Straight up hairy...

Did you know that it is impossible to outrun a helicopter in broad daylight? Did you know that it is impossible to outrun radio waves? It is impossible I assure you. It's February 11th 1993 sometime in the early afternoon. This is a day I shall never forget.  Roger and I are sitting behind some bushes while watching the front of a small bank. Our getaway driver has just dropped us off and is waiting a couple of miles down the road. We are waiting and watching. We wanted to make sure that there were no customers inside the bank because we didn’t want to have anything more crazy than what was already about to happen, happen.

I was so pumped up on adrenaline I couldn't think straight. It was one of my favorite drugs.  It's all natural, takes away all the pain, all the hurt, it forces one to live in the moment, fearlessly; free.  Nothing made me feel more alive than adrenaline.  My adrenaline addiction was so powerful at this time that I had quit all other forms of mind altering and would seek out adrenaline rushes only, and clearly at any cost. This had been building in me for several months. You could say it had been building in me my whole life.  Being only 17 years old, I had to keep getting more and more, it had to be more and more intense, or it just wasn't enough, the pain wouldn’t go away. Deep down, I wanted to die, so I was doing really crazy shit just to get an adrenaline rush.  Building up to this moment was 17 years of pain and hurt. Unconsciously I was trying to kill myself.  The switch was flipped. 

Roger and I looked at each other; it was that fleeting moment of clarity, that last chance to call it off.  Looking at each other as if to say, "Are we really going to do this?" I think Roger even voiced it, but we were so pumped up there was no backing down; neither of us was backing out.  We were sure we could get away with it. We waited for what seemed like forever and no one had gone in or out, we felt sure there were no customers inside. There were no cars in the parking lot so we assumed no one was inside other than the employees. Everything had been planned out, everything was ready. We jumped up and ran into the bank. The masks were on, the gun was out, and the bag was ready.

The rush cannot be explained.  It all happens so quickly.  The distance to the door was covered, and I don’t even know how.  The man behind the counter complied.  He did what was asked of him. He immediately began emptying the counter drawers of all the money. He was a tall balding man.  He didn’t' seem to shake at all.  We learned after the fact that this was not the first time this man had been robbed in this bank. There were employees inside, back through a doorway, but they immediately ducked for cover behind their desks. The feeling that it was all taking too long wouldn't go away.  I am sure they were on the phone with police before we got out the door.

What has always troubled me the most though, was that we were very wrong about something.  There was a customer inside.  Two of them actually. There was a woman sitting along the wall, with a child in her lap. This moment is the main reason I never complained about having to do time for robbing this bank.   I never complained at all. It used to haunt me all the time, but now it only gets to me if someone asks me why I was in prison.  That’s the only time I think about it now. As soon as she realized what was going on, she covered her child's eyes and just kept repeating, "She can't see a thing, don't hurt her." I knew that we weren’t going to hurt anyone, but she did not know that, and I have always felt incredibly terrible for having done this. I didn’t go to prison for robbing a bank.  I went to prison for scaring the shit out of innocent people.

At the time though this did not register, my heart was pumping so loud in my ears it was deafening. The adrenaline rush was as intense as it could be. I might as well have jumped out of an airplane with no parachute.  We really did not want there to be any customers inside, we just wanted the money and to get out. The lady with the child freaked me out.  I never wanted to hurt anyone.  Even now, writing this, it tears me up that I did this to these people and it has been over two decades since we entered that bank. Like I said, I never complained about my sentence, I deserved it, not for robbing that bank, but for scaring the living shit out of that woman and her child.

I’ve never forgotten that later in testimony neither she nor the man behind the counter got the story right about which of us had the gun and which one had the bag, and there is a considerable body size difference between Roger and myself. That let me know how badly we scared them.  We scared them so bad their conscious minds couldn't tell what was what.  We were not inside the bank for more than a couple minutes’ tops. Time is critical when doing such things. It was straight up hairy in there.

Out we went, back across the street and onto a motorcycle that we had covered up along the Katy Trail. Our getaway driver was waiting about two miles down the trail just across an old railroad bridge. We didn't want anyone to see us get into a car.  But then we realized one of the people inside the bank had decided to be a vigilante and had gotten into his car and was racing down the road that ran parallel to the trail. Because the bridge is a railroad bridge he managed to cut us off and due to the fact that our getaway driver had noticed this from up on top of the hill, he drove away.

Our idiot plan had just gone to shit.  We were in a major panic, we knew we were not going to shoot at this man, and we knew we were not going to take his car from him, so we fled on foot. The motorcycle would only have taken us back into town and we did not see that as an option. We were officially scared at this point and so we did the only thing we could think to do; we took off running.

I won't lie, it was cold.  In Missouri it can be very cold in February, and the water seemed even colder. Small islands of ice were gracefully floating down the river. There was no time to be scared.  I jumped into the river.  I knew my only means of escaping this situation was to get to the other side. Using the bridge to get across the river was not an option; the vigilante was in plain sight on the other side, just watching for us form the road. It was so cold.  It was cold enough that my adrenaline did not keep my breath from being sucked right out of me when I hit the water.  No time to think, I couldn't think, I only knew I had to swim, I had to get to the other side.

When I finally reached the other side I somehow managed to take off running.   It’s in these moments one realizes it doesn't matter how badly one is sucking air, somehow the body will keep going, and keep going I did. If you never swim very much and then try to swim as hard as you can, you will find that even 50 feet will kick your ass. I was not in the kind of physical shape to be acting like I was in a triathlon. It goes to show how the human body can perform under duress though, because I did just keep going. Using the woods, I was able to escape the man on the road, but then the biggest problem of all came; the sound of a helicopter.  It was game over. 

The helicopter got to me just as I was crossing a gravel road, he came in fast, and I was not a hundred feet from the woods I was seeking. I’m really not sure it would have mattered.  There are no leaves on the trees in February.  I know now the woods would not have helped me much, being there are no leaves on the trees in the dead of winter. No one ever said the 17 year old me was the smartest kid on the block; obviously. I was soaking wet and freezing. I just stood there, no idea what to do. I was smart enough to know that to continue running would only piss off law enforcement, so I just stood there.

Maybe a minute or two later a highway patrol car came to a sliding stop sideways in the road. There really is no way to determine the passing of time in these moments.  It felt like I was standing there forever, yet it all happened at once.  The cop was not playing around, the man knew what he was doing, and it was like he had done this countless times. Shit was just like in the movies.  He slid right out of the car, with his shotgun in hand and was immediately aiming it right at me. I could see his mouth moving but could not hear what he was saying due to the helicopter over my head. When he pumped his shotgun, then I felt fear, because I knew then; I knew it instantly, he was mentally prepared to shoot me.

I have not felt real fear too many times in my life but this was one of those times.  When you are getting beat at the age of two by grown drunk men one does not fear much in life.   I think it dawned on him though, he could see the fear in my face. I just could not understand what he was saying so he began one stepping it towards me and yelling louder.  The helicopter banked away a bit, the roar of the baldes cleared, then I understood what he wanted. I put my hands on my head and laid flat on the ground. I did not want to die. 

Everything was a blur, I was only 17, I had no idea what was going on, and now that I was in the police car my life would never be the same. Obviously we were not supposed to get caught, yet somehow deep down, I knew I had fulfilled my purpose. I had done what I was meant to do.   The patrol officer was informing me that I was lucky he got to me before a county deputy did.  He informed me that the county guys don't have to fill out paper work when they shoot someone like the highway patrol does. 

I had fulfilled my destiny; I had killed myself without actually dying.