Donnie Boy

His body lay on the stained carpet of the living room floor. His face was gray. All was quiet in the one-bedroom flat on the south side of St. Louis until one of the man’s two housecats pushed an empty food bowl across the kitchen floor.

It was Thanksgiving Day. A week earlier the man had made plans to enjoy the holiday with family in north county. Since he didn’t have a car, he would have to rely on his sister to pick him up and together they would make the thirty-minute drive to another sister’s house in the north suburb of Florissant.

The older sister had tried reaching the man by phone on Tuesday evening as she drove home from work at the local humane society. The call went unanswered, and she left a message on his voicemail asking to confirm the pickup time for Thursday morning. There was no return call that evening. He was usually very good at returning calls from his family.

The two sisters got together by phone Wednesday morning. “He’ll probably call today,” one said to the other. They both knew that the man wasn’t working at the coffee company any longer. A week earlier he had hired on with a temporary labor company but that the work was sporadic and only paid minimum wage, which is Missouri was only $7.25 per hour.

The man had been despondent about the loss of his job in the warehouse after nearly eleven years. Operating a fork-lift and pulling orders wasn’t much of a job, but it paid the bills, and he had benefits like two weeks paid vacation, sick days, and medical coverage. He didn’t have to love it, but it was steady employment, and he liked the people he worked with.

His fifty-two years of life had been hard. He was the youngest child in a family of eight children. His seven brothers and sisters had been moderately successful in their lives, marrying and finding gainful employment. The two oldest left home at seventeen when he was very young, and he didn’t know them well. Four of the siblings lived in other cities and he had little contact with them over the years. Where the others seemed to assimilate easily in social settings, he was awkward. The man struggled both personally and professionally. It had been that way his whole life. He had recently expressed regret that he wasn’t closer to his older siblings.

The sudden death of his mother one spring day, when he was only two years old left a void in his life. Where there had been the mother’s love, care, and daily affirmation there was only emptiness. His father swore to keep the family together instead of splitting the children up and sending them off to willing relatives to be raised. In fact, an uncle from New Orleans approached the father and pleaded with him to let the youngest child come live with his family since they already had two young children in the home. But the father was adamant that he could handle it on his own. The uncle was distraught but relented.

Everyone who knew the mother loved her. She was a warm wonderful person who had produced seven children in fourteen years of marriage to the father. Throughout her life growing up in New Orleans her family had a housekeeper named Masie, who took care of things. Mother was not much of a cook with housekeeping skills to match.  But that could be forgiven with seven young children and two adults in the modest three-bedroom suburban rancher.

The oldest sibling was a fourteen-year-old girl who was ill-equipped to assume motherly duties after the sudden death. When the father went to work at the Ford Motor Company assembly plant, he gave only basic directions about how to manage the day around the house without adult supervision.

Many times, this youngest child would be left alone crying in a playpen for hours with wet and dirty diapers, and no emotional or motor stimulation. Meals were just adequate most of the time with friends and neighbors pitching in to help the recently widowered father.

Within a few months it became obvious that the father needed help in keeping house and raising the family. A relative from Granite City, across the Mississippi River knew of a young twenty-something female immigrant from Holland named Vera who needed a job. They met and after a short interview Vera was hired to watch the kids and do light housework while the father was at work.

With the older kids at school during the week only the four younger ones needed Vera’s attention. The father supplied Vera everything she said she needed which included cigarettes and ‘pils’, which we learned meant beer in the Dutch language. No one was really sure how much attention was paid to the youngsters during the day, but from the condition of the house when school let out and the father came home from work it appeared that Vera wasn’t much of a housekeeper. And when the older kids got home from school, she would send one of them out to the Quick Shop half a mile away if her cigarettes ran low.

But young Vera was quite attractive in her high heels, tight halter tops, and short shorts. And the father was recently single. Vera lasted for a few months until the father’s prurient interests led to an overnight stay culminating in the older kids finding them partially naked in bed one Sunday morning.

Following Vera was a succession of more matronly housekeepers ending when the father settled on Mrs. Korte who lived only a few blocks away and had older children of her own. All of the children suffered somewhat during the year or so after their mother died but none suffered quite as much as the youngest one. There was little attention and even less affection given to the little tyke.

The father was introduced to a junior high school gym teacher from Granite City who was divorced and had one child of her own. They began a short courtship and found they had a lot in common. Both were hard-working, organized, and disciplined; attributes that would certainly come in handy in dealing with a blended brood of youngsters. Within a short time, they decided to marry, and announced their decision to the family. Then the children’s lives changed again completely.

The family needed more space than the little three-bedroom rancher offered so the father and his new wife found a larger home with a basement a few miles away. After the move a new discipline descended upon household. The stepmother used her gym teacher skills to whip her small class into shape, calling them to dinner with a whistle and establishing a merit/demerit system for doling out meager allowances. The two older children rebelled and rarely got a payout, but the younger ones fell into line quickly.

As a young child in the seventies, the youngest son acted out in school and had to be disciplined. The parents were unfamiliar with how to deal with these problems. The older kids were rebellious but not to the extreme. The middle children learned to live with the new discipline, for the most part.

The father followed the mantra “spare the rod, spoil the child.” Spanking was not uncommon. That’s how the father had been raised. His siblings all survived it and thrived. These kids would do the same. And they did, for the most part. Seven of the eight grew up, moved on into their teens and eventually into adulthood with some degree of success.

Psychological testing showed that the youngest boy had a high IQ, but he floundered in school and received mediocre grades. He hung around with miscreants from school and got into trouble.

School counselors recommended mental health experts to evaluate the youngest boy and it was determined that he was ‘hyperactive.’ In fact, the diagnosis was common among young boys at that time. His malady was given the acronym ADD or ADHD.

This was all new to many parents at the time and, along with counselling, the doctor prescribed a relatively new drugs that they said would help. The medication had little affect at first but eventually helped the boy cope better with his new environment.

His father wouldn’t allow long hair on any of his sons, and they all sat on a stool with a towel over their shoulders regularly for their crew cuts. As the youngest son grew, he took on strange physical attributes. He was tall, skinny as a rail with a shaved head, olive skin, pointy ears, and a prominent nose. This made him somewhat unattractive, and he didn’t have relationships with girls. At one point while in grade school he shaved his eyebrows and told everyone that his older brother held him down and did it to him. That wasn’t true.

The boy arrived in his early teens as a high school dropout. A brush with the law saw him committed to the Missouri Training School for Boys, juvenile detention facility in Boonville, Missouri, for six months.

His three older brothers had joined the service; one in the Army, one in the Navy and the youngest of the three became a Marine. His father encouraged him to follow the lead of his brothers, so he enlisted in the Army and was inducted. His family was surprised when he returned home after only six weeks having been rejected and given a general discharge.

The father allowed him to stay at home for a short time but told him he’d have to find a job and pay his way. He wanted a job doing something he liked but wasn’t sure what that would be. After a short period of time, he moved in with one of his sisters who was married and had two children of her own.

He applied for lots of jobs and worked in fast food for short time, jumping from one restaurant to another but never finding anything that interested him enough to show up on time and do the job. He got progressively more depressed and took his ADHD medication when he could afford it. Living with his sister and her family became untenable in their small north St. Louis County home.

The man couldn’t cope and one day, without warning he just disappeared. Word got out to family members who were living in other cities around the country. Has anyone heard from their little brother? The answer was ‘No”. He hadn’t contacted anyone in the family. No one knew anything about his whereabouts. As time went by the sisters worried and searched for their youngest brother to no avail. He was missing for almost three years.

The older of the sisters living in the St. Louis area heard about an organization that helped find missing loved ones and reached out to them. Luckily, the organization found him in southern California, and she was given the name of someone who knew her brother. When contacted the man told the sister that her brother was in jail. Apparently, he had been arrested for possession of marijuana and a condition for release was that he have regular drug counselling. He had failed to attend all of the necessary counselling sessions and was arrested and jailed. The family helped settle the issue and he was released.

Just as suddenly as he disappeared, he reappeared. The parents helped him get back to St. Louis and the sister who helped him get out of jail took him into her home. He stayed with her and her two sons for some time and they all got to know each other better.

When asked about his time away he said, “I was all over. I went to Dallas for a while and worked as a day-laborer doing construction.  Then I was in Las Vegas. Then a guy I met paid for me to fly to Hawaii. I stayed there for a while until I could afford a flight to Los Angeles where I lived a long time.”

“What did you do there? How did you live?”

“I had a bunch of jobs. I met some people. They took me in. One guy rented out rooms in his house and I lived there for a long time.”

The family was just happy he returned. Donnie was tight-lipped. Few questions were asked, and details of his experience remained sketchy. It didn’t really matter much. He was home now. To this point in his life had no spiritual inclinations. His sisters had become more religious over the years and offered emotional, financial, and spiritual support. One of the pastors of a church they attended became his counsellor and tried to help him. He went to a revival and had a spiritual awakening. For a time, he was active in his church, helping the pastor as the church ministered to the poor.

He found a job in the warehouse of a candy company and was able to get his own apartment close by. His niece and nephews called him “the Candyman” because he would always bring them candy. He loved kids. He couldn’t afford a car but biked or walked to work each day.

Depression was a chronic problem and he used marijuana to self-medicate when he could afford it or when friends offered it. He had health insurance from his workplace and sought help for his depression. He was prescribed medication and took it stabilizing his mood.

He told his counselor that he knew he was different from others in his family, but he didn’t know why. All he wanted was to find similar success with work and to get married and have his own children.

After nine years at the candy company, he found a better job working in the warehouse of a coffee company closer to his apartment. Things were stable for a long time, and he enjoyed his family and his church.

One of his older brothers lived across the river in Illinois and would come to town fairly regularly to visit and spend time with him. They would go to movies and sporting events. He loved the St. Louis Blues and the Rams. His favorite music was heavy metal or acid rock, but he railed against country music, saying how stupid he thought it was.

As 1999 ended he met a young girl at the local 7-11 a few blocks from his apartment. They liked each other immediately. She was much younger, only 24 years old, divorced with two small children, but had lost custody of one of the children to the father. He told his sisters that the age difference didn’t matter but they were skeptical, especially after meeting her. The couple went to church together and both decided that they wouldn’t have a sexual relationship before marriage. He felt that God had intervened in his life and that things would be better from here on. She pressed hard for them to get married, and he relented. They married, moved in together and started what he thought would be a new life.  He grew to love her young child.

The sisters tried to warn him that she was bad news, but he thought he had found someone that would love him for who he was. She learned to manipulate him. She convinced him to buy a used car and get a credit card; things he had never had before. Then she ran up charges on the card.

The sisters thought she was using him, and they brought it to his attention. He thought they were wrong. They stayed together and he continued loving the woman and her child but after a year she said she didn’t love him and didn’t want to be married. When she left, he was devastated and was stuck with car payments and credit card debt he couldn’t afford. He berated himself for being so stupid. He fell into a deep depression for some time after she left.

The sisters encouraged him to go to find solace in his church. They all prayed together, and it helped him stabilize his emotions. He had to work hard to stay on the straight and narrow and over time his depression abated.

He focused hard at his job at the coffee company warehouse and over time paid off his debts. He went to church regularly, found new friends and had a decent life. Periodically he fell back into the old ways, partied a bit, and smoked a little pot. But his faith sustained him, and his local family and friends supported him. His family and few friends knew him as a kind and funny person, though his humor was sometimes dark and inappropriate, a trait held by others in the family.

An accident at work changed everything. One day he miscalculated the distance behind him while operating the fork-lift and crashed into some equipment, damaging the lift. He was called into the personnel office and suspended from work. They told him he would have to take a drug test. He knew he would fail the drug test because he had smoked marijuana the previous day. Thinking that they would appreciate honesty he admitted that he had smoked pot but told them that he was not high at work.

The company was a family-owned business. There were no corporate rules about second chances or drug counselling that could save his job. He had mistakenly thought they would show empathy, but his employment was terminated immediately.

It was mid-October. The man was despondent. He went home and got high. Eventually he knew he needed to find another job.  The search yielded nothing in the short term and a friend told him about the temporary agency they would add him to the list of day laborers and help him find work.

He picked up a few jobs here and there. He prayed. His sisters prayed with him. His church friends prayed for him. The people at the new company he worked for liked him and thought he would be a good full-time worker. They told him there might be a good opportunity for him soon.

There were two second floor apartments in his building, sharing a common balcony. The neighbor next door was a thirty-something stripper/dancer at a local men’s club. She used a variety of drugs and had tried to get her neighbor to join in the party, but he had told he that he only smoked pot.

His sisters felt he was back on the right path but it’s hard to say how he really felt about his situation. At his bottom he probably only wanted to ease the pain; to forget about all of the sadness. To find a semblance of peace. His next-door neighbor was persistent. She could hook him up. She could provide something to make him feel better. He still resisted.

In his past he had friends on the west coast who were drug addicts and had done heroin himself before but had avoided the allure because he told himself he was too smart to fall prey to addiction.

Thanksgiving was coming but he had little to be thankful for. The sisters called him several times, but he didn’t return their calls and that worried them. They continued calling throughout the day on Wednesday. They called his landlord who lived in the same building late that day asking if he could check on their brother. A return call from the landlord said no one answered the door when he knocked.

On Thanksgiving morning, the older sister contacted the landlord again and asked if she could come down and check on her brother. He said he had no problem, but he didn’t have a key to the apartment. The sister arrived and knocked but no one answered the door. With the landlord’s permission she went to the basement and found a backdoor entrance to the apartment that was unlocked.

As she entered, she noted now quiet it was. “Don!” she yelled. There was no answer. “Donnie are you here?” she said even more loudly. She only heard a scraping sound coming from the kitchen. She looked across the room to see a one of the housecats pushing an empty bowl across the floor. The hungry cats turned and looked at her. Max meowed.

The sister walked down the hallway, arriving at the living room where she stopped and was horrified to see her obviously deceased brother laying prone on the stained carpet.

The police were called and responded quickly. Their experience told them that this was likely a drug overdose. Underneath the body they found a spent hypodermic needle. There were no other signs of drug use. Where was “the kit”? The spoon. The lighter. The cotton balls. The tourniquet. The wrapper that held the deadly drug before it went into his vein. This led them to conclude that he might not have been alone when the drug was injected and that after he stopped breathing a person or persons unknown panicked. They cleaned up the scene removing incriminating evidence. The door to the balcony was left open.

Donnie’s eyes were closed, and his facial expression was contorted. Was there finally some peace for a tortured soul?

To this day his family is certain that Donnie did not intentionally take his own life and has found that peace with the Lord in Heaven.