Three Eighty At Three A.M

Ten years gives a man a long time to think, especially on Texas’ death row. I never thought I would end up in Livingston for something other than a lake trip. Yet, here I am, just mere hours away from being euthanized by the state. When I was a kid, I used to have dreams where I would fall out of the sky. I would never hit the ground, though. I would wake up just in time to avoid the sudden impact at the end of the vertical journey. Of course, while I wish I could just wake myself up out of prison, I must come to terms with the fact that I’m about to fall into a permanent sleep. While I’m at it, I guess I should ask myself, what happened to me? What was the chain of events that led to me sitting here in prison garb, on a cot that works better as a bulletin board?

I guess it all started back when I was a kid. My father was the richest defense lawyer in Texas and my mother was married to my father. Ever since I was nine or ten, one of the things I was given was the impression I was a prodigy. At the social gatherings in our Woodlands manor, many would comment that I was a ‘twenty-five year old in a ten-year old’s body.’ Somehow, I attracted people that wholeheartedly believed that. I wasn’t complaining, I had already known I stuck out from the rest. Albeit it was a feeling as weird as the falling dreams I used to have as a kid, but it felt great. Take away the family fortune and white privilege, and I still bested the rest.

That still doesn’t explain it though---what led to the judge handing down the death penalty? Maybe it was that no-name prosecutor . No, that’s still not it. Maybe it was that damned green light on the corner of Woodland Hills Parkway and Cortlandt Street. Ah, yes, I remember now…it was a Sunday, April 18th, ten-odd years ago, around three in the morning. I was just driving back from Surfside at my friend Brad’s vacation house. He threw a massive college party with plenty of fine weed, women, and wine to go around. I was a tad crossfaded on the ride home but managed to make it back to Woodland Hills. I remember sitting on that red light for a solid minute, despite the lack of traffic around that time.

Come on, I thought. Just turn green.

It felt like watching paint dry, but the light eventually displayed the green turn arrows that led to the convenience store. I turned left, then made a prompt right into the handicapped spot that sat directly in front of the small shop’s front windows and doors. When I was sixteen, I got a small .380 Beretta handgun for my birthday. My father used to get worried about his clients coming after us, so he wanted me to stay safe in case. I reflexively checked my .380 pistol’s chamber. For someone whose profession had little to do with carrying firearms, my father was one gun safety nut for sure. He even had me go to a pistol training academy under the table one summer. He had also wanted me to carry it everywhere, even school. Luckily, one of the campus cops owed my dad a favor and I never had to pull it out before.

I went through the glass-paned door of the store and made my way to the section with pork rinds. Again, I was a mixture of wasted and high, so I began to put together a random assortment of items in my hands.

“Hey, man” a dark-skinned man with a goatee called out to me. “don’t take too long, I got to close up shop.”

I nodded my head passively as I grabbed a bag of spicy barbecue flavored pork rinds. To accent the flavor profile, I also picked out a four-cup pack of Reese’s peanut butter cups from the shelf to my immediate left. As I grabbed my last item, I stumbled slightly backward into a shelf full of toiletries.

“Hey, hey, don’t mess up the store, man!”

“Sorry,” I said.

“You got five minutes.” He said, as he opened the latest issue of People magazine.

I had no idea what his deal was, but he apparently took offense at my appearance in the store. I remember walking up to the register.

“Alright, will that be it today, man?”

“No,” I said. “Give me a pack of American Spirits, yellow.” I spoke.

“Let me see your ID.”

“Why?”

“Didn’t you read the sign on the front of the door?” He pointed directly to his left toward the ‘We ID’ sticker plastered on the glass pane. “Either show me your ID or forget about the cigarettes.”

I remember my face turning red. My ears became hot. Clearly, this small-time night manager didn’t know whose son I was.

“Do you know who my father is?”

“I don’t give a damn. If you’re underage, I can’t sell you cigarettes. Simple as that. Now, for everything else, that’ll be $7.62 after tax. Are you going to pay or what?”

My awareness turned to my .380 pistol in my jacket. In a frenzy, I decided to change my method of persuasion.

“Ok, fine, I’ll take the stuff.”

The man loaded everything into a small generic ‘thank you’ bag as I trained my loaded pistol between his eyes.

“I’ll also take all the cash in the register.”

Whatever authority he had as night manager vanished as he slowly lifted his hands toward the ceiling. His jaw fell open like a pebble into water.

“Look, I don’t want any trouble—”

“Shut up. Empty the register—” I gestured toward the cigarette cabinet with my gun. “And give me the cigarettes.”

“Sure, sure, whatever you want man!”

He opened the rear, glass-paned cabinet and dropped a pack of American Spirits into the bag.

“Alright here you go. Like I said, I want no trouble—”

A gunshot rang out. The man fell back against the pane doors of the cigarette cabinet. I don’t really remember what happened afterwards. Well, other than a few other shots, but everything else seemed like an unreal blur. At least, until the county sheriff picked me up at my front door for armed robbery and the murder of Darius Williams—the real name of the man that I was accused of shooting six times. Honest to God, I thought the charges would never stick. My father shelled out millions for lawyers—we tried everything to keep me out of prison. The insanity plea, self-defense, forensic technicalities---the lawyers said the worst I was going to get was ten years’ probation. I never imagined I would end up on death row with the rest of these vile criminals.

A guard approached my cell with a set of handcuffs.

“Stackwell, it’s your time.”

My final moments on this stage we call life on Earth are rapidly running out. I still haven’t managed to figure out what brought me here in the first place. Was it that damn green light that doomed me to running into that clerk? Was it the party that I had to drive home from? Or was I another casualty of prodigious intellect without sanity?

I don’t know. I haven’t figured that out in ten years, and I certainly won’t figure it out now.