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

put through my nose. Of course I meant nothing of the sort. What I meant was that I realized I was stronger than my father, that I had survived a life he had crumbled beneath the weight of and abandoned years earlier. I had survived without him, and he was doing me no great favor by being back in my life now. I was disgusted by his childishness.
    When I finally saw a doctor, he admitted me and I was given a room. The psychiatric ward was nothing like the hospital in Little Rock; it was more like an asylum. There were no group therapy sessions, no interaction with staff, no scheduled routines, no anything. The patients spent all their time wandering the hallways, looking out the windows at the city below or whispering among themselves.
    My parents came to see me the next day, and my mother behaved in her typical fashion—as if all would now be forgiven and we’d go back to being friends. Not this time. I was fed up with her. I told her that if she didn’t check me out of this place immediately, I never wanted to see her again. Her only response was, “If that’s what you want,” and they left. It was too much to ask that they stay away, and they returned the next day.
    I was taken into a doctor’s office and found my parents sitting on a couch inside. I was in no mood to make friends and behaved rudely. The doctor finally asked me, “What is it you want?” Perhaps this is a question only a medical doctor has the intelligence to ask, because my mother and father certainly never did. I no longer trusted my parents and could see just one option—“I want to go home.” I didn’t mean the apartment in Oregon. When I said “home,” I meant Arkansas. I didn’t believe there was a chance in hell of it happening, so I was stunned when my parents agreed to it. As I sat there, the doctor—who had been in communication with Jerry Driver and was aware that I had been “institutionalized” prior to this—actually called Driver to tell him I would be returning to Arkansas. Arrangements were made for me to be discharged the next morning, and I would take a bus back down South.
    There wasn’t much sleep for me that night. I went to bed but mostly just tossed and turned. I kept trying to form a plan of what I would do once I got to Arkansas, but I couldn’t keep my mind on it. I didn’t even have a place to go once I got there, but I didn’t care. I knew it would all come together in time. All that mattered now was that I would soon be back home. The month I’d been gone seemed like years.
    At daybreak I showered, dressed, and ate breakfast. A security guard led me downstairs and out the front door, where I saw my mother and father standing on the sidewalk next to a cab. My suitcase was sitting at their feet. My father handed me a bus ticket and the money left over from my last paycheck. I hugged him good-bye, but his body was stiff and rigid, as if he was reluctant to touch me. He didn’t say much. Same with my mother. I put my suitcase in the cab and climbed aboard for the trip to the bus station. I was nervous, I was excited, and I was on my own at the age of seventeen.
    I’d never been on a bus before, so the experience was a little surreal. I had been waiting in the station about fifteen minutes when the intercom announced that everyone should board now. My suitcase was placed in a storage compartment and I took an anonymous seat in the middle of a row.
    As I watched the bus fill rapidly, I noticed the passengers all seemed to have quite a bit in common. They were all unshaven and appeared to be in need of a bath; most were ill-tempered and barked at anyone who got too close to them. Somehow all the dregs of society had found their way onto a single bus. It was the smelly, grouchy Greyhound from hell.
    I put on my fiercest facial expression in hopes of scaring away anyone who might be tempted to sit next to me. It seemed to work. No one had the inclination to sit next to a scowling creature with unbrushed hair and dressed in black leather.
    The entire magickal voyage lasted for five enchanting days. We stopped mostly at gas stations and convenience stores for people to buy supplies, then we’d be off again. I survived on a steady diet of chips and soda, with an occasional sandwich. Sometimes we’d stop at a McDonald’s for breakfast, but I never went in. I stuck close to the bus in a constant state of anxiety that it would leave without me.
    On the second or third day I was reluctantly pulled into a