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I am the assistant district attorney of Davidson County, Tennessee, and on May 18, 2004, I killed Wilson Owens. He was determined, and I was willing. We were like lovers, in that way. Wilson pursued me with a string of petty thefts and miscellaneous criminal acts -- working his way through his lesser loves -- until he could wait for our union no longer. On that day -- three years, two months, and eleven days before his own death -- Owens killedSteven Davidson, the manager of the Sunshine Grocery Store in east Nashville. The moment Wilson's bullet entered Davidson's chest, the dance between us began.
I mention these names because it's important in my line of workthat they are remembered. Both are dead, and both are lamentedby their families. Ironically, both have gravestones in the samecemetery, Roselawn Memorial Gardens, in east Nashville; Wilson is buried underneath a flat, nondescript stone inscribed only withhis name and the duration of his life. A hundred and fifty yardsaway, Davidson lies beneath an ornate, marble monument paid forby his numerous friends, fellow churchgoers, and family.
Wilson was what society calls a bad man. The truth, as usual, ismore complex. What is certain is that his life went off the rails as ateenager, when his father -- a man to whom the notion of familyresponsibility was as alien as a day without alcohol -- took a finaluppercut at his mother and walked out the door. From those sullenseeds Wilson grew, nurtured in the subculture of the Nashville projects,until he emerged, at eighteen years old, already twice a father,already once a felon. His destiny was sealed, as was mine.
I was born to kill Wilson Owens as surely as he was born to bemy victim. This is clear only in retrospect, of course. When I wasgrowing up in Wichita, Kansas, the son of a civilian airplanemechanic who worked at McConnell Air Force Base, the idea that Iwould one day kill a man was as distant from my mind as India.My father's world was full of wrenches, grease, and secondhandtales of pilot braggadocio. I loved that world nearly as much I lovedmy father. In those days of blissfully low security, I would ride mybike from home to the base, wave at the bored guards, and screechto a halt outside the hanger 3, where my father worked. I wouldwatch him clamber inside one of the huge General Electric engineshanging under the wing of a tanker, or, perched on his shoulders, Iwould peer inside the still-warm tailpipe of an F-15 fighter. He andthe other workers wore flattop haircuts, black shoes, and the graycoveralls of Faris Aircraft, the company that subcontracted theoverflow aircraft maintenance work at the base. I wore my hair thesame way, even though in the early eighties this had all the cachetof a funeral director. It didn't matter. To identify with my fatherand the easygoing men of his world was all that mattered.
My mother lived in an entirely different world, one which I generallyviewed with suspicion. A legal secretary, she worked in the grandly named but decrepit Century Plaza Building, an agingstructure with noisy plumbing and elevators with doors that had tobe manually pulled shut. The few times I went there -- no more thanfive or six in my entire childhood -- confirmed to me that the worldof suits, ties, and paper-pushing was greatly inferior to the vibrant,masculine world of my father. My father's coworkers were muscular,told dirty jokes, and had eyes that sparkled when they roughhoused.The men of my mother's world all seemed slick,dark-haired, and smiling with secret agendas. That my motherseemed so completely at home in this world haunted me then, andnow that I occupy the same world myself, haunts me still. To mysurprise, I am more my mother's son than my father's, althoughphysically I am his younger picture. I have his photograph beforeme now, as I sit at my desk at the DA's office on a gray, Augustafternoon. He is bare-chested, his wide-open smile pointed at thecamera, a cigarette in his left hand, ready to fix any airplane thathappens to roll by. Looking at his smile, I can almost believe hecould fix the world.
On the day he died -- having fallen thirty-eight feet from the wingof an AC-130 Hercules onto the griddle-hot asphalt beneath theplane, breaking his neck as cleanly as a chicken's wishbone -- theworld as I had known it ceased to exist. I spent the next year or sotrying to bring him back, which my current profession has longsince taught me is impossible. But at eighteen, the answer to myproblems seemed to involve smoking a good deal of dope, drinkingbeer, and arguing with my mother over the direction of my life.Predictably, I wanted to join the military. She wanted me to go tocollege and become a lawyer. The compromise was inevitable: Iagreed to go to college if I could be in ROTC, which paid mytuition in exchange for two years of active service. Since my fatherleft us little, my mother could hardly refuse. I enrolled at WichitaState, and somewhere between marching for ROTC and anEnglish class I found the part of my mother inside myself that I had denied. I was a hell of a student and a hell of a recruit. I put the twotogether, traded two more years of active duty with the JudgeAdvocate General's Corps for law school, and in 1992 walked outof Vanderbilt Law a second lieutenant ready to fulfill my commitmentto the army.
Blood of Angels
Excerpted from Blood of Angels by Reed Arvin
All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
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