Read Online Life After Death: The Shocking True Story of a Innocent Man on Death Row by Damien Echols - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Damien Echols
Tags: General, True Crime
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his life’s work over the years, and it’s incredible how people have misunderstood him. One of my favorite examples is his “How to Succeed / How to Suck Eggs” wordplay. It comes from chapter sixty-nine (wordplay: get it?), in which he talks about sexual practices; anyone not reading closely won’t pick up on the “suck seed” reference. His words have been misconstrued, twisted, taken out of context, and misunderstood continuously. If you don’t know the key with which to decipher him, then you’ll never understand what you’re reading. Others don’t even want to understand, and would rather use his name or image to sway and scare the ignorant, just as the prosecutor did during my trial.
Our financial situation continued its steadily downward spiral, and the tension continued to build. We started trying to grow our own food, and it was hot, backbreaking labor. We had no irrigation system, not even a hose and running water, so we had to haul water by the bucketful to our “garden.” Everything was done manually. Some days you’d go up one row of cucumbers or potatoes and down another with hoe in hand, busting up the dry, cracked ground. Other days you’d spend hours hunched over, pulling weeds from between plants with bare hands. That task was especially hazardous, as you had to constantly be on the lookout for poisonous snakes, bumblebees, and wasps. If you let the monotony of the task lull your mind into a stupor you’d often receive a nasty surprise. After all the hard work, only about half the food would be edible. The bugs and animals would have gotten some of it, while other areas couldn’t be saved from rot.
The only thing we didn’t have to do ourselves was crop-dusting. Our house was in the middle of the field the plane flew back and forth over, and it gave us a healthy dose of poison every time it passed overhead. If you didn’t run for cover when you heard him coming, you’d get dusted, too. During that time, I inhaled enough pesticides to put a small country out of action. My mom’s and Jack’s advice? “Don’t look up at the plane, and try not to breathe deeply until he gets a little ways past.” I developed allergies so bad that my mother had to start giving me injections at home. She had no bedside manner and wielded that syringe in an entirely unpleasant way.
You had to be certain you had all the food out of the garden by the end of summer or there was a chance the fire would destroy it. Every year after the final harvest, farmers would ride through the fields surrounding our house and set them ablaze with instruments that looked like flamethrowers. This was so all the burned and leftover vegetation would fertilize the ground for the next year’s crop. I don’t know what prevented the house from burning, because the flames would come to a halt only a few feet away. If the wind changed direction you would nearly suffocate on thick, black smoke.
The house did nearly burn to the ground one time because the wood-burning stove started a fire in the ceiling. The fire department had to come and spray the place down. Unfortunately, the trucks arrived in time to put it out. As I watched, I desperately prayed that the entire shack would burn so I’d never have to see it again. It survived with little damage.
Jack was a roofer by trade, and he started taking small jobs on the side, repairing residential homes to bring in a little extra cash. I started going with him, learning the process. I was only about thirteen, so mostly what I did was clean up the area when he was finished, and he’d give me a few dollars.
Perhaps up until this point I’ve painted a completely unsympathetic portrait of Jack. He wasn’t an absolute monster any more than anyone else is. He was just a man, both good and bad. I believe he did care about both my sister and me, in his own way. He could be generous. He would stop to help every single person whose car was broken down on the side of the road, and he
Our financial situation continued its steadily downward spiral, and the tension continued to build. We started trying to grow our own food, and it was hot, backbreaking labor. We had no irrigation system, not even a hose and running water, so we had to haul water by the bucketful to our “garden.” Everything was done manually. Some days you’d go up one row of cucumbers or potatoes and down another with hoe in hand, busting up the dry, cracked ground. Other days you’d spend hours hunched over, pulling weeds from between plants with bare hands. That task was especially hazardous, as you had to constantly be on the lookout for poisonous snakes, bumblebees, and wasps. If you let the monotony of the task lull your mind into a stupor you’d often receive a nasty surprise. After all the hard work, only about half the food would be edible. The bugs and animals would have gotten some of it, while other areas couldn’t be saved from rot.
The only thing we didn’t have to do ourselves was crop-dusting. Our house was in the middle of the field the plane flew back and forth over, and it gave us a healthy dose of poison every time it passed overhead. If you didn’t run for cover when you heard him coming, you’d get dusted, too. During that time, I inhaled enough pesticides to put a small country out of action. My mom’s and Jack’s advice? “Don’t look up at the plane, and try not to breathe deeply until he gets a little ways past.” I developed allergies so bad that my mother had to start giving me injections at home. She had no bedside manner and wielded that syringe in an entirely unpleasant way.
You had to be certain you had all the food out of the garden by the end of summer or there was a chance the fire would destroy it. Every year after the final harvest, farmers would ride through the fields surrounding our house and set them ablaze with instruments that looked like flamethrowers. This was so all the burned and leftover vegetation would fertilize the ground for the next year’s crop. I don’t know what prevented the house from burning, because the flames would come to a halt only a few feet away. If the wind changed direction you would nearly suffocate on thick, black smoke.
The house did nearly burn to the ground one time because the wood-burning stove started a fire in the ceiling. The fire department had to come and spray the place down. Unfortunately, the trucks arrived in time to put it out. As I watched, I desperately prayed that the entire shack would burn so I’d never have to see it again. It survived with little damage.
Jack was a roofer by trade, and he started taking small jobs on the side, repairing residential homes to bring in a little extra cash. I started going with him, learning the process. I was only about thirteen, so mostly what I did was clean up the area when he was finished, and he’d give me a few dollars.
Perhaps up until this point I’ve painted a completely unsympathetic portrait of Jack. He wasn’t an absolute monster any more than anyone else is. He was just a man, both good and bad. I believe he did care about both my sister and me, in his own way. He could be generous. He would stop to help every single person whose car was broken down on the side of the road, and he
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