CHAPTER 4
THE LIFE OF AN OUTLAW
Criminal Equations
Curiosity + Puberty + Opportunity—Guidance = Voyeurism
Rejection + Depression x Rage x Lust—Counseling—Support = B&E + Rape
Outcast + Need x Excitement—Means of Support = Robbery
Dementia + Possession x Revenge = Murder
VIRGIN OUTLAW
I hung around Shreveport for a spell…lost my job…did a couple of B&E’s…got punched in the nuts at the skating rink…stole my dad’s .38 cal. Smith & Wesson service revolver…robbed Charlie’s Lounge and a liquor store…then I packed the .38 and hit the road hitchhiking through Mississippi and Alabama…robbed a Winn-Dixie…continued on my way to Georgia…robbed another Winn-Dixie…got busted…and wound up in the Muscogee County Jail.
May 12, 1979. Danny Rolling was named as the prime suspect in the attempted armed robbery of a Shreveport 7-11 store. When the clerk handed him the $11.00 in the cash register, he handed it back, saying, “Forget it, that ain’t worth taking.” No charges were filed.
May 13, 1979. His first real robbery was crazy and almost got him killed. Charlie’s Lounge was a small neighborhood bar where rednecks, bikers and ruffians bellied up to their mugs of beer and listened to shit-kickin’ country music.
It was 11:00 P.M. on a Saturday night, so the place was packed. The front door stood open and drunken laughter spilled out into the deserted street with the jukebox music.
The robber stood in the shadows across the street, watching the flow of traffic. He tried to talk himself out of it. He was 25 years old and no criminal. But that soon would change.
Looking at the .38 he had stolen from his father, he remembered how upset his dad had been as he tore up the house looking for it. Alone there in the dark, he was talking to himself.
“Well, I guess it’s true what they say about policemen and preacher’s sons. Dad, you’re a cop—and I’m a misfit. Oh well, I’ve come this far. There’s no turning back now. Look out, Charlie, here I come!”
And with his words dying in the darkness, he walked casually across the dimly-lit street like he was walking on the clouds of a dream. Standing in front of the lounge, he paused to put on the brown cotton gloves and the navy blue ski mask, then threw himself inside the door with his heart racing, not knowing what to expect. What he found was more than he bargained for.
The young robber pointed the cool black .38 in all directions from left to right and yelled, “This is a holdup! Everybody on the floor!”
Nobody paid him any attention. So he screamed at the top of his lungs. “I said on the floor! Everybody! Move it! NOW!”
Somebody turned off the jukebox and it became very quiet. All eyes were now fixed on the lone gunman.
“Get on the floor before I start shootin’ this place up!”
The women were the first to obey, but some of the men became a problem. A big heavy-set man playing pool picked up a cue-ball and started for the masked man standing in the middle of the room.
“Hey! You!” the robber yelled, pointing the pistol at the drunken man coming for him. “What? You want to be a hero, mister? Do you?”
With the gun leveled at him, the man dropped the pool ball and just stood there staring defiantly at the robber.
“Get on the floor now! DO IT!” And he did.
Everyone was lying on the dirty floor except the bartender, who reached for a shotgun he kept hidden under the bar. The robber caught this out of the corner of his eye, and snapped around taking a bead on the man crouching there.
“HEY! Whatcha think you’re doing, fella? Get your hands up! Do it or I’ll drill ya!” He did.
A man began crawling towards the back room. “YOU! Where are you going? Get back here!” But he got away.
Finally everyone was lying quietly on the floor. Quickly now the bandit pounced to the bar and demanded all the money from the register. The tender complied, opened the cash box, and handed over the money.
The bandit, watching everyone and everything, backed slowly out of the scene of his first robbery Once outside, he turned and ran back across the street the way he came, bullets zinging inches by him as someone from inside Charlie’s Lounge opened fire. It had been that close. He vaulted a 9-foot fence and disappeared into the night.
And thus began the virgin outlaw’s road to crime, punishment, insanity, and violence beyond his wildest nightmare.
May 15, 1979. Danny Rolling, wearing a brown sack over his head, entered the L&R Liquor Store in Shreveport and demanded “all the money,” fleeing on foot with about $200.00.
“Well, he had moved back in with us, said Claudia, “and like always, his dad struck a sour note with him from day one. I think it just built up until he couldn’t stand it any more, so he left early one morning before I got up. The next thing I hear he’s in jail in Columbus, Georgia, charged with armed robbery”
May 25, 1979. Jeanette Caughey of Phenix City, Alabama saw her nephew Danny for the last time. He came to her house and asked to spend the night. She agreed, but when he asked her to go bar-hopping with him, she declined. He asked if he could borrow her car, and she refused; after that, he went out. The next time she saw her brother’s son was on TV in a story relating his latest misadventures.
Wearing a brown ski mask, blue jeans and a blue jean jacket, Danny Rolling had entered a Winn Dixie Grocery Store in Montgomery, Alabama, at 8:35 RM. He pointed his father’s gun at the two cashiers and ordered them to put the contents of their registers in a dark blue hat he used as a bag. He fled on foot to a nearby Baptist Church.
He entered the church through an open window, and once inside, counted out eight hundred dollars. Flushing the food stamps down the toilet, he left the church and hitched a ride to Columbus, Georgia. Intending to visit his grandparents, he wound up in jail instead.
May 31,1979. Danny robbed a Winn-Dixie at the Peachtree Mall in Columbus, Georgia, bursting into the store at about 9:00 P.M. wearing a brown ski mask and flashing a revolver. He stashed the contents of the registers in a brown paper sack, and ran off into the woods.
About a half-hour later, three uniformed officers checking the woods behind the store found Danny Rolling hiding in some bushes. He surrendered without a struggle, and readily confessed to the armed robberies in Alabama, Georgia and Louisiana.
“He thought somebody would blow him away,” remembered Claudia Rolling. “It was another way of getting rid of that no-count Danny. I had money lying around the house all the time. He never took a penny. He or Kevin either one. They never stole anything that I know of. And by the way, his daddy’s .38 was empty, there were no bullets in it. Of course the people he robbed didn’t know that.”
So began my criminal education in joints across the Southeast. I’ve been in and out of every flea bitten, rat and roach infested jail and prison the good ol’ South can offer a rebel gone mad.
HOUSE OF STEEL AND STONE
Its hard…so very hard for me to understand.
What made this man put a gun in his hand?
Well, I guess I came to the end of my rope,
‘Cause when I lost my love, I lost my hope,
Now I’m livin’ in a house of steel and stone.
Prisons in America have changed immensely over the past fifteen years. Many are run as humanely as possible. Still, when you lock up dangerous men in close quarters, there is bound to be trouble.
You can judge a society by the way it runs its prisons. Even though this country tries to treat its prisoners with dignity, there is still much that needs to be done. We treat the symptom but not the cause. Give a prisoner basic human necessities and a way to improve himself. Reward good behavior and punish bad. At least give a guy a chance to overcome his mistakes.
You take a dog, cage it up, feed it slop, torment it, abuse it, and over a period of time the animal will either become uncontrollable and wild, or depressed with no will to live.
Everyone needs a reason to be. Take away that reason—and what’s left? Nothing but mischief.
July 31,1979. Danny entered a guilty plea to two counts of armed robbery for the Columbus, Georgia Winn-Dixie stickup, and received two concurrent 6-year sentences. He spent the next six years imprisoned, starting out as a trustee in the Muscogee County Jail in Alabama.
After three weeks, on August 20 he was processed into the Georgia Prison System at the Medical Classification Center in Jackson, Georgia.
He had no girlfriends at this time. The only people he had contact with in the free world were his mom, dad, brother and family. They came to see him about once a year.
Claudia Rolling remembered one miserable visit. “He looked like he had shrunk back to a little boy. I really don’t think that Danny ever got much past 15. I know that right now whenever he’s allowed to call me, his conversation is more mature, but every once in a while, he’ll revert back to that little 15 year-old that I know so well. I don’t think he ever really got much older than that.
“I had gotten a letter from him from prison, and it said, ‘Dear Mommy and Daddy,’ and there was two pages of ‘I love you.’ That’s all. Just ‘I love you.’ I didn’t know if James was going to let me go see him or not. He made me wait like a week before he said let’s go.
“When we first went to the jail, the jailer made me talk to Danny through a little bitty hole. And you’d have to put your ear and listen, and then put your mouth up there and talk and let him listen, and I couldn’t stand that, so Danny’s lawyer got a room, one of the interrogation rooms I imagine, and he had them bring Danny in. He was wearing just shorts. No shoes, nothing. And he come in the room like a little kid.
“He went straight past me, which kind of shocked me, and he went straight to his dad, and he begged him, he said, ‘Say you love me. Tell me you love me. Please tell me you love me.’ And his lawyer, I looked over and his lawyer had tears coming down. And his daddy was just standing there looking at him. And Danny said again, ‘Please,’ he said, ‘please tell me you love me.’ And so James Harold finally said, ‘I love you,’ sort of offhand, like OK, I’ll say it and maybe that will shut you up. I went over to Danny and took him in my arms to let him know that someone did love him.”
October 8, 1979. Danny escaped from a road gang while chopping down trees with a dull axe, but immediately surrendered about 100 yards from the prison boundaries after an officer fired a warning shot with a 12-gauge shotgun.
May 13, 1980. After a 16-day stay in the Jackson Medical Classification Center, Danny was sent to Reidsville for about six months.
WHATSA MADDA WITCHEW, WHITEBOY?
The closest I ever came to being raped was when I first pulled up to Reidsville Prison. The racial tension was so thick you could cut it with a knife. And sometimes you would have to.
Since I was the new kid on the block, so to speak, some black prisoners thought I was an easy target. They found out different.
My new home consisted of a 120-man dormitory-style wing. I stowed away what gear I had and went into the latrine to piss. Once that was taken care of, I stepped behind the long shower curtain into the shower stall to look out the window. I wasn’t in there 30 seconds when this real ugly black guy stepped behind the curtain with me and asked, “Whatsa madda witchew, whiteboy?”
Immediately, I sized up the situation and snarled, “Nothing! What’s wrong with you?”
That’s when he reached for me. I picked that dog up and executed a fireman’s carry, slamming him to the floor. I jumped on top of his chest and grabbed him by the throat, but before I could do him in, the black guy’s buddies (who put him up to it) came rushing in, thinking it was party time. There must have been 8 or 9 of the monkeys. I looked at all those staring dark eyes and knew this was trouble.
I looked down at the stinking rug-head I was choking, and said, “All right! I’m gonna let you up, but stay clear of me!” I let go my grip, rose to my feet, and got the hell out of there.
Nothing like that ever happened again, because they all thought I was crazy. Well, I guess I was, but it was a crazy environment.
EVERYTHING HE DETESTED
Reidsville was Danny’s first taste of prison life, and it was one hell of a taste. While he was there, two riots broke out. A friend of his had his kidneys punched out with a rattail file. Then three blacks caught this white guy on the third tier. Two of them held each arm, while the third butchered him. His only fault was being at the wrong place at the wrong time…and being white. He was in his twenties, and only had 90 days before his sentence was completed. Two months later, the brother of the slain man caught two of the blacks that killed his brother in the showers and stabbed them both to death.
One man working in the sawmill was thrown into a woodchipper and left for dead, but somehow he managed to hold on with one hand. He lost both legs and one arm—but he survived.
There is no place safe in prison. Even chow-time can be your end. Twice fights broke out in the Reidsville mess-hall. Danny watched in horror as one man’s brains were bashed out with an industrial can opener. At the time they still had guards armed with shotguns in the mess-hall towers, and whenever there was a fight they would pump buckshot into the room.
At Reidsville, many wildcats took up housekeeping under the buildings. One black cat that Danny recalls vividly would slink from under the building parallel to the mess-hall, step up on a flat rock, and get himself a drink of cool water that dripped from a spigot there. How Danny grew to hate that cat! He became the symbol of everything he detested about being locked up. While he was imprisoned there against his will, this cat chose to make it his home.
Danny wanted to remove that green-eyed black cat that taunted him from his sight forever. But a nine-foot chainlink fence restrained him. One day he purposed to kill it. From his lair, the dark shadow crept into the light. Ignoring Danny, he stepped onto the flat slab and began to drink.
“Today’s your day, bucko,” Danny said and picked up a large round stone. All in one motion, he leaped on the fence and pulled himself up with his left hand. With the right hand he threw the stone as hard as he could over the top of the fence at the despised cat.
The noise startled the cat and he turned about quickly, just as the stone struck him dead center on his forehead and knocked him out cold. His feet went right out from under him.
Danny looked on, fascinated. He could hardly believe his eyes. It was an impossible shot, a one in a million chance he could hit that cat at that angle and that distance, while holding himself up on a nine-foot fence.
The cat did not move. Danny thought for sure it was dead, and went about his business with a satisfied mind. An hour later he passed back by the same spot on his way to chow. Lo and behold, the cat had crawled off. He thought, “Hmmm. Maybe cats do have nine lives—but this one now has EIGHT.”
After six months at Reidsville, Alabama nabbed me up and extradited .me to Montgomery to stand trial for the stickup that happened there a year earlier. While I was doing a stretch in their Hotel Royal, my lawyer had me sent to Bryce Mental Institution. I was still doing time on the Georgia rap, but I spent two or three months in Bryce. They concluded I was sane and sent me back to the Montgomery County Jail.
HOUSE OF THE INSANE
In the fall of ‘79, a lone white van made its way up and down the picturesque hills of Alabama. Destination, Bryce Mental Institution, better known as the insane asylum, home of troubled souls lost in their own puzzling world beyond reason.
It is rather ironic that the clammy gray walls of Bryce stand a mere bow-shot from Alabama State College in Tuscaloosa. Both deal with the element of thought and how the mind operates—one to teach and learn the building blocks of our world, the other to rummage through the dirty cluttered rooms of insanity.
And so, as the white van pulled up the long driveway and parked before the unwelcoming doors of Bryce, we began this venture into the precarious minds of the mentally off.
“Whelp! Here we are, boys! Now let me make this crystal clear. If any of you whackos decide to bolt on me, I’ll shoot your ass full of holes* Is that understood?” the deputy announced in an acute tone.
Now, you can’t fully appreciate the implications of hardened indifference until you’ve been bounced around the countryside for hours on end shackled hand and foot in the back of a stuffy old van, only to face a tobacco-chewing good-ol’-boy pointing a fully-loaded riot shotgun at you.
“Get out,” Deputy Do-Right commanded, his appearance conveying pure repugnance.
First to emerge from the cage was a thin black man named Jonesy, who argued constantly with the ghosts of his forefathers, which in turn tormented him on a regular basis. He never seemed to eat or sleep, so barely did he acknowledge his presence in this world. He reeked of days, possibly weeks of neglected personal hygiene.
Next to exit was a pale, almost translucent-looking white male who couldn’t resist eating things—anything. Metal staples, ink pens, straight pins, thumbtacks, broken glass—if he could wolf it down, it ended up in his digestive tract, only to be cut out by some insensitive surgeon who felt he had better things to do than remove the broken bits of a drinking glass Carl had happily chewed up and swallowed to the horror of those witnessing the spectacle. Carl had so many scars from operations to remove those odd objects that his abdomen resembled a road map etched across his scalpel-violated flesh.
Last to emerge was a troubled young man known as Cowboy, who was seeking answers to questions only God knows, and had very little to say.
The ragtag bunch of misfits were herded into the vestibule to be admitted. “Well, Larry, I’ve got another batch for ya. You three sit down over there,” the good-ol’-boy ordered, pointing to a long wooden bench in the corner. Jonesy never stopped mumbling to himself, but the other two sat quietly. Carl bowed his head, resting it on his handcuffs, while his cuffed hands covered his ears. Cowboy stared past the admitting desk, his thoughts on what awaited him.
“Would you look at that? See-no-evil, Hear-no-evil, Speak-no-evil! Hey! You three monkeys behave and we’ll throw y’all a banana every now and then!” shouted the irritable orderly Jonesy continued his one-sided conversation.
“You! Shut up!” the man at the desk snarled, baring yellow teeth.
Jonesy was oblivious to the world.
“Hey! I said shut up!”
“You’re wasting your time on that one, Larry,”
Deputy Do-Right stated flatly “He’s way out beyond left field, know what I mean? Out there in the twilight zone.”
“Well, we’ll see about these three right away.” And the orderly got on the phone. Two men dressed in white arrived and mercy! Were they big boys! The two stood an impressive 6’3” or 6’4” and each weighed in at well over 250. Monstrous mean-looking goons.
Deputy Do-Right removed the cuffs and ankle chains from See-no-evil, Hear-no-evil, and Speak-no-evil, and left the three in care of the two giants. Cowboy saw the venom in their eyes and knew compassion would not be found there.
Within the walls of Bryce, if you obeyed the rules, you went along with the other mental defectives. But God help you if you stepped over the boundaries set by the institution’s sovereignty. Punishment was swift and harsh, often brutal.
The giants separated Jonesy from the trio and took him away, then returned to lead the two other monkeys into the human zoo that housed the state’s most violent and disturbed criminals.
THE THORAZINE SHUFFLE
Twisted and turned
Crimson lamplight burned
Sweet misery supreme
The night scream
Dementia…Dementia…Dementia
The word humanity somehow loses meaning when applied to the confused, babbling, shit-eating, piss-drinking corruptibles society has removed from our sight. Cowboy was suddenly surrounded by sights nobody wants to see, smells anyone would turn from, and sounds emanating from crawling, scratching, wild-eyed men turning expressions that only ostracized maniacs could project on the new monkeys.
In the middle of the recreational area, a black man danced and hopped about, his dick flopping out of his soiled, unzipped pants. Over in the corner knelt a broken man talking to the bare wall with a blank expression on his face.
A pitiful chap seated at one of the long dining tables was playing an imaginary game with no working parts. Only the motion of his trembling hands clawing at the still air gave shape to its composition. Two repulsive blacks leered at the new monkeys with such obvious expressions that even a moron could see what was on their minds.
After this unnerving introduction to his new domicile, Cowboy realized no answers would materialize in this place.
Later, he was given a change of clothes. Off came the prison garb, and he was suited up with old blue jeans, a cotton plaid shirt and tennis shoes, all donated by the concerned public. He was assigned a room with a hospital bed and a view from the fourth floor penthouse, panning out to the exercise yard below.
The rules were quite simple. Lights out at ten, reveille at six. You rose before dawn, made your bed, then meandered to the dining hall for breakfast. Afterwards, you lined up for your mind-numbing drugs. You stayed out of other people’s rooms. No fighting, no stealing, no sex of any kind, and absolutely no defiance of authority.
All in all, if you didn’t strike out at anyone, you were pretty much left alone to exhibit whatever behavior your fancy chose to perform for the zoo keepers to log in their metal clipboards. For instance, it was perfectly acceptable to dance about the room, drop your pants, piss in a cup and drink every drop. But if you cast the acidic liquid on the floor or threw it into someone’s face, retribution was swift and ugly, bringing either raining blows of batons and floods of mace, or days locked away in the aperture to solitude known to every prisoner as The Hole.
Every morning it was the same. Dawn painted the horizon with pastel blues and pinks, and after breakfast the Thorazine Shuffle began. “Line up, boys, and take your medicine. Open wide now. Let me see you swallow all of it. That’s a good monkey. Eat your peanuts and go bananas! Ha-ha!”
What was that?
Rat-tee-tat-tat
In the corner it sat
Staring matter of fact
Dementia…Dementia…Dementia
RUINED FOR LIFE
One afternoon, Cowboy singled out Carl and drew him aside. “How ya doin’, Carl?”
“OK. I was supposed to get an operation today to remove a couple of paper clips and staples, but they said I’ve already had too many operations. So they want to just wait and see if I pass it.”
“Why do you eat that stuff, Carl?”
“I don’t know, I just get the urge to swallow something.”
“I see. Well, listen, Carl. You seem like you can be trusted. So I’m gonna level with you. I’m planning on leaving this dump. You interested?”
Carl just looked bewildered as he slowly turned over Cowboy’s proposition. Then as if the sun broke free of the clouds, a big smile spread over his pimply pale face and his eyes twinkled. “Yeah! Sure, I’m interested! How ya gonna do it?”
Cowboy had never seen Carl smile before and it added a significant air of enthusiasm to the whole idea.
“All right, hear me out. On weekends there’s only two orderlies on duty after eleven o’clock at night. You know this, because they make you sleep in the day room so they can make sure you don’t chew up a light bulb or something, right?”
Carl nodded his agreement.
“Well, one is an old white man that looks real spooky to me, real shaky. The other one’s a slender black guy. Neither one looks like they’d be much of a problem. If we could get one more person involved, he could fake like he was choking or something. I’d rouse the orderlies. The two of them would open the gate to the wing, and you could follow behind. Once they enter the guy’s room, I can take care of the black guy, and you and the other guy could easily handle the old man. We’ll tie ‘em up with torn bedsheets, gag ‘em, take their keys, lock ‘em in the room, open the door to the nurse’s station, run down the stairs into the exercise yard, climb the fence…and be gone! You game?”
“Hell, yeah! You can count on me!”
Later Carl proved to be no help at all.
That day after supper, this big black lunatic called Jerry lost it and started his own little war. Cursing, he flung plastic chairs at anything that moved.
CODE BLUE! The goon squad exploded on the scene in a determined onslaught. The crazed man fought off wave after wave of swinging batons and flying mace. He slung chairs and turned over tables. But like a grasshopper who landed on a mound of fire ants, eventually he was overpowered by them. The human fire ants pounded the captured orthoptera until he screamed his submission under blow after blow inflicted on his person. The goons dragged Jerry off by his bloody feet.
Cowboy decided then and there the wild black man would be ideal for their cause. Three weeks passed slowly, and Jerry was finally let out of The Hole. Cowboy approached him with the plan.
“Are you game or not?”
“Whatcha want me to do?”
So Cowboy ran it down to him, and he agreed to play.
The plan was to go into effect that weekend. The fateful night arrived and the players were on stage to perform their roles. But when it came time to read their lines, two of them acquired stage fright.
Cowboy tiptoed to Jerry’s room and woke him up. “Damn, Jerry! Get up, man! It’s time now. Come on, fake like you’re choking!”
Jerry looked less than enthused, but began a halfhearted imitation of a man in trouble.
“Come on, man! You’re going to have to do better than that! Choke, dammit!”
Jerry wanted to back out of the whole deal.
“Oh, no you don’t! We need you! Now you start choking, hear? That’s it! Yeah! Now, you’re talking, bro!”
Jerry gagged and coughed and would have turned blue if he wasn’t already black. Very convincing indeed.
Cowboy answered his cue with perfect timing and raced down the long corridor to the locked gate that separated the day room from the sleeping weirdos curled up in their hospital beds.
“Orderly! Orderly! You’ve got one choking! Better come see!”
“Get back in your room!” the black orderly demanded.
“But I’m telling you, I think he’s dying! You better come quick!”
With that they jumped up and opened the gate, dashing down the hall with their keys rattling and Cowboy close behind. The old man ran straight to the room that emanated choking sounds. He knelt by the man’s bed and began to check him over. The young black remained just outside the door, looking on cautiously and regarding the situation with suspicion.
“Look at him!” Cowboy blurted with a grandstand wave of his hand. The black orderly followed the motion towards the accomplices acting out the play before him. Instantly Cowboy reacted with catlike speed, took one step behind the orderly and swept his right arm around his neck. He locked his wrist with the left hand in a cobra hold, a vise grip that stops the flow of blood to the brain and knocks a man out in less than 15 seconds. It can also become a death hold.
“You move, and I’ll break your fucking neck!” Cowboy shouted, applying as much pressure as he could while glaring at the fiasco unfolding before his eyes.
Jerry had stopped choking and remained glued to his bed, refusing to play his part. Cowboy stared directly into his fearful eyes, unable to believe the cowardice of this wild man who just weeks ago had taken on the whole Bryce goon squad.
Cowboy turned his eyes from that disgusting scene and looked hopefully down the hall for Carl to take up the slack, only to spot him standing lamely at the gate with obviously no intention of lending a hand.
The old white orderly raced by Cowboy, who was still holding the black man, who had now gone limp. Hope sank to the bottom of Cowboy’s stomach and turned over in his guts as he heard the white orderly calling for the night watchman on the next wing.
Not wanting to risk busting the black orderly’s head open by letting him just drop to the hard floor, Cowboy gently let him go. But much to his surprise, he found out the orderly had just been playing possum. The black man moved with speed and purpose, as swift as the strike of a diamondback rattler and just as effective. He grabbed his attacker’s right wrist with his left hand, and held it with a strength far surpassing his slight appearance.
With his right hand came the blow that would leave its painful thorn embedded forever in Cowboy’s most intimate being. Reaching behind him, the orderly grabbed Cowboy by the balls, clamped down, then yanked upward, tossing him over his hip, in a maneuver known as the hip toss. It turned out he held a third degree black belt in Tae Kwon Do, which he’d acquired in Korea.
“Ahhh! You’ve ruined me! You bastard!” Cowboy screamed, holding his crotch. He was to bear the pain of a torn epididymis in his right testicle for the rest of his life.
Cowboy was unceremoniously thrown into The Hole for several weeks.
Ah yes, The Hole. Complete seclusion. It sucks away your spirit like a black hole in space that draws planets, stars, even whole galaxies down into its dark funnel.
The Hole. A place without the slightest means of comfort. No chair, no bed, no toilet, no window. Just a tiny square that shows nothing but the occasional scornful face. When you need to defecate or urinate, you have to do it in the corner and cover it with newspaper pages apparently left there with that purpose in mind. Your thoughts become so loud you can literally hear yourself think.
IN THE END
As each day in the mental menagerie unfolded, it revealed displays of human behavior that were both pitiful and entertaining. There was the black guy who enacted a daily drama of prancing around the day room talking to the spirits dancing in his head. After some deliberation he would honor the spirits by raising a toast of urine to his lips and drinking it as if it were fine wine.
Then there was the Vietnam vet who was brain-damaged with shell-shock. He would sit in utter reclusive silence in a corner of the day room. Then suddenly! Up he would jump, mimicking the gunfire and explosions, screaming as if he were still in the steamy jungles fighting the Cong.
Late one night Cowboy woke up needing to relieve himself. He stumbled groggily down the hall to the latrine, expecting just to piss and go back to bed. But what he encountered there was to be forever lodged into his memory.
There…perched atop the white porcelain toilet squatted a naked young white man. With one hand against the wall to steady himself, he was working the other up his rectum. His whole hand was stuck up his ass…and he was pulling his guts out!
Red blood spilled over the white porcelain, splattered on the wall behind him, and mixed with the water in the toilet, turning it crimson. And on his face…THAT LOOK! It was one of determined reconciliation—penance for his sins. Whatever atonement he was digging for, I don’t believe he would find it up his ass.
Cowboy just stood there at the door, rooted in shock. The young man didn’t even acknowledge his presence, but continued to dig out his swollen intestines, grunting like some wounded animal caught in a hunter’s trap and gnawing off his trapped appendage.
Finally Cowboy ran down the hall to get the attention of the dozing orderlies. “Hey! You guys gotta see this! There’s a dude in the shitter with this much of his hand stuck up his ass.”
The orderlies chuckled, and one of them drawled, “Oh, that’s just ol’ Gerard. He does that all the time.”
“No! You don’t understand! He’s pulling his insides out! There’s blood everywhere!”
With that they jumped up and opened the grilled gate, dashed down the hall, and took poor Gerard to the outside hospital in a straitjacket. He was laughing as they toted him off.
Gerard was a real piece of work. Late one summer night, he woke up and decided to burn down the family home, along with his mother, his father, his brothers and his sisters. Nobody ever knew why. He just walked into the garage and found the gallon gas can used to fill the lawn mower. He opened the cap, spilled it throughout the house, struck a match…and WHOOSH!
“Look at the pretty flames!” Gerard stood outside on the front lawn in his underwear watching the flames leap and listening to the screams of his family pleading for help as the fire burned away their lives. When the fire trucks arrived, he was staring into the flames in a trance…smiling. When asked what happened, he didn’t reply. In fact, he never spoke again…ever. He just smiled, as if he knew a secret he wasn’t going to tell.
Perhaps Gerard eventually found what he was digging for, but surely he was bitterly disappointed with his discovery…IN THE END.
A shattered mirror dream
A fragile glistening sheen
Moody rainbows only seen
By the mindless fiend
Dementia…Dementia…Dementia
BUGGER BEAR
Have you ever had the displeasure of locking horns with someone you find completely repugnant?
You turn from the unsavory individual with an air of impertinence, hoping they will get the hint and stay clear. But some people live in a world unto themselves.
“Knock-knock.”
“Who’s there?”
“Bugger Bear.”
“Bugger Bear who?”
“Bugger Bear’s gone eat yo breakfast!”
The eroded minds of Bryce gathered every morning for powdered eggs, lumpy grits, burnt toast, milk, butter, and jelly. One crisp red-orange morning over their feast, Cowboy met the Bugger Bear. This huge black man looked like a silverback gorilla and reeked like a skunk. He ignominiously plopped down beside Cowboy, turned his colossal hideous head, and growled, “Gimme yo jelly.”
Well, now. Cowboy suddenly found himself in an indignation situation.
“Did you hear me, white boy? I said gimme yo jelly, or I’m fixin’ to bust yo face!”
Cowboy continued to eat, ignoring the beast spitting in his ear. Then the gorilla reached his paw out towards the grape jelly on his tray—and Cowboy snapped. Grabbing the animal’s hand, his eyes blazed with pure hatred as he whispered between clenched teeth, “Beat it, monkey, before I rip your tail off and hang you with it!”
The black man looked genuinely surprised at Cowboy’s sudden aggressive response, but gathered himself quickly and snarled, “After chow, I’m gone beat yo brains out, whiteboy!”
Nice way to start the morning, with a big ugly smelly ape threatening to beat your brains out over a two-inch square of Welch’s Grape Jelly. Breakfast ended abruptly and those who had enough sense to dump their trays did. The rest just did the Thorazine Shuffle back to their rooms to wait for their next dose.
Cowboy proceeded carefully along the hall, aware that he was being closely stalked by King Kong. Turning instinctively, he faced the challenge just as the ugly head filled with malice emerged from the dark. Cowboy struck out at it as though it was everything he had ever loathed.
POW! POW! POW! Three heavy blows found their mark before the orderlies broke it up and ran both men promptly to The Hole.
The next day was Thanksgiving, so Cowboy spent the holiday sitting Indian-style in the middle of a bare cell with only his own animosity to keep him company.
Warehouses of insanity
Filled with inhumanity
The ugly…the creepy…
The crawly…underhanded folly
Dementia…Dementia…Dementia
EMPTY ANSWERS
Eventually all mental patients get the privilege of being examined by the shrink.
“Oh, please sit down, Mister Rolling. Relax, now tell me all about it, will you?”
(I don’t think so.)
“Draw me a picture of a woman…hmmm, that’s interesting…now draw me a man…OK, now tell me, why are they both crying?”
(Because they’re sad, you idiot.)
“OK, then, let’s play with some building blocks. Put the round one in the right hole. That’s it. Now the square one...”
(What an astonishing revelation! The square one won’t fit in the round hole! Damn! Ain’t that something!)
“Tell me, Mister Rolling, do you hear voices?”
“Oh, yes.”
“Really? Tell me about it.”
“You’re talking, aren’t you, Doc?”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, I hear your voice...”
“Tell you what, Mister Rolling, we’re gonna give you a clean bill of health and send you back to jail—unless you cooperate. Do we understand each other?”
“You know something, Doc? You guys are as nutty as your patients. I thought I could find some answers here, but I can see now, the only answers you have are empty ones.”
The psychiatrist’s eyes were full of years of trying to put together puzzles that wouldn’t—couldn’t fit. “I’m afraid we don’t have time for this, Mister Rolling. You can go now.”
So once again the House of the Insane yielded up yet another misfit to the waiting world. Cowboy Rolling was shackled, placed into the white van, and the doors were slammed in his face.
As the van made its way up the long winding driveway now covered with dead brown leaves, the sun peeked out from behind the gray clouds, cast a single beam of blue-white light like a razor drawn across the moody sky, and stabbed Bryce in the heart.
Ghostly dead leaves scatter
On foggy banks gather
Asks the Mad Hatter
“What does it matter?”
Dementia…Dementia…Dementia
CHAINGANG LIVIN’
Since Alabama had decided Cowboy Rolling was sane, he went to court and got his time. The judge gave him a break and let it run concurrent with the Georgia time. After sentencing, Georgia extradited him to Reidsville to finish his time there. He did another year and after his sentence was up, Alabama extradited him back to their classification center.
While he was at the Alabama classification center, they had a prisoner exchange, and he was packed up and sent to the St. Clair County Jail, a small 60-man jail up in the hills of Alabama. They made him a trustee, and he ran off after dumping the trash one afternoon. He beat their prize tracking dogs by running figure eights.
He made it out of Alabama, but got caught three days later just outside Natchitoches, Louisiana, the sleepy little town where they filmed Steel Magnolia. They sent him back to the Alabama classification center. He stayed for three months and then was sent to Staten Correctional Facility, where he worked in the fields picking crops and digging ditches for 6 months, then got a job in the kitchen as a baker. Boy, could he ever bake! Sometimes the only thing the fellows looked forward to was Cowboy Rolling’s yeast rolls!
Cowboy was transported to Staten at about 3:00 A.M. The prison lights could be seen miles away, surrounded by empty darkness, like a beacon warning careless sailors away.
Staten Pen was not so bad as far as prisons go. Anyone who has done hard time would consider it a Boy Scout camp. Still, it was a prison, and it held its own dangers and distress. You see, you can’t paint a pretty picture of cold stone, barbed-wire fences, and guard towers.
When he first got to Staten, he was put on the road-gang, a squad of 39 hardened black convicts. He made the count 40, and he was the only white guy.
Early every morning, except Saturday and Sunday, the men marched miles out into the fields. They dug ditches, planted crops, harvested, and when the sun hung low in the western sky, they marched back to the compound dirty and tired, under the constant eye of a lawman astride a magnificent horse with a shotgun in his saddle and a .357 in his holster.
Marching back down dusty roads in the evening, the cons would say, “Cowboy, sing that song.” It never failed. He got so tired of singing it, but he’d sing it anyway.
I remember that a-cold and a-lonely night
Sireens and a-flashin’ lights
Well, they took me from underneath the stars
Placed me behind cold stone
And a-steel bars
Chaingang livin’
Of your life you’re given
A-many years and a-many tears
Before you see your home again.
Ooooh, I wanna go home.
They loved it.
Cowboy had a good rep as a boxer. They didn’t have a boxing ring at Staten. Instead, about 300 or so convicts would make a human circle and throw the two to fight in the midst. The only rule was you had to wear boxing gloves. They had several fights. The dust would fly…and he loved it! He never lost a match.
ECLIPSE
Cowboy saw his first and only total eclipse of the sun at Staten. He will never forget it. They were at the center of the path of the eclipse. A friend of his had purchased a piece of dark welder’s shield that one of the fellows had broken into chips and sold for a dollar a chip.
They stood there on the sandy yard and gazed skyward. Just before the eclipse, time seemed to slow, as if the whole universe stood still. The birds began to act crazy, flying about singing weird songs. They were frightened. As soon as the moon passed in front of the sun, the birds fell on the ground, and there was a dead silence. The sky changed colors, from deep blue to a dark orange. Everything appeared like a double exposure.
Cowboy grabbed the welder’s piece of glass from his friend’s hand and caught the eclipse at its peak. It was magnificent! As though God had stuck his mighty finger in the spokes of the universe, and everything went still.
Once the sun began to move from behind the moon, the birds began to fly again. The double exposure look came together crystal clear, the sky became blue again, and Cowboy felt small under the face of the Heavens.
The experience left a longing in his already lonely heart.
Rottin’ in a smoky jailhouse cell
When I heard a rebel yell
From a man who called himself Cowboy
He had this look in his eye
Like he wanted to die
And he said to me…
Chaingang livin’
Of your life you’re given
A-many years and a-many tears Before you see your home again. Ooooh, I wanna go home.
NO SHIT
Boy howdy! I’ll be horn-swoggled and hung at sundown!
Cowboy Rolling’s earliest role model was James Cagney in Public Enemy No. 1. But his all-time favorite movie is “The Oudaw Josey Wales,” starring Clint Eastwood.
Why? Mercy sakes and a bag of ratdesnakes! You’ve got to be joking! Have you seen it in living color on the big screen? It’s got everything any true horse-lovin’, gun-slingin’, dust-eatin’ son-of-a-coyote could possibly want! Indians…Confederate and Union soldiers…smoking cannons…cavalry charges…blazing guns…whiskey and wimmen—and then there’s the episodical presence of Clint Eastwood.
He don’t take no shit. You spit on his boots, he drills you nice and proper between the peepers. A man of action and few words. Discussing the theory of relativity won’t cut the dust down Clint’s parched throat. Hell no! A fifth of Redeye wets his whistle and enlightens his mind.
Welcome to the close of the 21st Century. The year 2000 approaches on the dark clouds of forebode. Who knows what it will bring? Perhaps it won’t arrive like a Space Odyssey, with mankind reaching for the outer stretches of space to find himself—but rather on the dusty wagon wheels of the Wild West.
I NEED A JOB
On June 7,1984,1 was released from Alabama prison. Mom and Pop were waiting for me outside the gates and we went back to Shreveport as one big happy family.
My Mom is the best cook in the whole wide world! She was so glad to see me, she would cook me all kinds of goodies. Homemade candies, cookies, cakes, pies and puddings, soups, fried chicken southern style, mashed potatoes with mustard and butter, mulligan stew, chicken and dumplings, shrimp gumbo—the list just goes on and on. I really miss my mom’s cooking. Man! I’m getting hungry just thinking about it!
Things went all right at home for a spell, then Dad and I started in on each other as usual—and I left.
I need a job today…
and I ain’t going to go away
Until I hear you say…
you’re hired.
I’ll work till I drop…
ain’t never gonna stop
And I don’t ever want to hear you say…
you’re fired.
I need a, job…
I need to work today
So please, don’t send me away…
I need a job in a bad way…
Yes I do.
“I gave him a bed and he rented an apartment,” said Danny’s Aunt Agnes. “I gave him some pieces of furniture and he got a job. He got two or three jobs at different times, but he would visit me. I had a craft shop, and he come and worked for me at odd times when he wouldn’t be on his jobs. So I didn’t keep up with where he was working or anything like that. All I knew was that his dad did not want him there when he got out of the pen the first time. He said he could not come home. I don’t know if James Harold came around and said he could, or whether Claudia insisted that he come home until he could get a job. Well then, James let Danny move in, but sure enough he did move out. I don’t know whether he was forced out or what. I do know that after three or four months, Danny began to say things to me and I knew there were problems there with his dad. He knew his dad didn’t want him, and he said, ‘Auntie, I’m trying to find a job.’ He said, ‘You know, since I’ve been incarcerated, people don’t want to hire me. They don’t trust me.’ And I said,’ Maybe a whole lot of that’s in your mind,’ but he finally moved out anyway, and got an apartment. When he moved out I said, ‘Danny, don’t move back in, now. Hold onto that.’ But he lost his regular job and he couldn’t pay his rent. He said as soon as they would find out that he had been incarcerated, they would let him go.”
Claudia explained another reason why her son had a hard time holding onto a job. “For one thing he had no transportation. We live in a residential area, so to go to any kind of job, you’ve got to get out of the neighborhood to do it. There were two cars at our house, but Danny had to walk. There were times when James would let me take him, but very rarely.”
Been to so many different places
They all had the same look on their faces
Fill out this application…now
But we don’t have any jobs…anyhow
I need a job…
I need to work today
So please don’t send me away…I
need a job in a bad way.
SANCTUM
I have done so many B&E’s I can’t remember them all. I can recall breaking into at least three different homes and one apartment to steal money from a purse or wallet while the people were home. I’ve broken into places for many reasons: sex, thrills, power, need, desperation, or shelter from the storm. Sometimes I did it just for the hell of it.
But the prime element was always the violation of sanctum.
Danny recalls breaking into one woman’s home on Christmas Eve, 1989. He didn’t know her personally, but he had watched her on several occasions at night. As usual, he and his dad weren’t getting along, and he found himself wanting to be any place other than 6314 West Canal. He forced a window with a screwdriver and climbed in.
While inside, he watched TV, listened to the stereo, and sampled the woman’s vast collection of booze. He stayed there for hours waiting for her to come home, but she didn’t show. He went through her stuff and stole about thirty dollars worth of dimes from a vase, a fifth of Chivas Regal, and the .38 cal. revolver he later used to shoot his dad. He never went back.
Several years prior to that, one night about 3:00 A.M. he wiggled open a window to a home occupied by a man, woman and infant. The woman and child slept at one end of a long hall, while the male rested in the guest bedroom adjacent to the living room.
Danny was looking for money. As the man snored away like a hibernating bear, Danny opened his Buck lockblade knife, crept into the man’s room, and lifted his wallet from the pants he had dropped across a chair only a few feet away. Then he slipped down the hall, gently opened the woman’s bedroom door, and watched her as she slept. That episode only netted him about $75.00, but he remembers the feeling it gave him. It was one of exhilaration—not unlike the adrenaline high a cop feels during a high-speed chase, or a soldier feels in the heat of battle.
These were not isolated incidents. He has broken into many places—sometimes just because he wanted to experience the presence of others through the touch, taste, or feel of their belongings.
Once in Daytona Beach, he climbed a tree, inched across a limb to a telephone pole, and climbed it to an open third-story window. After removing some perfume bottles from the window sill, he wormed through the narrow space into a bedroom belonging to one of the three young female coeds living there. Once inside, he eased onto the stairwell and watched two girls below studying on a couch in the den. He lingered for nearly an hour, then left the way he had come—out the window, down the pole, across the limb, and down the tree. He took nothing with him.
Danny had always been The Watcher—on the outside of life looking in—but breaking and entering was how he found himself on the inside.
RAPE!
What does it mean? Power…control…sexual ecstasy…shame…regret…and loss.
POWER! To have complete control over a beautiful woman is every man’s secret fantasy. Few will openly admit it, much less cross the line—but it is there.
RAPE! Everybody gets off on hearing about beautiful women getting raped. It’s the apex of male sexual fantasy. Just look at the studies taken on that very subject. A hundred college men were polled and asked, “If you could get away with raping a beautiful woman, would you do it?” A surprising amount said “yes.”
SEX! You see, to a healthy male a beautiful woman means pure sexual pleasure.
EXPLOSIVE ORGASMS! Reaching deep down into your soul, emptying out the well of lust. Yes, there is a hell of a lot of excitement, in fact it goes way off the scale of 1 to 10.
THE HUNT! The Viking’s war cry that pierces the night fog. An adventure as old as the mountains that stand in the distance. Seek…possess…ravage.
EXCITEMENT! Over the top thrills! Battles for the hand of a Lady Fair have been fought for centuries. The victor takes the prize. The violent take it by force.
VIOLENCE! Even in nursery rhymes violence against women is revealed. Man’s animal nature still exists—even in fairy tales. Take a look at “Little Red Riding Hood.” I mean, if the woodsman with the axe had not come along, what do you think the wolf would have done with Little Red? “My, what sharp teeth you have!” “All the better to EAT you with, my dear! Oooh…GRRRR!”
POWERFUL EMOTIONS RUNNING WILD! As wild as the wolf that howls on a star-studded night. The screams…the sound of tearing clothing…the struggle…the prize…the submission…sweet submission.
But afterwards, what is left? Regrets…shame…loss. When the blood is thumping in your veins, and you are King of the Hill for a moment, the light really shines on you. But once you step down, the darkness closes in around you and you find yourself alone.
RAPE—the fantasy so sweet to taste that sours once the lust is satisfied.
YOU DON’T HAVE TO DO THIS
Crunching sounds of heavy footfalls made way over the frozen ground of Savannah, Georgia, that crisp November’s night in 1984.
There in the shadows, the voyeur sought his window to fantasy, the portal to his dreams. It had always seemed so with him. Night would fall and the gentle voices of the air come calling.
Come out to us, Danneeeee…
Come and seeeee…
Pleasures hidden behind the veil
Of fantasy…
In the distance the searching eye of a beam of light pierced the darkness and drew his mind to the window of a beautiful young blonde. Closing the distance, Danny jumped a couple of picket fences, stealthy not to disturb any sleeping dogs. Now the dark figure stood watching…longing…lusting…only feet away from the damsel.
Lisa was busy cleaning her new home. She and a roommate had just rented the two-bedroom house and moved in the day before. She was alone, her roommate at work on the night shift at the same plant where Lisa worked.
The stranger outside her window observed the young beauty on her knees scrubbing the baseboard along the hallway wall. She had a toothbrush, a rag and a bucket of soapy water to work with.
2:30 A.M.: Lisa had been cleaning for hours, unaware that she was being watched. Finally, she got up off her knees and put away the cleaning materials.
“Good. Now it’s showtime,” the man in the shadows whispered as he moved from window to window watching.
The blonde entered her bedroom and undressed, oblivious to the Eyes of Lust peering at her through the blinds.
“Yeah, that’s it,” the peeper groaned as his button-fly 501 jeans became unable to contain the passion swelling within him. When the senses taste forbidden desires, reality becomes intensified.
He fell into a hypnotic trance as he undid the jeans and withdrew his throbbing rod. Then with the magic that brings unreachable worlds into reach, outside became inside. Both environments melted into one dimension, as fantasy came to life. The movie began to turn over in his mind. The focus zoomed in on the gorgeous young blonde as she lifted her t-shirt over her head and let it tumble onto the floor.
“Yeah! Oh yeah…do it, baby.”
Then she reached around her back with one hand and unlatched her brassiere. It fell the floor. She examined her breasts in the bedroom mirror. And at the window the stranger examined them too. They were beautiful, shapely, milky-white mounds of womanhood. The Eyes grew more intent.
“Ahhhh!” His dick throbbed in the frigid night air, pulsing with his rapid heartbeat. Lisa peeled out of the little red shorts she wore, freeing her sweet, firm virgin bottom, and she scampered out of the room to take a warm bath. The Eyes followed.
She knelt to adjust the temperature of the water. Then she stepped in, sat down, and washed herself.
The Voices grew louder, reaching for Lisa’s world. Danny disappeared in the mist of his tormented thoughts…and a different person surfaced. It was the outlaw, still unnamed, who would one day emerge as Ennad. All his instincts signaled GO!
He quietly tried the back door. It was locked. He moved on to the carport and tried the second doorknob. It turned easily, the door opened slowly, and the movie began to run in slow motion.
The intruder entered the bathing woman’s dark kitchen and closed the door gently, locking it behind him. For a moment he stood in the darkness, motionless, listening. The only sounds were the splashing of water emanating from the bathroom.
The Eyes hadn’t seen anyone else through the windows, but they searched the dwelling for any unwelcome presence.
Silence…then the droning sound of water draining from the tub. The day’s toil swirled down the grated hole, disappearing below where sewer rats gnaw on dead cat carcasses in the dark.
Lisa rose, grabbed a clean towel from the rack, and dried herself off.
He opened the big, sharp lockblade Buck knife. Its chrome finish mirrored the dim light as he waited.
The damsel opened the door and exited with the towel wrapped around her. As she stepped into the hallway, danger greeted her.
“Oh! Ahhhhh! Get away from me!” she screamed, stumbling into the sanctuary of her bedroom.
The masked man pounced on her like a tiger springing from the bush and grabbed her arm with his leather-gloved hand. But she was still wet and she slipped away.
“Do what I tell you and I won’t harm you,” the intruder commanded, brandishing the menacing knife.
“I’m scared! Oh! Please don’t hurt me,” she begged, and began to heave salty tears down her reddened face.
Her tears brought a shift in the intruder’s mind as one personality struggled with the other, and Danny emerged through the conflicting emotions surging within him.
“OK, OK, lady. Look. Hey, look! See? I’m putting the knife away. Now, you be a good little girl and I won’t hurt you.” Danny closed the lockblade with a click and safely pocketed it.
During the struggle, Lisa had lost her towel. Naked, shivering and shaking, she stood there with her arms crossed over her breasts. With the threat of stabbing removed, tears of relief soon turned into a cautious curiosity.
“Come over here,” he ordered, as again the outlaw personality he later called Ennad took the stage.
Lisa obeyed with a look of utter bewilderment, as if it was just a bad dream and she would soon wake up alone in the safety of her home.
The rapist unbuttoned his 501 jeans and drew out the writhing snake that grew restless between his legs, shaking it at the dumbstruck lass.
“Kiss it! Go ahead, it won’t bite. Kiss it!”
Much to his surprise, the naked beauty did just that. She smiled, bent over with her hands clasped together just under her chin, like a child who just discovered her present under the evergreen tree, and gave the swollen head of his sex a quick peck! Then she withdrew and giggled.
Well, now. There was something about the shy, innocent way she acted that caused another shift. Danny cut in on the dance.
“Oh, lady! I’m sorry…I don’t know why I’m doing this. I’m gonna let you see my face. And if you wanna call the cops? So be it.”
“No! No! I don’t want to see!”
Danny removed the mask.
“Oh! Hey…you’re good looking. Why would you try to rape somebody?”
“I don’t know. I guess I’m lonely.”
“Are you hungry?”
“Yeah…I guess so.”
“Would you like some breakfast?”
“Sounds good. Tell me, what’s your name?
“Lisa.” And she put on her robe.
“A pretty name for a pretty girl.”
They moved into the kitchen, where she prepared a breakfast of scrambled eggs, pink salmon and orange juice for both of them.
Danny peeled off the thin black gloves and crammed them into the pockets of his Levi jacket. They ate in silence, each aware of the other, each submerged in thought.
“Say,” said the pretty girl finally. “I’ve told you my name. What’s yours?”
“Danny…Danny Rolling. Like the Stones. I’m a singer and a songwriter.”
“Really? I’m a singer too! Wanna hear me?”
“Sure.”
“I’ve got a cassette around here someplace,” she said and bounded out of the room. She dug around in some unpacked boxes in the living room until she found what she sought, then returned with it and proudly placed it on the bar before her unusual visitor.
“It’s only a cheap cassette player, but you can tell if it’s any good or not.”
“Cool! I bet you have a beautiful voice.”
“Damn!”
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing, I’ve just got to rewind it.”
She pressed REWIND—whirrrr—PLAY—click—and turned up the volume. The song was “Time in a Bottle,” but the voice was clearly Lisa’s. Danny listened intently.
“Well? What do you think?” she asked, beaming proudly as the song ended.
“I’m impressed! You are obviously very talented. Tell me something. Does that thing record?”
“Uh-huh, sure does.”
“How’s about I sing you a song I wrote and you can record it?”
“OK, tell me when you’re ready.”
“Do it!” She pressed RECORD and Danny sang a capella.
Through misty clouds, gray morning breaks
‘Cross callused hands, crusty eyes awake
In dreams, she clings like rosepetal dew
Like some ghost haunting
The cold damp wind blew
And it’s a gray way, without you.
A princess, an angel, a devil from hell
With perfume and a gentle touch
She cast the spell
Crystal-blue pools in cameo glare Transfixed by the moment
And captured by her stare
And it’s a gray way, without you.
Didn’t I make you my only lady?
And I was your mystical prince
But you wanted to change me
Into a raving beast
So you took away your love,
And put it on a leash
And it’s a gray way, without you.
The magic moment passed and the spell was cast.
“Lisa…you wanna try it again?”
“What—what do you mean?”
“You know.” He looked deeply into her eyes with the gaze all the world recognizes as the expression of desire.
“Well…you’ve already seen me naked.”
Danny took her by the hand and led her back to the bedroom. Off came her robe, exposing her smooth, supple flesh.
“Oh! I don’t know about this—”
“It’s OK. It’ll be all right. Just relax. I’m not going to hurt you.”
“Will anyone be able to tell?”
“What?”
“I’ve never done this before.”
“You’re a virgin?”
“Yeah…I am.”
That turned Danny on to the MAX! He ignored her protests and laid her on the bed.
“No! Don’t! I don’t feel right about this.”
Danny grabbed both of her dainty ankles and spread her legs wide. The moment of surrender had arrived. His blood burned for her as his swollen cock assaulted Lisa’s virginity. A little force…and POP! Ahhhh…her cherry burst, opening the gate to wet, hot pleasure.
“Don’t cum in me—I don’t want to get pregnant.”
“Ooooooh…ahhhhh…uh…OK. I’ll pull out before I do.” “Promise?”
“Yeah, I promise,” he soothed, as he fondled one pointed breast and took the nipple of the other into his thirsty mouth.
She moaned as he stroked her with his pulsing shaft. They moved in unison to the beat of the symphony their bodies created. The pleasure of trembling flesh!
“Ahhh…ahhh…AHHHH!” Danny went rigid and came powerfully in Lisa’s blood-wet pussy.
“You promised!” She slapped Danny on the shoulder twice.
“I’m sorry. I couldn’t help it. You’re just so hot and sweet. I had to go all the way, baby.”
Lisa got up quickly, cleaned up, and dressed for work. It was time to bring the evening to a close.
“Do you need a ride someplace?”
“Well…you could take me home.”
Danny gave her directions as they got in her gray-blue sportscar. The sun came up to begin the day as they arrived.
“Come on in for a while.”
“No, I can’t. I’m late for work already.”
“Ah, come on, I’ll make you a cup of coffee.”
“No, I really can’t. I’m sorry.”
“Will I see you again?”
“Well…you know where I live.”
Danny got out of the car and watched the pretty girl back out of the driveway and speed away. She never looked back.
Paranoid that she would go to the cops, the rapist left a hurried note to his landlord and booked out of town like Satan himself was hot on his soul.
DEAD MAN’S HAND
Danny was a drifter, but he was not a hobo. There’s a difference. A hobo is just a tramp, one of the dirty people who live by railroad tracks or in abandoned land fills. They have little or no ambition. You can see it in their eyes. They gave up on life or the pursuit of happiness ages ago. Hobos are like winos. They move slow and the life ran out of them long before the sun came up this morning.
A drifter is driven, like the wind. You hear the sound it makes, then as suddenly as it comes…it’s gone. A drifter can’t stay put in one place long enough to set roots, because something keeps tugging at him, pulling him over the next hill into the next town or city. Like a tumbleweed, when the wind blows, a drifter’s gotta go!
So much of my life has been tortured and confused, blurred by drugs and driven by the winds of fate. How difficult it is to put a face on the wind. It blows where it will. You know where it has been, but where does it go?
January 15, 1985. Danny traveled to Camarillo, California, to visit his uncle Joe Rolling, his aunt Mira Rolling, and his cousin Donald Rolling.
I hitchhiked all over the place for about six months, maybe seven. I visited my Aunt Nadine and Uncle Eric outside Tallahassee, Florida, then went on down to Key West, where I stayed in an abandoned 3-story house by the Gulf. From Key West to Daytona, then I snagged a ride from Daytona all the way to L.A. That’s when I took up with my Aunt Mira and Uncle Joe.
Joe Rolling had never had much to do with his brother James or his family, and wants nothing to do with his notorious nephew now.
Danny’s cousin Donald attributed his own lack of closeness to his infamous cousin to an age difference, and laconically characterized him as “a loner with a drinking problem.”
The way Mira Rolling recalled it, one day Danny just showed up without notice, calling her from the bus station and asking if he could stay with them for awhile. She agreed. He did stay about three months, and then abruptly left, saying that he missed his daughter and wanted to go back to Shreveport to see her.
Mira told investigators she was angered by the suddenness and the lack of a real reason for leaving. And then there was the money Danny owed her. She had loaned him $800 to buy a motorcycle.
It was a candy-apple red Suzuki 380 GT Cafe Racer. Danny crashed it during his lunch break while employed with Silverado Builders. The entire crew witnessed the accident. He took the bike for a quick spin around the block. Speeding down the street in front of the construction site, he went through first second, and third gears, but before he could shift into fourth, he rushed up on the tight curve at the end of the block.
There was fine white sand blown across the surface of the road, and when Danny saw that sand, he knew he was in trouble, because by now he was going 50 plus m.p.h. No way to negotiate a tight curve at that speed. No time to power down.
So the bike slid out from under him, but he hung on and managed to bulldog the handlebars, aiming the front tire towards the approaching curb. That move probably saved his life, because just before the front tire struck the curb, it gripped clean road and the bike righted itself, T-boning the curb, flipping end over end, and catapulting Danny some 30 feet through the air, barely missing a newly-planted tree, and plowing face-first into a soft mound of dirt.
Danny was treated for a concussion at the hospital and suffered nerve damage to his neck, but due to the sandy ground, damage to the bike was fairly minor. The handlebars, the brake pedal and the clutch lever were bent, and one turn light was busted out. All this was easily repaired, except for the busted fairing, which Danny just removed.
He drove the bike around for several weeks after the crash, then sold it to a Navy man for $500. He gave his Aunt Mira $400, but left without repaying the rest of the loan.
I’ve had five iron horses in my life. Prior to owning the Suzuki, I had owned a Honda 350, a BSA 650 White Lightning, a 850 Norton Commando, and a Harley Davidson XL 1000.
I love the freedom a motorcycle brings. The wind in your hair, the sun shining on the road, ahhhh, yeah…freedom! Put it in the wind, baby! But I didn’t get into clubs or wear patches or piss on my leather jacket. I always have been a lone wolf. The only bikers I’ve known have been in prisons across the South.
I hitched a ride from Camarillo to Boulder, Colorado and stayed there for about two weeks, then rambled on down the road. I got a ride with a blind man and his chick. They were going to Deadwood, South Dakota. I stayed up in the Black Hills for about two weeks and almost froze my ass off.
Did you know they still have Wild Bill Hickock’s pistol and gunbelt draped across the chair he was sitting in and the famous hand he was playing (the dead-man’s hand, aces and eights) encased in a glass airtight showcase over the door to the saloon where he was shot dead? Yep! I was there. They still have a sawdust floor in the place.
As Danny was hitchhiking through Jackson, Mississippi, the man he was riding with was pulled over by police and arrested for D.U.I. He had a .45 semiautomatic handgun. After the man was arrested, Danny took the car to the police station, but he kept the gun.
He asked me to take care of it for him, so I did—from his glove-box into my backpack. I continued on to Columbus, Georgia, where I stayed with my Aunt Dot and her family for about a month, maybe two. Things didn’t work out there either…so I split.
“Welcome, stranger, to the Silver Dollar Bar.
What’s your pleasure?” asked the tender
with the big cigar.
Give me a whiskey, cause I’m a-feelin’ a little risky. And if that tin star’s in town, tell’em I’m around. Mystery rider…nobody knows your name. Gunfighter…who plays a deadly game.
Mystery rider…a rebel no one can tame.
Plains drifter…on the road to fame.
I’M THE ONE
July 22, 1986. Shortly after dark, Danny Rolling entered a Kroger next to I-10 in Clinton, Mississippi to case the joint, then left the store and ducked into a dark alley beside a liquor store at the far end of the shopping center. Around 10:00 p.m. he donned a ski mask and gloves, and brandishing a pistol, busted into the Kroger through the cartport. He was a man on a mission, and the mission was, “This is a holdup! Nobody move!” He got what he came for.
Taking everything in the register, he exited as he entered, and melted into the night with $290. Clinton Detective Jerry Blankenship stated that police trailed him to a stand of woods across the interstate, then lost his trail.
Sleeping in the woods for a few hours, after midnight he awoke and went on the prowl. He found a house with a broken-out pane in the kitchen back door. The entire family was home at the time. He watched them until they went to sleep around 2:00 A.M. before letting himself in.
Taking his cue from a set of car keys he found on the kitchen table by the back door, he stole the baby-blue LTD Ford and drove off.
At 9:00 p.m. the next night, lost and driving the stolen car erratically in a residential neighborhood, Danny was arrested. When apprehended by officers John Lee Hust and Robert Watras, he got out of the stolen car and walked over to the cruiser. They asked him a few questions. He didn’t have the right answers. He knew where it was going, so he fessed up. “Look, I’m the one that did it,” he said. “I’ll tell you what you want to know.”
They searched the stolen Ford and found the gloves. Danny took the officers to his campsite, and along the way he critiqued Hust’s novice police work, advising him that he’d made a dangerous procedural error. He should be more careful, the robber told the cop. In retrospect, Hust had to admit that the observations of the policeman’s son had been well-founded.
At the campsite they found the Colt .45 used in the robbery, along with Danny’s backpack, pup tent, and a small bag of pot.
On March 20, 1986 Danny plead guilty to the Kroger robbery in Clinton, Mississippi. He was imprisoned for a 4-year sentence, of which he served 3 years with good behavior, starting in Jackson County Jail.
At one point, he shaved off all his hair, including his eyebrows. Attorney Arthur Carlisle said, “When they brought him out, I didn’t recognize him. He looked like one of those war prisoners. I asked him why he did it, and he said he wanted to change, that he was cleaning up.”
Carlisle visited him often, bringing him Snickers bars. Danny offered to let the state cut off his arms instead of going to prison. Said Carlisle, “He was as serious as a heart attack.”
I did cry out for help. No one took the time to listen. Even when I shaved my head, eyebrows, and facial hair and beat my forehead against the concrete wall until I busted it open, all I got was a swift kick in the ass from a big ugly deputy sheriff. He was upset because I bloodied his newly-painted cell wall. Later, another cop came to check on me. I asked him for a cigarette. He gave me one and said, “Know what? You’re gonna end up killing someone one day.” What he said troubled me, and I asked, “Yeah? You really think so?” But he just shook his head and walked away. Whatever that cop saw in my eyes, I couldn’t see for myself. It would be years before the pools of blood were spilled that proved that cop right.
Said Blankenship, “He was kind of weird. I thought at the time he might have some kind of mental impairment.”
Claudia took her sisters Agnes and Artie Mae along to visit her son in Mississippi. “He had gotten very thin and he didn’t look good at all, but that was due to stress, I’m sure, because when Danny gets under a lot of stress it’s hard for him to eat. But we visited him more than once in Mississippi, and the second time we went he looked so much better, he had gained a lot of weight. It seemed that he was doing real good in that area. He had learned to cope with whatever went on.”