"Could he have misinterpreted his lawyer's words? Hell, we misinterpret conversations all the time, and we are mostly lucid."
Howe's Day
"Hey Batiste, I stopped taking those pills because they
didn't help my ellipsia."
"You mean epilepsy?"
Vogel caught on and interjected his thoughts on
the conversation, "Oh, those things you wear on your
shoulders?"
"No, those are epaulettes."
"Oh, you mean like what you put a letter in before you
mail it?"
"No, that's an envelope."
"Oh, you mean like going to Vegas to get married?"
"No, that's elope."
"Oh, I have those things on the bottoms of my ears."
David Howe was doing time for false imprisonment.
The case got so much publicity his ex-wife was on Oprah.
Apparently he locked his family up in their house. He
padlocked the doors from the outside, and put tin foil on the
outside of the windows. The neighbors never said a word.
The children never attempted to escape when they went to
school. They were threatened with the death of their mother.
What fi nally broke them free was when the wife learned to
use the Internet to create an e-mail account. She contacted
the police via e-mail. God only knows how long this shit
would have gone on without the Internet.
Without his medication, Howe had too much time to
think about his crime. That caused him to throw pity parties,
and nobody was coming but him. Howe fi lled his lock box
with library books and water, and then wedged it between
the door and the bed.
We locked down the entire house. Nobody was going
anywhere. The gallery where he lived was evacuated, and
the remainder of the house received sack lunches. No inmate
would be allowed to leave the house.
Howe was really twitching, "I want the Secret Service.
I want the FBI. I want the National Guard."
"Half the fucking staff is in the National Guard!"
"Should I tell him they are here already?"
"Why do you think we are so short-handed in the
summer, you fucking knuckleheaded retard?"
My co-worker, Elizabeth McCourt said to Howe, "Have
I ever been evil to you?"
"You're on the payroll, you're in on it."
Howe's cell was in the lower gallery of a split-level
housing unit. An academy classmate, Tim Dahl, was
watching him through the external window to the cell.
"He's swingin' now! The mother-fucker is blue!"
The mother fucker was blue. He tried it three times, and
on the fourth time he tried to get up but passed out. Howe
thought it was a plot to kill him, but the jaws of life were
used to get into his room.
"How long was I out?" asked Howe.
"Not long enough."
"No really, how long was I out?"
"Three days, hope you don't mind if I used your
bathroom."
The drama was better than the soap operas. Days after
the event, Joe "The Hammer" Ruth was making fun of him,
"I had myself barricaded in my room, but nobody noticed,
and I got hungry."
On the day before his suicide attempt, Howe informed
us that if a pardon came down from the Governor's offi ce,
he did not want it. Even the new staff would not believe
that a pardon would be granted to this evil bastard. "Only
innocent people should get pardoned. I don't deserve it."
"Can you imagine the sea of estrogen present at Howe's
parole hearing? Oh man, it would be an angry swell. There
is no fucking way he will parole. It will not be allowed.
Any man that even hints at approving his release is shut off
for life."
I can just see Oprah on the television, granted, not in
these exact words, "You had better give him life without
parole, or you'll get life without pussy."