Chronicles from Parchman #6: Silence Learned

Incarcerated writer L. Patri reflects on the turbulent series of events that led to his time in state reform school and later in adult prison.

This is the sixth installment in the Chronicles from Parchman series, a monthly column by the talented and prolific writer, L. Patri, who has been incarcerated on Parchman’s death row for over thirty years.

Photo by Justin Wilkens on Unsplash

Even though I’d been in reform school at age fourteen and prison at age seventeen, coming to death row was shocking and unlike anything I’d ever experienced. At an early age, I began to run the streets with neighborhood kids causing mayhem and chaos as only children of eleven and twelve can do. I joined a gang, and in order to prove my bravery and loyalty to them, I went on a “mission” with a childhood friend who was also joining.

The bridge that connects Natchez, Mississippi, and Vidalia, Louisiana, is nearly a mile long. When we lived in Vidalia, I chased my first cousin Wayne all the way across the bridge into Natchez with a dead snake, which I thought was the coolest shit ever. Well, it was maybe a little payback, too, because I still recalled the time Wayne threw a mower blade, cutting my right big toe damn near off. At its center, the bridge’s height is maybe three or four stories up from the river waters, and to prove ourselves to the gang, we had to stand on the railing and then jump into the river. I was aware that rivers had whirlpools that could suck you under and drown you, but I was so young and so stupid, that I jumped.

My parents found out, and it scared them half to death. I took a beating for that, but my lesson wasn’t learned. The next time out, we were at a high school football game and other children who were not from our hood were there and we kicked off a gang fight, shooting guns. Next it was stealing cars and breaking into homes or businesses, like the Pizza Hut break-in that sent me to reform school at fourteen, or the strong-arm robbery (purse snatching) that sent me to Parchman Prison at seventeen.

On Friday and Saturday nights at age sixteen, I was constantly fighting with people. One time, I took a pool cue stick and beat a man badly inside a night club because he had jumped on my dad Charles when he was totally fucked drunk. It was a Friday night, I think, and I had just arrived uptown in the 200 block, around 11 or 10 p.m. At this age, only certain people knew that Charles was my dad, as we didn’t hang out in these streets together, but only inside certain cafes and bars where Dad and his brother Jeff always go. I’d pop in every now and then and sit with them.

So. This guy stops me while I’m watching and peeping inside the clubs just to see what and who was happening in them, and told me Charles just got into a fight with Nate. He said my dad was drunk and bumped into Nate, who, by the way, was just as huge as my dad, at like 6’6”. Their fight, if you want to call it that, had happened a couple hours prior, and my dad was long gone. I knew who Nate was and went looking for him. I found him inside Pat’s barroom on the corner and didn’t say anything before I grabbed the cue stick and swung at him maybe fifteen or ten times, breaking the cue stick across his back. Then I walked out. I’m sure others must have told him who I was when he woke up. I never did, and he never bothered my dad again.

Parents and people would ask me why I was doing these things and my only response was, “I don’t know.” Looking back now, at fifty-five years of age, “I don’t know” was my go-to answer because I didn’t think people would understand how I could hold a grudge against my cousin Wayne, as it had been years since he cut my toe with the mower blade and I had healed up alright, or how I could feel the need to beat someone like Nate. I just didn’t like anyone who harmed me or my family that way. My aunt Betty Jo’s murder did that to me, where I was so protective of family that I thought I had to make certain examples of people so others wouldn’t dare harm them. It wasn’t so much that I loved to fight, but when I did, it wasn’t just a fight to me because I didn’t want to leave it until I was sure I wouldn’t have to fight it again. Louisiana Training Institute, a state reform school, taught me that.

My parents stayed on edge with me back then. I had a grand prix car. Totaled it when I tried to play speed racer and made a sharp left-hand turn on a Saturday morning. My mom had asked if I would go help a friend of hers named Mary move some things, which I did. It was around 8 or 7 a.m. when I left to do this, and around 11 a.m. when I was coming back home, I had a half a pint of Seagram’s gin I was drinking along with some marijuana I was smoking. I made the turn on the intersection coming off Minor Street and onto Concord Street, which is maybe a half mile of straight road with a railroad track right before a downhill slope and sharp curve. Really. After crossing the track, you need to slow down. But as I said, I was on this gin and weed, and I was feeling pretty damn good that I actually thought I could make the turn onto Old Washington Road. I ran through three telegraph poles and knocked myself unconscious.

I drove my parents crazy with worry over exactly what it was I was doing in those streets that was causing so much trouble. After getting involved with the street gang of kids, I was eventually arrested at age fourteen for breaking and entering at a fast food restaurant. I was sentenced to the reform school for boys in Louisiana. My first night in the LTI dorm, an open area with beds on both sides that ran the length of the room, the guard was stationed at the front to guard the door. Some kids snuck out of bed and threw a blanket over another kid and began to hit him with locks in a sock. The screaming woke everyone up, but this guard never got up. Didn’t even budge as this happened. Nothing ever happened to the kids who did the beating. Some nights over the weekend, we were allowed to stay up until 10 p.m. Guards would come in the day area and have us remove the chairs and tables and they would choose two kids to fight. It didn’t matter if they wanted to fight or not, because they would either fight that one kid one-on-one, or the guards would force two other kids to beat that kid up. So it was best to fight. At that age, I wasn’t really a fighter, but before long I was, and soon after that, fighting was all I wanted to do. So much so that a group of us would sometimes jump on the guards because we just didn’t care who we fought. Guards bet money, gave the winner drugs and candy. Soon, our fights got more vicious, cruel. I felt nothing inside for the kids after a while.

About seven months into training school, my brother, Deon, came to LTI too. He was only a year older, but they housed him in another dormitory. One day, everyone was on the yard playing, and I saw him fighting with a white kid. I ran across the yard with a shank made from the mess-hall cafeteria and began to stab this kid, maybe seven or five times. So many guards ran over there and began beating us with night sticks for what seemed like forever. Then they put Deon and me in the “hole,” a small box room no bigger than a clothing closet, where we were unable to stand up or sit up. We had to lay down to eat and everything, because there was no room to move around. And we had to be in this box for almost two months. To this day, I still bear the dark bruises from that beating. But I was a fighter. At LTI, I learned my first lesson: I couldn’t depend on the guards or legal motions if I was to survive.

I did not learn what laws I had broken at age fourteen or what the consequences of breaking these laws would be for my life. At seventeen, in 1987, having not learned my lessons from age fourteen, I again broke the law when I committed a strong arm robbery. “Strong arm” robbery is different than “armed or aggravated” robbery, as there are no weapons used in strong arm. It’s basically like a purse snatching, according to the laws. After being incarcerated from age fourteen to nineteen in both a juvenile and now adult prisons, I had now learned the difference between one crime and another and what amount of time each carried. In Mississippi, strong arm robbery carries five years, first offense, and armed robbery carried twenty years to life, depending on the criminal background.

Still, I wasn’t trying to learn any lessons that would keep me off the streets. As my dad used to say, “I was smelling my own piss.” I had said to hell with school and schooling, so I was just “out there” and the advice from older people wasn’t something I was hearing. I thought I was grown up. I thought I was smart and no one could tell me anything or teach me anything. I had no sense of direction and money came easy in the streets. But when I found myself in trouble, in jail, it was Mommy that I called to come save me.

My first stint in Parchman prison was two and one-half years. The first three months were spent inside the Regimented Inmate Discipline (RID) program where first-offense prisoners are given the “opportunity” to serve six months and then be released upon completion. Having been in the LTI reform school and subjected to its barbaric treatment by guards and staff, I had developed a violent tendency to fight before I talked. That behavior led me to be dismissed from the RID program and resentenced to serve the remaining two years in Parchman’s adult prison population. I was eighteen years old, a high ranking gang member, and thinking I was untouchable.

For my final two months in Parchman in late 1989, I was operating four units inside of prison and I was making certain other “moves” in anticipation of release. One of my teachers, an older gentleman named Smokey, pulled me to the side for a talk.

“Listen, youngblood, I respect that you don’t go around here causing trouble unnecessarily and that you think about the consequences before you act. Our organization is in need of people like you, understand,” and I only nodded. I had learned from talking to him that he was not someone you interrupt. He went on.

“You are not going to change your ways, you’re way too deep in this thing we do so I know you’re going back out there and getting involved with drugs, guns, and other things, youngblood. I want you to remember that if a day ever comes and you find yourself trapped by our enemies on the wrong side of town with the wrong people, just shut the fuck up and let them do and say whatever they want to. Because you’re smart, I see that. If you live through what they do to you, keep thinking. Keep your thoughts to yourself above all things…”

Silence! Now that was a lesson that sunk in. If I did not discuss and highlight the illegal activities that I was involved in, then I wouldn’t run afoul of prisons and jails, and the American law couldn’t imprison me. I could not have imagined then how many more times silence would save my life.

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L. Patri is of Black and Natchez Indian descent, and he is the father of one daughter and a grandfather of five grandchildren. He was born on the river in Natchez, Mississippi, and for the past three decades, he has been challenging his wrongful conviction of capital murder. He writes in multiple and hybrid genres, including thought pieces, journalism, short fiction, letters, and memoir.