Chapter 14 - The Cell Next Door

The hardest thing about prison is being away from your loved ones.  The next thing is the time you have to serve, then the location.  If you're serving a life sentence in a hard prison without any loved ones keeping you company and showing support, then you are hard timing.  And I pretty much was hard timing.  All I really had for support was Chris in the cell next door.  He bought me stuff on a weekly basis.

I had family, but they had their own struggles.   So, I was on my own as far as any type of support.  However, on occasion, my mom would figure out a way to send me some money.  My mom had been doing time with me since day one, so she will always be number one in my life.  Waking up in a prison cell most of my life is getting old.  Chris was returning to his cell.  I knew this because I heard his door close, and then the water running.  I tapped on the wall and called him on the phone.  At this point, the phone meant "the electrical outlet."  "Where did you  come from, bro?"  When I asked Chris, he pulled a chair up by the outlet, so I grabbed my plastic chair as well.  "I came from the business office," he told me.  "What the hell did they want?" I asked.  "I was on the phone with some lawyers about signing my house over again," Chris said.  He was asked to sign the house over to the victim's families.  I kept him from signing it over at the time because there could be evidence to help his case.  If he could hold off and get that private investigator Anna hired, or anyone else to sweep the house, it may have been helpful.  He needed new facts, new circumstances, and then he could possibly get out in 20 years instead of never. 

“What did you tell them,” I ask?  “Well, last time I told them, I didn't have an envelope to send them, just a sign agreement.  This time, I just told them that I didn't want to," he explained.  Chris was getting more and more of a spine.  "I'm impressed; this is good news.  "All we have to do is find a lawyer and a private investigator," I told him.  "I know, but I have to give it to her family.  It's the least I can do," he said, "Damn straight it is, buddy."  

“I'm not saying keep the house, but I'm saying, hold off on signing away your life.  There could be some kind of evidence in there that could help your situation,” I conveyed.  He was silent, which meant he was contemplating what I had just said.  “Yeah, I need a lawyer.  I won't sign it until I can figure out what I am doing,”  He decided.  “How much money do you think you and your wife made per year?” I asked as I curved the conversation elsewhere.  “Her and I together made well over $100,000." Chris said.  “What did she do,” I asked.  “She was pretty successful at selling Thrive.  She was the breadwinner out of us,” he admitted.  “What exactly did you do at work?” I asked.  “I basically was the guy with the clipboard supervising,” he informed me.  I sort of envied him for that.  I would love to have a chance to have that type of job.  “I just hope you get your chance at trial.  This time so you can go back to being that guy,”  I said.  "I'm still that guy," Chris said.  He was right.  He was still himself.  "Well, you haven't turned into what people are calling you, which is a monster.”  “When we get out, I'll teach you what I'm really good at," he said, "And what's that?” I asked him.  “Fixing cars,” he replied.  I started to think, and at dawned on me that he had five life sentences plus 84 years.  Did he have that kind of faith where he believed he was getting out?  Yes, I instilled hope in him, but I didn't think he truly had this much hope.  “I don't know shit about cars.  My brother is a mechanic.  He's tried to teach me in the information never sticks,” I admitted.  “My brother would lose patience with me often because of my lack of car knowledge.  When I would try to help, he would just tell me that I was in the way.”  "Well, you're going to have to learn a trade with all these hoes you're going to knock up.  Kids are expensive.  My daughter's medical bills, especially.  Kids get sick a lot.  Food, clothing, and they grow fast, daycare toys and a lot of patience,” he said, and I understood."

“I was half kidding about knocking up hoes,” I let him know.  He just laughed.  “But you were half serious, so I gave you half of my advice, like, never having a clean shirt without a saying because they have puked on all of them.  Crying in the middle of the night, changing diapers, just getting out of a dead sleep.  Are you ready for all of that?”  Chris asked me.  "Women change diapers.  Us men come home from work and say, "Woman, dinner on the table now." I laughed as he stifled away a laughed while sighing.  "I was kidding.  My wife would have killed me, dude, and I had a lot of responsibility with them," he said.  "Shanann ran the house," “It sounds like you were doing too much work and taking care of the kids,” I said to Chris.  “When I came home from work, I would make food for them, play with them, bathe them, read them a bedtime story, and put them to bed.  I did a lot with them some days,”  He expounded.  “What did she do?  I questioned.  “Well, she was really busy with her job and everything it required.  Some days, she would do a lot with them too,” he told me.  “I got to ask, what went so wrong with y'all that you ended up straying with Nicole?  I pressed.   He paused for a few seconds.  “I started working out, and brought my weight down to, like, 168.  Women were noticing me, and I met Nichol.  She was just everything my wife wasn't.  Like with me, she was just nice, and not a control freak.  We could make decisions together.”  “Wait, how long were you two together or messing around?  I thought it was five weeks,”  I asked.  “We knew each other for a while, but we didn't start messing around until six weeks before.  We knew each other for a while.  We worked together, we had chemistry, and I fell into temptation, kind of like in the garden of Eden, I compared.  She was the forbidden fruit,” he admitted.  “So, how did she not get wrapped up in any of this?” I asked him.  "Well, there are some complications with that," he said.  "Like what?  I asked.  It took him a while to respond.  “Well,” he says and pauses.  He pauses a lot before he reveals something that's hard for him to say.  “She didn't exactly do much to incriminate herself,” Chris admitted.  “I don't think I want to know, bro.  I really don't.”  I didn't want my opinion of him to change.  If he told me what I thought he was going to tell me, how he could murder his girls in cold blood?  It just made no sense at all.  These little girls were three and four years old.  They loved him and he loved them.  “Just know it wasn't my hand actually doing it,”  He managed to say.

He told me that before, and I still couldn't comprehend what he meant by it.  The traps on our doors were being popped out for dinner.  “Time to eat.”  That's all I managed to mutter to him.  Life is simply just one big classroom.  If you don't pay attention, you fail.  I had failed at life thus far, however, I was bringing my grades back up.  Chris and I were at of service in the chapel.  He was soaking up every word that the pastor spoke.  The pastor's words were going in one ear and out the other for me, though.  Usually, I paid attention, but I had the weight of the world crushing me.  My status was still Department of Community Corrections.  I didn't even have a court date scheduled.  My situation was hopeless.  Then again, my situation could never get worse than the man on my left.  Chris or the man on my right Pete.  They were both in worse situations than me by far.  I looked to my left at Chris.  How could he be at such peace with his family dead and serving life in prison for their murders?  I was going home eventually, and still, I could not find that peace.  I cannot get comfortable if you can pack all of your stuff and be ready to move in less than 60 seconds, then you are not comfortable.  You weren't cozy in prison like the majority of inmates.  The complacency of those around me kept me from becoming just like them.  I did not want to become yet another statistic.  The walls around me, the fences, the ignorance of the majority, they all motivated me to strive to be better.  If there was one person that got me, it was Chris.  He didn't see me most judgmental individuals did.  We kept this strictly Matthews 7:1-2.  “Do not be judged so that you will not be judged.  For in the way you judge, you will be judged.  And by your standard of measure, it will be measured to you.”  See, you get back what you put out, which kept us on our toes.  Before I knew it, we were ending the service in prayer.  I said my own prayer to God and asked that he guide me on my path that is better than being and fetters.  I asked that the Lord give me the peace he had bestowed upon Chris and Pete.  The Lord must have bypassed me with peace, cause my entire life has been war.  How could I obtain a feeling that I had never known?  I left my prayer up to God while I suffered the consequences of being on the wrong side of the law.  The one thing at clung to was hope.  Hope was the one thing that encompassed me to walk the path of a square.  I wanted to live the normal Christian life, but I was the definition of the direct opposite of the normal Christian life.  I tried and tried to shake the thug from myself; however, it was who I was, and I had to learn to contain it.  I was not very civilized.  I lived my entire life on the edge, and I wasn't going to fall off yet.  My mind was on the path of a normal Christian life, but my heart was stuck in the trenches.