Almost Home (18 page)

Brian had a plan that was both simple and ingenious—I would stay with him, but we would tell no one. As long as his mother didn’t know I was living in the house, she could not object to it. I was impressed with his logic. After much pleading and cajoling, we convinced his brother to drive to Domini’s and pick up my suitcase, although he seemed none too fond of the idea of me living with him.

The weekend was a flurry of excitement because I was so happy to be back and around the people I knew. We talked about what I missed while gone, drove around Memphis like old times, got reacquainted with people I’d forgotten
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about, and generally enjoyed ourselves. I slept on Brian’s floor Saturday and Sunday night, then on Monday morning I went with him to school.

Attempting to enroll myself in school turned out to be one more thing on a long list of disappointments. The principal informed me that I needed a parent present to sign me up because I was not yet eighteen years old. I explained how this was impossible as both of my parents were now living on the other side of the country. There was nothing he could do and suggested that I consider getting a GED instead. I found the idea to be distasteful, but I could see that I was making no progress in pleading my case. Dejected, I returned to Brian’s house where I ordered a pizza and watched television for the rest of the day.

When Brian returned home from school, I told him what happened and we put our heads together to form a solution. In the end, the conclusion we came to was that we’d have to see if the school would allow his mother to enroll me. We never had a chance to test this plan and school would soon be the least of my worries. The very next day would find me back in jail.

XXIII

Tuesday morning Brain got up and followed his usual routine of preparing for school. I was jealous that he got to go and I did not. I loved going to school, I just didn’t like doing the work. I always thought school was more fun than a carnival.

Everyone I knew was going to be there, so the day was impossibly boring for me during school hours.

Brian left, and I settled in for another long day of watching television. When lunchtime came, I ordered another pizza. I knew I couldn’t eat the food in the house or Brian’s mom would become suspicious. I was pretty sure I could live on pizza until my money ran out, then I’d have to think of something else.

Twenty minutes after I placed my daily pizza order there was a knock at the front door. Thinking that my provisions had arrived I opened the door to discover Jerry Driver and one of his two cronies. Driver was trying his best to look official, and had a pair of mirrored sunglasses stretched across his rotund face. His partner was a skinny black man who one day met the wrong end of a shotgun after sleeping with another man’s wife.

“I’m here to arrest you,” Driver wheezed.

This was quite a shock to me, as the only crime I had committed was not being in school, and that was not for lack of trying. “For what?” I asked him.

He began stuttering as if I had caught him off guard with such a question. His jowls quivered as he managed to insult my intelligence with the crime of being under the age of eighteen and not living in the household with my parents. I seriously doubted his assertion that this was a criminal offense, but I once again had no choice in the matter. I was forced to wear chains and shackles as if I were a dangerous, hardened convict, while Driver ushered me back to the jail I had previously been in.

This time Driver’s questions became even more bizarre and outrageous. I was taken into a small office and chained to a chair as he and the black guy tried to entice me to read texts to them that were written in Latin. He showed me odd objects such as glass pyramids and silver rings with strange designs. He wanted me to explain the significance of these items to him. I had not the slightest clue 99

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what any of it meant, but he refused to accept that answer. When he was finished with this, I was left in a jail cell for a few more weeks.

I knew what to expect this time, but that didn’t make the ordeal any less horrendous. The endless days in a cage, the fights that erupt all around you, the ined-ible gruel, the humiliating orange clothes, and the way the jailers treat you like scum—it all comes together to create an incredible mental pressure that’s maddening. You feel defeated and hopeless. What made it even worse is that this time I knew I had done nothing wrong. I was being punished at the whim of an obsessive, delusional, power hungry liar. I just couldn’t figure out why this clown had become obsessed with me.

After my time in jail I was once again sent back to the mental hospital in Little Rock. Jerry Driver took me himself, as he had obtained a court order for my institutionalization. I was chained and shackled for the entire trip. When we arrived, the other patients were quite disturbed by the sight of me. They later confided that they had believed I must be a madman of the highest order to require all the restraints. You know you’ve hit rock bottom when mental patients question your sanity.

Luckily, I only had to spend two weeks at the hospital this time. During my first conversation with the doctor she said, “I have no idea why they brought you back here, because I see no reason for it.” It would have taken too long to explain Driver’s fixation, so I just shrugged my shoulders as if to say, “I don’t know why you’re asking me, I only live here.” I was kept two weeks just for the sake of following procedure, and then I was discharged. On my last day I said goodbye to all the other patients, some of whom I really liked. There’s always a huge emotional scene anytime someone is released.

I walked to the front desk and saw that I was being picked up by none other than Jack Echols. Jerry Driver had contacted him while I was hospitalized, told him where to pick me up, and said that I was his responsibility since he had legally adopted me. If I had a choice I would have checked myself back into the hospital. Unfortunately, I didn’t. I would now be living with Jack Echols again. I was caught in an endless cycle of hell.

XXIV

Living with Jack was worse now than ever before. I could tell he really didn’t want me there but felt like he had no choice in the matter. While I had been in Oregon he had been renting a small room that was barely bigger than a closet, so he had to find a new place once he found out I would be coming back. That place was a tiny trailer in Lakeshore. It was barely big enough to stay out of each other’s way.

Unsurprisingly, Jack didn’t have a single friend in the world. Every moment that he wasn’t at work was spent in a chair in front of the television. Other than yelling at me, the only topics of conversation he employed were about how my sister had ruined his life by telling social services that he had molested her, or how wrong my mother had treated him by filing for a divorce. He was sickening to me, and I hated the very sight of him in his sweat stained shirts.

He went to bed at eight PM every night, which meant that I was forced to do the same. After eight o’clock I was not allowed to turn on a light because he said it kept him awake, so there was no reading. I couldn’t watch T.V. or listen to the radio—not even a walkman. He claimed that he could hear it playing in his room even with the headphones clasped firmly to my ears. I couldn’t go out after six o’clock because he would have to sit up and let me in. When I asked why he didn’t just give me a key, he said because he wouldn’t be able to fasten the chain lock, and I’d wake him up coming in. He had three locks on the door and still felt the need to prop a chair against it every night so that no one could break in.

The only thing a thief could have taken was the jar of pennies next to Jack’s bed or the huge picture of Jesus hanging in the living room. Only a true crackhead would break into that place.

Jack Echols is always angry. Sometimes it’s at a simmer, other times he erupts into a screaming fit, but there’s always anger. I couldn’t tiptoe around him or stay invisible in such a tiny place, so his rage was always directed at me. He did nothing but sit in his chair stewing and brewing, filling the rooms with misery and hatred. It was unbearable. Brian had moved to Missouri the day after I got out of the hospital, so my only refuge was Jason’s house. I slept there as much as possible.

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Jerry Driver had also told Jack that he wanted me to check into his office once a week for reasons unknown. The first day of every week I made the five-mile trek to Driver’s office where he and his two side kicks (Jones and Murry) questioned me. Their approach no longer seemed friendly. They had switched tactics and become downright antagonistic. Most often Driver and I were alone, but if one of the two others were there they’d appear to be deep in thought while Driver asked one question after another about Satanic activity.

During the winter months and rainy days, Jack didn’t work nearly as much, so he took me to Driver’s office. As long as Jack was present, Driver refrained from his usual insanity. His beady eyes gleamed and his whiskers twitched as he stared at me across the desk, but he managed to restrain himself. After Jack came with me every week for over a month Driver must have grown exasperated thinking he’d never again be able to see me alone. Admitting defeat, he said I no longer had to check in.

While Jason and Domini were in school, I had nothing else to do but read. I educated myself since I couldn’t go to school. I spent most of every day in the West Memphis Public Library, devouring book after book. I loved that library.

There’s something a little creepy about all that knowledge housed in one place. It gives the books a slightly sinister aspect.

I eventually took my old principal’s advice and got my GED. I was hoping I’d have to attend classes or something, but no such luck. I scored so high on the pre-test that I was immediately given the real thing and passed with flying colors.

Being that I was still on the antidepressants given to me during my first visit to the hospital, I had to make periodic visits to a local mental health center. This is where a doctor would refill my prescription. They never bothered to check and see if I actually needed them, I’d just be handed a prescription like it was a hall pass.

I thought my life was pretty dull, but Jerry Driver must have believed otherwise. One day Jason and I were sitting in Jack’s trailer watching television while he was at work. I answered a knock at the door to discover one of the local Lakeshore youths named Bo. He was sweating and breathless as he came in and helped himself to a soda before telling me that Driver was around the corner at the Lakeshore store asking questions about me. “He asked me which street you lived on and I said I didn’t know,” Bo informed me without a trace of irony in his voice.

Driver had also told everyone at the store to stay away from me because sooner or later I was “going down,” and anyone with me would meet the same fate.

Upon hearing this news Jason looked at me with an aggravated expression on his face and said, “What the fuck are we doing? We never do anything, but this
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freak is telling everyone we’re running wild. Doesn’t he have any real crimes to solve?” Apparently not.

The last time I saw Driver before my trial was the night of the high school homecoming football game. Jason and I went to it because there was absolutely nothing else to do. We had to walk home after it was over, which is when we were intercepted by my old friend Jerry Driver. He was riding up and down the streets of Lakeshore, probably looking for me. He asked where we were going, what we were doing, etc. When he finished the interrogation we continued on our way to Jason’s trailer where we passed the night watching horror movies. I forgot all about this incident until I was on trial for murder and Driver testified.

He told a great many lies, some of which were that Jesse Misskelley was walking with us, that we were all three carrying staves and dressed in Satanic regalia, and that he believed we were returning from some sort of devil worshipping orgy.

The jury ate it up like candy and loved every sordid detail. A story straight from the tabloids, right next to “Bigfoot Sighted!” or “Bat Boy Born in Cave!” This was evidence.

The misery of living with Jack reached a fevered pitch when I also had to work with him. He decided that I should have a job and that I was incapable of finding one for myself. The truth is that it’s almost impossible to convince someone to hire you when you don’t have a car or anyone willing to drive you. I had tried everywhere. Jack convinced his boss to hire me to work alongside him doing roof construction.

The job was hard, boring, and dangerous, but the worst part was that I never had a second in which I was out of Jack Echols’ presence. We got up at sunrise and didn’t get home until nightfall. The only thing I could do was come home, eat supper, go to bed and rest for the next day. I was chained to him day and night, there wasn’t one moment when I was free of him. This went on for months. I began to hate my life and could easily see myself trapped forever. Jack became more of a bastard by the day, and it wasn’t just me that noticed it. The people we worked with tried to be friendly to him and were met with hatefulness.

I grew more and more desperate to escape his presence. I wracked my brain attempting to come up with an idea that would allow me to break free. Finally I discovered the answer, which Jerry Driver himself had handed to me. He had insisted that I be confined to a mental institution on two separate occasions, and now I took advantage of it.

I went to the Social Security office and applied for disability benefits. They looked over my application, which detailed my stays in the hospital and declared me mentally disabled. I was entitled to a check every month. I wasn’t allowed to
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work and draw the check at the same time, so this was my escape from working with Jack. The chain was broken. When I told Jason about it he laughingly said I was receiving “crazy checks.” The name stuck, and that’s what we came to commonly refer to my income as. “Have you gotten your crazy check yet?” Yes, indeed.