Almost Home (2 page)

Allow him to become yours.

Freedom, justice and love will prevail.

Margaret Cho

May, 2004

Preface

The purpose of an introduction is to take two people who have never met, and formally induce a culturally acceptable greeting between them. Maybe we do this so that the two people can then be acquainted, and possibly become friends with one another thus connecting the dots in our circle of friends, or maybe we do it because we feel like the two people we’re introducing to each other might learn something valuable from their new acquaintance. Learning something valuable is usually good, and by introducing you to this book by my friend Damien Echols, I’m satisfied that you’ll agree with me about the value of it.

The life story in this book isn’t your average autobiography; in many ways it’s
more
average than the average autobiography. Damien hasn’t fought in any wars or discovered any important scientific principles. He hasn’t traveled much, and he’s never been a millionaire or a movie star. He hasn’t lived a life full of adventure or conquest, but the drama of his life is an important one to read and know about, because Damien represents a lot of people living here in the Land of the Free. You know people like him.

Growing up, he didn’t have much use for conformity. He was never one to take on the appearance, beliefs, likes or dislikes of his peers in that way that so many teenagers are driven to. “Fitting In” never held much water for him. He grew up with the courage to be himself, and trust me, in a violent, judgmental, and terri-torial place like an American High School, it takes courage to even carry around a book that nobody else has. That’s nothing new or ground-breaking, though.

Simply being an outcast doesn’t make much of a story all by itself. There are lots of kids out there who dress different, read books that they discovered on their own, or think outside the militantly rigid and violently maintained borders of whatever teenager society they happen to find themselves a citizen of.

The fact that there’s lots of outcasts makes Damien’s story even more important and disturbing. If he was not on death row in an Arkansas prison, his story might not be all that different from many other outcast’s. Damien, however, is a victim of a type of panic that’s been a part of human nature since we’ve been using lan-x

Damien Echols

xi

guage. This sometimes hysterically defended belief that “different is bad” goes way back, and clearly it’s still an idea that rules the world.

The state of Arkansas wants very badly to execute Damien, but even a cursory look at his case tells the rational among us that he, along with Jason Baldwin and Jessie Misskelley, are innocent of the crime they’ve been locked up for. The three of them have come to be known as The West Memphis Three, and their cause has been embraced by people all over the world who see it for what it is—an example of how ordinary people can become victims of a system that is supposed to protect and serve us.

The fact that Damien is on death row puts a big red circle around his autobiography. Is it a warning? Is he telling us what not to do to avoid his unfair fate? I can tell you by way of introduction that the young man you are about to meet is certainly a standout among average outcasts. He’s everyone and no one at the same time; a part of our world, but locked away from it and us in a nine by twelve cell.

Damien is a very disciplined man, impressive in his ability to turn his situation around and create something positive and productive from it. He reads constantly, and has carefully and methodically transformed himself into a writer.

This book is poignant and disturbing, full of focused observations and insight that, in some ways, explain why he’s in that cell.

There are some people who think people like Damien are evil simply because they’re not easy to define or categorize. Damien lived proudly outside of their boundaries, so when something horrible happened in their town, they looked beyond what they understood and felt comfortable with and saw Damien standing there. They couldn’t look deeper because they couldn’t see any deeper.

They’d been conditioned by the “different is bad” rule.

Damien has been my friend since the moment I realized what had happened to him. Like a lot of people, I see a little of myself in him. I grew up hearing “be yourself” and learning that individuality was important. My favorite people have always been distinctly individualistic, and Damien is one of them. Those of us who know him have learned a lot about perseverance and strength in the face of unfairness. Damien, Jason and Jessie haven’t allowed the Arkansas Department of Corrections to turn them into criminals or even convicts. They all seem to
Damien Echols

xii

exist outside of the prison system they’ve been trapped in for over a decade, and they’ve wisely used their experience to make themselves better and stronger.

Damien’s autobiography shows us a young man who still doesn’t conform, even in the most rigidly conformist environment imaginable. He’s still the same person he was before he was arrested, just a decade older and perhaps more informed about the roots of unfairness and injustice. This book is his from start to finish.

Nobody is editing him or putting words into his mouth. No newscaster is spinning rumors into a sordid tale to tease you into staying though the commercials, and nobody is interpreting or claiming to know what he “really means” by whatever he’s saying. This book is sad and funny, heartbreaking and honest, but it isn’t a whiny “look what they’ve done to me” tirade against the forces that put him where he is.

Damien isn’t a complainer. He isn’t a murderer. He isn’t a symbol or a meta-phor. He’s not a martyr or a saint. He’s precisely and exactly Damien Echols.

—Burk Sauls, August, 2004

Introduction

Writing down your life’s experiences can be very rewarding. I find that when I start telling someone a story it isn’t long before their eyes glaze over and they begin thinking about earwigs and whirling dervishes. The whole world has ADD, and no one has the time to listen to a story that lasts longer than thirty seconds.

Ah, but once you begin compiling those stories into a book, people become completely absorbed. Their attention is riveted to the page. I thrive on that.

Some of the stories in this book are things I’ve wanted to tell someone for years, but I was never given the chance or excuse to do so. When I first began communicating with Margaret Cho, my excuse was born. Without her, this book would have never happened. Every single day, I hopped out of bed, grabbed my pen, and started writing. I didn’t stop until lights out every night. Some days, after writing for eighteen hours straight, my fingers refused to grip the pen and my wrist throbbed in agony. Still, I couldn’t stop. The story continued to spill out of me and I could not rest until I captured the words on paper. This book is in reality one long letter to Margaret. I was driven to get it all out.

This book also serves as an exorcism of sorts for me. My life abruptly changed course in 1993. The world I knew came to an end through no fault of my own.

Everyone and everything I knew became a ghost that haunted the inside of my head. With this book I laid my past to rest. Now I feel like I’m free to move on and begin a new chapter. All my friends and lovers dissolved like a spoonful of sugar in a glass of water.

Ever since the age of fourteen I’ve wanted to write a book, but was always uncertain about what to write. So, I wrote about what I knew. What will make me happy is if you not only read this book, but feel it. I want you to walk through these pages next to me. Hurt when I hurt, laugh when I laugh, and love when I love. This is an invitation to walk a mile in my shoes. That’s what all good stories do, in my opinion.

xiii

Damien Echols

xiv

What are you waiting for? Take my hand, and we’ll be off.

Damien Echols

6–28–04

10:19 pm

I

My name is Damien Echols, although it wasn’t always so. At birth I was different in both name and essence. On December 11, 1974, when I came into the world, I was given the name Michael Hutchison at the insistence of my father. My mother had a different name in mind, but my father would hear none of it.

The hospital I was born in still stands in the small rundown town of West Memphis, Arkansas. It’s the same hospital my grandmother died in twenty years later. As a child I was jealous of my sister who had the privilege of being born two years later across the bridge in Memphis, Tennessee. In my youth Memphis always felt like home to me. When we crossed the bridge into Tennessee I had the sensation of being where I belonged, and thought it only fair that I should have been the one born there. After all, my sister didn’t even care where she was born.

My mother and grandmother were both fascinated by the fact that when the doctor cleared my mother to go home, I was placed in a Christmas stocking.

They kept the stocking for many years, and I had to hear the story often. I found out later that hospitals all over the country do the same thing for every baby born in the month of December, but this fact seemed to be lost on my mother, and it marked the beginning of a lifetime of denial. After saving the stocking as if it were a valuable family heirloom for seventeen years, it was unceremoniously left behind in a move that was less than well-planned.

Other than the stocking, I had only one memento saved from childhood—a pillow. My grandmother gave it to me the day I left the hospital, and I slept on it until I was about seventeen years old, when it was left behind in the same ill-fated move. I could never sleep without that pillow as a child; it was my security blanket. By the end it was nothing more than a ball of stuffing housed in a pillowcase that was rapidly disintegrating.

I was born in the winter and was a child of the winter. I was only truly happy when the days were short, the nights were long, and my teeth were chattering. I love the winter. Every year I long for it, look forward to it, even though I always feel as if it’s turning me inside out. The beauty and loneliness of it hurts my heart and carries with it all the memories of every winter before. Even now, after hav-1

Damien Echols

2

ing been locked in a cell for ten years, at the coming of winter I can still close my eyes and feel myself walking the streets as everyone else lies in bed asleep. I remember how the ice sounded as it cracked in the trees every time the wind blew. Sometimes I was so cold that I wanted to cry, but still did not want to go indoors and miss the magick of it. The air could be so cold that it scoured my throat with each breath, but it was beautiful. There’s a tremendous amount of emotional pain that comes with the magick and beauty of winter, but I still mourn when the season ends, like I’m losing my best friend.

The first true memories I have of my life are of being with my grandmother.

We lived in a small mobile home trailer in Senatobia, Mississippi. I remember the purple and white trailer sitting on top of a hill covered with pine trees. We had two large black dogs named Smokey and Bear, which we had raised from puppies. One of my earliest memories was of hearing the dogs barking and lunging against their chains like madmen as my grandmother stood in the backyard with a pistol, shooting at a poisonous snake. She didn’t stop shooting, even as the snake slithered it’s way under the huge propane tank in the backyard. Only in hindsight, years later, did I realize she would have blown us all straight to hell if she would have hit the tank. At the time I was so young that I viewed the entire scene with nothing but extreme curiosity. It was the first time I had ever seen a snake, and it was combined with the additional spectacle of my grandmother charging out the back door, blazing away like a gunslinger.

My grandmother worked as a cashier at a truck stop, so during the day I had to stay at a day care center. I can only remember it because it was horrific. I remember being dropped off so early in the morning that it was still dark, and led to a room in which other children were sleeping on cots. I was given a cot and told that I should take a nap until “Captain Kangaroo” (my favorite television show) came on. The problem was that I could not, under any circumstances, go to sleep without my pillow/security blanket. The very thought hurt me, filled me with an overwhelming sense of cold dread, and I felt abandoned and alone. I began to scream and cry at the top of my lungs, tears running down my face. It awakened and frightened every other child in the dark room, so that within a few seconds, everyone was crying and screaming while frantic day care workers ran from cot to cot in an attempt to find out what was wrong. By the time they got everyone quiet and dried all the tears it was time for Captain Kangaroo and I was quickly absorbed into the epic saga of Mr. Green Jeans and a puppet moose who lived life in perpetual fear of being pelted with a storm of ping-pong balls. After the first day, my grandmother never forgot to send my pillow with me.

Damien Echols

3

She also brought me small surprises home from work, one of which was a plastic fireman’s hat that became my most prized possession. All of the boys and most of the girls in the day care center had them, so everyone’s name had to be written inside their hat with a black marker in order to prevent confusion. Mine said

“Michael H.” Never Mike, always Michael. I don’t believe that anyone ever called me Mike, although every other child named Michael was always Mike. I was frequently asked after my name was changed if it was odd having grown accustomed to being called by a different name. The answer is no, and the reason is because I was never Michael Hutchison. That was someone else, someone that ceased to exist long ago. I have always been Damien Echols. At first, every great once in a while, someone who wanted to pretend they knew me better than they truly did would try to address me otherwise. I usually look upon them with contempt.

The only other memory I have of that time is of my mother and father coming for a visit. My sister was just an infant, and I can still see my mother sitting in the dark living room holding her, rocking her to sleep. I went outside and sat on what my grandmother called a “Big wheel.” It’s like a tough plastic tricycle, only laid back like a chopper and much cooler. My legs were too short to reach the pedals, so I just sat there. Suddenly my father came around the corner and stopped when he saw me. I should have known to run when I saw the demented gleam in his eyes.