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

and rest for the next day. I was chained to him day and night. This went on for months. I began to hate my life and could easily see myself trapped forever. Jack became more of a bastard by the day, and it wasn’t just me who noticed it. The people we worked with tried to be friendly to him but were met with hatefulness.
    I grew more and more desperate to escape his presence. I racked my brain attempting to come up with an idea that would allow me to break free. Finally I discovered the answer, which Jerry Driver himself had handed to me. He had insisted that I be confined to a mental institution on two separate occasions, and now I would take advantage of it.
    At my mother’s suggestion, I went to the Social Security office and applied for disability benefits. They looked over my application, which detailed my stays in the hospital, and declared me mentally disabled. I would be entitled to a check every month. I wasn’t allowed to work and draw the check at the same time, so this was my escape from working with Jack. The chain was broken. When I told Jason about it, he laughingly called them “crazy checks.” The name stuck, and that’s what we came to refer to my income as. “Have you gotten your crazy check yet?” Yes, indeed.
    Doris and Ed, my paternal grandparents, moved to West Memphis, and I began to spend time at their house a few miles away. I would keep my grandmother company while my grandfather was at work. I dearly love my paternal grandparents. No matter how old I get I always feel like a kid around them. To have that feeling around anyone else would be irritating, but I didn’t mind it at all around them. It made life seem clean and simple. You can’t stay in a black mood when visiting my grandmother; it’s impossible. Jason usually went with me because he knew there would always be food there. As soon as we walked in she would begin preparing huge bowls of chili for us, or bacon and eggs with toast, sometimes pork chops or fried chicken. Dessert was always Dolly Madison cakes and ice-cold cans of Coke. My grandmother is a saint.
    One day while I was visiting her, my mother called. My grandmother told her that I was there and then handed me the phone. I talked to my mother and father, who were both still in Oregon. It wasn’t unpleasant; they mostly asked what I was doing, where I was staying, how Domini and Jason were. I had my reservations, but didn’t mind talking to them. It became a routine that when I was at my grandmother’s house I’d speak to them on the phone. We were getting along, but I remained wary of them to a certain degree, like I would a dog that had bitten me in the past.
    Domini now skipped school more often than not, and she stayed with me while Jack was at work. We never had a burning romance, but we kept each other company. I had no desire to get into another situation where I risked the sort of trauma I had experienced with Deanna, and Domini was safe. We were friends who had sex, and that’s the only type of relationship I was willing to have then. Perhaps that makes me sound selfish, but I will be nothing if not truthful. My worst fear in the world was having my heart broken. When she called me one day and said to come over, I already knew what was happening.
    I knew exactly what she was going to say once I got there, but curiously I felt nothing. I knew my life was about to change forever, yet I was strangely detached. I wasn’t especially happy, nor was there sadness to speak of. There was neither excitement nor dread. I was a Zen master for a day.
    When I arrived, Domini was smiling, glowing. She had an assortment of papers scattered across the kitchen table and her mother was with her. The papers were medical pamphlets. I sat in a chair; she sat on my lap and put her arms around my neck. She said the exact thing I knew she was going to. She told me she was pregnant.

Seventeen
    F or a split second today I could smell home. It smelled like sunset on a dirt road. I thought my heart was going to break. The world I left behind was so close I could almost touch it. Everything in me cried out for it. It’s amazing how certain shades of agony have their own beauty. I can’t ever seem to make myself believe that the home I once knew doesn’t even exist anymore. It’s still too real inside my head. I wish I had a handful of dust from back then, so that I could keep it in a bottle and always have it near.
    Time has changed for me. I don’t recall exactly when