LIFE ON THE FARM - TALES OF DAILY LIFE AT THE CUMMINS UNIT FARM - Government - http://maxpages.com/lifemeanslife/Roy_Miller_and

Wednesday Afternoon
July 12, 1989

ROY MILLER
by Bud Tant

Roy Miller, #72487, arrived at the Cummins Unit back in 1961. He was sentenced to five years for burglary. He was a slight young man who had a speech impediment and chose silence to ridicule. He didn't make friends easily and didn't fit into any of the prison cliques.

Roy Miller was alone as he bent over his hoe under the watchful eyes of the longline rider, the horse-mounted guard who herded the inmates at a run to work the fields each morning and back to the barracks at dusk each day. He suffered in silence.

Roy was small and a mere nineteen years old. He didn't shave, and when he dared to talk, his voice was as meek and small as he was.

One night a big, mean gang member had come to his bunk with a shank and taken Roy's manhood. He also took Roy's left eye during the fight that preceeded the violent sexual assault. Roy suffered in silence. He didn't even go to the Infirmary to have his eye checked. Roy had no money and knew that without something to pay The Man, the chances of them doing anything for his eye were slim.

I doubt if Roy slept that night. I imagine the misery of his punctured eye mixed with the bitter tears running down his cheeks as he laid there, again, suffering in silence. But quiet men have loud thoughts, and Roy was screaming inside his head.

The next day Roy placed a patch where his left eye should have been, and found a shank of his own. He stood in the auditorium waiting for the big gangster to leave the chow hall. When Roy saw him walking out the door and saw that he wasn't paying attention to anything except the line of bullshit he was throwing on one of his companions, Roy made his move.

Now, there's a great deal of controversy surrounding exactly how many times Roy stabbed that big, mean gangster , but suffice to say he killed and mutilated the gangster in front of dozens of witnesses.

Roy was charged with first degree murder. He was a quiet man and had difficulty expressing his thoughts, even when he wanted to. But, still it was the early '60s in Arkansas, and he was white. He was spared by the jury, although he lost all of his good time and had to serve another couple of years.

Most folks left Roy to his thoughts after the exhibition he put on in front of so many witnesses, but Time has a way of erasing memories, and in prison violent memories mean respect. Roy's eye turned white and he was jeered at by the other prisoners. He became quite sensitive about his white eye.

The Yard Captain's pet was a huge, trustee and he was tough. He was one of the inmates in charge of handing out the daily whippings with the big leather paddle. He was "untouchable". To hit him would be tantamount to striking the Captain, himself.

One day the Yard Captain's pet snitch called him a one-eyed punk. Roy told him never to call him that again. The Captain's pet just laughed at him.

Roy went to his barracks and retrieved the long shank he had so carefully concealed behind some loose bricks in the wall, and returned to the Yard Desk. Roy slashed and stabbed the trustee untold times, until the desk was covered with blood and the trustee had quit trying to fend off the knife's blows.

Roy Miller, of slight stature and impeded speech had killed for the second time in a year. He had killed a trustee inmate in full view of the guards. Roy was in trouble.

Roy was again charged with first degree murder and taken to trial. The prosecutor painted a vicious picture for the jury. Roy became a cold killer in the eyes of the jurors, and the prosecutor prayed that those jurors and the Good Lord would pass sentence preventing Roy from ever endangering the public again.

Roy sat silently, shielding his white, sightless eye from the jury's view. His slight build had by this time diminished to 115 pounds while he was held in the hole awaiting trial.

In those days, inmates in isolation were fed a "grue" loaf once a day. "Grue" was a bland mixture of meat, vegetables, eggs and corn meal, mashed to pulp, spread in a pan, baked in an oven and then placed in a refrigerator so that it's cold and tasteless. Each meal consisted of a 4" square of this vile recipe, which afforded a man fewer than 1,000 calories per day.

The jury returned a verdict of "guilty" and recommended that Roy receive a life sentence. The judge concurred and Roy was returned to his concrete world to suffer in silence.

Some time in 1980 Mr. Lockhart, then Director of the Arkansas Department of Corrections must have suffered a feeling of guilt, because he ordered the Cummins Warden to release Roy from the hole and put him in a single cell in 2 barracks. He told the Warden to leave Roy alone, he had suffered enough. He told him not to assign Roy a job or fool with him in any way.

Roy couldn't believe his good luck as he walked out of the hole and onto the green prison exercise yard for the first time in more than 10 years. At first it was all he could do to walk. The old timers say he looked like a ghost as he stumbled around the big yard, squinting with his one good eye from the bright Arkansas sun. He weighed 110 pounds and was 6 feet tall when the doctor filled out the form releasing him from isolation.

The days passed and Roy spent every second he could on the yard. His walking had turned into a slow jog, and he moved around the big yard as incessantly as the Earth revolves around the sun. He ran and he ran. He ran for hours and he would have run for days had they not made everyone leave the yard at the end of each day. He somehow never lost his pallor, and the old timers say Roy's spirit left that shell of a body years ago and that now the body is weightless. He ran as if he weighed no more than a sheet.

In 1985 Roy's mother died. She was a poor widow from the hills of Northern Arkansas and she had only been to visit Roy once in the more than 10 years he had spent in isolation.

I was living in the room next to Roy when his message from the Chaplain's office arrived. Roy didn't go outside for several days. He just sat on his steel bunk staring at the wall with water running from his one good eye.

An aunt of Roy's came to see him shortly after his mother's funeral. She had promised Roy's mother that she would deliver a message to the maddened person she always thought Roy was, and as he turned out to be. She took Roy a present to remember his mother by. She took Roy a big black Bible that his mother had used to record landmark dates and events in the life of her family.

Roy didn't stay in the visiting room long. He came back to his room clutching the Bible his mother had clutched in her moments of crisis. He held the Bible his mother had held during her hours of pain. He held that Bible until it was wet with the tears of his one good eye, and then he began reading the soggy pages.

Roy only went to the yard once more after he read that soggy book. When he came in from the yard that last day, he ran. God was waiting for him in his cell. God spoke to Roy and told him to stay in his cell until He called him out. He told Roy that his speech would be sweet as music and his thoughts would flow with the ease and purity of a mountain stream. He told Roy that it was up to him to spread His word to anyone who might visit Roy's room. Roy has only left his room to eat since God talked to him.

I talk to Roy all the time. He speaks with a quiet conviction and his thoughts and words fall as softly as autumn leaves on my ears each time I speak with him.

Roy's mother left him a little more than two hundred dollars, too. He knew it was the last money he would receive in the mail, so he prayed on what to do with it so that it would grow and not disappear. God came again a couple of days after Roy received the money and had begun praying. Once again he spoke with my one-eyed friend. He told Roy that He wanted Roy to work on radios so that people would come to his cell and be ministered to.

Roy knew absolutely nothing about radio repair, but he ordered a $15.00 meter, some solder and a soldering gun, then just sat back and waited.

I don't know of a problem a radio can have that Roy can't fix. I don't understand it, either because Roy is quiet and is not predisposed to lying or even rationalizing anything. Roy told me in his quiet, simple way that God taught him to work on radios.

Roy Miller is in his cell, even as I type this. He's waiting for whoever walks through his door, and he's hoping that God will return to tell him it's ok to go outside again. I know how he longs for that Word because I see him staring out his window at the blue sky, green grass and yellow sun.

I don't know God, or I'd insist that he give Roy permission to go outside. If anything should happen to me in this place and if it turns out there IS a God; if I have an audience with him, one of the first things I'm going to ask him is if he'll let Roy go outside and play.

...Just reporting history...

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SHELEA SUZANNE (SUE) TANT THURSTON
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