The Change Agent

by Damon West

  He continued. “You shall be confined for sixty-five years in accordance with the law and governed by the Texas Department of Criminal Justice Institutional Division. Also, Mr. West, you will be eligible for parole in fifteen years.”

  Then, he thanked the jury for faithfully and dutifully fulfilling their constitutional obligations to serve and added that the state or the defense might have questions for them that they might or might not answer at their discretion.

  “We’re in recess,” Snipes said, banging the gavel.

  “All rise,” said the bailiff. His deputies were on me quickly, handcuffing me.

  Everything sped up now. The slow motion/shock effect was over. This was happening in real time. I glanced at my lawyers, Ed and Karen. No help there. Ed wouldn’t even make eye contact with me; Karen had a look of disgust, defeat, or both. Of the two, I knew Karen took this defeat more seriously than Ed. The entire trial, Ed appeared detached, clumsy, aloof.

  The jury members were being congratulated by both assistant district attorneys who tried the case. The only thing missing from their celebration was the popping of champagne corks. The State got a life sentence; they must have been ecstatic.

  My parents and my little brother, Grayson, looked destroyed. I found it difficult to look at them. I saw the fear in their faces.

  Three deputies whisked me away, hands shackled behind me. “Wait!” I said, startling them. Everybody was tense.

  Say something, I thought. This was my last chance.

  “I’m sorry, Mom.”

  The deputies didn’t let me stick around to hear a reply. They took me to a holding area, a prisoner of both the state of Texas and the thoughts racing through my head. The former was not nearly as scary as the latter.

  I had hit rock bottom.

  CHAPTER 1

  The Escape

  Prison Diary

  Thursday, March 10, 2011

  Yesterday, an inmate named David Puckett escaped from the Mark Stiles Unit, where I am currently serving my sixty-five-year sentence.

  Although I’m not sure of all the details, the entire unit is on lockdown. This means there is zero offender (that is what inmates are referred to as in the Texas Department of Criminal Justice) movement. All three thousand of us are locked in our cells. The guards will bring us three sack meals, called Johnny Sacks, each day, usually consisting of two sandwiches, some raisins, and a hard-boiled egg.

  WHAT IS AMAZING ABOUT THE ESCAPE is the fact Puckett was housed in Ad-Seg, the most secure part of the prison. Administrative Segregation is basically an island unto itself on this maximum-security unit. The hardest cases live there, locked in their cells for twenty-three hours a day. Anytime they leave their cells, they are shackled, handcuffed, and escorted by two guards. They are transported like this to the showers, infirmary, and recreation. Apparently, Puckett sawed his way through the recreation cage he was in and made it over all the razor-wire fences.

  What little information I had came from radio news reports and the few guards who would discuss it. When mail call came, I would hopefully get my copy of The Port Arthur News, where I was sure to find something.

  Experience had taught me to make the most of my situations. Ever since that awful day two years ago when I was sentenced to this hell on Earth for sixty-five years, I had taken the position that this was more of an opportunity than a punishment. Because of my actions, the great state of Texas had given me ample time and opportunities to work on me.

  What a gift, right?

  Position determines perspective. My current position required some serious out-of-the-box perspective if I was to not only survive this ordeal, but also come out on the other side as something I and everyone else recognized. The last thing my mother and father said to me before I came to prison was, “Damon, don’t come back to us as someone we won’t recognize.” That basically meant don’t go into prison and get sucked into one of the myriad white supremacy gangs and get a bunch of swastikas tattooed all over myself.

  Check and check. No gang affiliations and no tattoos. The former was, literally, a battle when I first arrived. But, I am getting ahead of myself….

  In the spirit of making the most of my new “opportunities,” I decided to take advantage of this recent escape, and the subsequent lockdown it had imposed on me, and begin writing to chronicle what had transpired in my life.

  Convicted felon. That was my reality. Conviction, in my eyes, was more than just this felony. My conviction was a wake-up call. With this epiphany, I was making the most of this opportunity, this second chance in life. You see, I firmly believed I would turn this whole thing around and return to a new life like a phoenix rising from the ashes. Call it an extreme makeover. My eventual freedom would be a testament to the power of God, and the love of family and community. Once the drugs, alcohol, and criminal behavior were removed from my life, I was a man of good character, an upstanding citizen. Also, I was a fighter, a scrapper. Nothing had ever kept me down permanently. This incarceration, and all the pain and misery it entailed, would not make history and break me.

  Okay, so here are the rules. You, the reader, will get every bit of Damon West. The good, the bad, and the ugly.

  It is my hope that my story can be a warning to those who need it, a message of hope for those who are looking for it, and a tribute to the awesome power of faith.

  The best place to start any story is at the beginning.

  CHAPTER 2

  Innocence Lost

  MY PARENTS, BOB AND GENIE WEST, welcomed me into the world at 4:16 A.M., Tuesday, October 21, 1975, at St. Mary’s Hospital in Port Arthur, Texas.

  Also waiting at the hospital was my older brother, Brandon. Our family would be complete five years later when my brother Grayson was born.

  My hometown is a petrochemical giant. By far the largest employer in the area, the refineries made Port Arthur a “company town.” In its heyday, it was a thriving city on the Gulf Coast.

  The Port Arthur News, the newspaper where my father has written for over forty years, used to be a decent-sized paper for a decent-sized town. My father has helped hold up the subscribership for years with his witty, on-point sports columns and commentary, along with his semi-famous “I Beat Bob West Contest.” He has spent a lifetime building up his name and reputation in a profession where there are few dinosaurs like him left.

  Above all, he is known for being bold and fair. Like when in 1971, he and my late godfather, Bill Maddox, decided to defy the local “rules,” which said a black athlete does not belong on the front page of the Football School-Boy Preview that comes out every August. Their decision to run with Joe Washington Jr., an All-American running back from the all-black school, Port Arthur Lincoln, outraged many in Port Arthur and Southeast Texas. Washington went on to play at Oklahoma University and a had a solid eleven-year career in the NFL with the Chargers, Colts, Redskins, and Falcons. My father still has a box full of all the hate mail he received for taking that against-the-grain approach.

  Dad didn’t go through it alone. My mother, a home economics teacher, went to work at Charlton-Pollard High School in the south end of Beaumont in 1968. That was one of the all-black campuses (remember, this is before forced integration in Texas). It was also where Coach Willie Ray Smith and his wife, Georgia Smith, were employed. The connection with the Smith family was a bond forged in courage and timing.

  Coach and Mrs. Smith had three boys, Willie Ray Jr., Bubba, and Tody. The last two of them went on to play in the NFL. Bubba was also well-known as an actor after his playing days.

  As a coach at an all-black school, Coach Smith recognized immediately the rare bird my father was: a white sportswriter in Southeast Texas who was willing to give coverage to the best players, regardless of their race. The black communities in Southeast Texas welcomed my parents with open arms, inviting them into their homes and their lives.

 
; My parents raised us with the principle that our Founding Fathers wrote about but did not always practice: All men (and women) are created equal. We grew up without prejudice, xenophobia, or fear of people and cultures that were different than ours. My hometown was a melting pot of many races, cultures, and ethnicities. I would not trade growing up in Port Arthur with anybody else’s experience.

  Having a sportswriter father, and all the extra exposure to sports it provided, wasn’t a guarantee I would be good at sports. I wasn’t, at first. Just like my mother being a registered nurse didn’t guarantee I would be good at science. I wasn’t, ever. All things being equal, I was a fairly intelligent kid. My parents pulled Brandon and I out of Catholic school to attend public schools in the Summit Program, Port Arthur’s answer to integration. They would take the “gifted and talented” students in the city and bus them across town to the schools where the population was majority African-American. The year was 1983 and I was beginning third grade at Franklin Elementary.

  I cried that first day of school. The place was huge. Multiple stories, a gymnasium, an auditorium, and hundreds of children. It was scary to a kid who just left a private school where you knew every student from kindergarten to the eighth grade. But, like with all things, I faced my fears and found my way up the stairs to Ms. Woodall’s class.

  That wasn’t the first time I had problems concentrating or behaving. Few people back then knew what Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) was. Today, I would have been diagnosed before the lunch bell rang on the first day of school. Back then, no amount of scolding or threats of trouble could keep me in my chair. Ms. Woodall improvised a string-tied seatbelt, so to speak, to my school desk. Basically, she tied me into my seat.

  I did well in academics. School was always easy for me when I applied myself. My conduct grades, however, were often a point of contention at home. I suffered many punishments and spankings over my poor behavior. The principal’s office was not unknown to me, and I could count on being grounded from time to time.

  But, I wasn’t a bad kid. I was not the kind of kid who picked on others. To the contrary, I was the kid who took up for other kids and stood up to bullies. I hated bullies then, and I hate them now.

  Our family’s foundation of faith was as solid as they come. My mother was a devout Catholic who, like her mother, had a strong devotion to the Blessed Mother. My father did not identify with any religion, but you would never have known it because he was always at mass on Sundays and was at church for every baptism, communion or confirmation. If it was church-related, he was there. Rumor has it, my mother made marriage contingent on his being fully supportive of raising their children Catholic.

  My older brother Brandon and I were altar boys. This was a pretty cool setup because we often served mass together. Brandon and I did a lot together. Although he was much more intelligent than I–he has a genius IQ–he always had a way of making things understandable to me. Grayson, on the other hand, was an altogether different fascination for me. In him, I found a miniature playmate who would do practically anything I wanted. This privilege was most frequently abused in the form of me getting him to do things for me under the guise of something else. Between Grayson’s fourth and sixth years on this planet, I do not think I ever got off the couch to get the phone, a snack, anything.

  Most frequently, the charades I had to use with him involved making him feel as though we were in a race. A common ruse would entail me sitting on the couch watching TV with him and betting him he could not go and get me a glass of milk before I could count to ten. Sometimes he would win, sometimes he would lose. It was always a photo finish, so as to keep it interesting.

  Our brotherly bond was a hierarchy of love and admiration. I looked up to Brandon, and Grayson looked up to me.

  Our family was not wealthy, but we were definitely not poor. We were a normal, middle-class family. Both of my parents worked their butts off to provide for us. With both parents working, this created an obvious need for help caring for us in the form of a sitter, but one who was old enough to drive and could help shuttle us around to and from things like baseball practice and games. This job was filled by a high school senior named Cathy.

  Cathy was nondescript. She went to school, she smoked cigarettes, she talked on the phone to her friends. Definitely not a shy person, she made friends with other parents wherever we went. Specifically, she had fallen in with the team moms and other family members at my games as if she were one of them.

  Cathy made me feel very at ease. More importantly, my parents felt very comfortable with Cathy taking care of the three of us. It was as if she were becoming one of our family members, like an older sister I never had. I trusted her.

  I cannot remember how it all began. Did she touch me initially or reveal parts of her anatomy to me? Looking back on it through the lens of decades, it is difficult to remember because there was so much of both going on. Eventually, it would cross nearly every line, short of intercourse.

  Coming out to my parents about being sexually abused caused a crisis in our home. For the longest time I thought I was the reason why everyone was so upset. My parents did everything they thought was correct. They sent me to counseling, they sent me to the family priest, and they prayed, a lot. I did not fully understand what the problem was. On the one hand, I knew enough about what was going on to understand it was inappropriate because Cathy was an adult. On the other hand, I physically enjoyed the things she did to me.

  Trying to figure all this out at 9 years of age was, I now know, outside the realm of comprehension for a child. Only later in life would I be able to piece together that this was what is known in addiction lingo as my “activating event.” This was the starting point for me putting chemicals into my body to change the way I felt. First came beer and smoking cigarettes at ten, and pot by age twelve.

  As an adult, I understand how destructive this whole episode was to my emotional growth and maturation, grossly affecting my perceptions about sex and relationships. By the time I was twelve, I was fully sexually active, pursuing the girls I thought would be open to having sex. There were always girls who were willing. Mostly, these girls were older.

  * * *

  To this day, as I sit in my prison cell writing this, I think back to every relationship I have ever had, and in not a single one can I claim to have been mature. I honestly think it is a textbook case of arrested development. I stopped maturing emotionally around the time I became a teenager. This is definitely something I am working on now that I am in a 12-step recovery program and letting God carry me in life.

  Some days I look at the task of putting my life back together from in here as daunting to the point of being impossible. Other days, I am thankful for the seclusion prison offers because I have no other demands on my time and on my life. In that regard, this sentence is truly a blessing. One day I will walk out of this place, and I will be a better man spiritually, emotionally, and physically than the one who the police arrested on July 30, 2008.

  CHAPTER 3

  Better Days

  Prison Diary

  Wednesday, September 7, 2011

  It’s nearing the end of the summer of 2011, and there’s a record heat wave in Beaumont. People were passing out left and right because there’s no air conditioning in Texas prisons.

  My “home” is a 10-by-12-foot cell. Seven Building, G-Pod, 23 cell, bottom bunk. I definitely drew the short straw on cell assignments. My cell is on the top tier of three rows, the wall of my cell faces west, and that means the sun sets all day long on my wall. It is literally too hot to enter my cell before 10 p.m. Moreover, you cannot even touch the wall of my cell, which my bunk is against, until around midnight. It will burn you. I understand this is a punishment, but living in an environment where there is little to no moving air is ridiculous.

  SINCE COMING TO PRISON, it has been my observation that violence escalates in the hotter month
s simply because the comfort level in extreme heat is minimal. The guards are also under the intense pressure created by this atmosphere. They pull twelve-hour shifts in a workplace that is devoid of air conditioning. So, you have inmates and guards cooking in the uncomfortable, intense heat for months; a recipe for disaster.

  The most dangerous ingredient in this toxic soup is the difficulty in sleeping in extreme heat. My dreams are even different, almost psychedelic. I have not slept more than a few hours at a time since May. I do not expect to sleep more than that until at least October. That is five months of living in an environment where everyone is extremely sleep-deprived. Some of the inmates are armed, others are in gangs, most are going through deep, internal and personal struggles, and many are looking for any signs of weakness to exploit. Hope is in short supply, and violence is the only language in which everyone is fluent.

  We do have our little fans. However, I wouldn’t ever accuse mine of keeping me cool. It simply moves one hundred-plus-degree stifling air around if you are within two feet of it. It practically has to be within arm’s reach to be effective as an air mover. I consider myself to be fortunate because some guys do not even have that. In order to have a fan, someone must put money on your “books”—the inmate trust fund account to spend at the commissary—or you have to apply as indigent for a free fan.

  There is a third avenue to acquire a fan. My current fan isn’t the original fan I purchased when I arrived in prison. That fan saved my life in another way a few months after I touched down at the Stiles Unit. That is a story for later, though. I’ve learned, in prison as in life, there is always another option. You can buy one off the “street.” That’s the term for the prison black market, where anything and everything is for sale. When I first arrived here, I was shocked by the type of vendors who would come around selling their wares.