by Ashley Smith
Letting the gun droop in his hand, Brian Nichols sat opposite me several feet away from the tub. He was leaning forward with his forearms propped on his knees and the big red jacket riding up behind him. The vanity stool had basically disappeared underneath his body. Hunched over the delicate, gold-plated frame, he reminded me of a teenager trying to ride a little kid’s bike. In the mirror behind him, I could see the back of his shaved head moving as he talked.
“Do you know what I was on trial for?” he asked, looking down at me.
“No,” I said. “I don’t know why you were on trial.” All I knew was that he had killed those three people at the courthouse.
“Well, let me tell you this: I was falsely accused. My girlfriend of seven years falsely accused me of rape.” He was looking just to the left of my head as he talked, as if his mind was somewhere else. Rape? Oh, God, protect me in here. I glanced down, and where his pant legs were riding up, I could see that other gun—what looked like a small black gun—tucked inside his black sneaker against the inside of his right leg. He wasn’t wearing any socks.
“Falsely accused you of rape?” I said. “That’s terrible. Man, I’m sorry you had to go through that. And being on trial and everything. I can imagine how awful that was. Nobody should have to go through all that. I’m really sorry.” At this point I was going to agree with everything he said and try to feel his feelings—whatever it took to connect with him and gain his trust. He had to see that he could relate to me.
“I mean, she really did me wrong,” he continued, the pitch of his voice rising. “She went out with our minister. Can you believe that? What kind of woman do you think that is?” He sat up and raised his left hand in the air—for emphasis, I guessed—and with his right hand he held onto the gun. Now he was squinting intensely and looking me in the eye.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “With your minister? That’s horrible. She had no right to do that. That’s just wrong. That was your minister. What a terrible thing to do. I’m sure you were falsely accused.” I was prepared to start calling this woman every name in the book if necessary.
Then he said, “You know, I did her wrong too. I got this other girl pregnant. But I tried to apologize, and she went out with one of our ministers. Can you believe she did that to me? I mean, we were supposed to be in church.” He leaned back suddenly, then sighed and came forward again, propping his elbows on his knees.
“No,” I said, shaking my head. “I can’t believe she did that.”
I was thinking about his religious background and how I might be able to use it to relate to him. But I was also looking into his eyes right then and noticing something. For a brief second I thought I saw something real. Whatever really happened with his girlfriend, I was seeing something in his eyes behind the anger and frustration—something that made him look like a lonely, hurt little boy. His heart really did seem broken, and I knew I was seeing a flash of real pain.
If I could just learn more about what I was seeing and relate to him there, I thought, then maybe I would have a chance. Maybe I could actually make it out of this apartment alive. Maybe I would get to see Paige in the morning. Help me, God. Help me do it. I know what it’s like to hurt. Please just help me find a way in.
4 trying to relate
Do you know what it’s like to be in jail?” Now his voice was low again. He sat leaning over his knees with his head bent down. “I mean, do you know what it’s like being in there? A girl like you—you’ve gotta have no idea.” He looked totally disgusted.
“Okay,” I thought, “I know I can use this. I can use myown experience. I can use Mack.” Lord, help me do this right.Help me show this guy that I understand.
“Yes,” I said, answering in a low tone to match his. “Actually, I do know.” He looked up at me with his brow lowered a little and his head turned to the side. I wasn’t sure if he believed me, so I just started talking. “
I’ve actually been in jail myself several times. Mostly for DUI-related stuff, but also for shoplifting and possession, and battery once against my step-dad—but all that got resolved and he and I are fine now.
“Most of the time I stayed in a holding cell until someone came and picked me up, but I did go upstairs to the women’s floor in population a couple of times. And I hated it—just the way they treat you up there. I mean, they talk to you like you’re stupid. They throw that orange jumpsuit at you like, ‘Here! Put this on!’ They give you a hard time if you want to use the phone. Just ordering you around like you’re a piece of crap. And the food is nasty.
“The longest I stayed in jail was, I think, maybe twenty-eight hours or so, but my husband—he was locked up for a week or two on a DUI, and he said it was a lot worse on the men’s floor. He told me they just treated him like crap; he didn’t even feel human. So I can just imagine what you’ve been going through.”
Brian Nichols watched me as I talked. I was rambling on, and he had that distant look in his eye again. Studying his face for a minute, I tried to imagine what an Atlanta prison would be like for someone on trial for rape. It had to be rough. Being locked up, period, was rough.
I remembered what it felt like sitting in that holding cell at the Richmond County jail after being arrested for the first time. It was the summer after my high school graduation, and I had just turned eighteen. The cops had picked me up for shoplifting in the parking lot outside Macy’s at Augusta Mall. Two Tommy Hilfiger shirts were stuffed into my pocketbook; I had stolen them for a friend, a small time drug dealer, who in return was going to give me some cocaine. Outrunning the security guard in the store, I thought I could make it outside with the shirts, but by the time I busted through the side door into the parking lot, the cops were already there waiting on me. The friends who were with me fled the scene in my car.
I waited for a while in the holding cell, declining my one phone call and expecting one of my friends to drive my car to the jail and pick me up. The holding cell was just a ten-by-ten concrete room, and it was overcrowded that afternoon. I was packed in there with about six other women, most of them messed up on drugs and right off the street, all talking about what they were in there for—prostitution, selling drugs, possession. There was a toilet in the corner and a bench against one of the walls. I stayed quiet, trying to play it cool, but I was pretty scared.
I must have looked like the preppy high school girl I had been for most of my teenage years. My long, light brown hair was styled and curled under. I wore nice clothes and gold jewelry. I was tan and physically fit from years of playing basketball. But underneath all that, I was starting to become someone else. I’d gotten hooked up with this bad crowd of people at the end of high school—I’d moved on from my pot smoking high school friends to the people who could actually get me the drugs, and this crowd was into harder stuff like cocaine. I was just getting a glimpse of the world those women in the cell were talking about—the drug world—and I liked the way the drugs made me feel so much, I didn’t really stop to think about what might happen to me if I kept going. It never crossed my mind that I might end up like those women—that I might turn into one of them. But that’s pretty much what happened.
Looking at Brian Nichols sitting on that vanity stool across my bathroom—seeing the blank, just totally miserable look in his eyes—I remembered how alone I felt sitting there in that holding cell waiting on my one friend to come. Hours went by and he never showed up, and I ended up having to call my grandparents. I was living with them at the time, and I was scared to death to make that call. A former marine, my grandpa was a tough man. He had helped raise me and was my primary father figure all through my growing-up years. My own daddy wasn’t around; I had only seen him a handful of times. Mema and Papa took care of me when my mom worked late, and they gave me anything I wanted—the Plymouth Laser my friends had driven off in at Macy’s was a gift to me from them.
Now I was going to have to call my grandparents from jail—not that I thought they would be surprised exactly. They knew I was
running with a bad crowd. They knew I was doing drugs. I was only living with them because my mom and step-dad—who married when I was eleven—had thrown me out of their house right after graduation. I had been rude and disrespectful; I was coming home late at night high. My mom and step-dad didn’t want me setting that kind of example for their two younger children, and they hoped Mema and Papa could straighten me out.
But I was rude and disrespectful to my grandparents too. I would go to work at Red Lobster, where I waited tables, and then stay out all night drinking, smoking pot, or doing cocaine with my friends. Most nights I came home drunk or high. I yelled at my grandparents.
I found every excuse not to show up Sundays at their church. They tried to use tough love—Papa took my car away too many times to count—but I didn’t care. The harder my grandparents were with me, the harder I got with them. When I finally called them from the Richmond County jail and asked them to come and get me, they told me I could just sit my butt down and stay there.
Right now, sitting in my bathtub at gunpoint, looking across the room at Brian Nichols and trying to find a way to connect with him, I could almost feel that same wave of pure misery and loneliness I felt when I hung up the phone in jail knowing Mema and Papa were washing their hands of me right then. The guards gave me that orange jumpsuit and some nasty, flimsy, white Velcro shoes that I was afraid would give me foot fungus, and they moved me upstairs. All of the cells were full, so I was handed a blue mat and told to go lie down in an open space near a big Plexiglas window.
As darkness came on, from the window I could see the lights at the Red Lobster where I worked—the restaurant was just across the street. I was scheduled to work a dinner shift that night, and I wondered what everyone must have thought when I didn’t show up. If they only knew I was here, right across the road, locked up and looking at those lights while they served dinner. What would they think? But only a few people knew where I was that night. And they had left me to myself. I was on my own, lying on a hard floor with a bunch of messed up strangers, facing a long night and a loneliness that I didn’t know how to fill.
“Well, my girlfriend put me in there,” Brian Nichols started again. Now I saw the anger return. He was squinting, looking to the side of my head, and the pitch of his voice rose. “She put me in jail. And now I’m a soldier for my people. My people needed me for a job. And I’m doing it. Those people did my people wrong.”
What in the world? What does he mean—soldier for his people? Does he mean race? People of his race? He wasn’t making sense. This was not a good sign. If I could keep talking to him and maintain a conversation and feel his feelings, then I might have a chance. But if I couldn’t understand him, reason with him, or get through to him, then I was in trouble. I looked at the gun—it was a pretty large handgun—still in his hand. I looked at his face. His eyes were shifting around the bathroom. What can I say right now, God? What can I say to bring him back down?
Then he asked, “Have you ever shot a gun before?”
“Yes,” I said calmly. My legs were starting to cramp up in the tub, but I didn’t want him to know. I kept sitting Indian style and looked him in the eye. “I was eighteen, I think, and I shot a little .22 once in the backyard with my boyfriend.” I didn’t know what he was getting at with this question. Maybe he wanted to figure out if I was a threat to him—if I would be capable of using his own gun if given the chance. I watched him now, expecting him to continue, but he didn’t; he just sat there, still hunched over on the stool.
I wondered if I could use his gun. It looked a lot like a large automatic handgun that one of my boyfriends after Mack’s death used to carry. Guns were a big deal in the drug scene, and all the guys I knew owned at least one. This particular boyfriend had several, and I never wanted them around. I hated guns. They scared me. They could go off anywhere. This boyfriend always kept one under the passenger seat in his car, and whenever we went anywhere I worried. What if the gun went off under me? What if we got into a car wreck and it went off and I died that way? I just didn’t like guns at all.
Brian Nichols kept quiet. He was looking around now, and I wasn’t sure what to do to get the conversation back on track. Behind him on the counter to his right I could make out the photograph of Paige and me in that gold frame next to the sink. I could remember that picture being taken. Paige and I were standing outside the sanctuary in the church where my cousin Sarah got married back in December. I wore a black evening dress and long blond extensions in my hair that were flipping out over my shoulders and driving me crazy. Paige wore her beautiful flower girl’s dress—lots of white fabric down to her ankles, a petticoat, and sheer white sleeves—and she had her long blond hair pulled back. I was leaning forward slightly in the picture so that I could hug Paige in close.
I thought about those weeks and months after Mack died—how I had lived on Xanax and pain pills and just totally checked out on Paige. One batch of pills would wear off and I would take another handful, sometimes as many as thirty pills a day. I cooked for Paige. I took her to her church school. But I didn’t give her any real love and attention, and I know she suffered. Every time I had the chance to leave the house, I did. Babysitters would come over and Paige would cry. “Mommy will be back later,” I would say as I ran out the door to go get high on something—pot, ecstasy, more Xanax; ecstasy and Xanax. My attitude was “Y’all take care of her, she’s not my problem. Y’all take care of her. I don’t want to feel anything.”
Now, waiting for Brian Nichols to say something, I thought, “Why did I have to fall so far? Why couldn’t I get myself together after Mack died? I couldn’t even stop those drugs for Paige. I just abandoned her for all that. And now she has to pay for it. It’s not fair. Aunt Kim’s done a great job, but Paige is my child. I’ve got to do better so I can get her back.” God, you know I want to do better. I’m trying so hard. I’m fighting to get there. Please don’t take me away from her now.
I pushed my hair back from my face and readjusted myself in the tub. I knew there was no way I could leave my daughter on this earth without a parent. I just couldn’t do that to her. She didn’t get to say goodbye to her daddy, and I wasn’t going to leave her the same way. I was just going to have to make it to my uncle’s church in the morning. There was no other option. I have to do it, God. You’ve got to help me find a way.
I focused back on Brian Nichols. He was sitting on that stool looking at the floor, running his hand over his bald head. He was thinking. But about what? What could I do to relate to this man? What could I say to make him see me as a person just like him? I had to get back in the game.
“What’s your name?” he asked suddenly.
Should I tell him my name? Yes, I should tell him. Any question he asks, I need to answer simply and honestly. “Ashley,” I said.
Then he stood up. I saw the vanity stool wobble underneath him. It was missing a knob on the bottom of one of its legs, and I could hear the metal rattling on the linoleum. He pulled his jacket down at the waist and stepped forward onto my orange shag rug in the middle of the floor. He was towering over me now, and he aimed the gun at my chest. I sat up as straight as I could in the tub. God, hold him back. Don’t let him lose it. Don’t let him shoot.
He said, “Ashley, I don’t feel comfortable with you.”
“Okay,” I said. “Please don’t hurt me.” I knew I had to get him to feel comfortable. If I couldn’t do that, I wouldn’t make it. What can I do differently? What do I do here?
“You’re going to have to sit right there for a minute and not move.”
“Okay, I won’t move.” I sat in the tub, barely breathing, not wanting to do anything to set him off.
Then he looked toward the hallway to his right. “Because if you move,” he said, “I’m going to have to hurt you.”
5 i want to relax
He looked down at the orange rug, inhaled deeply through his mouth, and kept talking. “Because then I’ll have to hurt you and I really don’t want to
do that right now. I don’t want to hurt any body else. I just want to relax. I’ve had a long day, and I don’t want—I just want to chill out. I want to relax. So right now I’m going to walk around your house to get the feel of it and get comfortable.”
“Okay,” I said, wrapping my arms around myself to try and keep from trembling in the tub.
His eyes shifted as he talked, and he used his hand—the one not holding the gun—to express himself. To me he looked exhausted. I wondered where he’d been all day and how many hours he’d been on the run. Without my watch I had no idea what time it was now, but I figured this guy had been running for a while.
I knew what it felt like not being able to relax. I thought back to that long night of driving around the streets of Augusta before my mom and Aunt Kim finally checked me into the mental hospital. That was almost two years ago now. I was driving around all night strung out on ice—also known as crystal methamphetamine, the drug I was using basically around the clock by then—and I had been awake for days. My paranoia was in full force, and I thought terrorists were tracking me through a chip in my cell phone. I thought the terrorists were sending me subliminal messages through the songs on the radio, trying to lead me somewhere.
Near daybreak I finally got to Stevens Creek Road, the road I would take to get to Aunt Kim’s subdivision. That’s where I thought the terrorists were leading me—to her house—but I kept driving back and forth on that same road as if I couldn’t get off. Back and forth. Back and forth. Messed up out of my mind. I couldn’t have been driving more than half a mile each way. I would drive in one direction, then turn around and go back the other direction. Back and forth. Back and forth. I kept thinking I was going the wrong way.
