Burn Down the Ground (38 page)

My blood ran cold. It was jarring to learn that my mother could suspect Dad of such a thing. “How could you
not
want to know?”

“I was afraid, Kambri. He had hurt me and threatened me too
many times, that he would cut me up all over my face, body, and crotch so that no man would want me.”

My father had Mom so intimidated that she didn’t voice her suspicions and feared for her own life. I wondered aloud if that was why she never took my claims of abuse at David’s hands seriously; it was child’s play compared to what she was dealing with.

“I used to complain to you that David was beating me up but you never did anything. He sat on top of me and tormented me, dangling long strings of spit and thumping my forehead or sternum with his index finger.”

“Hmm, is that so?” Mom seemed intrigued. “Interesting …”

“What?
Interesting?
What’s interesting?”

“That’s what your daddy would do to me. If I confronted him about driving home drunk late at night, then he’d fight with me till dawn. I remember having a lot of fights in our master bathroom because I didn’t want you kids to know what was going on, but then I guess I forgot that you both can hear.

“He would grab and push me to let me know that I can’t tell him what to do. Once I fell backwards in the tub. That could have killed me. I knew he would never hurt me in front of you kids, so when he would get angry and start to act out, I ran to David’s bedroom. Your dad would sit on top of my chest and interrogate me for hours, calling me names, accusing me of fucking this guy or that, and blowing cigarette smoke in my face.”

The revelation was potent. I hadn’t done anything to make David turn on me. David had just been treating me the way Dad did Mom. My heart ached for my brother witnessing what he had and not knowing how to help.

I couldn’t stop wondering about the barmaid. I speculated that Mom may have been so consumed by her abusive relationship that she was being histrionic. It’s one thing to be in love with a man prone to domestic violence. It’s entirely another to suspect him of murder. But the story nagged at me. Everything else my mother had shared with me corresponded with my memories. Using the little information I had, I searched online for old articles using keywords from Mom’s story. I didn’t expect to find anything. But my first query yielded an article from the
Houston Chronicle
detailing a crime almost exactly how my mother described it. Only now, I had a name.

The murder was in the summer of 1985, just when our lives on Boars Head were falling apart. Jerry Michael Ward had been suspected but committed suicide before he could be questioned. I asked a friend who is a police officer in Texas to investigate. He made a call to the Montgomery County Sheriff’s Office, which revealed that my father had also been a person of interest.

After his arrest for the attack on Helen, Dad was required to submit a DNA sample. During a routine check of cold cases, my father was cleared of Hackett’s murder. It was a relief to know he was absolved for that crime, but it was no comfort to know that more than one person believed he was capable of it.

The mystery was finally unfolding. Mom was helping me
piece together the clues I had been too young to understand. She had been a good wife and had protected me from ever seeing this side of my father, a jack-in-the-box crouched and waiting for a turn of the crank to set him off.

Her only mistake was that she was afraid to leave. The one time she tried—during the move from Grove Street to our apartment on Weyland Drive—Dad had caught her in the act. He discovered her new address and pressured her into giving him one more chance. She needed help and didn’t know how to ask for it. Even if she did, then what? The whole Deaf community would know her dirty laundry. She was too proud for that. Or worse, Dad wouldn’t be punished and his fury would be fueled by Mom’s disloyalty and she would have no protection.

Dad hadn’t just woken up one day and turned into a criminal. Society, our family, and the criminal justice system had colluded to give Dad the keys to a warship. His life hadn’t spiraled out of control; it was on a steady downhill course from day one.

Just like in Oz, the curtain was pulled back. The Wizard was a fraud.

After Mom left Dad, many of her friends said how free and relaxed she looked. “Before, I always had to be careful who I talked to. I can’t talk to him, or him, or him, and if a guy approaches me just for friendly talk, I need to have an excuse to move away or your dad might think I was flirting.

“Your dad would show up at the helicopter company I worked for in Fort Worth to check on me. One time, after you and I got evicted and were living in the townhouse apartments, I was driving home from work when I saw his car following me. I thought,
‘Oh no! I can’t let him know where Kambri and I have moved to!’ So I sped up, but he sped up and was not going to stop. I now think about how reckless this act was, but I was speeding over forty miles an hour in a residential area. Think what could have happened? I could have hit and killed someone, a kid playing in the street, someone’s beloved pet. I was crazy with fear.

“One time, out of the blue, your daddy showed up at my place of work. Several people lingered close by just in case. He said he didn’t mean to be so mean and hurtful to me. He was there to say he was sorry.”

This came as a great surprise to me. Dad has always denied any responsibility for anything. Learning that at one point he felt compelled to make amends with Mom gave me hope. My father is capable of admitting his wrongs and healing rifts. This awareness also irritated me. Dad has never once told
me
he was sorry.

“Really? He told you he was sorry?”

“Uh-huh, and he returned my jewelry he stole the night he slashed my clothes and took the gun your uncle Doug gave me. Remember the jade ring I told you I found in a woman’s coat? I still have it. Now it’s yours! A keepsake of your daddy’s cheatin’!”

A floozy’s trinket and a sliver of the truth aren’t much of an inheritance, but I’ll take it.

“T
hirty minutes,” a guard mouths to Dad while tapping his watch. Dad’s demeanor shifts
.

“I need you to help me write a letter for an appeal. I’m tired of staying in prison so long. I should be walking free because of the lack of evidence in my case.”

Since his incarceration, Dad declares his innocence in every letter to me. Now that we’re face-to-face, he wants to tell me his side of the story
.

He launches into a dramatic reenactment of events the night Helen was nearly killed. “She was mad because we didn’t have money for more beer. She was already drunk and wanted to pick a fight with me.”

His signs are big; his hands strike each other with force. The smacks are loud enough to cause his neighboring inmates to shoot us worried glances
.

“She grabbed my knife, held it up to her neck, and said she would kill herself. I tried to get the knife away from her but it was too late: She cut her own throat. I grabbed her hand with the knife and when we struggled she got stabbed a few times
.

“I’m still angry at the cops for spraying me and holding pistols to my forehead. Dammit. I wish they shot and killed me so you could sue them.”

I had wished him dead, too. I hear Greg’s words echo, “He’s lucky he’s got you.” Yeah, some luck Dad has
.

His story, while swallowed up as the truth by a prisoner like his child-molesting friend Larry, doesn’t ring true with me. In addition to
all that Mom told me about Dad’s criminal past, I ordered the trial transcript, retrieved police reports, and read written statements from witnesses to Helen’s attack, ranging from a fourteen-year-old neighbor to the arresting officers
.

Everyone’s accounts support the devastating picture. My father’s version was full of lies. It only took the jury one hour to decide Dad was guilty, and I’ve never once questioned their decision. But Dad is grasping for the hope that I believe him; that I won’t leave him to die alone in jail. Rather than ask him why the facts are against him, I just nod along as Dad signs. He interprets this as support, which seems to spur him on. His anger and paranoia kick into overdrive. “Helen planned this. She wanted me to go to jail so she could take my things.”

Helen had not wanted Dad to go to jail. Her desire to protect him had almost gotten her killed. Mom had acted the exact same way. And both of them defended him on the stand
.

“He was the most loving man I’ve ever been around,” Helen testified when asked how Dad behaved when he wasn’t drinking. My father insisted he didn’t have a drinking problem or see a need to seek counseling for the addiction. His public defender noted, however, that every time Dad got into trouble, alcohol was a factor. I thought of Mom’s testimony and, even after all he had done to her, how she tried to lessen the blow by talking about what a good father and provider Dad had been
.

As if he can read my mind, Dad says, “Your mother lied on the stand about the 1988 case. See, I was mad that she let Rob stay at the apartment and left you alone with him. I never had a knife at her throat. I just punched holes in the wall, only five. I don’t know why your mama lied. Maybe she wants to see me in jail.”

You’re forgetting one thing, Dad: I was there.

We can sort the details out later. The one thing we have now is time
.

Dad must serve ten years of his twenty-year sentence before he is eligible for parole—something he has little chance of getting with his record of fighting and unwillingness to accept responsibility
.

“Twenty years? Why me? Why me? Why me?” He shakes his head slowly in disbelief. His chin wrinkles and his pursed lips turn downward. “I will tie sheets around my neck and hang myself,” he signs with defiance
.

“No,” I scoff. I scan his face for a sign that he won’t do it
.

He stares back, scanning my face; perhaps his only reason not to
.

I left the prison at peace. He is my father, for better or worse. I accept him as he is. And my bad dreams? I don’t have them anymore. Dad and I write to each other now. I send him postcards and photos, and tell him about my life in New York City. I buy him writing supplies and subscriptions to magazines, and deposit money into his inmate trust fund. I hope he will use it to purchase strawberry ice cream. “Don’t worry,” he tells me. “I will pay you back when I’m in the Free World.”

I research things for him on the Internet—mostly sports trivia and history—to help settle intellectual disputes with other prisoners. And lately, Dad has channeled his anger and time in a more productive way by researching the Americans with Disabilities Act and how it applies to inmates. Dad has even anointed himself “Warrior for the Deaf.” I’m encouraged by his investing his intellect and time toward a greater good. Sure, he might be motivated to help himself, but isn’t there usually a selfish reason for being unselfish?

He sends me drawings and gives me fatherly advice “to not commit adultery, take dope, or drink heavily.” If anyone would know, he would. Sometimes Dad’s cards just say, “Send money. Love, Daddy.”

I had wanted justice, and had gotten it. Now I just wanted my daddy, the one I chose to remember. The man who rescued my flip-flop because he thought it meant something to me; the father who danced better than John Travolta; the dad who let me drive the Toyota. The father who was my Daniel Boone, Frank Lloyd Wright, Ben Franklin, and Elvis Presley all rolled into one.

So when his notes are a brief demand to “send money,” well, I will. After all, I’m in the Free World. My cross to bear isn’t a heavy load. I’ll humbly carry it as a reminder of where I came from and how far one can fall.