His name was JJ. His whole family was like fighters of the town of Wellston, Ohio. His brother Tommy, his sister Karen, and their mom was all fighters. They was street fighters. My mom and his mom have fought – physically fought each other — her name is Trudy. Now she’s only got one leg. Her leg got blown off with a gun. There’s another brother too—Jake, he did time in prison over fighting. He bit someone’s nose off. These people were fighters. Matter-of-fact Karen’s son just got murdered last year. He was only something like 18 years old. Karen was the sister to this JJ. There was JJ, and there was Karen, there was Tommy, and there’s was Jake. But all fighters. And Trudy the mom she was a fighter too.
They was all related, they all stuck together, I understand that, but Karen in her day she would fight a man. The guy I’m talking about JJ, had a bad eye. I don’t know what happened, it goes back to a BB gun, he accidentally got shot as a kid and now he’s got one eye that’s cockeyed. I don’t know exactly the story. I don’t know what happened for sure. I’m not for sure. He worked for the Street department of Wellston. He’s one of the people that got in big trouble because of the water was not being paid and people were paying off people with pills. And there was a big thing with the district water company because all the water was runin’ and they’re not getting paid for it. The district found out when all these people had their water turned off and were turning their water back on. These guys were getting paid off to show those people how to do it.
JJ didn’t like me. The originality of why he was really mad at me goes a long time ago about a stolen gun. He was blaming me for that. I had two other people that would tell my side of the story, and I could have used them as witnesses, but they did wrong by it, so it wasn’t a good thing. I don’t really want to go into that part of the story. In the end he got the money for the gun – more than the gun was ever worth – a lot of money like almost 500 bucks for it. I mean they tried to make things right in the end, but there was nothing that was going to be right for him. And that’s the honest truth.
Actually, this is right after the gun deal. Todd and me lived in a three-bedroom trailer and we turned it into a two-bedroom makein’ one room big. There was a bedroom at one end and a bedroom at the other. One side there’s a bedroom along the side with the window and I had the bed in underneath there for the cool of the night. That’s where I usually slept back there in the back bedroom. Tod was sleeping in the living room; he always slept on the living room couch. Todd was sleeping on the sofa because of his back. He had an accident when he was 18. Him and his best friend were driving in a car and his best friend jumped out while he was driving, and left him in the car. And it went off the road and Todd’s back got broke. He was in a coma: he’s lucky to survived it. He could walk and move around, but it gave him a lot of pain. So that’s why Todd was sleeping on the sofa. Anyway, I changed bedrooms and I suppose no one would’ve know unless you lived in the house. I don’t know why I change bedrooms. I was just sleeping in the other room.
Anyway, during that night someone threw a boulder through the window! Whoever picked it up was pretty strong, too. It was about a foot long and 6 inches wide and 6 inches high. It crashed right through the bedroom window! They meant to send a message. I think they was trying to hit someone in the bed because the bed was right underneath the window. But like I said, for some reason that night I slept in the other bedroom. JJ knew that; he had stopped by and talked to Todd enough to know what the trailer looked like. And he knew if someone was sleeping in there, it wouldn’t be Todd. He knew that Todd slept on the sofa and had a bad back, everybody that new Todd knew that. JJ was a little bit older than Todd – maybe four years older. He ‘n Todd were kind of friends, they had been friends for a long time ago.
So the next day when we took a good look at it we could see the damage. All the glass was broken inwards where someone had throwed it. The boulder was on the floor, it had to have hit the bed and rolled off. All the glass was on the bed too. The boulder probably hit more on the left side of the bed. The bed was underneath the window and it was more towards the left side of the bed and then it hit the floor. If I had been sleeping there it would’ve hit my head and I could’ve been killed. We was lucky nobody was hurt. We replace the window the same day. But there was bad blood between JJ and me, that’s for sure.
Now the guy I worked for lived down the road. I clean his house and did odd jobs, picking potatoes and whatever. He had a great big giant field – he had a lot of property – and he would send me out there to pick potatoes. Potatoes come naturally because he had the field planted in potatoes once and now the potatoes just came up voluntarily. They were really good. He owned a safe. And whenever he would pay me he’d go into the safe and give me some money. So word got around. I think I told Todd and Todd told somebody, and somebody told somebody, and the next thing you know I was going down there to work and the cops were there. Somebody had stole the safe. And the cops they start questioning me.