Almost Home (17 page)

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that I realized I was stronger than my father, that I had survived a life I knew he would have crumbled beneath the weight of. I had survived without him, and he was doing me no great favor by being back in my life now. I was disgusted by his childishness.

When I finally saw a doctor he admitted me to the hospital and I was given a room. This place was nothing like the hospital in Little Rock, it was more like an asylum. There were no group therapy sessions, no interaction with staff, no scheduled routines, no anything. The patients spent all their time wandering the hallways, looking out the windows at the city below, or whispering among themselves. I didn’t understand the point of being there.

My parents came to see me the next day, and my mother behaved in her typical fashion—as if all was now forgiven and we’d go back to being friends. Not this time. I was fed up with her. I told her that if she didn’t check me out of this place immediately, then I never wanted to see her again. Her only response was,

“If that’s what you want,” and they left. It was too much to ask that they stay away, and they returned once again the next day.

I was taken into an office to see a doctor, and my parents were sitting on a couch inside. I was in no mood to make friends, and behaved quite boorishly.

The doctor finally asked me, “What is it you want?” Perhaps this is a question only a medical doctor has the intelligence to ask, because my mother and father certainly never did so. I no longer trusted my parents and could see only one option—“I want to go home.” I didn’t mean “home” as in an apartment in Oregon. When I said home I meant Arkansas. I didn’t believe there was a chance in hell of it happening, so I was stunned when my parents agreed to it. Arrangements were made for me to be discharged the next morning, and I would take a bus back down south.

There wasn’t much sleep for me that night. I went to bed but mostly just tossed and turned. I kept trying to form a plan of what I would do once I got to Arkansas, but couldn’t keep my mind on it. I didn’t even have a place to go once II got there, but I didn’t care. I knew it would all come together in time. All that mattered now is that I would soon be back home. The month I’d been gone seemed like years.

At daybreak I showered, dressed, and ate breakfast. A security guard lead me downstairs and out the front door, where I saw my mother and father standing on a sidewalk next to a cab. My suitcase was sitting at their feet. My father handed me a bus ticket and the money left over from my last paycheck. I hugged him goodbye, but his body was stiff and rigid, as if he was reluctant to touch me.

He didn’t say much. Same with my mother. I put my suitcase in the cab and
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climbed aboard for the trip to the bus station. I was nervous, I was excited, and I was on my own at the age of seventeen.

I’d never been on a bus before, so the experience was a little surreal. I had only been waiting in the station about fifteen minutes when the intercom announced that everyone should board now. My suitcase was placed in a storage compart-ment and I took an anonymous seat in the middle of a row.

As I watched the bus rapidly fill I noticed the passengers seemed to all have quite a bit in common. They were all unshaven and appeared to be in need of a bath, most were ill-tempered and barked out at anyone who got too close to them. Somehow all the dregs of society had found their way onto a single bus. It was the smelly, grouchy greyhound from hell.

I put on my most fierce facial expression in hopes of scaring away anyone who may be tempted to sit next to me. It seemed to work. No one had the inclination to sit next to a scowling creature with unbrushed hair and dressed in black leather.

The entire magickal voyage lasted for five enchanting days. We stopped mostly at gas stations and convenience stores for people to buy supplies, then we were be off again. I survived on a steady diet of chips and soda, with an occasional sandwich. Sometimes we stopped at a McDonald’s for breakfast, but I never went in. I stuck close to the bus in a constant state of anxiety that it would leave without me.

On the second or third day I was reluctantly pulled into a conversation with two other gentlemen who had come aboard at the last stop. One guy was young, about nineteen or twenty years old, the other guy looked to be about fifty, but it was difficult to tell because of the layers of fat and road dirt. The young guy had long black hair and was wearing a leather jacket with a picture of Madonna air-brushed on the back. He spoke in a soft, quiet voice and chain-smoked clove cigarettes every time the bus made a stop. The old guy had a loud, obnoxious voice, greasy, grey hair, and was dressed in cut off sweat pants and a filthy teal colored shirt. He smoked cigarettes he rolled himself, and his hands were stained yellow from the nicotine. His fingers reminded me of some animal’s horns. Being that I had nothing else to do, I found myself sitting with them whenever we had a layover. The young guy and I sat on the ground in what kids call “indian style,” but the old man’s legs were too fat for such maneuvering—he sprawled out, panting from the effort. He was a braggart who gave speeches on every topic under the
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sun, and you couldn’t find anything that this guy didn’t claim to know something about. There was nothing else of interest happening, so I studied him as if he were an obese ant farm. He was absolutely revolting, but you couldn’t quit watching him.

They both set out to convince me that I should join them, working at a carnival that traveled from state to state. They spoke nonstop about the glories and riches I could acquire if I chose to undertake this noble profession. I thanked them, but declined the offer on the grounds that I was holding out for a more lucrative deal in the porn industry. Somewhere between Oregon and Missouri they departed the scene, and I continued my journey alone.

The longest layover was in St. Louis, where I spent six hours. I left the bus station to go exploring and stumbled upon an extraordinary number of dubious individuals. An old black man that looked like a fugitive from the intensive care unit tried to sell me drugs before I was more than ten feet away from the station.

This was a neighborhood in which one definitely didn’t want to be caught after dark, and since night was rapidly approaching I soon beat a hasty retreat back to the station. I spent the remainder of the time talking to a guy from Germany who had come to the U.S. in search of his father.

We crossed the Arkansas state line somewhere between two and three AM, but I still had trouble believing I was there. A part of me was certain the place no longer existed—that it had disappeared once I left. I looked out the window into the darkness beyond and kept thinking,
I’m back, I’m back, I’m back
—projecting it out into the night. It was Saturday morning, and everyone else on the bus was asleep. I couldn’t sit still. Every landmark I recognized pushed me to a new level of excitement. When we passed the cemetery where my grandfather was buried it took all my self-control not to tell the bus driver, “I need off
now
! Let me out
here
!”

We pulled into the bus station just as the sun was rising. No one else stirred; I was the only one getting off. Getting off the bus, I retrieved my suitcase and looked around. Everything I could see looked exactly the same as when I left.

XXII

I was stopped by a cop less than ten minutes after getting off the bus. There was no one to pick me up, so I was going to have to walk while carrying my luggage.

The closest person I knew was Domini, and she lived about three miles away. I thought that perhaps I could leave my suitcase there while searching for a place to stay, so that’s where I started off to.

As I crossed the street from the bus station a cop car pulled around the corner.

I was greeted with flashing blue lights and a blaring siren. I have no idea what I did to “arouse his suspicion,” but he pulled up next to me and rolled down the window. Behind the wheel was an insolent slob with a stomach so huge he could barely squeeze into the front seat. With a voice somewhere between a hare-lipped drone and an obnoxious whine, he began to ask, “What’s your name? Where are you going? Why are you dressed like that?”

I had broken no laws and was doing nothing wrong. He was harassing me simply because he could. The only reason he eventually left me alone was because he got a call on his radio. If not for that, there’s no telling where the situation would have went.

Walking three miles with a large, heavy suitcase took forever. I had to stop every so often to rub my hands, which were quickly developing blisters. This short jaunt took an eternity, and the day was rapidly growing hot. Summers in Arkansas are brutal, and this morning was going to be a fine example. When I reached the apartment complex where Domini lived I was exhausted and covered in sweat.

I had an odd sensation as I made my way between the buildings. It was a complex mixture of thoughts and feelings, one of which was amazement (and perhaps pleasure) at how nothing had changed. The only difference was the way I now saw everything. When I had come here to see Domini in the past, I was always struck by how different this place was from Lakeshore. Then again, Lakeshore is different from every other place. I was sleep deprived and hungry, and I couldn’t decide which was more dreamlike—the time I’d spent in Oregon or being back here now.

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My feelings about West Memphis and Arkansas in general have always been something of a paradox. The people here have often been cruel and hateful towards me, and I’ve been so lonely that I thought the envy would kill me. I didn’t fit into the social scenes, and there aren’t many opportunities to be had here, but it’s been my home. The place itself is alive with a kind of magick that can cause my heart to feel like it’s bursting. There is a scent in the air I can’t describe. I wish everyone who reads this could feel it just once. You would remember it forever.

When I stepped in front of Domini’s apartment she was on the second floor looking out an open window. She glanced down and saw me, looked shocked for a second, then disappeared back into her room. A few seconds later the front door came open and Domini ran out. All she said was, “Hi” when she hugged me. She felt familiar to me in her own way, but there was no power or passion to it like there was with Deanna.

The word I associate with Domini is just “pleasant.” Hugging Domini is pleasant. I told her I was back for good and asked if I could leave my luggage there until I figured out what I was going to do with it. She helped me get it inside and out of the way, then said she’d come with me to Lakeshore. My next step was to let Jason know that I was back.

As Domini and I walked the mile or so to Lakeshore, I told her all about my having been sent to the hospital, the return of my father, and the great Oregon adventure. She was explaining that she would let me stay with her if it wasn’t for her aunt and uncle’s objections when a cop stopped me for the second time that day. It wasn’t even lunch yet. He pulled up next to us, got out of his car, and struck a pose like some sort of obese superhero. This one asked all the same questions the first one did, and I had to go through the same routine. The most obnoxious thing was the way he acted as if he was entitled to know my business.

As a child, I was taught in school that living in America automatically entitles you to certain freedoms, yet the older I’ve gotten the more I’ve come to know the harsh reality. These cops could stop me anytime and anywhere to make demands of me that I had no choice but to comply with. Even though I was doing nothing wrong, I was forced to tell them where I’m going, where I’m from, and any other personal information they demand of me, all because they don’t like the way I look. The only freedom I had was to obey or go to jail. They never taught me that in school.

When this ass clown finally released us, we continued on to Lakeshore. I hadn’t realized how much I’d missed that dilapidated hellhole until I saw it again.

That trailer park was a magickal place. I still miss it now, even though the Lake-Damien Echols

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shore I knew is gone. The scummy green water and the dead fish smell in the air said “home” to me like nothing else.

As Jason’s trailer came into view, I wanted to break into a run. I knew he’d still be sleeping, so I slapped the window next to where his head would be. He peeked out the window looking irritated and half asleep, then realized who it was and quickly ran to open the front door. He was highly excited and ushered us inside where he was the only one home. Once we were all seated, I had to explain again where I’d been and what had happened. I hadn’t seen Jason since he’d left Deanna and I in the abandoned trailer that afternoon, so the whole thing had been a mystery to him.

He told us how he’d knocked on my door one day to discover a whole different family inside, and none of them had ever even heard of me. It was as if I had disappeared from the face of the earth without a trace, and he was certain he’d never see me again. When I told him about Oregon he just shook his head and said, “I would have never come back.” I’d have said the same thing myself before I had the experience.

We discussed the fact that I didn’t know for certain where I was going to stay yet, and agreed how great it would be if I could stay with him. We both knew his mother would never agree to it, but later that day he tried to convince her anyway. As we expected, the idea was met with much hostility.

My only real option was Brain. I made the trip to his house accompanied by both Jason and Domini. He started laughing the moment he opened the door and saw who it was. We all sat on the patio, and I explained for the third and final time where I’d been. Brain was more amazed than I expected him to be, which resulted from the fact that he thought I had still been around and had simply dropped out of sight for a while. He found the entire story to be very amusing and laughed as if my misfortunes were the epitome of stupidity and hilarity. My life had taken on the quality of an episode of
The Three Stooges
in his eyes. He asked questions when he wanted me to clarify certain points, all the while staring at me like he couldn’t believe what he was hearing.