My daughter gave me a set of Callaway golf clubs on my 69th birthday and I'd been using them that day at the Wasioto Winds golf course, completely unaware of the people watching me from their car up on Clear Creek Road. I remained unaware of them as they followed me home. They must have been watching even after I got home, although I don't know how they could have. In the wide open rural area in Eastern Kentucky where I lived, they would have been conspicuous. But not ten minutes after my daughter and her little rug rat arrived for dinner, they drove up the quarter-mile long driveway and politely knocked on the door. They probably thought that the look of shock and bewilderment on my face was an acting job, but it wasn't. I couldn't believe they'd tracked me down after all this time. That shit went down forty-six fucking years ago!
* * *
One of them I easily recognized—he was a deputy with the Bell County Sheriff's Department and had been a customer at my tire store a few times. The other two young men, though, I'd never seen before. They were wearing cheap off-the-rack suits and smart haircuts. Waylon, the deputy I'd known since he was a kid, grimly said, "How's it going Mr. Jameson. These two gentlemen would like to speak with you." Both of them simultaneously held out their identification cards, which were attached to lanyards around their necks. One of them introduced himself and his partner, but to this day I don't remember their names, I only remember him saying they were with the San Diego Police Department. And it was then that I knew the jig was up. They asked me my name, they asked if I was in San Diego in 1957, I just kept repeating, what's going on? why are you here? After they got tired of me they told me to turn around and put my hands behind my back. That's when I saw my wife and daughter who been standing behind me the whole time. They were telling the cops that this must be a case of mistaken identity. My wife was telling them over and over that I'd never been to California, my daughter emphatically backing her up while her snot-nosed little rug rat kept asking why policemen were arresting pappaw.
* * *
Back in 1956, when I was only 22 years old, I broke into a salvage yard and stole three carburetors and a car radio. My intent was to sell them for profit, but I never got the chance. A Kentucky State Trooper saw me walking along the shoulder of US Highway 119 carrying my loot, and to make a long story short, I ended up doing 30 days in the Bell County jail on a burglary charge. When I got out, I vowed to leave this fucking podunk backwater and I embarked on a trip to California. I walked 70 miles to Knoxville, Tennessee before a truck driver saw me with my thumb out and gave me a ride as far as Shreveport, Louisiana. That's where I bought the gun. At a Sears. A .22 revolver for $30. I thought I was smart by using a fake name. Back then you could get away with that shit. Maybe I'm one of the reasons you can't anymore. Nobody believes me now, but the only reason I bought it was for self defense while I was hitchhiking across this great country of ours.
You wouldn't know it by looking at me now, but back then I had movie-star good looks. My masculine jaw and thick black hair was a casting director's wet dream. Bogart was dogshit compared to me. And that's why I started this whole fucking thing, to be a big time Hollywood movie star. When I hopped out of the chartreuse microbus that had given me a ride from El Paso to San Diego, I was sure my destiny was within reach. To celebrate, I bought a bottle of Jack at a liquor store right before it closed at midnight. I sat in the liquor store's parking lot hitting my half-pint on an empty stomach, looking up at Mount Soledad with all of those nice houses, and thought one of them might be a good place to rob. I started the walk up Mt. Soledad Road, taking judicious sips from my whiskey bottle, not knowing that it was a make-out spot for horny teenagers, and happened upon a 1949 Ford Custom Club Coupe with two teens necking hot and heavy. I pulled my gun from my waistband, opened the driver side door, and ordered Mr. Horny Teen out. He meekly complied. I told his girlfriend to get the fuck out of the car too, but she was reluctant. Luckily, Mr. Horny Teen told her to do what I said. Damn, this was easy. I told them both to get their clothes and jewelry off. They did it. I told them to walk over to the edge of the cliff and kneel. They did it. I got turgid thinking about raping that sweet little blonde girl. Her boyfriend certainly wouldn't have stopped me, but I decided against it anyway. I told them not to fucking move or I would shoot them. They stayed their while I drove the car away, their clothes and jewelry in the front seat with me. I made it to the bottom of the mountain, then made it to the intersection of Garnet and Mission Bay Drive, and stopped at the red light. The damn thing was taking too long to change, and since it was late at night and no one was around, I went through the red light. My mistake. There indeed was someone around—a cop sitting in his car on break.
He took the registration papers back to his patrol car (I told him I forgot my driver's license) and even if he didn't find out the car was stolen (I had only taken it a few minutes ago) I might not be able to concoct a good enough story to explain what I was doing driving the damn thing if he started asking questions. I couldn't take that chance. I jumped out and fired three shots through the windshield of his car as he talked to his microphone. I turned around to jump back in the car, heard the bang of his service weapon and felt a piece of my left shoulder tear away. I got the car going and swung a U-turn, ready to shoot him again, but he was flat on his back. Maybe he was playing dead, I didn't care, I just wanted to get the fuck out of there and ditch the car. As I found out later, he wasn't playing dead.
I left the car in an alley a few blocks away, jumped a backyard fence and dug a hole with a hand trowel to bury my gun and then changed into Mr. Horny Teen's shirt with a makeshift bandage on my shoulder. I made it downtown, found the Greyhound station, and had just enough money to get back to Knoxville. I was back in Bell County two weeks after I'd left, my big plans for Hollywood up in smoke.
The first job I got was at a gas station and I was able to save money by living behind it and not paying rent. Not long after that I was managing a tire store and within just a few years the owner asked me to buy it from him. He helped me get it financed. Pretty soon I owned three tire stores and was married. I bought a nice house. Then bought a nicer one. I donated money for my wife's church to build a new Sunday school building. I even sponsored a softball team that wore uniforms with my tire store's name silkscreened on the jerseys. Had a kid. Then a grandkid. Domestic life wasn't all that bad. I didn't so much as get a parking ticket all those years.
So it's not surprising to sit here looking at these newspaper clippings with quotes from my neighbors saying that they don't believe I did it. "Always helpful." "Nice neighbor." "Quiet and polite." The accolades went on and on. Some of the articles have my 1956 mugshot, 'JAMESON, MICHAEL 07/23/56' looking mean and handsome with all that swept back hair. Now I've got a gray horseshoe of hair around a liver-spotted pate. Since I don't have my case documents with me here in my cell in the Kentucky State Penitentiary in Eddyville, I rely on these newspaper clippings to find out how the fuck I ended up here. Every one of them mention how officer Gildardo Soto had marked me for life when he fired the shot that grazed my shoulder.
It turns out they had my thumbprints the whole fucking time. They lifted them as soon as they found the car. But by the time the case had gone cold, the FBI still had not set up their national database to compare them with. My prints sat in an evidence box all those decades. Until the most damndest thing happened in 2003 when some woman in Oklahoma said that her uncle had bragged about killing a cop in San Diego in 1957. The stupid son of a bitch bragged about what I had done, and they drug my fingerprints out and matched them to my 1956 prints taken when I robbed the salvage yard. What a bunch of shit.
They also had my gun for most of those years, too. The guy whose backyard I buried it in dug it up three years later doing yard work. They traced the serial number back to the Sears I bought it in, but lost the trail because of the fake name I gave.
I don't get as much mail as I used to. The wife died a couple of years ago and I think my daughter doesn't believe that she doesn't believe I did it anymore. There's a cemetery on the prison grounds—no headstones or markers, though. Fine with me.
THE END
Hugh Blanton combs stories and poems out of his hair during those moments he can steal away from his employers loading dock. He has appeared in Bottom Shelf Whiskey, As It Ought To Be Magazine, The Dope Fiend Daily, The Rye Whiskey Review, The Abyss, and other places. He lives in San Diego, California.
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