Lockup and Blanket Ropes

I ran away from the home several times, having nowhere to go and never getting very far, but I ran anyway. I thought that perhaps there was a chance that they would take me out of there if I kept running. They would have to lock me up or something – send me somewhere else, like the boys home or something. I would usually be found rather quickly and be brought back to the home where I would be grounded to my bedroom: Everything would be taken out of my room except for my mattress, which was, as it turned out, great practice for the future.

When I got brought back Roy would be enraged! He would scream and yell at me, saying things like “After all that I do for you,” and “I can’t believe you would actually run away!” His screaming and lecturing would make me feel even worse, more worthless and even more importantly – more helpless. He ruled the house and I could do nothing about it. There was no escape even by running away. His anger would die off though and before long he would start sneaking me out of my room when everyone else was in bed, giving me cigarettes and coffee, again breaking the rules for me. Of course I always paid.

I attended St. Michael’s School and began getting into trouble there as well. I quickly found a drug supply and hung around with guys who had it. I couldn’t get as much as I wanted, not even close, but I smoked what and when I could. When I went to Goose High School that fall I found my drug use could increase considerably. I especially liked when we went to the vocational school for industrial arts class. A handful of us would meet outside upon arrival and do hotknives before going to class. I would be fried out of my tree and then have to use power tools such as band saws. I guess it is only by luck I still have all of my fingers.

In October, around seven months into my twelve month placement at the group home, I ran away for the final time. I made my way to the Valley (Happy Valley) and hooked up with some other teens. One of them decided that he wasn’t going home either and so the two of us were officially runaways, though in my case there would be an escaping lawful custody charge involved.

We needed food and had no money so the obvious solution was to steal what we needed. We decided to break into Pleasant Valley Grocery, a convenience store. All it took to gain access was to remove the air conditioning unit from the wall and just climb through. We carried off cigarettes, as much food as we could carry and most importantly, beer.  A lot of food got left behind so we could carry more beer.

I proceeded to get hammered and Danny and I camped out in an old ambulance body at the edge of a scrap yard. It was cold but we had come up with some large heavy coats somewhere and being drunk I didn’t mind the cold very much. The following night we were getting low on beer and I suggested we head back to Pleasant Grocery. I knew they would have fixed the hole in the wall but we could get in somehow. I was drunk when we got to the store, and instantly saw how we were going to gain access this time – Their method of fixing the hole in the wall where we had torn out the AC until as to simply place a sheet of plywood over it. Tearing that off of the wall took all of sixty seconds and we were again inside the store. This time we had help – a few guys who were lined up outside to pass the cases of beer up the hill behind the store. The didn’t want to help actually break in, but were more than happy to help us carry the nineteen cases of beer we passed out of the store to them.

Needless to say, I stayed drunk a little longer.

On my third night of drinking I ended up in lock-up. I had been at the game hall, completely wasted, and got into a fight with an older guy. Actually it wasn’t much of a fight from what I was told: I was mouthing off and kicking the machine this guy was playing, and he finally had enough and hit me. I laid in the corner out cold for a few minutes, and when I came to I started the aggravation again, and so he knocked me out again. Someone dragged me out into the front of the building where I mumbled something about cutting the guys throat and put my fist through the front plate glass window. Blood was pouring out of my hand, quickened by my high blood alcohol level. Someone (thanks Scott) wrapped his shirt around my hand trying to slow the bleeding. Then the cops arrived, bringing me to the hospital where I received 18 stitches in my right hand where they sowed a flap of flesh back on and then I was taken to lockup.

The next morning I woke with nearly no recollection of the night before. I remembered being at the hospital but that was it. The police later took me out to an interview room and told me what I was charged with – a sprawling list including  multiple counts or break & enter, causing a disturbance, resisting arrest  and escaping lawful custody. They asked me to give them a statement about breaking into the corner store and everything that I had done while I was on the run. I refused of course, so they sent me back to my cell. I was physically sick with possibly the worst hangover I had ever had and filled with sickening remorse and fear. I knew I was out of the group home for good – there was no doubt there – but now it looked like I was heading for the boys home. Now I would be doing real time in a real institution. There had seemed to be no other way but to get into enough trouble that they would take me out of the home, but now that I had accomplished that I didn’t know what I was in for next.

A day or so after my arrest the guy I had been running with was also picked up after stealing a truck and attempting to leave town with it. He was put in the same cell with me, and eventually we appeared in court. We were both placed on remand and told that we would go to the Pleasantville Detention Center in St. John’s.

I tried hard not to show it, but I was scared to death of going to the dreaded ‘Boy’s Home’. I’d heard so many stories that I thought I already knew what I was going to face there; Inmates constantly fighting, staff and inmates beating up other inmates, rape and just about everything that I feared the most. A lot of the information I had about the boys home had some from guys that had been there, so I thought that it was all the truth. And I was scared.

One night as my cellmate lay sleeping on the bottom bunk below me, I made a decision: I was not going to closed custody. I simply could not face what I believed I would have to endure there. Could not go somewhere that I knew would be a hundred times worse than the group home had been. And I was not going to go.

I would rather die. I would hang myself.

I tore strips from my blanket and made a noose in one end using a very simple slip knot, the same knot I used to tie hooks onto fishing line. I laid on my bunk suddenly feeling calmer than I had in a long while. I had no clue what happened to you when you died. I suspected you laid in the ground becoming worm food and that was the end of it. But it didn’t matter. I didn’t care. I could not face the boy’s home, and especially not the detention center which was supposed to be the worst place a teenager could be sent.

I waited, wanting the guard to think that I was asleep the next time he came in to do his rounds and I wanted to make sure my cellmate was sound asleep below me.

When it came time to do it I found my hands were shaking so badly that I had trouble tying my makeshift rope to the bars, visions of being caught by the guard flashing through my mind. What would they do if they caught me doing this? Send me to the mental hospital? Waterford Hospital? That would be even worse than the detention center, I was sure. When the “rope” was tied I spent some risky minutes testing it. I hung from it by my hands. I swung around on it. I hung by my hands some more. It was plenty strong enough to support my skinny fourteen year old body. It didn’t so much as stretch from my weight.

I climbed up onto the bars, placed the noose around my neck and stepped off.

At first I thought that my efforts were in vain, as I found that I could still breathe even though I was hanging by my neck. It took a little more effort to inhale than normally, but I could still breathe. Then I realized that this was not going to matter. Things were getting blurry very fast, meaning no blood was making it to my brain, so I would die alright. Mission accomplished. I relaxed and the light began to fade, everything quickly going dark… black…

I thought that I was dead. There was no sound, just stillness. There was nothing except blackness. Then the silence was shattered by what sounded like thousands of screaming voices. ‘I’m dead and in hell… or on the way there.’

After a moment, or a few minutes, or an eternity (I had no idea which was correct) I realized that I wasn’t dead. The screaming voices was actually the radio that had been on outside the bars. I didn’t know how it was possible, but I was still alive.

Then I felt my face. It was pressing against something hard and cool… concrete. The rope had broken. I still couldn’t feel the rest of my body and couldn’t open my eyes, but I knew I was alive. I realize that I was moaning and tried to stop. I couldn’t. It sounded almost alien, like I wasn’t actually making the noise at all.

Some time passed – minutes only I am sure, but it felt much longer – and finally I could feel the rest of my body. I couldn’t open my eyes no matter how I tried, but I could feel my body and I knew I was coming around.

Then my eyes opened. I was staring across the floor and the moaning had stopped. I kept trying to move and finally my body responded. I staggered to my feet dizzy and weak, grabbing for the piece of rope that was still around my neck. The side of my head was sore and felt like it was bleeding. I placed my hand on the painful spot and it came away dry. I assumed I had hit my head on the foot of my cellmates bunk when the rope had broken. He hadn’t even woken up!

I tore the other half of the blanket / rope from the bars and threw it all up on top of the lockers outside of the cell and climbed unsteadily up onto my bunk.

I laid there, shaking uncontrollably until the guard brought in our breakfast hours later. I didn’t know what I felt. Disappointment, relief, anger? All of them maybe. “Can’t do anything right you fucking dummy,” I thought.