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

hover like a fog for the next decade. It was the sort of fear that robs people of their ability to think clearly. It was the kind of fear that usually ends up with a frightened mob hurting someone.
    In this part of the world all shrines are built to honor the great spirit of mediocrity. The celebrations are for mediocre events, and everyone praises a mediocre god. Heads upon pillows dream mediocre dreams and loins all give birth to mediocre offspring. At the end of a pointless life awaits a mediocre death. Love comes wrapped in a bland little package and fulfillment of the biological urge leads to swift decline. There are no monuments to greatness in this land of stupor.
    Down here in the deep, dark South we know and live with the real world. Candy-Land idealism is quietly suffocated in the relentless humidity. This is the world where fist meets face. This is where the calluses on a man’s hand are bigger than his conscience, and dreams get drowned in sweat and tears. Mutually assured destruction rides the roads on gun racks in the back windows of pickup trucks. The goodness of human nature gets packed away with childhood toys, and the only third eye I have is the one I use to watch my back. Everyone puts on their Sunday best and pays tribute to religion’s slaughterhouse and then dines on a cannibal communion. People put their backs to the stone in the field and push until their entrails rupture, and they drag their meals from the earth with bleeding hands. Education is foreign to the sunburned beasts of burden, and the painkiller comes in black-labeled Tennessee bottles. No one here moves quickly, but
everyone
moves with absolute certainty.

Eighteen
    M y eighteenth birthday, in December 1992, came and went on silent feet. There was no cake, no celebration, no well-wishers. Jack didn’t even remember it, or if he did, he made no mention. I’m certain his hatred of me equaled my disgust with him by this point. Having me in his house was a reminder of his failed relationship and disgrace. At least I was now officially an adult, and outside Jerry Driver’s jurisdiction. As a juvenile officer, he was only allowed to harass children.
    Domini’s aunt and uncle had decided to move and were leaving her and her mother behind. Domini’s mother was in extremely poor health. She was diabetic and needed insulin injections, not to mention the fact that the left side of her body was almost completely paralyzed from a stroke. It took her ten minutes to walk the length of a room, and she often needed help getting dressed. Needless to say, the doors of opportunity weren’t exactly banging open for her.
    After searching for a place to stay, they located a rapidly disintegrating trailer in Lakeshore. They had procured a van to move their things, but a one-hundred-pound pregnant girl and a half-paralyzed woman proved to be less than adept at the moving process. In the end most of the loading and unloading fell to me, but I didn’t really mind. It gave me a chance to look at all the interesting things they had accumulated—old birdcages, roach clips shaped like snakes, mildewed books, and other assorted treasures they hoarded. They were more than a little worried about how they were going to make ends meet.
    Meanwhile, pressures continued to mount with Jack. He constantly accused me of things I hadn’t done, such as having parties and letting people go into his room while he was at work. I didn’t know enough people to put together a party, and there was nothing in his room worth going in there for. He would rant and rave, screaming at me, pressing his face right into mine, but he drew the line at hitting me. I could tell he sometimes wanted to, but he never did.
    Late one night I could take it no more. He was bellowing at me as usual and I simply got up and left. I walked out while he was in mid-tirade.
    It was dark, cold, and drizzling as I walked up and down the streets of Lakeshore. It must have been winter still because I remember I was wearing a leather jacket at the time. It seems it’s always cold, dark, and drizzling when I go through momentous emotional changes. I used to wear an old black slouch hat, and I liked to watch the rain drip off the brim. It made me feel like a character in a spaghetti western. That’s what I did for a couple of hours before finally going to Domini’s, where I slept that night.
    I went and got my things the next day while Jack was at work and brought them back to Domini’s. Between