Life After Death: The Shocking True Story of a Innocent Man on Death Row (14 page)

I should have run like I was on fire. I should have shaved my head and taken a vow of celibacy. I should have instructed this raven-haired package of pain to go bugger herself. I did none of the above. Instead I crushed her to me, buried my face in the top of her head, and inhaled deeply. Her face was against my chest and she said she was breathing my scent. When I asked her what she smelled, her response was “home.”

She asked if I’d broken up with Domini, and I explained that I’d yet to see her, so I hadn’t been able to. She folded her arms across her chest and looked at me through narrowed eyes, but there was no real anger or jealousy, because she knew there was no competition.

Did I seek out Domini that night and tell her that it was over? Indeed I did. All was right with the world and I cared about nothing else. Domini has earned the right to call me an asshole many times over. I could tell her heart was broken and I offered no comfort. I couldn’t get away from her fast enough, because I was living in denial. I wanted to believe the split with Deanna had never happened, the tryst with Domini had never taken place. Because I knew that a vase that has been broken, even if it’s been glued back together, is never the same.

Eleven

S
leep deprivation is a direct result of the lights. They turn the lights off every night at ten-thirty. Then they’re turned right back on at two-thirty, when they start to serve breakfast. If you could manage to fall asleep the moment the lights went out, then sleep through all the guards’ activity, you would still get only four hours of uninterrupted sleep. It’s not possible, though. Doors slamming, keys hitting the floor, guards yelling at one another as if they’re at a family reunion—it all wakes you up. During the four hours when the lights are off you can expect to be awakened
at least
once an hour. The activity continues throughout the day, with the addition of bright, fluorescent lights. Any attempt at a nap leads to further frustration. You can never sleep very deeply here anyway, because you have to stay aware of your surroundings. Bad things can come to those caught off guard. The strain of keeping one eye open wears you down.

When Death Row was housed in Tucker Max, we at least had control of our own light. It was an older building, and each cell had a wall-mounted fixture with a bulb you screwed in to turn on and unscrewed to turn off. You had to be quick about it, or it would burn your fingertips.

One of the first things I learned when I arrived was how to cook on a 100-watt lightbulb. This is accomplished in one of two ways. The first is by using the bulb directly, as a heat source. To use the bulb like an oven, you first cut the top off a soda can with a disposable razor blade. You then fill the can with whatever you want to cook—coffee, or leftover beef stew, for instance. You make certain the can is completely dry, not a single drop of water on it, and then balance it on the lightbulb. After twenty or thirty minutes, whatever is in the can will be hot enough to burn your mouth. You have to be absolutely certain the can is dry, because the bulb will explode in your face if water drips on it. You can always tell when someone has made this mistake—the explosion sounds like a shotgun blast.

This technique can be modified to create a sort of hobo microwave. You simply flatten out a few soda cans and line the inside of a saltine cracker box with them, then fit the box over the bulb. This contraption can be used to prepare some of your more delectable treats, such as bologna or Spam.

The second way to cook with the bulb is by using it to start a fire. If you prefer to cook over an open flame, you must first create a “burner.” You do this by wrapping toilet paper around your hand a few dozen times and then folding the ends in on themselves. If you do this correctly, you have something that vaguely resembles a doughnut. There’s an art to this technique. If you roll the paper too tight, it will only smolder and you’ll choke on the smoke. If it’s not rolled tight enough, the whole thing will go up in flames in a matter of seconds. You need a nice, controlled burn that lasts for at least five minutes.

Next you wrap your bulb in toilet paper—twice around should be sufficient. All you have to do is wait for it to begin smoking, which shouldn’t take longer than three minutes. When the paper is smoldering, pull it off the bulb and blow on it, which should cause it to erupt into flames. Light the burner from this fire, and you’re well on your way to being the Wolfgang Puck of the prison world.

Set the burner on the edge of the toilet seat so that when you’re finished you can just nudge it into the toilet and flush it away. You can flush
anything
down a prison toilet—socks, plastic spoons, busted-up whiskey bottles, smashed cassette tapes, orange peels—I’ve seen it all go down with no effort. Once you get used to these big, industrial-sized prison toilets you will thumb your nose at the home variety. The
only
good thing about this place is the toilets.

I used this method to brew myself some tea on many occasions: fill a soda can with water, tie a piece of dental floss or a string from a bedsheet to the top of the can, then dangle it over the flame until the water begins to boil. Put your tea bag in a cup and pour the water over it. I love tea. Others make hot chocolate, or even chili.

One other trick that people always seem to find interesting for some reason is “fishing.” Fishing is what you do when you can’t get anyone outside a cell to pass something to someone else for you. You yell to the guy you’re trying to pass something to—“Hey! Send me your fishing line!” Soon a string will land in front of your door. You tie whatever it is to the line, and the guy reels it in. You need fifty to a hundred yards of string and something to use for a weight to pull this trick off.

Most people obtain their string by slicing sheets into thin strips and tying the ends together so that you have one long strand. The most commonly used weights are batteries, a bar of soap, or a travel-size bottle of lotion. If you use batteries, you can even fish in the toilet. It requires two people to do this. Each of you flushes about a hundred yards of string down the toilet while holding on to one end of it. If both of you keep flushing, the strings will become entangled somewhere in the pipes. One man wraps whatever he is passing to you in plastic—a cigarette, for example. He then ties it to the end of the string, and the other guy pulls the whole thing back up through his own toilet. Some men frown on this practice and refer to those who do it as “shitty fingers.”

I have no idea what it is about fishing that people in the free world find so amusing, but some of them ask me to describe it to them every time they come to see me. They know the story as well as I do by now, but still want to hear it over and over. To me it’s just another aspect of daily life in the Arkansas Department of Correction.

Most people in the outside world look at you in a different way if they find out you’ve spent time in prison. They can hold it against you for the rest of your life. You’re never trusted and always made to feel like an outcast. For most of the people in here with me it’s a different story. It’s nothing out of the ordinary for people in here to have friends and family within the prison system. It’s accepted as an everyday part of life, as if everyone goes to prison at least once. Several men on Death Row have sons, brothers, uncles, and cousins who are doing time within the ADC. None of their friends or family members would ask for a description of a prison cell because most of them have already seen one.

One of the first things people always ask is what a cell looks like—my cell in particular—and they want to know whether it looks like what they’ve seen on television or in the movies. To begin with, you have two types of walls. Some of them are made of cinder block; others are simply smooth, poured concrete. The one I live in at Varner Unit is smooth concrete, which is what I prefer. Perhaps that’s because I had to look at the cinder blocks for a decade and simply appreciate the change.

The color is a very pale blue. Everything here is blue of one shade or another. The walls are so light they’re almost white, while the door is more of a powder blue. The floor is plain, unfinished concrete, and it’s very harsh on the feet. In seventeen years I have not taken a step that wasn’t on concrete. I miss grass and dirt. Sometimes I believe one of the most beautiful things on Earth must be grass. The green of summer or the brown of winter—both are equally bewitching. I’d love to be able to touch it.

My bed is a concrete slab that stands about eighteen inches off the floor. I have a thin mat to place on top of it that greatly resembles the ones given to kindergartners to nap on. We’re given the cheapest, most horrid blankets ever designed by mankind. When you wake up in the morning you have to pick bits of fuzz out of your nose, eyebrows, and hair. Not to mention the fact that they just aren’t very warm. My pillow is composed of extra clothes—socks, T-shirts, sweatpants. We have to buy these clothes ourselves. Being that there are no chairs, or anything else to sit on, you spend a great deal of time on or in the bed.

Next to the bed is a three-foot-tall concrete block that serves as a table. You can never see the top of mine because it’s beneath a jumbled mound of books, magazines, journals, letters, pens and pencils. No matter how often I try to organize or straighten it up it will be mayhem an hour later. I can never find anything I’m looking for. Sometimes when I pass other cells I see spotless, well-organized tables, but I can never figure out their secret.

There is one wall not made of concrete, and it serves as your “bathroom area.” This wall and everything on it is made of steel. It’s nine feet tall and houses the toilet, sink, mirror, light, and shower. The toilet and sink are made of one big chunk of steel. The sink is where the tank would be on most toilets, so you have to straddle the toilet to shave or brush your teeth. The mirror is nothing more than a square of the steel wall that is slightly more reflective than the rest. It’s not very clear, and it’s impossible to make out small details in it.

Over the sink and toilet resides the hated fluorescent light. It’s the same sort of light found in the ceilings of office buildings, hospitals, and public schools. The only difference is that mine is in the wall instead of overhead. About two feet over from the toilet is the shower, which consists of a spout on the wall with a button underneath. When you push the button, the water comes on for about thirty seconds. There’s no way to adjust the temperature of the water; you must accept whatever comes out. There is a drain in the floor, which barely works. I have a small brown plastic rosary hanging on my shower button. I’ve loved holding a rosary all my life. Just running the beads through my fingers calms me.

Nanny gave me my first rosary on my fifteenth birthday. She took me to a small bookstore and allowed me to pick out the one I wanted. I chose a long turquoise strand of beads with a thin, sleek, silver crucifix. I always carried it in a small pocket of my leather motorcycle jacket. It was the first of many, though I no longer have any idea what happened to it.

The cell door is made of solid steel. It has a plexiglass window so the guards can play Peeping Tom, and a small letterbox-type opening heavily bolted from the outside that the guards open to slide your food inside. This door ensures that there will be no fresh air circulating or communication between prisoners. It took a while to get used to because I had been behind old-fashioned bars for nine years at Tucker Max.

The window is a four-inch-wide slit through which I have a panoramic view of a concrete wall and chain-link fence. The most exciting things I ever glimpse are the flocks of pigeons and sparrows that come here to roost.

My television is inside a steel box suspended high up in a corner of the cell. It picks up three channels, but there’s not much that comes on that I’m interested in watching. I have two addictions when it comes to television: David Letterman and professional wrestling. David Letterman is someone I’ve only recently discovered, but I’ve indulged in pro wrestling all my life. It’s a tradition in my house. My grandfather and father both watch, and when my son comes to visit once a year, we compare notes, too. I grew up watching it and as a child often had tag team matches with other neighborhood kids. We all argued over who got to be Jerry Lawler. Jerry “The King” Lawler was a huge deal in the Memphis area. He was
the
wrestler. For a while he was so well-known you’d see him on various commercials for local places, and he had his own talk show, which aired every Sunday morning.

My loyalty to
The Jerry Lawler Show
once outraged and embarrassed my grandmother. A woman from a local church used to make rounds through the neighborhood with a purse full of bubble gum. She would stop at houses and try to lure the kids into coming to church on Sunday. If you promised to come she would give you gum. When she arrived at our house she chatted amiably with my grandmother for a few moments before turning to me and asking, “Do you want to come to church with me on Sunday?” The gleam in her eye spoke volumes. It said, “You know you can’t resist bubble gum. You may as well sell me your soul.” Thus, she was quite shocked when I responded, “Absolutely not.” The smile on her face turned into a puzzled frown as she asked, “Why not?” I looked at her as if she’d lost her mind and said, “Because I’d miss
The Jerry Lawler Show
.”

My grandmother was mortified. I had just proved myself to be a heathen of the highest order. She gaped at me in disbelief. In her view I had just chosen Jerry Lawler over Jesus, which made her look bad. After the shock wore off she promised the woman, as she ushered her from the house, that I would indeed be in church on Sunday. Not only did I miss
The Jerry Lawler Show
, but I didn’t get a piece of gum.

At any rate, that’s the nickel tour of my cell. The only other things in here are two big plastic boxes in which I keep everything I own. They’re filled with small packs of Tylenol, packs of mustard, bars of soap, books, extra paper, and various other odds and ends I’ve collected over the years.

The best fortune I can wish for you is that you never have to see the inside of such a place for yourself. This is a hell, void of anything that makes life worthwhile.

*  *  *

O
nce I was looking through a magazine and I came across a piece about an art show opening in New York. The artist was a female photographer who had been badly burned as a child. She had taken photographs of herself as she slowly went through the healing process. She had to have an ungodly number of surgeries to help her along, and they continued well into adulthood. Throughout the years she kept her trusty camera in hand, documenting every step. Above the tiny article there was a photograph of her laughing, and at first glance I didn’t even notice the light ripples of scar tissue on her chest and collarbones. Only after reading it did I backtrack and realize there was indeed still evidence of her childhood trauma.

The thing that really struck me about this article was a comment the woman made. What she said was that she was much stronger as a child than she is as an adult. She had to have an understanding and appreciation for the subtle mechanisms of the mind to have come to this realization. Perhaps sometimes the memory is worse than the pain at the time of its happening. And sometimes it’s not.