Chapter Five
A couple of weeks later I was
finally getting back on track. “Getting better” was beyond my capacity, but
“back on track” was a goal I could move toward. Thank God my last semester was
filled with nothing I needed for graduation. I declared a major early and stuck
to the program so I finished my major classes last fall. This semester was just
getting enough credit hours to fill out the elective credits so there was
nothing too difficult on the schedule. I only needed passable grades at that; I
didn’t need high grades to graduate. How else could I play so much soccer and
football?
I tried to get stuff ready for
church with Ashley, but she sensed I wasn’t really into it. I met with her
father an awful lot over the next six weeks. I couldn’t tell if it was
pre-vocational advice or post-crisis counseling, I could use both; not that I
wanted either. We sat and talked. I don’t think I talked enough to suit him,
but that’s life, so to speak. I do think I drank more of his Scotch than he
expected, but he kept offering it to me, so that’s life too.
I was just six weeks from my
parents’ inurnment to the end of school. Who knew how death would expand my
vocabulary? Inurnment, who knew disposing of cremains had a word of its own too.
Because of their death, along with study, sport, tests, and Ashley there were
accountants and lawyers.
I knew my parents didn’t have a
lot of money, I just didn’t know they didn’t have a lot of other assets either.
By the time the life insurance was sorted out and the house was settled and the
bills were paid off, there wasn’t much left from the settlement. It barely covered
a quarter of my student loans and I didn’t borrow close to the maximum. I sat
with the lawyers and the accountants and with the Reverend Doctor’s lawyers and
accountants to look for errors. They did find one error and it wasn’t in my
favor! Thank God I had signed the final estate
settlement; otherwise I would have lost half of what I had received.
After I finished my finals but
before the graduation ceremony Ashley had a women’s church conference so I
decided to go throw darts. While I was there I ran into a girl from church who
I hadn’t seen her in the pub before. We started throwing darts and I moderated
my drinking. She knew Ashley, so we started talking about the last year. She
told me how blessed I was. My eyebrows went up, I’m blessed? I mentioned my parents’
death, and she mentioned Ashley. I smiled, she was right about that.
We talked about our degrees and
graduation and our plans. She was going into her father’s financial firm and
told me about her salary and all of the zeroes and commas that she would be
handling. I told her about seminary and being close to Ashley in Med School
Yep, a lucky dog. Was it all just
luck? Was it a blessing? Am I drinking too much? Why is the room spinning?
I excused myself. I felt like I
was getting ill, that’s not a way to impress the girl from church. By the time
I got out the door, I really felt woozy. Sick, but not really. Dizzy, but
sleepy. Ill, but not quite. She offered me a ride home. How did she know where
I lived? Whatever.
It was a couple hours later when I
was half awake because I was in real pain. I was groggy and sore, but why were
my hands and nose broken and why was my face bleeding and swollen? The big
question though was why was she wrapped in a sheet screaming? Passing out
seemed like a blessing.
Waking up again wearing a paper
gown and getting my picture taken for a mug shot made me decide that passing
out again wasn’t such a blessing after all.
This is what my public defender told
me about how I spent the night:
I met the girl from church in the
bar, I remember that part. She was taken with my dart throwing skill, I didn’t
think she was “taken with” anything, but I let that go. Then we left the bar together.
Not that I did not remember. We went back to her place and we had sex. This is
the weird part, it appears that she had sex and it appears she was “covered
with my DNA” but things didn’t quite add up. Why would I have sex with her? I
haven’t had sex with Ashley! I didn’t want to have sex with anybody but Ashley
so why would I have sex with her? My lawyer would later remind me that I had
been very sexually active and then went without sex for nine months. The story
didn’t sound far fetched and “I was woozy” didn’t sound like an argument in
favor of my innocence.
He also reminded me that “Didn’t
quite add up” was a matter for the DA and the jury, not the police. Getting
back to the story…
Her boyfriend comes back to her
the apartment with three of his buddies, seeing her in trouble they “tear me
off of her and beat me senseless” before calling the police. That brings me to
a Sexual Assault charge. This was my turn to demand a toxicological screen. If
you’re going to test me for all sorts of physical evidence, I want to find out why
something made me feel so “different” that night. Thankfully I got in contact
with a better lawyer, the lawyer who handled my parent’s estate. He knew
someone who could at least get me bailed out of jail.
When I did I went directly to
Ashley’s house. I had to talk to her. God only knows what she had heard. I
don’t know exactly what happened, but I could tell her the truth, I could tell
her what I did know. I’m sure the rumors and allegations had made it around the
block before I had even gotten my shoes laced. I didn’t get to see her though.
I saw her father.
The Reverend Doctor Andrew W.
DeMoss, Jr., Alphabet Soup had some things he wanted to spell out for me. We
went to his study. I honestly believe his chair was two inches higher than mine
just to make it easier to look down on me. He laid it out for me.
Ashley did not want to see me.
The woman and the four guys, everybody in the room that night was from church
and I was a pariah. Yes, in this country a defendant is innocent until proven
guilty, but in his study, about his parishioners, about his daughter, I was
guilty as sin and that was that.
As for seminary, he told me “I
hope you go to prison for a good long time just for the amount of pain you
caused my family and should this get cleared up in your favor and you attend
seminary; you will not be attending seminary close to my daughter. You will not
attend seminary within a thousand miles of my daughter. As for your financial
aid, I wish you well.”
He didn’t call me “Son” this time and he expelled me from the house.
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