Embedded Files
This is a work of creative non-fiction and a true story
Published online Christmas Day, 2012
ABSOLUTELY NO PORTION OF THIS PERSONAL ESSAY MAY BE REPRODUCED OR DISSEMINATED WITHOUT EXPRESS PERMISSION FROM THE AUTHOR, DONALD LEE DUPAY, UNDER PENALTY OF COPYRIGHT LAWS!!
Miss Artent Thomas, born 1951, murdered, 1979, aged 28.
Senior photo from Jefferson High yearbook, 1967, page 143.
“She was stabbed 27 times,” the Seattle detective told me. “The body is in pretty bad shape. She fits the general description of the woman you reported missing to the Portland police though, late 20's, black, short black hair. She was probably about 5 ft 6. Most of her clothes had been torn off when she was found dumped in the bushes in Seward Park. We would appreciate it if you could come up to Seattle and identify her body. Tire tracks were found nearby. Maybe she was dumped out of a car.”
That would explain the extra 200 or so miles on my car, a trip from Portland to Seattle, and back I thought. “Sure, I'll be there first thing in the morning. My mom will drive me up.” I was heart-sick and too upset to drive to Seattle by myself. I prayed the body they found of a young black woman was not my precious Artent.
I've never known a woman before or since with the name “Artent.” but somehow it fit her. She was different. She 'zinged' my heart when I first saw her. Pretty legs, cocoa colored skin, with lots of red lipstick. In high heels she looked like “Minnie Mouse” and I used to tease her about it. Other guys said she had the perfect “disco' hips” and a hell of a butt. Her boobs were large for the rest of her frame, and she always showed a lot of cleavage. So much so, that sometimes her nipple would slip out. When that happened, she flashed an irresistibly sultry smile and tucked it back in making sure an audience was watching.
Artent was beautiful, sexy to the nines and a whore. A cocaine addicted prostitute. She wiggled her sexy way into my life when it was in turmoil. I had found my wife of 20 years in bed with a lesbian woman that often had some good cocaine. The lesbian, (I guess my wife was one too) was paying for the eventual divorce. It helped to explain the reason my wife had become more and more distant sexually. I thought maybe it was just boredom. But a lesbian? No wonder I couldn't turn her on anymore. It wasn't me she wanted, it was a God-damned woman!
Shock wears off after awhile and I somehow felt relieved. I sure as hell had a lot of life ahead of me and maybe now, just maybe, I could find a black woman. I wanted a sexy black bitch in my life this time and Artent fit the bill. At the time, I had some good cocaine to sell and a junkie friend of hers had introduced us.
I'm white but after the divorce I let my feelings run. Back in the day when I'd been a street cop I spent a lot of time working the black neighborhoods and bars. I had fallen in love with a beautiful, light-skinned black table dancer, but never acted on my impulses. I decided if the opportunity ever came to be with a black woman, I would jump at it.
I picked Artent up one night with my black Cadillac, from her ghetto apartment and we went to a decent motel on Barbur Blvd. After parking I checked in and got the key. This would be my chance I hoped. I knew the coke would make my dick hard. She threw her purse on the king sized bed, smiled at me and excused herself into the bathroom but left the door open for me to see. She tied off her arm with a piece of rubber tubing she'd brought with her. I was fascinated watching her getting ready to shoot up. In the bathroom mirror she grinned at me. “Wanna try it with me?” she asked. “It's your dope.”
Jeez! My mind froze. I'd been a cop half my life and I knew better on all levels. I'd always been faithful to my wife, even when I worked Vice, but I was secretly attracted to trashy, sexy, cheap looking, crotch-tight women showing some panty line and jiggling boobs. As a street cop I'd loved to talk to the hookers on my district with their sexy little asses and too much lipstick.
“Wanna try it?” she repeated, motioning me into the bathroom with her head, her breathy voice unthawing my brain freeze. God yes, I thought to myself. “Hook me up, baby. Treat your daddy right,” I murmured. My heart started pounding in my ears, so loud I didn't hear what she said as she eased the needle into the big vein on my left arm. I could taste the coke. The rush hit hard. How did the taste of the coke in the needle get from my arm to my taste buds so instantly?
I didn't know what to expect but it was erotic, intensely sexual and nothing like I had ever felt before. She tossed the needle in the sink and led me to the bed. I don't remember taking off my clothes. I saw the clean white sheets, the beautiful black body, and my white body on top of hers. It was slow motion and fast forward all at the same time. And then we were yelling hoarsely at each other it seemed, but it wasn't yelling. What are the involuntary sounds that happen when your nerves explode in orgasm? “God! God! God!” she screamed, or was it me? I was in her and she was in me.
We floated somewhere in the ether for awhile, our bodies entangled in each other, until we started to come down from the high. “Let's do it again baby, there's still a little powder left,” she said. Without waiting for my answer she wiggled out from under me and dashed naked to the bathroom returning with a paper cup full of water, the needle, and the rest of the gram in the wrinkled 'snow seal.' Jesus! I couldn't take my eyes off of her bouncing boobs as she jiggled to the bathroom and back.
This time we sat on the edge of the bed while she tied me off. “Hurry,” I said wanting to get the same feeling again and get my still hard dick back inside her. She inserted the needle and drew in a small amount of blood to make sure she had hit the right spot. Satisfied, she hit the plunger. I got the taste and was off flying again to that unexplainable place you go when you're shooting coke. She did the same and was back under me in a flash, the needle and and rubber tubing dropping to the floor. We made love for the rest of the night, she and I, black and white, dissolving into each other, color no longer mattering. Each thrust of my hips was met with her own push back until our soft love whispers crescendoed in simultaneous multiple orgasm.
As we both relaxed in satisfied exhaustion, she offered me a Valium to help me come down from the coke. I took it and we smoked on a bud of Maui Wowie from my connection in Hono. Sleep came after the second smoked joint. I pulled up the covers and cuddled close to this beautiful black vision. One of my dreams had come true!
I moved into her apartment, less than a week later, and after that she made no bones about the fact that we were together and I was her “old man.” She told me that I was the only white guy that had ever made her come. But still...she was a hooker and our life was the night life...the fast life. We spent many nights at the disco club called “The Great Gatsby's” on NE Halsey at 102nd avenue. The music was loud, the disco balls spun beautifully, the colored lights flashed and all was wonderful with the world.
Artent kept wanting me to dance with her on the floor, but I was not a natural dancer, remember I'm white, and awkward doesn't describe how I looked “dancing.” Truth is I looked and felt stupid. That is until she got me loaded on booze and coke. We always parked the black Cadillac across the street in a vacant lot and between music sets we would use the back exit and run across the street. Sitting in the front seat we used a small flashlight to illuminate the water bottle we carried, the cooking spoon, the needles and the rubber tie off tube. I never learned how to inject myself. Artent always fixed me. She almost never missed, even with the dim light of the car. When we finished shooting up neither one of us could remain still and we sprinted across the street back to the club racing each other to the door. I still wonder why shooting coke made us both want to take off running. It seemed to be a necessary part of the rush.
Most bar patrons were only allowed one “in and out” pass but Artent did coke with the owner of the Gatsby so we had a free pass to go in and out all night. And we did, shooting coke each time. But I'll tell ya, when we returned inside the club I could dance my ass off!
Nobody laughed! Either because I was as good as I thought I was or...I was Artent's “old man” and they didn't laugh out of respect for her. As the night ended and the bartenders yelled out “last call,” My Artent always left with one or two other guys, off to get more coke and money. Even though she was my “old lady” she was a prostitute and always did her own thing. She would kiss me goodnight and stick a few bills in my shirt pocket, money she had hustled while at the Gatsby. “Later baby,” she whispered. “I'll be home before daylight.” But she never was.
I staggered out the back door to my Cad and drove home to her apartment. I was usually so drunk and high I was seeing double. To solve that problem I shut one eye. It seemed to work. Hard to drive when all you could see was two roads, multiple traffic signals and cars with four headlights.
My guts were torn up, her leaving with other guys knowing she would fuck them for money and coke and weed. Back at home, I found a Valium in the ashtray and put it under my tongue to dissolve. She was what she was, a whore and I knew it the first time I slept with her. Still I felt castrated. When I pulled into the driveway of her apartment I parked the long black Cad more or less between the two yellow lines of her parking space...or was it four yellow lines? Once inside I retrieved the gallon bottle of Chablis from under the sink and drank until I passed out.
****
I sat in the back seat of my mothers car during the trip to Seattle watching the sign posts fly by “Hurry up mom. Can't you go faster?” I saw my mothers face in the rear view mirror, looking back at me. Her brow was furrowed as she shared my anguish and worry. Mom was very disappointed in my drug dealing activities and my association with blacks. She couldn't figure out what had happened to her son, the cop, the detective she used to brag about to all her friends. I wasn't sure what happened to him either. Part of if it was a strong unfulfilled desire to be “black” for awhile.
Part of it was the total disillusionment with the cops and the corruption that couldn't seem to be avoided, the corruption no one seemed to give a shit about so I didn't either, and part of it was the allure of the fast life, the desire to just be 'the other side of the coin.' I knew my life was on a downhill slide, but I wasn't ready to stop skidding yet. “Can't you find a decent white woman?” mom had been asking. Probably not, because I wasn't looking for a white woman. Yeah, I had received a proper white upbringing; blacks and whites didn't associate unless they were employees or working for whites. That's what I'd been taught. Still she could see how distraught I was and the reason Artent hadn't picked me up after my hernia surgery at Emanuel hospital was probably becoming clear to her.
A hernia operation on my right side had recently became necessary and arrangements had been made for me to have it repaired at Emanuel Hospital. The plan was for Artent to pick me up when I was released. I sat in the hospital waiting room in the obligatory wheel chair. The nurse had parked me where I could see Artent coming, if she drove up to the waiting room door. She never came! I waited an hour trying to fend off the nurses questions. Did I have a ride? Was I sure they were coming? Hell yes! My ride home had been planned before I was admitted. But where was she? I was becoming irritated. Did she get high and forget about me? Where was my silly Minnie Mouse, my sweet black bitch?
Two hours went by and I couldn't sit still any longer. The nurses looked at me like they wanted the wheel chair back. I called Broadway Cab, the only cab number I could remember and went to our apartment. My car was in the parking lot, and the keys were in the ignition. I checked the interior for any sign of her, purse, perfume, apartment keys, anything. There was about 200 miles on the odometer that wasn't there when I entered the hospital. I tended to keep track of the mileage when she had the car just to see what she was up to. Switching on the ignition I saw the Cad was almost out of gas.
Apprehensive now, I opened the trunk, not knowing what to expect, hoping it was empty. It was and so was the apartment! It had been four days since I heard from her, so I reported her as a missing person. The next day the Seattle police called.
****
The King County morgue was cold as the detective wheeled out a refrigerated body covered by a sheet. The gurney stopped in front of me and on it was a tag that said “Jane Doe.” As he pulled the sheet from the body, tears instantly came to my eyes and I turned away and clung to my mother. I felt like I had just been kicked in the guts. It was her! God damn it! It was her! I forced myself to turn back and look at her again. Her face was barely recognizable.
She had obviously been tortured. Her real hair was cut short, as she usually wore a wig. It was dirty! And bloody! Only one eye was visible from the destruction of her face. Her mouth was distorted as if in a scream. Her lips were cut. Her arms were bloody. It looked like she had been cut all over. Dried blood everywhere! It was horrible. “I guess that's her?” asked the detective. “We haven't been able to get to her yet. That's the way she came in.”
“Yes...that's her!” I choked. “Her name is Artent Thomas.” As a former police detective I had seen too many dead bodies already, but this bloody mess, this stiff and tortured woman was mine! My precious Artent was gone. She had been a butterfly and now my beautiful black butterfly was dead. I always feared her life on earth would be short. Her butterfly self flitted here and flitted there, never stopping long in one place. Sometimes she landed on me and stayed awhile, but if I tried to catch her, she flitted away, smiling back at me over her wings. Now it was death that finally caught her. She lay on the stainless steel table as if pinned there like a specimen crushed in its capture.
“Are you her next of kin?” asked the detective. “No, we weren't married. That would be her sister. I'll get you her name and address. Now tell me who killed her so I can blow the motherfucker away!” I told him. “We're not sure yet, but now that you've identified her we will be working with the Portland cops.” The detective turned over the tag that read Jane Doe and wrote ARTENT THOMAS in capital letters. The murdered girl in Seward Park now had a name. “I know this is hard,” said the detective, compassion now in his voice, “but don't do anything stupid. We'll get him.” Get him before I do, I thought to myself.
The Portland cops fingerprinted my car the next day and found bloody prints belonging to a Davon Wills, a black man. Wills had only recently been released from the Oregon State Prison where detectives told me he had met Artent in the "co-ed pre-release unit." So that was the fuckers name! Artent never did tell the name of the guy.
A few months before we started living together she had gotten high and gone shoplifting at Nordstroms department store at the Lloyd Center Mall. A store security guard spotted her stealing and Artent, thinking her high-self could out run the store cop took off, sprinting out the door. “I can run really fast when I'm high,” I remembered her telling me. I knew she could because we would often shoot up some coke and try and out run each other to some imaginary finish line.
But on that day, she'd stumbled in her high heels and the store cop caught her. He was probably sorry he got so close because Minnie Mouse beat him bloody with the other high heel shoe and ran home bare footed. When she came down from her high she realized she had dropped her purse with her ID inside. We both knew that it was only a matter of time until she would have to face the charges. Eventually, her court appointed attorney told her that with her previous record for shoplifting and prostitution she would do some time for Theft and Assault. But we continued to party and stay high ignoring the real world.
When you're high it's easy to put off reality, at least for awhile. On a very few rare occasions Artent would “take the day off,” and we would just have fun together. We would smoke a lot of pot and when the munchies got to us we loved to have breakfast at Quality Pie on NW 23rd Avenue. She ordered her hash-browns crisp and her eggs sunny-side up with white toast. “Please” and “thank you,” she always said, smiling pleasantly if it was a waitress, and sexily if it was a waiter. Artent was born to flirt and I got used to it. My meal was usually pigs in a blanket when we ate breakfast out.
I had to give her my little container of jam because she put all of hers and all of mine on the two pieces of white toast, spreading it thick and painstakingly to the very edge of the bread. I would watch her. No one could spread jam on toast as sexily as my Artent. Maybe it was just me, but I thought everything she did was sexy. Then she would take a bite putting the jelled up toast corner daintily in her mouth. God!! This woman gave me a hard-on just watching her eat!
And again on a rare day off, after eating I would drive her over to Vancouver Washington. About 6 miles up the freeway towards Seattle was a little known turn off that lead to a private Arboretum. Some guy had painstakingly, over the years, turned 5 acres of meadow and forest into a kind of wonderland of odd shaped trees and bushes and vines. It was pretty magical especially if you were high! Some of the trees looked like ghostly shapes, some had animal shapes and some looked like Christmas trees, but the ornaments were a different bush that had been grafted onto the 'Christmas' tree to look like it had ornaments. My favorite little spot on the property, and the one we were heading to, was about half a mile back on the trail, where a heart shaped tree was growing out of a lot of tall grass. We would make love on the ground hidden by the grass, our own private little piece of someone else's heavenly half acre.
But this one time, in the hot summer, some ass-hole had mowed all the grass around the tree. We both stopped and looked at each other when we saw the tall grass was gone along with most of our privacy and wondered for a moment what to do next. But we shrugged it off. “We're so far back in here,” Artent mumbled, “no one will see us anyway.” “Yeah,” I answered, “no one will see us.” We grinned at each other, the prospect of making love out in the open, seemed to whet our appetite for each other and we took off running the rest of the way to the tree and fell to the ground laughing and hugging each other. I took off my black leather jacket and put it on the ground for her to lay on. I lit a joint and we smoked it before taking one last look around, making sure we and the tree were alone.
Satisfied, Artent lay on her back and let me kiss her until most of her red lipstick was on me. Slowly, deliciously, my hand felt under her dress. I caressed her soft little vulva as she wiggled out of her panties. “Wait baby, we got a little powder to shoot up first,” she whispered. Looking around, our privacy okay, I silently cussed the guy that cut our grass. As luck would have it, I have a large vein running down the top of my penis. We had talked about it before, but this time we decided to inject the dope right into my dick. Artent called the big vein a “roller,” because when she tried to hit it with the needle the vein moved. We persevered and after wiping off the tiny spot of blood from the injection site, I stuck it in her pussy as far as it would go.
We zoomed past heaven, flying right on by, kissing, touching, rolling around on the ground, grunting, groaning and squirming, entwined in each other's body and lost to the world...until we heard voices coming down the trail toward us. The sound brought us both slamming back to earth. Two older white ladies were on a leisurely stroll up the path about 200 feet from us. We didn't think they had seen us yet, but my dick went limp instantly and her panties were back on in a flash. “Ass hole grass mower,” I said under my breath to Artent. “Let's get out of here!” We stood up and Artent lit a cigarette, coughing a little to let the intruders know someone else was in the area.
My dick hurt a little from the injection and a lot from not being able to come. My sexy bitch was frustrated too. “Let's go home and do it baby,” she whispered. We smiled and waved politely at the two ladies as we passed. Artent stopped for a moment on the trail and opened her compact mirror to wipe her face and refresh her lipstick, since most of it had come off on me. In her mirror she could see that the ladies had turned around to look at us again. I knew they wondered what was going on, a black woman and a white man clear back here on the trail? Little did they know what a show they just missed. Little did they know...
****
Have you noticed, that court rooms have their own smell, kind of woodsy and stale? Marble wall panels stare at you and you wonder how they got the slabs of marble carved so impressively. The hard wood benches seem to have absorbed years of the negative vibrations and nervous depressed energy of witnesses and victims. The whole austere ritual of the black robed judge entering the court room to the words of the clerk, “All rise” a tableau designed to impress and frighten all that are seated. A ritual of law that says none are above the black robed jurist staring down. Judges don't look down, they stare usually over their reading glasses, a ritual enforced by old movies and Perry Mason episodes.
As a former street cop and detective with the Portland Police Bureau, truly, I'd spent hundreds of hours in court rooms. When I was a traffic cop often violators would say “I'll see you in court!” And I'd laugh to myself, thinking, “Sorry buddy, if you're not a plumber, don't try and fix your pipes, and if you're not an electrician, don't try and wire your house, and if you're not a judge, don't try and scare me by claiming your prowess in court. I make my living in court, ass-hole...that's where I make my fucking living!”
Still those were the old days, and Artent and I and I were in this courtroom to hear her sentence for stealing from Nordstroms and beating up their rent-a-cop. I was in a very familiar environment but in a very uncomfortable circumstance. “Artent Thomas, I sentence you to 3 years in the Oregon State Prison for theft and assault.” Her attorney nodded his head, acknowledging the judges sentence as Artent jumped up proclaiming her innocence. “It wasn't me judge I swear.” The judge furrowed his brow and took off his glasses, setting them in front of him. “I am as certain that you are as guilty of this crime, as I am as sure that you are the only ARTENT Thomas in Oregon! Judgment is entered. Deputies, take her into custody.”
The gavel slammed down on the hardwood desk and my pretty Artent was gone, handcuffed in front of me and whisked away behind the big metal doors that I knew from years of experience led directly to jail. Reality was a motherfucker and the judge's gavel caught me sliding into first base but both Artent and I had struck out. She would spend too damned many nights in a prison cell, for stealing over priced clothes from Nordstrom's, and I would be sleeping alone in our apartment in a pull down bed with too many springs sticking up. Fuck! I thought to myself.
The next few months were really hard. My baby was locked away in a town 30 or so miles away at the Oregon State Prison in Salem Oregon. In a way we were both locked up. Prison frustrates the natural emotions of a love now untouchable, loneliness unsatisfied, and the counting of time, not knowing, only hoping for a quick end to being away from each other. Doing time is not only the sentence of the prisoner but is the sentence of loved ones too.
If there was any value to Artent's imprisonment for me, it was to force me to re-evaluate my own life. I came to realize that if she and I were ever to have a real life together, it couldn't be the “fast life.” It had to be a more normal Mom and Pop, father goes to work and mother keeps house kind of life. I wondered if Minny Mouse could or would change.
Just as fast as she was whisked off to jail, I decided to jump back into normalcy myself. I stopped being a coke dealer, cut off my old connections and stopped being a crook. Cold turkey! Abrupt change can be a bitch, but I knew it was the only way. I returned to the business I grew up in, before I joined the Navy. I was raised in the restaurant business and that's what I went back to managing a couple of hamburger joints, and dealing with high school kids as employees. It gave me a legitimate income, regular working hours and paid enough to cover the apartment rent and gas to get back and forth to the prison for my weekly visits.
Visiting Artent in prison was hard on me. Each week I was strip searched before being allowed into the visiting room, a place I had only seen before as a detective. The grapevine at the prison knew I used to be a cop and that I was visiting a convicted prostitute, a thief, and a black girl at that. I was always escorted into a small private room where the smug smiling guard ordered me to strip. I never had anything to hide. I'm not stupid enough to try and smuggle contraband into a prison, but the guard staff never tried to conceal how much they enjoyed putting me through this ritual, every week. It always ended the same way. “Make sure your report states that I was polite and cooperative,” I would say, trying to match the same smug smile they were enjoying at my expense.
The visiting room would be filled with visitors first, before prisoners were admitted, one at a time, and then seated by their guest. Once all the seats were filled, the pent up emotions spilled over and we were allowed to kiss, and hug briefly. The guards didn't allow, heavy tongue kissing or fondling or groping. It was torture for me not to be able to hold Artent tight and feel her breasts. After kissing her as much as I thought I could get away with, I poked some change in the vending machines and brought her a soda and a candy bar.
Conversations were hard to start with Artent, because she was so depressed at being locked up. I tried to be light-hearted, but damn...this was fucked! It was impossible to be light-hearted and locked up. Our conversations turned to what we would do upon her release. I told her that I wanted to be with her the rest of my life and that we needed to get married. She seemed apprehensive at my going straight. And married?! She was in a turmoil of her own, for she had never known me as a straight person, and she had always been in the fast life.
Artent's early home life had been hard, with her mother dying when she was a very young child. She also told me, she had a small son, about three-years-old that had been taken from her and was being raised by a relative. Though she had graduated from Jefferson high school, she had never gone on to college and had few marketable job skills. I could see the prospect of working a straight job and living 'normal' scared the hell out of her. “What kind of a job could I get?” she mused over her soda. “Tending bar maybe?”
“You'll be on parole when you get out of here.” I reminded her, “I doubt they'll even let you smell alcohol.” “I'll just do a little coke then,” she said coyly, and I could see the old sexy smile light up her face again. “Honey,” I screwed my face into a grin as I spoke, trying not to be condescending, “they'll piss test you on parole. No coke--no pot--no alcohol. You'll be lucky if they let you smoke cigarettes baby” I told her. “I don't think I can do all that,” she said, squirming in her chair and looking seriously at me, a worried expression on her face. I held her hand for a moment across the table shaking my head. Artent would be hard to change.
****
As the prison time wore on, I continued to become a productive and normal citizen. I re-joined the boyhood church my mother and I had attended. My mom was thrilled at my change. I could see the proudness return to her face when she looked at her wayward son. “You look healthier Donnie,” she would say, “now that you're not coked up all the time.” And she was right! It's amazing how much better I felt, ditching the powder and just smoking a little pot. I landed a prestigious job as security chief at a downtown Portland luxury hotel making a lot more money than flipping burgers and chasing high school kids around a restaurant, getting them to do their work.
Working at the hotel, being a department head, I had to wear conservative, expensive three piece suits and shiny black Stacy-Adams shoes to fit in with the fancy clientèle. It was a fun job in a fancy place, eating fancy food. The employee lunch room was the recipient of all the left-over food from catering events for the rich. There I learned to like quiche (what the hell was quiche anyway?) exotic cheeses, various species of mushroom and raw oysters on the half shell. Rich people spent a lot of money at the hotel and they sure as hell ate good.
The famous people stayed at the hotel too, pulling up in limos or parking their tour buses near by. The hotel was Portland home for movie stars like Merv Griffin, impressionist Rich Little, concert artists like Gladys Knight and the Pips, Victor Borge, Bob Dylan, and Ella Fitzgerald. Sports greats also arrived regularly like Kareem Abdul Jabar, and Arnold Palmer. And the biggest star with the most “good-ole boy” security was Waylon Jennings. His security guys were big tough looking white dudes, dressed in all black with radios sticking in their back pockets and serious looks on their faces. It was obvious Waylon didn't take any shit on the road!
Working in this environment made me feel human again, a person of worth with a future and a real life ahead, someone mom was proud of again. As a cocaine addicted crook mother had a right to be ashamed of me. In truth I had been ashamed of myself. Now she had renewed faith and when she dropped by work sometimes for lunch she was all smiles as she stepped up to the front desk and asked for her son, the “Security Chief.” And best of all, I was away from the curse of being a cop! Being a cop and being a crook were both now happily far behind me, dust from a dirty, dusty past! I was a church member, I had a checking account. I was new!!
****
For nearly the next year, I shuttled back and forth from Portland to the prison in Salem once a week visiting Minni Mouse the butterfly. While I was busy returning to the status of model citizen, as in fully employed, attending bible studies, and keeping a balanced check book, Artent was not being a model prisoner.
She had spent 3 days in “the hole” for “inappropriate sexual contact” with another female inmate. It cost her, her good time and further delayed her release date. According to her “matrix,” a confusing complex formula for figuring the actual exit date of a prisoner with a 3-year-sentence, she should have been released in 9 months. Well that wasn't going to happen. I was pissed off at her for doing something stupid that kept her locked up longer. “How could you do that?” I wrote her in a letter, since she also lost her visiting privileges. “It happens,” she wrote back, “I've been in here too long.”
In the next few weeks I could see two problems heading my way. I was having pains in my left groin and the Doctor at Emanuel Hospital was not subtle about it. “You have a developing hernia that has to be operated on. Your gut is starting to stick through the hole in your abdomen wall and that's what is hurting. If it does stick through it's called a “strangulated hernia. You could die.”
Damn! Damn! Damn! I hated even the thought of a scalpel and wondered how long I could put if off. The other problem appeared in the form of a letter from the parole board. When she finally got out, Artent would be paroled to me!! At first it sounded great...then it dawned on me that I would be the one responsible for her actions. The model citizen thing seemed to be backfiring. I looked good enough on paper to be her keeper.
But I was just now learning how to be responsible for myself again and I wondered vaguely at the thought process of the parole people that assumed it would be a good idea to parole a black woman to a white man. Devoted boyfriend? yes. Lover? yes. Keeper? Wow! I couldn't control her before, how could I control her in the future?
And then my butterfly got in trouble again. The prison operated a co-ed pre-release center where she would spend her last month. I don't know who thought it was a good idea to mix, by now, very horny men and women together in the same place but it was disaster for Artent! She became involved with a male inmate, was sent back to the general population and back in “the hole.”
I don't know what his punishment was but I wanted to castrate the bastard! I was damned mad, I was super pissed at everybody. How in hell could a prison whose job it is to watch people, be so un-observing that two people could just go off and fuck each other somewhere? So yeah they got caught. Was it the first time? Who knows! But it was the last time for damned sure. And Artent, the two-timing little whore, I thought to myself! Why did I think she would be faithful to me in the new life I imagined for us? Was the new life real only to me? Would I not have her? Jesus! It could be so good now, for the two of us, if only she would go straight.
I was working in the now, living in the now, being happy in the now and I wanted her to come with me. Could we be happy or was she really just a butterfly I fell in love with, quiet only when captured and imprisoned, and once freed unable to return to the mundane life of the caterpillar?
****
The worsening pain in my groin told me that my appointment with the scalpel wielding doctor who wanted to cut open my guts was not far away. “We'll make an incision and sew a patch over the hole in your abdomen and then stitch you back up,” said the doctor. “Sounds like you're patching a hole in an inner-tube,” I complained. “Sort of, except we are sewing up the hole not gluing a patch over it.”
“I always liked the smell of the rubber patching glue,when I fixed the tires on my bike in grade school” I muttered, mostly to myself. “Me too,” volunteered the doctor, “and the smell of gasoline. I used to pump gas when I was a kid going to high school.” It sounded like the doc was a regular guy and I would feel pretty safe in his hands. He patted me on the shoulder when I left his office. Surreptitiously I sniffed near his hand. There was no smell of gasoline on him.
At the hotel I placed myself on light duty until the hernia operation and spent most of my work day sitting at my desk in my private office, conning the bus-boys into bringing me lunch from the cafeteria.
They felt sorry for me and wanted to be “security professionals” someday. It worked out great because I could relate to these young kids. They knew I started out my career in a restaurant busing tables, and now look at me, big fancy desk, private office, a title with my name on the door, a fancy suit and a staff of security officers to boss around. They looked at me as a kind of God. I gave them tips on police work and they gave me lunch. Mostly I stared at the big wall clock hanging over my office door.
When I was thinking about the damned operating table, the hands seemed to spin faster making time whiz by. And when I was thinking about how much more time Artent had on her matrix, the clock hands seemed to move backward making time drag. How in hell could time be flying by and dragging at the same time? When was the clock right? I reached in my desk drawer and felt around for a bottle of aspirin hiding under a pair of scissors I used to trim employee ID cards. I swallowed three and waited for the pain to lessen.
The next morning when I arrived at at my office there was a letter on my desk from the Oregon State Parole board. The message was short and to the point. “Artent Thomas would be released to me, Donald DuPay, anytime after 1300 the following day. Please arrange for her transportation.”
I sat down and read the letter over and over trying to figure out the matrix thing. If she got released tomorrow she will have served 11 months 13 and one half days on a three year sentence. She would be my legal responsibility for over two years. Whew...I was excited, thrilled, apprehensive and downright scared. This was a humongous responsibility and for a long period of time. Still my love for Artent was strong, but bruised more than I wanted to admit by her sexual encounters with two inmates. Especially this last fiasco with a man.
Minnie Mouse's getting caught the first time with another woman, seemed to be somehow, different. Two women having sex seemed kinda normal in a women's only prison. But fucking a guy? I couldn't erase it from my mind. In our fast life together I knew she had sex with lots of men for cocaine, but that life was over now. I felt stabbed in the back! What had she been thinking?
The next morning I gave myself the day off explaining to the General Manager only that I had to meet a friend out of town. I never told anyone I had a girl and that she was in prison and kept my problems to myself. I put on a freshly cleaned 3 piece dark blue pinstriped suit, paid a busboy $5.00 to wash and vacuum out the Cadillac. As I got in the car I could see the reflection of my polished black Stacy-Adams shoes in the shiny paint job of the big Cad. I was ready, scared but ready. I was dressed sharp in a nice suit, the Cadillac was clean and shiny and I hoped to make a good impression on my long lost girl.
When I reached the release center there were about a dozen people milling around at the top of the entry stairs also waiting for rides. I nosed the long black Cad in front of three other cars waiting in line and got a disapproving look from the other drivers that said “why do you think you can crowd in line?” And my look said “because I'm driving a Cadillac and you're not!”
I left them wondering and jumped out of the car opening the passenger door for Artent, who was standing at the top of the stairs. I ran up the 6 stairs to meet her and grabbed her up and swung her around in my arms. I was the best dressed person there and I had the coolest car. An impression had been made. They all knew I was Artent's white “old man.” I put her back on her feet and stood looking at her. She was the same Artent but something was different about her. She appeared apprehensive and kept looking back over her shoulder. “No one is going to come after you now baby,” I said. “We're going home!” She breathed in the fresh air and looked around at her surroundings, finally giving me a hesitant smile. With her large brown Bambi eyes she looked for all the world like a deer in the headlights, but she was safe now. We were back together and everything would be alright.
I pushed down hard on the gas pedal and peeled out spraying driveway gravel on the lesser cars underscoring their insignificant status and headed for Interstate 5, the freeway that would take us home. For a long time there was an awkward silence between us. Neither of us was sure just what to say. She kept glancing at me out of the corner of her eye, hesitant smiles on her face. This was more awkward than I anticipated it would be.
We were both the same yet we were different too, shaped by our year-long but opposite life styles, her living in a jail cell and me living the life of Riley with car, clothes, money and a cushy prestigious job, all legit now! In her hands she clutched a large white envelope. “What's that?” I asked. “Rules and regulations,” she replied, “stuff I don't think I'll be able to live by.” I took the envelope from her, tossed it in the back seat, and blurted out the question I had to ask. “So what about this guy you fucked in jail. What's up with that?”
“He's just a guy,” she replied in her squeaky little girl voice, the voice she used when she was trying to explain why she had been late getting home from the clubs “He was cute and he has a lot of connections, you know connections for coke and stuff. We'll need him later on won't we baby?” her voice trailing off to a whisper.
I reached for the envelope in the back seat, grabbing it and threw it in her lap. “You're on parole!” I shouted, louder than I intended, “no dope, no alcohol, and no strange dick! You're my legal responsibility now. You have to straighten up and fly right or there'll be hell to pay! You'll be back in a fuckin' jail cell again!”
I reached across her and got a bottle of aspirin out of the glove box and swallowed three without water. “Listen,” I continued, “I have to have a hernia operation in about two weeks and I'm going to be in the hospital for a few days. You have to be good. You have to drive me to the hospital and you have to pick me up when I'm released. Do you understand?”
I pulled her close to me and rested my hand on her knee, gradually but possessively feeling higher up her thigh. “You're mine now baby and no arguments!” I told her.
****
Our little apartment, my bachelor quarters for the past year were messy from tender loving neglect. I never seemed to have time to clean it up and frankly didn't care much how it looked as I never had company. My mother had came over once to check on me, but she just shook her head and mumbled something about me never cleaning up my room at home either, when I was a kid.
The bathroom mirror was speckled with little white spots, tooth paste splashes from brushing my teeth and the dingy bathtub ring showed how high I let the water get when soaking my bones. The only towel was on the floor partially covering an empty toilet paper roll. The main room, that made up the studio apartment, was equally messy. The pull down bed covered a pile of dirty clothes, yet to be ferried to the basement laundry room and a pair of Artent's under-panties hung over the arm of the only chair. I never moved them, but looked at them every day like a shrine. They were something of hers. They stayed where she'd carelessly tossed them over a year ago, the last time we made love.
When she was through looking around I pushed her back on the bed and pulled off her panties, tossing them at the other arm of the chair. I propped her little butt up by putting a pillow under her, spread her legs and without any foreplay I fucked her. Her resistance was minimal and after a little wiggling around and getting comfortable, she submitted. We both knew this was not about making love, but about reclamation. I was forcefully re-entering my territory and she dutifully acquiesced. I didn't know whose dick had been in her last but I knew whose dick was in her now. It was mine!
But after the unceremonious beginning, the bed springs began to squeak as our passion for each other returned and she clung to me, whispering my name over and over. My arms pulled her shoulders towards me at the same time I pushed against her with my penis trapping her in my clutches, offering her no escape.
Push-stroke, pull-stroke, take it and like it! And she did. It had been a long time since we had made love and it was at the same time both awkward and natural. God damn, it felt good to be inside of her again! I had missed her little body next to mine more than I realized. “What was his name?” I whispered rolling off of her now, the intense orgasm being replaced by the pain in my groin. I reached under the bed and grabbed a clean towel and put it between her legs. “It doesn't matter,” she said, “you're the only daddy that makes me come” she whispered girlishly. “Does it hurt?” she asked, placing her delicate, long-fingered, brown hand over the painful spot, distracting my thinking. “Hell yes it hurts. I never thought I would be happy to go to surgery but I can't stand this pain much longer.”
I didn't push her for the guys name now. It didn't matter anyway. He couldn't get at her. She was home with me and I was the one responsible. After my operation we would settle into a new routine, I hoped! She wouldn't be fucking other guys anymore!
****
But if I hoped Artent was going to be good...if I hoped she could return to my definition of “normal,” or the parole boards definition, I was painfully wrong. Barely two nights later we got into a argument. She wanted to go out night clubbing and get high and find some coke, and I wouldn't let her out the apartment door. I would never hit her, so all I could do was try and stand in her way.
Artent was small, wiry, and faster then I, considering the hernia pain I was suffering. She was 29, while I was 42, so when I tried to block the doorway, she hit me with a beer bottle over my right eye and escaped, her slinky floral-print skirt, fluttering in her haste, pulling her purse behind her and trying to stay in her high heel shoes as she ran down the apartment stairs and out into the street. Poor Artent! She never did get the hang of high heeled shoes and I didn't even try and stop her. The blood dripping down into my eye was an epiphany. I knew then as I drove myself to Emanuel Hospital emergency room that my little parolee would never change.
The ER doctor asked me what happened and I lied, telling him I'd "fallen down" the marble stairs, in front of our apartment security building. He didn't believe me. It didn't matter. It took 5 stitches to sew up the cut she inflicted. Stitched, bandaged and shot up with morphine for the considerable pain, the doctor gave me a Valium to go and released me. Fortunately the hospital and our apartment were not far from each other because I barely remember driving home and crawling into the pull down bed with squeaky springs. I was aroused hours later as shafts of daylight crept through the slats in the mini blinds as Artent snuggled into bed beside me. We didn't speak. I cuddled her in my arms. She smelled like a combination of cigarette smoke from the night club, a lingering odor of whiskey on her breath, mixed with a wispy smell of her usual perfume. I was comfortable now. She was safe in bed with me.
****
I finally awoke from my Morphine-Valium grogginess to my brown eyed Bambi watching me and stroking my stitched up forehead, telling me how sorry she was she had hit me. And she really meant it, kissing me gently and clucking her sorry sound. I knew Artent loved me. It was in her eyes and in her caress and in her soft brown body. At the same time I also realized she would never be tamed either by me or the damned parole board. “Baby,” she purred, still stroking my head, “I know you have to go into the hospital tomorrow, so I have a surprise. We're going to the Commodores concert at the Coliseum tonight.”
“Jeez honey, tickets to that are going to cost at least $50 bucks apiece and I don't got it now.” “Got it covered honey,” she smiled her sexiest smile at me, “got it covered. All I have to do is show up at the West wing back door and smile at the security guard I met last night at Gatsby's.”
“What did ya have to do for that?” I asked, not wanting to hear the answer. “Don't ask,” she replied and I didn't press any further. “We'll get in. All we have to do is show up at 7:30 tonight.” “Wow! Can you get me an asprin,” I begged, “My head still aches.”
****
Before we left to see Lionel Richie and the Commodores I fortified myself with with a few shots of whiskey, just for the pain of course. Man, my head hurt from the stitches and my groin hurt from the hernia, but I was determined to have fun and enjoy some good music from one of the hottest groups playing. When we appeared at the back door of the Coliseum the uniformed security officer gave Artent a wink and a smile. She passed him something which he stuck in his shirt pocket after surreptitiously looking around to be sure no one saw. “What was that stuff?” I asked her. “A little coke and two Valiums,” she smiled. Not a bad price for admittance I thought and gave her a pat on the butt.
“...And a blow job last night at the club.” Jeez! That I didn't want to hear! This girl was crazy! She continued on and I followed. The guard opened the back door and we found ourselves at the rear of the hall in kind of a property room storage area where they piled extra risers and folding chairs and scenery. From there we had to work our way through the gathering crowd toward the front stage area. Artent pushed, wiggled, squeezed and smiled her way, with me in tow to the very front of the stage. Once ensconced, we had a hard time maintaining our position as everyone else was pushing closer too. Artent removed one high heeled shoe and held it in her hand using it as a sort of “space maintainer” to give us room. Artent could be surprisingly protective of me at times and it always touched my heart to witness that side of her.
Once the lights went down, the off stage fog machines began blowing in the atmospheric smoke. At least it looked like smoke but didn't smell like it. The front edge of the smoke cloud drifted off the leading edge of the stage and on to the crowd. And with people jumping up and down it looked for all the world like peoples heads bobbing up above the clouds and then disappearing, only to reappear again. The ambiance was surreal and otherworldly.
The Commodores rushed onto the stage and started the concert with “Brick House.” I wrapped my arms around my own “brick house,” and we swayed and jumped to the music, blasting beautifully at us from the speakers on the stage. Lionel Richie and the others members dazzled us, dressed in their white outfits covered in sequins.
Every movement of Lionel seemed to blend with the music. I could see the sparkles reflecting in Artent's lustrous brown eyes. My pains were forgotten for now, but still, I wished I had another shot or two of whiskey. The next song was “Zoom,” followed by “Machine Gun.” Man, this was so exciting, the music blasting, the crowd yelling and screaming. The intensity was physical. I could feel the sound waves from the base speaker hitting me in the face. A pair of girls panties flew over my head and landed on the stage, followed by a lace bra. These girls were serious about getting invited back stage to an after party. Couldn't tell which girl they came from though. They all looked like they wanted 'some' of Lionel. The smell of marijuana smoke passed my nose and someone I didn't know passed me a joint. I took two hits and passed it to Artent. She hit it and soon the joint disappeared into the crowd.
The pace of the music went from frenetic to swing and sway when Lionel opened up with “Easy”...easy like Sunday morning. Artent soaked in the music and the words of the song became her words as she sang along. “Why does everybody want me to be what they want me to be,” she sang along with Lionel. “I want to be high, oh so high. I wanna be free.”
By the time the concert ended we both knew that our relationship had come to a fork in the road. Artent, the butterfly would never be able to lead a straight life. She needed to be high and she needed to be free. Free of any 8 to 5, don't-stay-out-late, rules set by the parole board. And although I loved her with all my heart, I could never go back to the fast life. Prison had only frustrated Artent, eager to get back to her old life. Prison and a year apart had carved our paths in opposite directions.
We didn't speak the rest of the night, both lost in our own thoughts, knowing the inevitability of the change that had come over us. As we eased in bed together I kissed her goodnight and turned my thoughts to the next morning and my impending surgery. I hated even thinking about an operation where they were going to cut open my guts. Thankfully I fell asleep. Morning would come soon enough.
The pain in my side and in my head where Artent had smacked me with a beer bottle, served as an alarm clock to awaken me. I tried to make the cobwebs disappear with a cup of instant coffee. I hate instant coffee but it was all we had. The only cup I could find was a slightly used Styrofoam cup on the cluttered kitchen counter-top. I hated instant coffee and I particularity hated it out of a Styrofoam cup. But it was that or nothing. I hoped the rest of the day would be better.
Later, as we pulled into the hospital parking lot, Artent pulled the Cadillac into the short term parking area reserved for unloading patients and I hobbled in the front door with her trailing behind me. “We've been expecting you Mr. DuPay,” said the intake nurse. I was glad they were waiting for me, but I was afraid. Doctors--operating rooms--anesthetists, hell I could die on the operating table, I thought to myself. I gave Artents hand a tight squeeze, so tight she started to pull back, but stopped. She knew I was frightened. “You'll be okay honey,” she whispered when the nurse wasn't looking. I suspected the nurse gave us the once-over look because we appeared to be the odd couple, her being black and me being white.
I was escorted to my room and told to undress and put on the blue hospital gown laying on the bed. The nurse disappeared and I put it on. The crazy thing tied in the back, and I could only reach one of the ties. I sat on the bed, testing its softness. The springs weren't poking through so it was better than the pull down bed at home. The nurse reappeared to see if I was in my gown while Artent slipped me a joint and then promised to pick me up and take me home in three days, giving me a quick kiss goodbye.
I stood at the doorway and watched Artent walk down the hallway toward our car. Girls hips just move different than mens' and I watched her sexy little butt wiggle into the distance, catching glimpses of the outline of her panties when her thin, slinky, floral-print skirt pulled against her hips. I chuckled when she wobbled and nearly walked out of one of her high heel shoes. That girl never did get the hang of walking in high heels, but God she was so sexy. I didn't know it then but it was the last time I would see her alive.
When Artent disappeared and the nurse was safely gone, I opened the window and smoked the joint. I blew the smoke out of the window, not really caring if the nurse smelled it or not. It relaxed me and after all, if I died on the operating table so what, I felt! I climbed into bed and shut my eyes and was wiggling around getting comfortable when the nurse reappeared with a cotton swab and a syringe. “What's that?” I asked. “Valium,” she replied sticking me in the arm. Artent and I had injected a lot of crushed up Valium tablets so I knew what to expect. I drifted into a half sleep, barely conscious, but aware the bed was moving down the hall toward the operating room. Someone said, “breathe deeply and count backwards from ten.” I remember saying "seven" before the lights went out.
After the operation I drifted in and out of my drug induced stupor, unable to move. I could see I had been catheterized. It didn't hurt and I was grateful I didn't have to get out of bed to pee. In fact nothing hurt until the next morning when the nurse removed the catheter telling me I had to get up and walk a little. “Are you kidding lady?” I grouched, “I can't walk. I feel like I've been gutted.” I told her angrily. “Doctor wants you to get up,” she insisted. “You will get better faster.”
Later, concerned that I had not heard from Artent since she left me at the hospital, I now sat in the waiting room expecting her to come and pick me up. Did I have a ride? “Are they coming to get you?” the nurses asked me.
****
After identifying the tortured bloody body, dumped in Seattle's Seward Park, as my beautiful Artent, I stayed with my mother for a few weeks but decided to keep the apartment for awhile. Slowly I reintegrated my life back into working at the hotel, dressing up every day and sleeping without her.
Portland detectives had arrested Davon Wills at his home about 10 blocks from my apartment and he waived extradition to Seattle. Faced with his bloody fingerprints being found in my Cadillac Wills confessed to the murder. “But why! Why did he murder her?!” I asked the Seattle cops. “Was it a drug deal gone bad?”
“No that's not why he killed her. I can read you part of his statement if you want” the detective replied. “Please!” I begged. “You probably won't like this,” said the detective, “but here goes.”
“There was no way I was going to let Artent marry that white motherfucker, especially since he used to be a pig. If I can't have her...he can't either.”
“Did you plan on marrying her?” asked the detective. “Yes, we talked about it,” I replied, stunned at this new information. “That crazy motherfucker killed her because she was going to marry me?!” I demanded. “It was a love-triangle killing,” said the Seattle detective. “That was it, plain and simple. I'm really sorry for your loss.”
After the trial, which took place rather quickly and which I didn't attend, I finally returned to our little apartment to stay. I was exhausted. My emotions were dead. I couldn't cry anymore. I pulled down the squeaky old bed where we slept together and smoked part of a joint she had left, that I'd failed to notice before, looking at it numbly first. I laid down and turned over, pulling the covers over my head eventually falling into a fitful half-sleep. But all I could hear was the detectives words over and over like a broken record stuck on one phrase.
“She was stabbed 27 times--She was stabbed 27 times--She was stabbed 27 times.”
Finally, one morning, crawling slowly out of the bed, I found my clothes, dressed and put all my remaining belongings in a black plastic garbage bag. Satisfied there was nothing left to take, I looked around the room, taking it all in, savoring for a moment the little room that had been our home. I left the key in plain sight on the bed, tiptoed out and quietly closed the door behind me, trying not to disturb the still remaining shadows of the dream that could have been.
Authors Note: Davon Wills pled guilty to aggravated murder. He is serving a life sentence in the Washington state penitentiary at Walla Walla.
FINI
If you'd like to contact Don DuPay, you can find him at facebook here...https://www.facebook.com/dondupay
or you can email him at his PSU email, at ddupay@pdx.edu
ABSOLUTELY NO PORTION OF THIS PERSONAL ESSAY MAY BE REPRODUCED OR DISSEMINATED WITHOUT EXPRESS PERMISSION FROM THE AUTHOR, DONALD LEE DUPAY, UNDER PENALTY OF COPYRIGHT LAWS!!
By Don DuPay
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