Dark Days: A Memoir

by D. Randall Blythe

  Sonnet understood my concerns and seemed to agree that for the moment, this was probably for the best. She also informed me that she had been in contact with my family and would keep them apprised of any developments with my situation as they occurred. She also confirmed what the consular officer had told me on the phone the day before—my embassy could not provide me with any legal advice, a policy I still have a hard time wrapping my head around to this day. I was in some serious legal trouble in a foreign country—obviously, competent legal counsel was the thing I needed most at that point. I had always operated under the assumption that the job of a foreign embassy, besides maintaining diplomatic relations with the nation it was placed in, was to ensure the well being of its citizens in that country. Perhaps I’m a bit of an idealist, or just ignorant of the vagaries of international relations; but having on hand some sort of ambassadorial attorney familiar with the judicial system of the country in which it operates, just in case a tourist gets into a sticky situation, seems like something an embassy would cover. I wasn’t being held captive by a Pushtan tribal warlord in the mountains of Afghanistan, and I wasn’t expecting them to send in SEAL Team Six, but a visit from a lawyer to explain what the hell was going on would have been nice. Regardless, Ms. Frisbie was very pleasant, and I knew she didn’t make the rules, just abided by them. She gave me a list of attorneys that had worked with Americans in the Czech Republic before, and I was gratified to see Martin Radvan’s name on the list. Before she left, she promised once more that she would stay in touch with my family, and as I later found out, she kept her word. I will always be grateful to her for that, because I was far more worried about them than myself most of the time.

  After Sonnet and Hana left, I asked Alex if he could take me to the bathroom. In the hall I saw our merch guy, Steve Stephens walking toward me. Steve is a lovely man from Birmingham, England, who travels with us on European tours selling our T-shirts and other wares. I think very highly of Steve, and we’ve had several great talks about music, books, and life over a good meal and coffee or just sitting on the tour bus as we rumbled through the night to the next gig. Our eyes met, and I could tell it pained him deeply to see me in such a bad situation. My band carries a road crew of seven to eight people when we tour, and without them we wouldn’t be able to put on the shows that we do. They are employees, but they are also our friends, and over years they have become like family to us—Steve even flew to America for his first time once during a tour just to ride the bus and hang out with us for a week. I was happy to see Steve’s face, but it really bothered me to see the upset in his eyes when he looked at me, so I gave him a smile and a nod, hoping he could tell I was okay. His dark eyes shot to the ground and he walked out a doorway. His would be the last familiar face I would see for quite a while.

  After draining the lizard, it was back to the holding cell, and soon my lawyer arrived with a colleague. Martin Radvan was a casually dressed bespectacled man with a well-groomed mustache in his fifties. He limped into the cell and introduced himself in the pleasant and even voice I had heard on the phone, then introduced his associate. Tomas Morysek was a tall, slenderly built, young man in his twenties with a beard and long hair pulled back into a pony tail that hung down his back. Had he not been wearing a suit and tie, he could have very easily passed for a member of my band. I stood, shook both their hands, then we sat down and I noticed the source of Mr. Radvan’s limp.

  Martin’s right foot was wrapped in a blood-spotted bandage and contained in an open-toed brace. A few of his toes and some of the flesh surrounding them poked out from beneath the bandage—what I could see of the foot was bright red, very swollen, and rather angry in appearance. It looked like an extremely infuriated fat man put on a forced diet, bloody nosed after being repeatedly, viciously, slapped with a large book of dessert recipes. Martin’s foot was gnarly, in the same way those of us who skateboard describe a particularly heinous slam onto concrete.

  “Excuse me, Mr. Radvan,” I inquired, “but what happened to your foot? Are you okay?”

  “Oh this,” he chuckled, waving in dismissal at the bleeding, moribund appearing appendage, “I must go to the hospital later today. They have to cut some small part of it off—it has happened before. It is nothing.”

  It sure didn’t look like nothing to me; in fact it looked pretty damn serious from where I sat. Cut some part of it off? It’s happened before? I thought. If it looks that bad and they couldn’t whack off enough of it the first go around, will he stomp in on a peg leg when it’s time for court? Good Lord, what kind of savage country have I landed in? I need to get out of here right now.

  “Well, I hope the doctors can . . . fix it.” I grimaced, and we began discussing my case. Martin and Tomas informed me that they were there to be present during my interrogation that day, since according to Czech law a suspect has the right to have a lawyer present during any questioning by the police, just as we do in America, as long as the suspect isn’t a complete moron and doesn’t waive that right. I had been under the mistaken impression that I would be seeing a judge that day, perhaps to set bail, and that is why Alex had been insisting that I have an attorney by 8:00 AM. Martin and Tomas told me that I would be interrogated for quite a while, so I should be prepared to answer many questions. The interrogation would take longer than normal as well, since by law all questions had to be asked and answered in the Czech language; this would require a licensed translator, which the state would provide. I told Martin and Tomas what I could remember of the day in question, and then an officer came to lead us to the interrogation.

  Since I had been arrested, my mind had been turning and searching frantically for a clear picture of May 24, 2010, more than two years before the day I was taken into custody. As I sat in the holding cell, over and over I read and re-read the poorly translated English warrant for my arrest, hoping for clues that would explain what had led me to this strange and frightening place. The warrant stated that on that day at our show in Club Abaton, I had made some sort of gesture that a young man named Daniel had apparently interpreted as an invitation to join me on the stage. Daniel had climbed up onto the three-foot-high stage, whereupon I had then allegedly pushed him with both hands into his chest, causing him to fly from the stage, landing on the concrete floor of the club. Daniel sustained an injury to the back of his head as a result of this fall, and had been taken to a hospital, where he died thirty days later. The warrant said that I acted with intent to hurt Daniel—since I had to have been aware of the height of the stage, I had to have been aware of the potentially deadly nature of pushing someone from it, therefore I was responsible for killing this young man. I was to be charged with intentionally causing the young man bodily harm that resulted in his death (manslaughter of a sort). As I read this paper and tried to come to grips with what was happening to me, I was really only certain of two things: a) that I had never meant to hurt, much less kill anyone that day; and b) that I had not been drinking before our performance in Prague on May 24, 2010. These were the only two things that allowed me to fight for my freedom over the coming months. Without both of these things being certain, I would have had no choice but to plead guilty. I would be in prison right now, as my conscience would not allow me to defend myself if I felt there was a possibility that either by intent or a drunken mistake I had ended this young man’s life.

  What I remembered of May 24, 2010 was (and is to this day) exactly this: I woke up on our tour bus in Prague, either as we were pulling through the city to the venue or already at the venue. I tend to believe that we were near the venue, as I had vague memories of seeing a river passing by from a window of our bus, but this could have been during a cab ride later in the day. Regardless, I woke up, more than likely made a coffee in the front lounge of the bus as is my habit, and walked off the bus, which was parked next to the club on a small cobblestone street that ran behind the venue. It was a cloudy day, and I walked around the building to the street in front of the club to see if there was anything
interesting near the venue. There didn’t appear to be anything appealing that I recall, just an empty street, which is rather standard for the areas surrounding rock clubs—these venues are often on the outskirts of whatever town they are in, many times in an industrial area so there aren’t any real neighbors to complain about the loud music and drunken patrons that emerge at late hours from these places. I then walked back around the block to my bus and saw a member of our crew unloading gear from the truck we rented to carry it. I’m not 100 percent certain which crewmember it was—I believe it was our lighting tech at the time, Jay—but I do remember very vividly what that person said to me:

  “Don’t even bother going into the club. It’s a fucking dump—we’re already having problems getting the gear in there.”

  On tour, I generally spend as little time as possible at the venues we play. Once you’ve seen the inside of one dirty rock bar, you’ve seen them all. A dark, graffiti covered rectagonal room that reeks of stale beer, piss, and vomit is not where I want to spend my time, and that’s just the dressing rooms—the concert area is usually worse. Some venues and their backstage areas are actually quite nice, but all the members of my crew have been in enough shit holes to know one when they see it, so I took my guy’s advice, grabbed my book and journal from the bus, and settled down outside to sit and read and write for a bit. I must not have had to take a poop, otherwise I would have gone in and used the bathroom in the club—no number two is allowed on most tour buses, as their chemical toilets are not equipped with grinders to chop up all the collected shit and paper fine enough for it to shoot out the pipe that empties the septic tank. Plus, a bus toilet smells bad enough when there’s a bunch of guys just pissing in it—thirteen dudes dropping deuces after nights of drinking way too much beer and eating truck stop food would be truly horrific, so pooping outside the bus is the way to go.

  Regardless, I don’t remember going into the club for any significant amount of time that day until right before we played—I vaguely recall at some point walking up the stairs to the entrance of the Abaton, poking my head into the venue briefly, seeing a mess of equipment crammed into an obviously insufficient amount of space and some very unhappy looking crewmembers, then turning around immediately and walking back downstairs to resume reading. We pay our crew to make our show run smoothly, and I very rarely talk to them much before a show if they are on stage setting up or working on our gear. They don’t need me clowning around, getting in their way, asking them a million useless questions—generally being an annoying nuisance. I am expert at all of these things, especially if there is nothing to do nearby and I’ve had a bunch of coffee, which is, of course, almost always the case within an hour or so of me waking up on tour. When the crew looks less than content, as they did that day, I stay far, far away until it’s time for me to do my thing on stage. Except for the first day of tour, when our sound and monitor engineers need to dial in my stage sound, I don’t even go to sound check—it’s not like I’m Pavarotti.

  I clearly remember that at one point as I sat there reading and writing, it began to rain, so I moved into the open doorway of the club entrance and sat there smoking cigarettes and looking out on the rain. I do not remember how long it rained, only that I didn’t wish to go back on the bus to read, where I couldn’t smoke and the television was guaranteed to be on and blaring, so I did my reading and writing elsewhere that day, as I do most days.

  The next thing I remember is my drummer Chris walking up to me at some point in the afternoon. The rain must have stopped, because he said, “Hey, me and Steve Stephens are going to take a cab into the city center in a bit if you wanna pitch in and catch a ride with us.” The next thing I remember is being in a taxi on the way to the center of Prague with Chris and Steve, both guys who like to do a bit of exploring, just like myself. I was looking forward to seeing the architecture, perhaps the old Jewish Quarter, and hopefully a few of the gorgeous Czech women I had heard about from friends who had lived in Prague since the fall of the Iron Curtain (it is true—there are many, many women of great Slavic beauty in that city). We were dropped off not too far from Old Town Square, and began walking toward it down a broad avenue, soon cutting off onto one of the countless winding cobblestone side streets that snake crazily through Prague and make it such a bewildering place for a newcomer to navigate. Right at the end of the street as it emptied into Old Town Square sat a Starbuck’s coffee shop, and I quickly ran inside to grab an iced mocha, for it was a warm and (now) sunny summer day and perfect for some chilled caffeine. (I would become a daily visitor to that very same coffee shop over two years later when I returned to stand trial.) I then rejoined my friends on the edge of a very crowded Old Town Square.

  There was some sort of celebration in the square that day, because there were literally thousands of cheering people packed into its sizable confines, waving Czech flags and applauding as men in what appeared to be a sports team’s jerseys took turns yelling into a microphone from a platform erected in front of the large monument to Jan Hus (a vocal critic of the Catholic Church who was excommunicated and burned at the stake for his “heretical” views, sparking the Hussite Wars) in the middle of the square. I was sure this gathering had to be something to do with soccer, but after asking a stranger what was going on, my hunch was proven wrong—the Czech national hockey team had just won the world hockey championship, and the victory had driven the normally publicly taciturn Czechs to a huge and rare display of red-faced, screaming, public exuberance.

  I was happy for the Czechs, and they all seemed to be in a really great mood, but all you could see of the square was hooting, beer drinking, hockey fans. Very large public gatherings of intoxicated sports enthusiasts has never been my thing (I have seen them turn ugly very quickly more than once), so we pressed on in search of more viewable sites.

  Leaving Old Town Square, we proceeded through the narrow streets and walked across the famous Charles Bridge that spans the Vltava, heading towards Prague Castle. I remember being impressed by the view from the bridge, and enjoyed seeing all the musicians busking and the artists set up the entire length of the bridge, selling their paintings and photographs and handmade jewelry. I am always happy to see street musicians playing and artists out in public hawking their wares, and I often give them change or buy some small piece of art if it catches my eye. I am glad to see them even if they are terrible players or their art is atrocious, because they are displaying belief in themselves and their ability to create something worthwhile, even if only for themselves. That takes guts, and guts are something I quite admire. A city’s artists and musicians are the living, breathing chroniclers of its soul, and there were plenty out in the sun that day in Prague. I remember thinking on the bridge how much more I enjoyed the urban outdoor culture of Europe than that of most cities back home, which are (with a few notable exceptions, such as New York City, still undeniably the greatest metropolis on earth) becoming increasingly sanitized, resembling more and more the deathly strip mall environs of those cities’ suburbs as chain stores pop up like cancerous polyps invading once healthy tissue. As I walked smugly towards the bridge’s end, feeling oh-so-cultured and well traveled, a sharp and overpowering odor hit my nose, reminding me of one of Europe’s distinctive shortcomings.

  In any major European city on a hot enough summer day, the smell of the piss of a thousand years wafts through the air depending on how close you are to a sewer grate. Some are worse than others, but I have yet to find a European city that has somehow managed to renovate their ancient sewer systems thoroughly enough that the urine of antiquity has finally been flushed away. Prague was nowhere near as bad as Rome (as the reigning champion in the pee smell department, Rome completely baffles me with its terrible plumbing. I mean, didn’t the Romans invent indoor plumbing?), but the eau de wee-wee was strong enough for me to comment on it to Steve and Chris as we walked off the bridge and headed up the hill towards Prague Castle.

  I remember walking for a long while uphill, climbin
g many steps that ran beside a stone wall, which I believe was the outer wall of the castle. As we reached the summit, we saw a group of four or five young people standing there, and they called out to Chris and me. They were lamb of god fans, and had traveled from somewhere outside of Prague to see the show that night. We signed some autographs for them and took a few pictures. One of them I remember very clearly had long blond dreadlocks. They were very polite fans, not pushy or invasive of our space, nor taking up too much of our time—polite fans are a joy to meet, and unless I have something urgent to do (like getting on stage or going to the bathroom) I almost never mind taking the time to take a photo or sign something for well-mannered people. They told us they were looking forward to the show, then we said our goodbyes.