Name’s Hobie, Hobie Miller and the lady that I have to see once a week or so that picks my
brain like an old weathered hen pecking at scratch told me that I needed to write down the
things that seem to swirl around in my head so that I can heal. Now I don’t think I need any
kind of healing, but the State of Florida says I do so now I get to sit in front of this here pad of
paper and tell you what happened to me so many years ago. This is going to be hard for me
‘cause all I have for inspiration is looking out of the bars at the rest of my row-mates.
Sometimes I go up to the bars and look out and pretend I see the orange groves full of sweet
white blossoms letting me know that spring was around the corner, but that was a very long
time ago, so long in fact that I can’t bring to my mind what the blossoms smell like anymore, it’s
been replaced with the scent of my own sweat as I bake in my death row cell.

I was born in the spring of 1957 and as my momma told me it was the coldest day in May and
the biggest thing in the news was a twister touching down in Texas that killed a bunch of people.
So I suppose I came into this world like a whirling dervish and from the time I can remember
momma told me I was special, almost gifted she’d say. I would ask her how she knew that and
she would say “It’s in your eyes Hobie!” Now I know this is silly but I did spend a lot of time
looking in the bathroom mirror at myself trying to see what she saw, I never did. It wasn’t until a
hot summer day in 1963 that momma’s predictions about me came true. I was riding my bike
with my best friend Tommy Hill, we had tied rope on our handlebars and we was pretending
that our bikes were wild mustangs and we were famous Florida Crackers taming the wild
beasts. Up and down the dirt road in the back of my house we would ride using just the ropes
to steer and every once in awhile one of us would hit a rut and go flying off the bike tumbling
into the orange grove that bordered the back of my house. We would laugh and slap the dirt
off, hop back on and do it all over again.

Tommy said he was thirsty and said we should ride up to the old country store on the corner
and get an RC cola. We checked our change and had enough to get one to split between us.
The store was about two miles up the main road from my house but I knew momma wouldn’t
mind, there wasn’t much traffic out here and momma always said that our town of Umatilla was
like a “fart in a wind storm, nothing around these parts but groves.”

So Tommy and I rode down to the end where our dirt road connected to the one lane paved
road. We stopped to take off our ropes, I wish now that we had never stopped. That was the
day my whole life changed. As we stood at the cross road Tommy was checking his pockets
for peanuts so we could add them to the soda when up rode Clem Tucker. Now Clem was a
year younger than me and Tommy and we didn’t care much for him. He was always whining
and had snot dripping out his nose. We didn’t have much to do with him but this day Clem
decided he was coming with us to the store. Clem wouldn’t take no for an answer so Tommy
said we should out ride him and then maybe he’d get tired and turn around. I wasn’t sure about
that but I didn’t have any bright ideas of my own so off we raced down the one lane towards
the store. I looked behind me and saw Clem, red-faced, trying hard to catch up with us. I can’t
explain what happened next except that when I turned around to look at Clem I saw something
happen to him, ‘cept it hadn’t happened yet. And somewhere deep inside me I knew something
terrible was going to happen to Clem so I slowed my bike and hollered back at him, “Turn
back Clem you’re going to get hit by a car!”

Clem just kept ridding like the wind to catch up to us. His little legs were pumping the pedals
like my grandma would pump the ice cream churn. Within minuets Tommy and I were at the
main road. We had to cross the two-lane to get to the store on the other side. We slowed
down, looked both ways and raced across to the store. We hopped off our bikes and I turned
to look at Clem. It was like everything happened in slow motion. I watched in horror as Clem
came to the stop sign. He never slowed down and only looked one way. Within an instant a
blue sedan came from his left and smacked into him. I’ll never forget the awful sounds of tires
screeching and the hard thud that Clem made when he met with the sedan’s front end. The
impact sent Clem flying up into the air and hit him so hard it knocked him out of his Keds. We
dropped our bikes and ran into the store and Mr. Williams was already on the phone with the
operator asking her to ring the police and ambulance so we ran back across the street to see if
Clem was dead.

I’ll never forget looking down at Clem as he lay twisted in the dirt. He was awake and he
looked up at me and said between sobs, “This is your fault, you told that car to hit me, you said
it was going to happen and it did, I’m going to tell my momma!” I was never so scared in all my
life! I just knew I was going to get the belt, and Clem was right I told him it was going to
happen and it did. I raced back to the store and grabbed my bike and with Tommy right behind me raced back to my house.

When I got back to my house I threw my bike down in the front yard and raced into the house.
Momma was visiting with the neighbor, old lady Ketchem when I came bursting through the
front door. Momma took one look at the horror on my face and when I was finally able to
catch my breath asked me what was wrong. I didn’t want to tell her the truth in front of old lady
Ketchem so all I said was that Clem had been hit by a car. “Oh dear!” said old lady Ketchem.
“I better go see if I can help the family.” She gathered up her purse and knotted pine cane and hobbled out the door.

My momma took a long hard look at me, kind of studying me like she would the evening paper.
“Tell me what happened Hobie.” I could tell by the way she asked me that I wasn’t going to get
a whipping, don’t ask me how I knew, but I knew. So I told momma the truth. “Now Hobie,”
she asked with hesitation in her voice. “Did you see it, see it or did you just think it in your mind
that it was going to happen?”

“I saw it momma, I saw everything before it happened!” I couldn’t help it but I began to sob
and I was shaking so bad my teeth were chattering. “Did I make this happen momma?” I
remember asking her. That’s when my momma explained to me about my “gift” as she called it.
Now you have to understand that momma, in my opinion, did a lot of strange things. She had
these special cards, as she called them, they had pictures on them and she said she could tell the
future with them. I think she called them Tarot cards. Anyway, she would pull them out in the
evenings after I went to bed and lay them out in different patterns and she said they would tell
her things. She said the cards had told her that she would have a gifted son, and now here I am.
Momma said I was able to see the future, that I was special, and I should use my ‘gift’ to help
others.

I let what she said sink in for a moment and confused I asked her that if this was truly a gift why
did it only include me seeing bad things happening to people? She couldn’t explain it but said
when I got older I would be able to help people with my ‘gift.’ Well, my ‘gift’ didn’t keep Clem
from spending the rest of the summer in a body cast. We didn’t talk much about it anymore
after that afternoon and after a couple of months I stopped seeing Clem flying up in the air ass-
ver-teakettle and landing on the ground without his shoes every time I closed my eyes. Things
started getting back to normal for the most part until the dreams started.

It was a hot August night, I think I was around eight at the time, and I was lying in bed wishing I
could peel off my skin thinking it would be cooler. The sheet was sticking to me, and the floor
fan that momma put in my room was only pushing the hot air around. The moon was full and so
bright that it lit up my room as if I had the ceiling light on. I got up and went to the window
praying for a slight breeze. As I watched the clouds swirl through the light of the moon I felt a
cool breeze ‘cept it was coming from behind me. I slowly turned around and watched as a
white, circle like, vapor appeared near the door. All I saw was a figure with no face reaching
out a hand to me, motioning me to come closer. I didn’t know why but I had a great fear of this
person, and I shut my eyes tight against the vision and jumped in bed pulling the sheet up over
my head.

When I pulled the sheet down to take a peek it was morning and I was more confused than
ever about what was happening to me. Momma said that when visions come to me they could
be in many forms. Sometimes I could see them, like watching a movie, or sometimes they will
come to me in a type of dream. She said the only thing I needed to do was heed the message
they bring. Momma told me that my newest dream was a warning that someone would try to
hurt me and I should always be aware of what was going on around me. Sometimes, though,
we never heed our own wisdoms…