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

him altogether.
    I allowed Jack to legally adopt me because my mother explained to me that if I did, my father wouldn’t be punished for being unable to pay child support. If my sister and I were adopted, then he would be free of this monetary obligation. My mother was gung ho about it because she wanted us to be seen as one big happy family, and she wanted to erase any and all traces of my father. She even made us call Jack “Dad.” When I protested that I did not wish to give him such a title, my mother went into a veritable rage. I finally gave in and did as she demanded because the stress and the pressure wore me down. It’s a form of torture to have to sit at the dinner table while no one speaks and an aura of anger hangs over everything like a cloud. They wouldn’t even look at me. It’s impossible even to eat in such circumstances, and a child can’t bear such psychological pressures. I relented, though I felt a sense of betrayal by my mother that I’ve never gotten over, and every time I had to say “Dad” it was ashes in my mouth.
    My mother denied later that they treated me like this. She has a very convenient way of forgetting and rearranging the past to fit whatever view she currently wishes to promote, much like the history changers in George Orwell’s
1984
. She now knows very little about me, but makes up stories so as to seem closer to me than she truly is. It gains her more attention.
    The only thing that could soothe and calm me during this era was music. That’s continued to be true throughout my life. My mother would put my sister and me to bed and turn on the radio to sing us to sleep. There was something very comforting about being in a dark, cold room with Prince, Tina Turner, Cyndi Lauper, or Madonna playing quietly. I didn’t have to think about anything—the music took me away from myself and I got lost in it. I needed it like a drug. I felt disconnected and alone, and I realized around this time that things would never get better. It got so bad that I would pretend to be sick at school just so I could come home and lie in bed listening to music. It was like being adrift on the ocean at night. I still have trouble falling asleep without music now.
    *  *  *
    O ur next house, right outside the city limits of Marion, Arkansas, was beyond a shadow of a doubt the worst place I ever lived, and it ushered me into the most miserable period of my life. Jack obtained this prime piece of real estate for the price of thirty dollars a month, and still he paid too much. This was an honest-to-God shack, made of old clapboard that would have collapsed in a strong wind; it was built on an old Indian burial mound. The entire house consisted of four rooms covered with an aluminum roof. There was no running water or electricity to speak of, no heat or air conditioner, and half of the front porch had caved in on itself. Looking at it you would believe that such structures were inhabited only in third-world countries.
    During the summer you felt that you were being cooked in your skin. The sun beating down on that metal roof made the place so hot that you’d literally think you were going to lose your mind and go stark raving mad. At night I would lie in bed sweating and being eaten alive by mosquitoes.
    The winter wasn’t much better, as the only source of heat was a small wood-burning stove, which filled the house with more smoke than heat. Our eyes always burned and our clothes always smelled of soot. My feet got so cold that I wanted to cry. No one could stay awake all night to constantly feed wood into the stove, so the fire was guaranteed to go out right when the temperature reached its coldest point. In the morning, the temperature in the house was only slightly higher than the freezing air outside. The house always gave me the creeps, and I despised it with a passion. When we decided (were forced) to move there, it was literally filled with knee-high garbage. Trash, sticks, broken tractor parts—it was all one big ocean of garbage, and the rats swam through it, delighted with their lot in life. There were no flushing toilets, and our drinking water came from a well that the crop dusters regularly sprayed with pesticide. It was fucking misery. I remember times when my entire family had to bathe in the same water. My stepfather would drag a big steel tub into the kitchen while my mother boiled pots of water to fill it up. There’s nothing like marinating in a lukewarm pool of other