a sample of five. Strangers who had seen the news made eye contact and nodded. Several came over to shake my hand. As we were finishing our coffee, the waiter told us someone had picked up the tab.

  Luther handed me a duffel bag holding toiletries and clean clothes, and the four of us drove to a nearby apartment leased by a nonprofit organization devoted to helping former prisoners reenter society. It was a one-room efficiency in a marginal part of town with a two-burner stove and a sofa that opened into a bed. It was mine for a month. The refrigerator and pantry were stocked, and there was an envelope on the table with five hundred dollars in cash.

  Olvido had said, You do not have to stay here. I have an extra room. You are welcome to it for as long as you like.

  But I was ready to be alone and unwatched, ready to use the toilet with the door open wide and nobody around, ready to watch TV in the middle of the night, ready to shower for however long I wanted at any time I chose. I was already planning to walk down the street to a convenience store at three A.M. and come home and make a bag of popcorn in the microwave. I said, Thank you so much, Olvido, but this will do fine for now. They hugged me and said they’d talk to me in the morning.

  I set my duffel on the table and stood in the center of the room. I stretched my arms to either side because they wouldn’t reach the walls. I opened the window despite the cold, again because I could. Horns blared and voices drifted up. Across the street a neon sign advertising beer with two missing letters flashed off and on. Three guys wearing micro shorts and leather jackets—I think they were guys—went roller-skating down the middle of the street and swerved around a bus parked at the curb. It was nearly midnight, and I wasn’t the least bit tired.

  The thin walls may as well have been screens. In the apartment next door, a young couple from Eastern Europe whispering in what I think was Polish tried without success to console their infant son. The woman sang, and I think the man played a mandolin. I grabbed two beers from the six-pack in the refrigerator, plopped down on the sofa, and turned on the cable news with the sound on mute while listening to the child cry all night. At four A.M. I walked over to the window and watched the stoplight change from yellow to red. A single car approached from my right. As it drew near I could see the driver was smoking. He was wearing a uniform, perhaps a security guard going home from work. He stopped at the light and turned his head up toward the window from where I watched. He noticed me there, nodded once, then idled on the empty street until the light turned green, white smoke curling up from his tailpipe. When the sky lightened at the false dawn and the traffic began to grow thick, I went to the bathroom and washed my face, then lay back down and fell deeply asleep.

  A volunteer from the reentry group knocked on my door at ten holding two steaming cups of coffee and a paper city map. I thanked her for the apartment, the supplies, and the clothes, and reminded her I lived nearby not very long ago. She said, Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t know. She was embarrassed. I told her not to worry and to lighten the mood said, Do people still use paper maps? That might have made things worse. I said, Okay, no more jokes from me, and she smiled. She drove me to a government office where I got a new driver’s license, then to a branch bank where I opened a savings account with a thousand-dollar money order donated by the volunteers. I didn’t need the funds, of course, but I thought it might be bad manners to say so. So I said, Thank you very much. I will pay you back as soon as I can. She patted my forearm kindly. A month later I sent the charity an anonymous cashier’s check for ten thousand dollars.

  The night before, at dinner, Olvido had handed me an envelope. I opened it in the morning after the volunteer dropped me off. Inside were letters written by nine of the twelve people who had sentenced me to death. You might wonder what happened to the other three. I wonder that too. I brewed a cup of actual espresso and sat down to read. What would you say to someone whom you had grievously misjudged and caused to lose six years of his life? I admired these men and women for even trying to answer that impossible question. Tieresse used to tell me she judged people’s sincerity by their effort, not their execution. The anguish and sorrow were evident in every letter I read. I knew these people had not acted in malice, and their antipathy toward the person they thought had murdered someone so good even struck me as a positive thing. Eventually I’d write back to every one of them with absolution. There were people I knew I would never forgive, but the twelve men and women who once believed I killed my wife were not among them.

  I folded the letters and placed them back inside the envelope. I watched a small cockroach scurry across the kitchenette’s linoleum floor. I clutched the envelope to my chest. The letters made me feel more alone, not less so.

  A few years before I met Tieresse, I was watching the local news one night. Reporters were covering the story of a young man who had been convicted of rape and sentenced to prison for thirty years before new DNA testing established his innocence five years into his term. A crowd gathered outside the jail, awaiting his release. He emerged onto the street carrying all his possessions in a cardboard box. He was wearing a warm-up suit, horn-rimmed glasses, and an ear-to-ear smile. For a moment he took in the size of the crowd, then walke
d straight into the embrace of his mother, sister, and girlfriend, and disappeared. A reporter had interviewed the mom, who said she never had any doubt about her son’s innocence. The only thing she didn’t know was how long it would take her to prove it so he could come back home where he belongs. She placed her hands together and tilted back her head and said, Glory be to God, all glory belongs to the Lord Jesus Christ, and she was so certain and serene I smiled despite myself.

  When I walked off of death row, the only people there to greet me were the guards, and when I emerged from the Houston courtroom a free man, there was nobody there at all. Reporters had to keep their cameras fixed on me. My parents and wife were dead. My friends were still in prison. Most of La Ventana’s staff had testified for me at my trial, but they had been my friends, not my family, and unlike family, friends do move on. My restaurant and upstairs apartment were shuttered, and in another month I would sell them. I was glad to be out, but every remnant of my prior life was gone. What awaited me was emptiness.

  I spent my first full day of freedom walking. Olvido had given me a cell phone, but except for a call from her to check up on me around noon, it didn’t ring. I arranged with my offshore bank to have funds transferred to a new domestic account. I spent an hour reading the local paper in a hipster coffeehouse, surprised to see a quarter-page-size photo of myself taken outside the courthouse the day before. Six other patrons didn’t seem to have any idea who I was, but the young man who brewed my drink bumped my fist when he came by my table to ask if I needed anything else. I left too large a tip and walked north toward Buffalo Bayou, pausing to buy a hamburger at a food truck along the way. By the time I got back to my apartment at close to five, my legs were so sore I struggled up the stairs. I drank a glass of wine while I drew a bath, and I fell asleep in the tub. There’s a neighborhood pizza place that also delivers beer. I ordered a large pie with jalapeños and a six-pack of lager when I woke up at nine and watched basketball while I ate. Then my cell phone rang.

  After the first DNA report came back, I received a letter from Reinhardt. It was the first time I had heard from him since arriving on death row. The letter held both a sincere apology and an unsparing flagellation of his decision to cut off contact with me. I read it out loud to Sargent. He said, Damn, Inocente, some motherfucker beat my old lady to death I’d kill him too. Dude’s stand-up, but he’s got to chill. I said, Yeah, I know what you mean. I wrote Reinhardt back saying I missed having him in my life.

  I did not recognize the area code, but I answered anyway. Reinhardt said, I hope it is not too late to call. I didn’t know how to reach you. I finally got your number from your lawyer. His voice was unsteady. I said, I am glad you did.

  Reinhardt said, There are a lot of things I need to say to you, but the first task is to get you your money back so you can move on with your life.

  He must not have known I already had more sitting in Caribbean banks than I could possibly spend. I said, Actually, Reinhardt, that’s very kind, but I do not need it, and I don’t really want it.

  He said, You can make that decision later, if you want to. Right now, I am arranging to transfer to you what my mother wanted you to have.

  We spoke for nearly an hour, both of us crying at times, and made plans to see each other the following week. Before we hung up he said, My mother was the happiest I ever saw her beginning the day she met you and lasting until the end of her life. It should have been obvious to me you could never have harmed her. I recalled what Sargent had said. I said, Reinhardt, if our two positions had been reversed, we’d be having the mirror image of this same conversation.

  The neighbors’ baby was quiet that night, and I slept until the sun woke me the following day. I’d spent six years waiting for something good to happen, but believing I might jinx it if I made any plans. I no longer had an excuse. I took a cab to La Ventana to have one last look. Splotches of mold peeked out from cracks in the walls. The dial on the electric meter was still. The mirror that ran the length of the bar was tarnished and cracked, but the tables and chairs were mostly still in place, and I stared at the spot where I had first shaken Tieresse’s hand. A homeless woman walked past and asked if I could spare some change.

  I walked down the street to a boutique hotel and checked in for a week. I ordered a steak and a bottle of bourbon from room service and ate in bed while I watched a classic movie on a huge TV. That night, slightly drunk, I made a plan. I decided to say adios to Texas.

  * * *

  • • •

  But it took a while before I could leave. Four TV networks wanted me on their morning shows. They flew me to New York in first class and put me up in a three-room suite overlooking Central Park. I sat down for interviews with NPR and the BBC, and my story was on the front page of The New York Times. Between shows I went to a matinee at a theater near Times Square. It was dark and loud, and I kept turning around to see what was happening behind me. I left before it ended. From a vendor on the street, I bought a candy bar and four newspapers and carried them uptown to the park. I sat on a bench across from a man who looked homeless and watched him throw crumbs to overweight birds. Although the temperature was in the sixties, he was wearing a threadbare overcoat, a polyester scarf, and an oven mitt on his left hand. I handed him my unopened chocolate before I left. He looked at me, confused, glancing over my shoulder toward the pond. I think he said thank you in a language I didn’t understand.

  The day before I flew back to Texas, I had the beginning of an idea. At the time it was less an idea than an intuition, the way you can feel the extraction team coming around the corner before you see them. I was walking in Koreatown, looking for a place to eat lunch. At a bodega with wicker baskets holding carnations, roses, apples, and pears I bought a Nokia phone with one thousand minutes of talk time and two hundred texts. I paid for it with cash. I left it in its plastic wrapping and packed it in my suitcase for the flight back home.

  Once I was back from New York, my newsworthiness faded to dusk. Other than talking to Reinhardt almost every day, my conversations were with waiters and cashiers. I had more space and more freedom, but no longer purpose or plan. I called Olvido, thanked her again, and told her not to worry if she couldn’t find me for a while. She asked how long a while. I said, I’ll let you know. I bought a small RV, food staples, clothes, and a bike. After an early cup of coffee the next morning, I checked out of the hotel, drove past La Ventana one last time, and headed east to Louisiana, the fastest way out of Texas. I crossed the Sabine, pulled into a rest stop, made a roast beef sandwich, and studied the map. I realized what I wanted to do first, what I needed to do first. I gripped the wheel, took a deep breath, and said out loud, I’m coming, my love. I drove north though Louisiana, into Arkansas and across Missouri, then I made a left turn and headed west.

  It was after midnight when I crossed into Kansas. West of Kansas City, at a rest stop on Interstate 70, I pulled over for the night. I stretched my legs, had a sandwich, and drank a beer. Then I slept until nearly dawn.

  The next morning, as the sky lightened behind me, I arrived at the property where we had planned to grow old. The pasture showed signs of six years of neglect, but the house itself was a pristine time capsule. When I had asked Reinhardt about it, he said he’d been too sentimental to list it for sale. I told him I was glad to hear that, it was where I felt I belonged. I lived in the RV for two days, working outside to clear brush and trails until the electricity, water, and gas were turned back on, then I parked the camper beside the hangar and moved back inside.

  Reinhardt had had his mother cremated. I wish he hadn’t. Maybe this sounds morbid, but I wanted to hold her bones, to go to sleep one last time with them lying next to me in bed. I have a different relationship to death than I once did. I’d spent seven years knowing the last woman I intimately touched was someone not my wife. I wish I could have changed that.

  He sent me a box holding her ashes. I pushed my hand deep d
own into it. It was damp and cool, like rocky sand. I took a fistful of ashes and placed them in a clear crystal vase that still stood on the granite kitchen island beneath a patina of dust. I added a rose from a dozen Tieresse had dried and displayed. I put another handful in a small box from which I had emptied wooden matches. I took the remainder and scattered them where our garden had grown. I said, Tomorrow, my love, I will plant, and I wiped the ash from my hands.

  I crossed the overgrown field to the forest and meandered down to the river. A love seat we had made from an old chairlift and a tractor-tire swing still hung from a massive oak. I took off my boots and socks and sat at the river’s edge. The water was clear and cold. I saw a giant sturgeon and a school of rainbow trout. She never came to visit me in prison, not even once, but I felt her presence there. I smelled her too. I lay down and covered my eyes with my handkerchief. I pictured her the first time we had come here together, laughing, eating ribs with her hands, licking a dab of sauce from the corner of my lips. I heard her laugh again, and I smiled. I remembered our first night in Kansas, sitting outside, sharing a bottle of wine and staring up at the stars. I felt and I smelled and I tasted and I heard, and I smiled again, until I cried.

  The next morning I cooked breakfast at dawn then walked to the hangar where we kept her plane. I drained and changed the oil and checked the fuel. I spent more than an hour inspecting the engine and frame. To start it up, I used an external power source because the battery needed a charge. The sky was cloudless, and visibility was unlimited. I checked the wind sock and took off to the west, and I flew for an hour.

  To make my license current and knock off the rust, I enrolled in a three-day refresher course at a flying school in the southwest corner of the state, where nobody knew my name. I celebrated the three-week anniversary of my exoneration with a meat loaf sandwich and root beer float at a diner behind a gas station where they still filled your tank and checked your oil. The next morning, in the sky over Colby, heading east toward home, I discovered an important truth about myself. I’ve read interviews of exonerated men who spent years in prison before being released, and they always seem so serene and centered. They betray no hint of vengefulness or rage. They go on TV and say they harbor no malice toward anyone, and they mean it. They say, Mistakes are made, and they shrug. They say, Shit happens. They describe human tragedy with the passive voice. They say, There’s no point in being bitter, and they aren’t. They set up charitable foundations and go on the speaker circuit to urge reform of the criminal justice system. They write books and give the profits away. After years of being brutalized by a system that did not care about them at all, that denied their very dignity, they remain decent and good.