Life After Death: The Shocking True Story of a Innocent Man on Death Row

because there was a bag of hard candy in the sacks of food the men brought us, and my grandmother always called it “Christmas candy.”
    As I grew older I learned to be ashamed of being poor, too. It became humiliating, something I’d do everything I could to hide from the rest of the world. I developed an overwhelming sense of being excluded from everything. Everywhere you look you see people with things that you do not have, and it has a profound mental effect. That’s mostly during the teenage years.
    Later still, I developed a fierce sense of pride at having come from such situations and circumstances. I look at the people who have done horrible things to me, who have lied about me, abused me, and tried to take my life, and I know they would never have been able to rise above the things that I have. They would have died inside.
    I’ve talked to some of the other guys on Death Row about our lives as children, and they laugh at my poor childhood. I laugh along with them. One guy will say he was poor because he grew up in the projects, and I become outraged. “Poor? You had water! You had heat! You were wearing shoes that cost a hundred dollars! That’s not poor! Let me tell you what we had. . . .” Everyone snickers when they hear that certain areas of the trailer park were considered to be where the “rich people” lived. Now that I can look back on it all, it’s funny to me, too. I didn’t always see the humor in it, though. It’s no laughing matter when you have to fight with the roaches to see who gets the cornflakes.
    Now I believe my parents just weren’t meant to be together. Perhaps they weren’t meant to be with anyone, as my father has now been married and divorced several times, and my mother follows closely behind in her number of failed relationships. The trouble between them began when I was in second grade.
    Nanny had gotten remarried to a respectable man named Ivan Haynes. He’s the one I always remember as being my grandfather on my mother’s side of the family. He could be a real asshole sometimes. I could always expect to hear his amused chuckle anytime he witnessed my pain and misfortune. Upon hearing tales of my childhood, some people have speculated that perhaps he didn’t like me so much. I don’t believe that. There was much love between him and me; he was just doing what comes naturally to members of my family. Laughing and teasing others helps take your mind off your own troubles.
    I remember one sunny afternoon when I was about seven years old, and Ivan was sitting on our front porch in a lawn chair, drinking a can of beer. I saw him drink only once or twice a year, and he never consumed anything stronger than Budweiser. For some reason he always dumped a couple spoons of salt into the can before he drank it. He once gave me a tiny sip from his can, and I could taste nothing but salt.
    I was playing out in the front yard wearing nothing but a pair of shorts. I was open for attack. “Hey, boy,” Ivan called out, blinking like a cat in the sunshine. “Bring me that board over there.” He pointed to a piece of plywood lying across the road.
    I picked it up unsuspectingly and started to make my way back to the front porch. When the pain came, it seemed to inflame every part of my body at once. I began to shriek and flail about wildly. The pain was so intense that it short-circuited my logic. I spun in circles, slapping myself and stomping my feet, giving voice to one unending scream. The board had been sitting atop a nest of fire ants. This wasn’t the first time I’d been bitten, nor would it be the last, although it was the worst and most painful.
    What was my grandfather doing while I was going into a frenzy? Sipping his beer and watching me in a half-interested way. My mother came running out of the house and grabbed me up. She already knew what the problem was, and she carried me in to the bathtub to pour cold water over me. As we crossed the porch and passed my grandfather, I heard him chuckle.
    I heard that maddening chuckle again after one of his trips to an auction, which he loved. He would go through people’s garbage, show up bright and early at every garage sale listed in the local paper, and bid on ungodly amounts of junk at auctions all over the state. He took this rubbish and fixed it up, then sold it at his booth in the flea market.
    One day he came home with a box of odds and ends that contained a pair of swim fins, or swimming flippers. They