Grover’s Lament
A true story as reported to me by Grover
When I was a boy, back in the 1950s, I thought I would live a charmed life. I used to love fishing, skipping stones across the creek, helping my poor momma empty the buckets from our indoor latrine. I went to school. My teachers thought I was smart, and they used to call me “their little darling.”
I was a small boy, and others would customarily kick me and drag me through the fields for fun. I never had anybody to really look after me, and Momma used to say, “Grover, you gotta figure out a way to handle your problems!”
So, after I gave some thought to what Momma had told me, I got used to taking matters into my own hands. If I had a problem, I would like to think about it first, and then commit myself to doing a certain something about it.
By the time I turned ten, I had become good at it, and others either had learned to respect me or if not, they had better well fear me.
Now, I look up to see the three-inch cockroaches crawl across the walls and floor of my cell. As I write this, my cellmate is yelling at me for having left a cold cup of coffee on top of our locker. He spilled it across his artwork and blames me for this occurrence.
I am sixty-eight and have a heart condition; otherwise, I’d stand up to him. As it is, if it’s not one thing, it’s another. Better to just let it go. I believe God will have the final word. He will deal with my thirty-two-year-old Mexican Mafia hot-head of a cellmate. And He will deal with the judges, prosecutors, and sheriffs of our “justice” system.
See, about twenty-five years ago, my twelve-year-old daughter was approached at school by two of the sons of our local sheriff.
They gave her a bag of illegal street drugs and told her where to come when she wanted some more. I talked with my daughter Daisy that afternoon. Holding out the bag of drugs for me to see, she explained where she had gotten them and what had been said to her.
I drove to the sheriff’s house myself and knocked on the door. When he answered, I threw the bag at him and told him to tell his sons to leave my daughter alone. But they would not leave her alone.
Drug cartel and absolute corruption
Over the next few months, some other kids overdosed, and one of those died; and then, finally, the sheriff’s sons were arrested. When their trial came, a faulty indictment was found to have been drawn up somehow from within the prosecutor’s office. The judge said he had no choice but to drop the case altogether.
Even with all of the kids lined-up who had been willing to testify against those sons-of-bitches! My neighbor came to me that night. He had quit his job as a bailiff at the courthouse that afternoon. “Grover, I have to tell you this,” he said to me. He looked scared, and his face was as white as the cotton growing in my fields.
“The judge, county prosecutor, and the sheriff himself are directly involved in this. They’re all receiving kickbacks from the drug cartel! I’ve overheard them whispering behind closed doors.”
The school soon became a junkyard. My daughter, along with other children, could not learn, and kids began to fear going every morning. Some more students became very sick. Another had died.
When I saw a problem, as I said before, I would think about it first and then commit myself to doing something specific about it. In this situation, I knew right away that there were no plausible answers to doing things in a legal way.
These men in power were untouchable, or so they thought. My momma knew all along. She had used to tell me every chance she got, “Grover, power tends to corrupt. But absolute power corrupts absolutely! Doesn’t matter if they’re Democrats or Republicans.”
About two weeks after my neighbor had come to my house to tell me he had quit his job, I went to the courthouse early one morning, and bypassing the secretary, I strolled right into the prosecutor’s office.
I didn’t care who heard me and I confronted him about their ties to the cartel, the judge’s and the sheriff’s involvement, the kickbacks they were all receiving, and his purposefully freeing the sheriff’s two boys. I had yelled my accusations so loudly that I guess all the judges present, along with the other prosecutors, and even the secretaries had overheard me.
He, of course, then denied everything that I had accused. However, I knew that my neighbor, the former bailiff, was an upright, church-going man, and I had believed him.
Lo and behold, next thing I knew, the sheriff and then the judge himself came into the office. Looking at them all there before me, I grew extremely angry. My earlier life lessons had informed me how to keep bullies at bay — you had to be tougher and yell a bit louder than they did. Looking from one to the other of them, I shouted, “Well, better start checking beneath your cars before you start ’em up — and don’t be surprised to find yourselves blown to bits one day if you don’t!”
Then I waltzed out.
I went home and was mad enough to consider doing what I had threatened, but deep down I knew I would not do so. I figured my posturing would be enough to handle this group of scum.
And just as I had suspected, the judge, county prosecutor, and the sheriff all grew fearful thereafter, and soon they withdrew their ties to the operation altogether. My daughter was able to go back to school and so were the other kids. The drug supply had been cut. I felt proud that these bastards would no longer deal in the illicit things that had ripped the life out of our community, and I knew Momma would be proud of how I had handled things.
But the downside was that I had threatened three public officials with a terrorist act, and the feds came and arrested me for conspiracy to place explosive devices in pursuit of domestic terrorism. I received a thirty-five-year sentence in federal prison.
Oh, and by the way, seeing how they were no longer of any use to the cartel, and its head honchos could not afford to be shut down for very long, soon thereafter, the cartel had one of their snitches hand the three officials over to the feds. They were all later convicted.
The system is broken beyond measure.
I had to stop writing these notes for a moment. My cellmate ate too much of the pink and bloodied, refrozen, under-baked chicken last night and had to use the toilet right quick. I always said the chicken here would kill you.
I do not eat it. The inmate workers in the kitchen told me it was unfit for human consumption — said so right on the boxes inside the walk-in freezer. It had been returned from Russia after they had received too many donations in the aftermath of the Chernobyl disaster.
I am lucky, though. My friend down the hall will send me a few saltines for later. That and a cup of hot water, or maybe coffee if my friend from the chapel has some extra to spare, are good enough for me!
Anyway, eating the chicken here gives you the runs something bad. So, while my cellmate used the toilet in our cell, I had to get up from the small desk, and I laid in my bunk thinking about all this stuff. It kind of stinks in our cell now, but I wanted to get back to writing this.
One of the thoughts I had was this — if you believe the justice system is “just,” or anything about any of our court systems for that matter, then may God prevail to show you all the truth.
Just look at our elections. Lobbyists control all of that nowadays — along with what “our leadership” does. Corruption and fraud is the truth. Supposedly, the big tech and those international organizations control everything and had funded most of what we get.
Thank you, Momma, for having given me the ability to see and not be a fool like so many others.
My other thought was this — for those of you who have sons, daughters, uncles, cousins, fathers, and grandfathers in jail and then when they tell you awful stories about how they have been treated by their attorneys, the government, the “system:” believe them!
Unless you are a politician or have a close friend who is one; or have enough money to pay off, as soon as they are accused, they are guilty, while those who are truly guilty, so long as they have power in some way or another, are let go scot-free. Be careful and watch out for yourselves!
Sad to say, it is the American way and always has been — money talks, everything else walks.
If it has not touched you in any way, my guess is that it is just a matter of time — it will. We sign plea agreements for ten years, then wind up getting thirty-five years (yes, I did sign a plea for ten years). You think I am kidding, but I am not.
You should just listen and pay attention. Open your eyes and your ears. Don’t know what’s to be done about it. But as Momma always said, “better to know the truth and suffer than suffer in ignorance.”
I had written my daughter every single week throughout my many years behind bars. I would always end each of my letters with this: “Hon, I love you more today than I did yesterday. But not as much as I will tomorrow!” I have missed seeing her grow up and had missed being with my family so badly.
My daughter grew, married, and had kids of her own. I missed not being able to watch my grandkids grow up.
I have two grandsons and one granddaughter. They are either in middle school or in high school by now. I had seen all of them just once when they came to visit six or seven years ago. I told my daughter then to try not being angry at me for having missed most of her life, but that I knew life went on.
Then, my wife got sick with cancer. She had waited all of those years for me, or for God, or for justice to prevail — whatever it would take for me to be released.
The final chapter of my story is that just when I figured God had forsaken me, I had tried to escape from federal prison. I figured that they weren’t going to let me out, and since I had been promised only ten years, I felt I deserved to go free.
I dug a small hole out on the yard and tried crawling beneath it. The razor wire hooked my old khakis and tore into my flesh. I was stuck like a dolphin in a fishnet. Then, they added another ten years to my sentence.
The judge, county prosecutor, and sheriff had each gotten out after two or three years.
Well, don’t know that it matters, but I have truly turned my life around, over to God. No longer do I take matters into my own hands. Judgment and vengeance are mine, sayeth the Lord. And they are up to God to decide upon, and to administer, according to His own will.
He has directed my path now for the past two decades. I go to Mass weekly. I live in peace — knowing and trusting God and waiting on His somewhat mysterious ways.
They say I will be allowed out when I am eighty-six. I won’t mess up again. I have life left to live and love left to give. God will watch over me and will direct my path from here on out.
Author’s note:
Two weeks after I helped him to write this, Grover died alone in his cell due to complications from high blood pressure and his heart-valve. The prison doctors had just two days before changed his blood pressure medications to generic, even though Grover had told them he reacted poorly to generics.
His cellmate had been out on the yard walking the track on the sun-drenched and warm, southern spring day, after having worked at the prison factory for the early shift. He later told me that when he had come back to his cell, he had found Grover’s body collapsed onto the cold tile floor, his face purple, and there was a foot-long trail of dried saliva which had spewed from his mouth. His body was cold. Nobody had checked on him for hours.
Grover had not heard from his daughter or from any relatives for the past fourteen years.
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