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

blue jeans, a T-shirt, and tennis shoes. His feet were propped up on the coffee table, and he had a bologna and cheese sandwich in one hand, and he was twirling an orange flare gun in the other. His hands had something black smeared on them all the way up to the forearms, as if he’d been working on a car. There was a mesh baseball cap perched atop his head; the emblem on the front was a Confederate flag and a grinning skull—typical truck-stop fare. From beneath the hat, long, straight, brown hair hung down to his shoulders.
    Before my eyes even had time to adjust to the inside, a female voice screeched with deafening fury, “Get out from in front of the TV!” This seemed to be directed at me, and it came from a skinny, dark-haired girl sitting in another chair. This bundle of feminine charm turned out to be Jessie’s girlfriend, who was notorious in certain trailer park circles. Some guys had their girlfriend’s name tattooed on their chest. Jessie had the word “bitch” tattooed on his, in reference to Alicia.
    Jason and I took a seat on the couch. Jessie’s girlfriend fell back into a silent stupor. Jessie became more animated and began to bebop around the living room. He took a glass figurine from a shelf and started making kissing noises. “This is my girlfriend,” he announced, holding up the glass figure. It appeared to be a small black woman with breasts bared, perhaps a novelty saltshaker.
    An older man came out of a back room, and I took him to be Jessie’s dad. I was correct. He didn’t so much sit in the chair that Jessie had vacated as collapse into it with a groan and a sigh. He looked tired and weary, as if every day of his life had been a long day. He eyed Jessie’s sandwich and asked, “That ain’t the last of that cheese, is it?”
    Jessie’s response was “Oops.” When his dad informed him he’d been saving it to take for lunch the next day, Jessie pulled the cheese from between the bread and flapped it in the air. “You can still have it,” he said, holding the cheese aloft and casting a grin in our direction. It was several bites short of being a whole piece.
    His father paid him no attention. Instead he said Jessie needed to get ready to climb under the trailer and make sure all the tires were on and aired up. They were preparing to move it to another trailer park, called Highland.
    Jason was suddenly very ready to leave. As we were going through the gate Jessie called out, “Y’all come back later so you can help me.” Jason said, “Okay,” over his shoulder without slowing down. A little farther down the street he told me that’s why he rarely went over there—they always tried to put you to work while they did nothing. Needless to say, we did not go back later to help, and Jessie took no offense. He knew he’d try to get out of unpaid manual labor, too.
    I never did see Jessie a great deal, but we became familiar enough with each other to talk when we met. Jason and I would run into him at the bowling alley and spend an hour or two playing pool, or hang out for a little while at the Lakeshore store. Jessie was no great conversationalist, but his antics could be amusing, and the odd things he said were usually worth a chuckle. It was very apparent to anyone of even average intelligence that you weren’t dealing with the world’s brightest guy. He was a great deal like a child. He was harmless.

Nine
    G oing back to school the next year was like starting from scratch. I was going to high school, while Jason was staying behind in junior high. In the preceding three years, I had developed a sense of security or stability, and now it was gone. Even though the high school was only about ten feet away from the junior high, it was a whole different world.
    Marion High School drew ninety-five percent of its student body from middle- and upper-middle-class neighborhoods. This was a place where kids drove brand-new cars to school, wore Gucci clothing, and had enough jewelry to spark the envy of rap stars. This was a place where I definitely didn’t fit in. Everyone who used to skateboard seemed to have given it up and moved on to other things, which meant that my circle of acquaintances had grown much smaller. In truth, I wasn’t even skating all that much anymore.
    In response to my new environment, my behavior became even more outrageous, and I was viewed as a freak. Freaks were a definite group of people, but it’s sometimes hard to explain what causes a certain