My hands are broken, my ribs are broken, and I’m dope sick beyond belief, but I know the real pain is in the mail, deeper than broken bones. It’s about broken promises, broken hearts, and broken lives. The headlines in the newspapers are as black and bold as gunpowder. The Jackrabbit Stumbles: after thirteen years of freedom, thirteen years of a publicly redeemed life, I have gotten myself wired, robbed a bank, shot at policemen, and held two people hostage. A nightmare I can’t imagine away or hide from in sleep. I collapse on my bunk and try to shut out the glare of the twenty-four hour light. Behind my eyelids life has become everything I can’t get back. I’m forty-nine years old, married to one of the most interesting and beautiful women on the planet, and parent to two incredible pieces of magic, Sophie, who is ten, and Charlotte, seventeen. The forfeiture is unbearable. I see a clear plastic laundry bag lying in one corner of my cell. If I could only get it over my head, wind it tight, airtight, at the neck. I keep the garbage bag clutched in my hand for five days, as I lie fetal, curled around that cavity that others call the centre of their being. I lie down with the pain and I sweat and I weep. Every five minutes I gather enough strength to do it, to place that bag over my head, and every five minutes and one second I gather enough strength not to do it. By the weekend I can sit up. Another inmate brings me a plate of congealed stew with a biscuit. I manage to swallow a few plastic forkfuls of the stew, but I don’t manage for long. I charge for the toilet bowel and sell a Buick all over the corner of my cell. The guy who brought me my dinner also helps me change clothes and clean up. That evening I sit on the edge of my bunk, sip a cup of water, and this time keep the biscuit down. I glance over at the plastic bag, now filled with sweaty socks and underwear. Who’d want to be sticking their head into that? Susan visits. She’s been here on previous days but this is our first contact; I couldn’t get up to see her the other times. I measure the two guards assigned to escort me to the visiting area. The top of my head comes level with the epaulets on their cannon ball shoulders. I step carefully. I know I am in ‘roid country; nobody grows that big eating homemade bread. They place me in a security booth and it is all Susan and I can do just to sit there, so numb and so saddened, and watch each other weep through that scratched-up sheet of plexiglass. And when we pick up those black forty-five pound telephones and hold them to our ears, all we can do is listen to that weeping until the hour has passed and the guards come for me. Susan begins to visit every day. Our words come slowly, the trembling of my face, of my hands, lessens. Soon thereafter my lawyer, a good and kind friend, begins to show up for a series of consultations. Each time he comes I am led out to the interview room, and he is waiting, yellow legal pad in one hand, pen in the other, poised to take notes. Just the facts, ma’am. With my bones back in my body, my will to live barely restored, it is already time for me to help him to form a narrative of the crime, to gain an understanding of the facts. Good luck. As I walk through it with him, recollecting the carnage, it is the faces that emerge most clearly. Bank employees, unfortunate customers, the innocent bystander, the elderly couple in their apartment: the fright in their eyes, the bewildered expressions. And finally, the masked and goggled Emergency Response Team. I didn’t ever see the actual faces of the ERT officers, but their feet left a lasting impression.
A Culture's Catalyst
For-mi-da-ble: inspiring respect or wonder because of size, strength or ability
"Formidable," Murphy says to his cat, Mousetrap. "The Formidable Four. That's us, MT. What do you think about that?"
