The Night Everything Changed

August 25, 2005, was a night Clarance did not expect to be significant. He was at his parents’ house. He and his mother were preparing for an early morning drive to Cushing, Oklahoma, to visit his younger brother, who was in prison there at the time. It would be his first visit with his brother in that facility. They had things to say to each other that had been waiting for the right moment, and this was going to be that moment.

Earlier that day, Clarance stopped by Michelle’s place to package some marijuana. He found her in a state of acute distress. Her brother Mitch had followed through on another threat: he called her job, and it worked. He had gotten her fired. The housing inspection was coming. The welfare reports were pending. Her life was being dismantled piece by piece, and she wanted Clarance to do something about it.

He told her what he had told her before, without ambiguity: he was not getting involved. This was her family. This was her problem. He was not going to take a side in a dispute between siblings, no matter how badly she wanted him to. He had his own life. He had his own family. He had an early morning road trip, a brother he was going to visit.

At one point during the visit, he walked into the kitchen while talking on his phone. Michelle and Ronald were sitting at the table together, deep in conversation, a conversation that stopped the moment he entered the room. The silence was specific. It was the silence of people who were discussing something they did not want overheard. Penny Avans, Michelle’s close friend, later testified that Michelle and Ronald were in the middle of planning something when Clarance walked in. She described it as something dark. Something serious.

Clarance did not know this at the time. He walked into the kitchen, registered the silence, finished his call, left. He went back to his parents’ house.

As the evening progressed, people called to buy marijuana. Because he was in the area, near his parents’ house on the north side of Tulsa, the transactions were simple. While he was at his parents’ house, Kenneth arrived: the childhood friend whose grandparents lived across the street, who were, in the way of certain Tulsa families, bound up in the fabric of Clarance’s family history. Kenneth was having a hard time. He had no place to stay. He was trying to figure out his next move.

They were talking when Ronald called. His speech was badly slurred. He was nearly incoherent. He had been sent home from his job at Walmart because he was visibly impaired, impaired in a way that, it would later emerge, went well beyond anything a single substance could explain. Meth, likely. Ecstasy. Cocaine. Xanax. Whatever combination had produced the stumbling, mumbling man on the other end of the phone, it was serious. He needed a ride. He had no one else to call.

Clarance looked at Kenneth and said: “You want to take me to go pick him up?” Kenneth said yes. They drove to Ronald’s job and found him inside, barely functional: stumbling, zoned out, unable to string a sentence together. This man was not in any condition to navigate himself. Clarance told Kenneth that Ronald needed to go to his wife’s place in Mannford, not to Michelle’s. Not with the inspection coming. Not in this state. Kenneth agreed.

Kenneth took Clarance back to his parents’ house first. He dropped him off. Then Kenneth and Ronald drove away.

Clarance went inside his parents’ home to prepare for rest before his and his mom’s early morning road trip the next day.

Later that evening, he drove to his cousin Michael Scott’s house. Michael was someone he could open up to, someone who knew the texture of his life, the weight he was carrying. Clarance had been struggling with depression, with the grief that had never resolved, with the accumulated difficulty of the years since his father’s death. He had run out of his Xanax prescription. With the anxiety surrounding going to see his younger brother behind bars, he needed a coping tool to help him relax and rest for the long day ahead. Michael had some and gave him a few pills to help him settle before the early drive. They talked. Clarance began to feel calmer, more relaxed, ready for the morning to come.

His phone rang. An unfamiliar number, but he answered it anyway.

It was Kenneth. His voice had a different quality now: tight, stressed, not quite right. He said: “Bro, this dude we picked up passed out. Where’s that girl’s house again?” Ronald had passed out cold, was unresponsive, and Kenneth was somewhere near Michelle’s place without a clear address. He needed directions.

Clarance said he would come meet him. He drove to a QuikTrip near Michelle’s that Kenneth had mentioned. No familiar cars in sight. Clarance drove to Michelle’s house and found Kenneth parked outside.

“This dude’s an idiot,” Kenneth said when Clarance reached the window of his car.

“What are you talking about?” Clarance asked.

“This dude’s just a freaking idiot,” Kenneth said.

Clarance opened the passenger door to help get Ronald out. Ronald was limp: not sleeping, not resting, but absent from his own body. The two of them had to carry him into the house. Michelle’s door was unlocked, as it always was. They went inside and laid Ronald on the couch. Clarance went to the back bedroom and woke Michelle up.

“Your cousin is here,” he told her.

She was awake at once, panicked at once. He couldn’t be there. The inspection. The housing. He needed to go.

Clarance told her, for what felt like the hundredth time: this was her family. This was her problem. He was not the person responsible for managing the chaos of her life, and he had somewhere to be in the morning.

He told Kenneth to call him when he got somewhere. He said goodnight. He left.

That was the extent of his involvement. That was the whole of his presence at Michelle’s house that night. He drove back to his parents’ house and went to sleep.

It was not an accusation. It was a confirmation.