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

going to the movies on a date. We adjusted our sleep schedules so that we go to bed and get up at the same time. We talk to each other all day long. For example, I’ll think of something she said or did when she was last here and suddenly find myself laughing at her antics and saying, “You monkey!” out loud, forgetting for a moment that I’m alone in a prison cell. Instead, for that time period we are playing and cavorting together. We both do this.
    *  *  *
    I have a propensity to glance around the visitation area to see what others are doing or talking about. You see a wide variety of experiences and activities taking place. Some people are incredibly happy to be there with a loved one, and others show up late and act like they’d rather not be there at all.
    One father showed up every week hoping to persuade his son to drop his appeals and allow the state to execute him. He had two reasons why this was such a good idea. The first was that he believed it was the Christian thing for the son to do. The second reason was that the trip to and from the prison was difficult to make when he came to visit. I turned away in disgust, unable to comprehend a parent who would encourage his child to commit suicide.
    A great many visitors appear awkward, because they don’t know what to say to the loved one they came to visit. They glance around, clear their throats, and ask, “How ’bout them Cowboys?” thinking football the only safe topic. When visitation time comes to an end some people jump up, relieved the painful experience is over and eager to be on their way. Others clutch hands and hug, trying to get in one last kiss. A few cry as they leave; a few more laugh and call out raucous good-byes. Some convicts shuffle their feet and look at the floor; others stare at the retreating forms of loved ones until they’re out of sight.
    Some convicts and visitors don’t even get to touch each other and have to speak through a pane of glass, like Lorri and I did for the first three years of our relationship before we were finally approved to sit in the same room together. Some people never get approved at all. Children stare at fathers without being able to hug them, sometimes for years at a time.
    My parents separated again during the first year I was in prison. They both continued to live in the West Memphis and Marion area. My father came to visit regularly during the first year, and brought his new wife. He stopped visiting after 1997. My mother also remarried. She usually came to visit me two, maybe three times a year in the early years. She couldn’t come more often, because she couldn’t afford it. She has never owned a car that cost more than a few hundred dollars and so had no means of making the long trip to the prison—nor could she afford a trip to the vet when her beloved cat got into a fight with a possum.
    During one visit she sat across from me in a hard plastic chair, slowly eating her way through a bag of pork skins bought from the prison vending machine and describing every detail of performing an amputation on the family pet. She spoke with a tremendous amount of pride in her accomplishment as I squirmed in my chair and tried to keep from becoming violently ill. She was clearly pleased with her handiwork and couldn’t understand why anyone would not be in awe and pat her on the back. She seemed to view herself as the Mother Teresa of the cat world.
    The unfortunate feline came home with one of its back legs bitten most of the way off. She held the little guy’s leg together and bandaged it up, hoping it would miraculously grow back together. It did not. Soon the cat began to stink of rotting meat as gangrene set in. After she realized the smell was not going to get any better, she called the vet and asked for advice. The vet told her she had two choices—the cat could either be “put to sleep,” or they could amputate the leg, which would cost what amounted to a small fortune when you’re poverty-stricken.
    My mother couldn’t stand the thought of having the animal put down, and she couldn’t afford the amputation, so she decided to do it herself. From old movies she had learned that ether renders people unconscious, so she figured it would work on the cat. Her first step was to buy something from an auto parts store that was in a can labeled “Ether.” Since ether isn’t something a person can just march into a corner store and buy, God only knows what the can contained. She poured