QUACK

The Aaron Revelation

“Be kind to your servant that I may live,

        That I may keep your word.

Open my eyes to see clearly

        The wonders of your teachings.”

                              -Psalms 119: 17-18

THIS CHAPTER IS FROM AARON'S POINT OF VIEW

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Prison is a place for thieves and killers and a very small number of genuinely innocent people. But the place itself is a thief and a killer, and I find I have died a thousand deaths over the years I have spent behind bars.    What meager possessions I had coming in were returned to me when I finally came out. The life I left behind fit inside a Ziploc bag: a couple sticks of Wrigley’s, a crumpled piece of paper, the writing of which has seeped into its folds, an ace of spades, a crushed up cigarette, a guitar pick. There is a wristwatch that has stopped working, a tarnished silver cross hanging from a chain necklace. In a separate bag are the clothes I came in wearing. I am not surprised that they are much, much looser now. I have been robbed clean, bodily and materially.

I had been in prison for eighteen years, three months, a week and three days. Early on, I had been obsessed enough to count down to the hours, but it taxed the mind too much.

In all that time, Allen visited me only once, to tell me one sad truth, and an even sadder lie. The sad truth was of your passing, how your heart gave out during labor. He told me of the service, of the people who came. He told me about the funeral at Greenwood. He told me I should have been there, yet another truth I had to swallow like a hard nugget.

The sadder lie was of our child’s death.

The thing about being an innocent man from prison is that you’re the only one convinced of your blamelessness. I had hoped that if people saw our child, they would realize that what I did—what we did -- was an act of love, not of malice.

You were the only thing worth living for. That night, after Allen’s visit, I had almost succeeded killing myself, of joining you, joining our child, making our little family whole.

I had fashioned a noose from torn clothes and sheets. There I was in my cell, bare naked, struggling for air. The knots came loose, and I tumbled to the floor.

Maybe I passed out, I don’t remember. But I woke up so disoriented, like I had no idea where I was, why I was naked. I guess I am what Heidegger meant about the human person as a being-thrown-to-earth. I was clueless and disoriented at my nakedness. I had been hanging onto something before being thrown back down to earth. I supposed that there were still some things that tethered me here.

And today, when I saw you, I finally found out why I am still here.

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In prison, I got used to sleeping in a cell that probably wasn’t even thirty square feet. I got used to eating whatever food they slapped onto my tray. I got used to falling asleep with the lights on, with a grown man crying himself till he passed out from pure exhaustion, with a place that never allowed for rest. I got so used to the way things were in there that I no longer understood the way things really are. I was handed my freedom and I had no idea what to do with it.

The minute I got out, I was itching to do something stupid and reckless, just so I could get sent back in and just go back to the place I knew. I no longer felt like I belonged in this world.