My Heart Is an Idiot: Essays (32 page)

The visiting room had the size and feel of a grade-school cafeteria. Low wooden tables sat in three rows of ten, four plastic chairs clustered around each of them. A few vending machines in the corner offered plastic pop bottles and microwaveable snacks; nearby, a counter held a stack of games, including chess, checkers, Candy Land, and Sorry! Off to the side, a children’s area was stocked with small toys and picture books, and in the back of the room, an amateurish yet oddly appealing mural of a mountain landscape had been painted across the back wall—by a prisoner, I assumed. This, I learned, was where visitors to Crossroads could have their pictures taken with incarcerated friends and loved ones.

Byron, Evelyn, Napo, and I found a table in the middle of the room and took a seat. The stage was set for some initial awkwardness—after all, Byron and I had only exchanged a handful of letters, and my reasons for making such a long trip to be there weren’t entirely clear, even to me. But from the moment we sat down, the two of us started talking like old friends. Byron took the lead, telling stories about his current cellmate, Donnie, who loved crossword puzzles but couldn’t solve a single clue without Byron’s help. At night, Byron said, while he read in the top bunk, Donnie would lie below, rattling off clues: “Okay, okay, come on, just one more. Twenty-three down. Minority whip. Six letters.” Byron had tried steering him toward word-search puzzles, but Donnie was devoted to crosswords. “He doesn’t really care if we get the answers right,” Byron said. “He just likes seeing them all filled out.”

I really hadn’t had any idea what to expect, but still found myself surprised by Byron’s relaxed charisma, sweetness, curiosity, and nerdy wit. Even after a couple of years in prison, he seemed, remarkably, to have not one trace of hardness in him. The prosecutors—and those who frequently posted on comment boards and Anastasia’s memorial site and believed that the state had convicted the right man—had made him out to be a savage, remorseless killer, a sociopathic, cyberpunk freak. But in person, he was just a nice, smart, funny guy, who seemed no different from half the kids I’d gone to high school with—goth types and punk rockers whose entire wardrobes were still black a decade later, though they’d left most of their other macabre trappings behind, graduating from H. P. Lovecraft and Marilyn Manson to Harry Potter, trips to Burning Man, and NPR. Indeed, Byron told me that he was a fan of the public radio quiz show
Wait Wait … Don’t Tell Me!
and seemed more impressed that I’d once had a beer with its host, Peter Sagal, than with anything else I could offer.

We talked about books—Byron was on a Dave Eggers and David Foster Wallace kick, and we wound through the things that we’d been amazed and annoyed by in
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
and
Infinite Jest
. We exchanged lists of our favorite cult-classic movies, like
Strange Brew
and
Flash Gordon
. Byron told me he still had a soft spot for
Nosferatu
and other old-school, early twentieth-century horror flicks. There’s certainly more to people than the books and music and movies they like, and I kept reminding myself that just because we had an appreciation for the same kinds of shit didn’t mean that Byron couldn’t have committed any crimes. But as the hours rolled by, it was hard to dismiss his essential kindness and goodness. Evelyn and Napo gave us room to chat by playing long games of gin, and I found myself talking on and on to Byron about all the creative projects I was working on, and the current fucked-up state of my love life. Byron listened patiently, asking questions about the specifics, and doling out spoonfuls of thoughtful, helpful advice. Even with his state-issued threads and the guards posted by the door, it was easy to forget that we were inside a maximum-security prison and not a college-town café. I felt as if he and I were no different, and that if I’d suffered a few strokes of miserable luck things could’ve just as easily been reversed, with him visiting me in prison instead.

Later, when I asked Byron about his dad, Dale, he told me that he’d died of AIDS a few years before, just two months after Anastasia and Justin’s deaths. He told me the story of coming home one day from middle school to find his mom in tears, and how she’d explained to him that Dale had come out to her, and that they’d soon be separating. Still, even after the separation, he said, his mom and dad had remained close friends, and Byron had even formed an affectionate bond with his dad’s longtime boyfriend. Byron reminisced about a weeklong camping trip he’d taken with his dad and his dad’s boyfriend the summer before his dad died. “Someone had given my dad a bunch of fishing gear,” Byron said. “But none of us had ever gone fishing before, and we had no idea how to use it. It was fucking hilarious. We were waist deep in this river, all our lines tangled, using Cheetos as bait. These old-timers were watching us, shaking their heads. It’s about as happy as I remember being.” His smile faded. “A couple months later, everything pretty much went to shit.”

Gradually, the visiting room had filled up. I went to inspect the wares in the vending machines, and picked out a somewhat edible-looking burrito. While it cooked in the microwave, I took a look around, gazing at all of the other families gathered at neighboring tables, talking, laughing, playing Connect Four—the inmates in gray scrubs, their parents in sweatshirts and jeans, wives all dolled up, hair freshly curled, and here and there, little kids scrambling around at their feet. The older prisoners looked as friendly and docile as high-school math teachers, and the younger prisoners seemed soft and vulnerable, visibly nourished by the company of their family and friends. It was hard to fathom what crimes had landed them in one of the state’s harsher prisons.

Crossroads, Byron told me, was not like prisons in the movies or on TV—rapes and assaults were rare, and he didn’t feel like he was in constant danger. The worst part about it all was the endless, mind-numbing boredom, stretching out for eternity. Prison was not hell, it was purgatory. Byron spent a lot of his time writing letters, essays, and short stories, and his job in the prison library gave him steady access to a stream of decent books, but there was no one around to talk to about them, or share his writing with, no one who could string together enough words to challenge him in Scrabble. Most of the inmates came from either inner-city St. Louis or tiny, rural farm towns, and though some were pleasant enough, Byron had little in common with any of them. For a while, he’d been lucky enough to share a cell with a kid named Pablo, also from Kansas City, who loved manga and indie rock, and had frequented a lot of the same spots in Westport that Byron had once hung out in; they even had some mutual friends and acquaintances on the outside. But after six months, Pablo completed his sentence and went back to Kansas City, where he’d enrolled in college and now did what he could to spread word about Byron’s innocence. Pablo had begun to host a late-night college radio show, and in the wee hours he’d play Byron’s favorite tunes. Once every great while, if the temperature and humidity and barometric pressure were just right, the station’s trembling signal would carry across fifty miles of prairie to the tiny radio in Byron’s cell, and he could hear traces of a song by Minor Threat or Joy Division, sweet as a pinch of sugar on the tongue.

Every time I looked up at the clock on the wall, another hour or hour and a half had passed. Before I knew it, it was almost five, and the guards were coming around to all the tables, telling us it was time to wrap things up. Me and Byron went to get our picture taken together in front of the mountain-range mural. A prisoner whose job this was snapped a Polaroid and handed it to me. As we waited for it to develop, Byron explained to me that he’d formerly had the job of visiting-room photographer, but had decided to quit since there was too much pressure from other inmates to try to smuggle in drugs and other contraband. The rest of the families were packing up games and saying their goodbyes. “Well,” said Byron, “that went quick.”

Can you really gauge someone deeply just by hanging out with them for eight hours? Probably not. I remembered a story my friend Alex had told me from her time working for a public-interest group in New Orleans fighting the death penalty. One day she’d gone to Angola, the famously bleak Louisiana prison, to interview a young inmate who’d already admitted to killing his girlfriend, their two young kids, plus three other random folks he’d encountered during a brutal weeklong spree. Her job was to learn about mitigating circumstances in his life—mental impairments, abuse he’d suffered as a kid—anything that might convince a jury to give him life in prison rather than consigning him to death row. The guy was utterly charming and winsome, Alex said; she even found him kind of cute. Of course, her attraction to him waned as he candidly laid out his gruesome crimes to her with stunning nonchalance, as though explaining the details of a bowl game played between two teams he had no rooting interest in.

Likable people, I know, can still be capable of horrendous things. And someone’s state of mind in their mid-to late twenties may not be much of an indicator of what they were like at eighteen, Byron’s age when Anastasia was killed. But over the years I’ve met and talked to a lot of people who were friends with Byron in high school; they now run organic farms in Florida, write code for websites in Philly, or work in the mayor’s office in San Francisco. And every one of them says that Byron was the same then as he is now—a kind, creative soul with a wry sense of humor. He may have had his dark moments, but what teenager doesn’t? On my first visit, me and Byron had barely scratched the surface talking about the details of his case, but even as I tried to resist it, I already had a belief in his innocence. Nice guys could still be killers, I told myself, and it was obviously in Byron’ best interest to put on a show of kindness for anyone who could potentially help him, but I would’ve gladly bet my left nut that this guy, who tuned in every week to
Wait Wait … Don’t Tell Me!
couldn’t harm a fly, much less shoot a girl in the face.

“Come back and see me again sometime,” Byron said, giving me a little half-hug. “You know where to find me.” It was a strange, lacerating feeling to watch him trail out of the room with the other inmates and disappear, back to the patchy, frozen grass of the prison yard and the nothingness of his cell.

In the lobby, we gathered our keys and our wallets from the mini coin lockers, and Evelyn wiped the tears from her eyes, in a rush to get outside. Once we were in the car and I’d started the engine, she broke down and sobbed for a minute, while Napo put his arms around her from the backseat and tried to comfort her. “I never let him see me like this,” she wailed, “but it hurts. It hurts every time.”

She’s right. I’ve been back to see Byron half a dozen times over the last few years, and the sinking, gut-shot ache in my stomach as I pull out of the prison parking lot at the end of my visit is always the same.

Once we’d left Cameron and made it back to the highway, Evelyn had pulled herself together. “I’m sorry,” she said. She made a sad laughing sound. “Oh, you know what, that’s just really hard. And I’m absolutely starving. Are you guys as starving as me? I’m starving. There’s a Subway in Lathrop, about ten miles up. Do you want to stop? Do you guys want Subway?”

*

So, back to this morning. Imagine me, Peter, Byron, and Evelyn crossing the visiting room and taking our usual table near the back. The mountain-range mural has been painted over with flat yellow paint, though Byron’s not sure why—who can guess at the arbitrary and sometimes hostile whims of the prison administration?

We start off with small talk. Me and Peter tell Byron some tales from our tour—the bar manager in Boise who tried to cheat us out of our cut of the door, until we took his favorite mouse pad hostage; the teenage sword-swallower we met in Charleston, West Virginia, and convinced to come along with us for a week as an opening act at our shows. I used to feel bad regaling Byron with stories of my adventures, but I finally came to understand how much he appreciates and even craves hearing them. He spends enough of his time suffering through the monotonous rhythms of life inside the prison walls, it’s enjoyable—honestly thrilling, he says—to hear about our lives on the outside.

Byron asks for updates on my girlfriend situation, and what new movies, books, and music I can recommend. We talk about the stuff he’s been writing and the stuff I’ve been writing. Peter mentions a couple of the new songs that he’s been performing on tour, and Byron begs him to sing one for him. Peter laughs and shakes his head at first, but after a bit of wheedling persistence from Byron, Evelyn, and me, he closes his eyes, clears his throat a couple of times, and then, very softly, begins to sing. The pureness of his voice, even at low volume, is beautiful, and I notice that a few of the families at neighboring tables have dropped their conversations to listen in. The guard senses a change in the air and takes a few steps in our direction, but decides not to intervene. When Peter’s done, everyone claps, and Byron says, “I’ll tell you what, that’s a song I’d put on every mix tape I ever made for a girl.”

Finally, Byron starts to fill us in on the latest developments with his appeals. He’s already filed for ineffective assistance of counsel, which was quickly denied. (No matter how poorly your lawyer might have performed, it’s incredibly rare for incompetent representation to cause a case to be overturned, even in extreme instances.) Byron’s appeals regarding procedural mistakes the judge may have made and other grounds have all been turned down, and his remaining hope now seems to ride on an appeal known as actual innocence—introducing new evidence (or a new way of looking at the evidence) which contradicts your guilt and shows that you were convicted in error. Recently, in letters back and forth, we’ve been digging into the details of his case, exploring every aspect of it to hunt for any pieces that don’t fit. I’m no professional sleuth, but Byron tells me that sometimes the biggest breaks in the cases of other inmates who’ve been exonerated came from casual observers who were able to look at things freshly and have a flash insight.