![\"\"](\"https:\/\/alecclayton.com\/writingetc\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/04\/AlecClaytonApril2012-238x300.jpg\" "\\"AlecClaytonApril2012\\"")
<\/figure>\n\n\n\nLocked In<\/em> is the story of a lifelong fight for justice and of romance and sexual obsession as remembered by Willie Ray Rivers, a newspaper publisher in Mississippi. After a stroke, Willie Ray is left paralyzed head to foot. He cannot speak, but he can hear. He can think, and he can remember. Cared for by his wife, Ella, and their friends Dream and Edgar, Willie Ray looks inward. His memories take him from a jail cell in Mississippi to Amazing Grace Church in San Francisco and back to Mississippi where he and Ella publish a crusading newspaper and become entangled in an ongoing struggle with corrupt city council leader Bubba Wright.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Here is a small excerpt from when the reader first meets Willie Ray:<\/p>\n\n\n\n I\u2019m not writing this. I\u2019m screaming it. But only inside my mind. It\u2019s all in my head. YOU are in my head. I hear you listening to my thoughts. Skeptical as all git-out no doubt.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Not a word, not a sound escapes my mouth, which I can\u2019t even open or close. <\/em>At least I don\u2019t think I can. It feels as if nothing happens when I try. Can I stick out my tongue? Can I smile or frown? Is my face frozen in some godawful expression I can\u2019t even imagine? Somebody hold up a mirror, let me see what\u2019s going on with my face.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Please. What\u2019s going on with me? I can\u2019t seem to move anything, not any part of my body. I try. Desperately I try. To move a hand, a leg, a foot, to lift an elbow, to move my head to the side. I hear something but I don\u2019t recognize what it is. Is that a presence off to my left? I can\u2019t look in that direction to see who or what is there. Nothing. It\u2019s like I\u2019m frozen. I can feel pain, though. On a scale of one to ten it\u2019s about a seven. I guess that\u2019s a good thing\u2014I mean it\u2019s a good thing I can feel anything at all.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n My eyes are open, and I can see. Thank God I can see, but only straight ahead. I can\u2019t look to the side beyond what peripheral vision allows. Am I wearing blinders like a freaking horse? I can raise my vision to the white ceiling where I see things on rods and wires which I can\u2019t identify and don\u2019t understand. It\u2019s like I\u2019ve been transported to some place like a laboratory out of some cheesy sci-fi movie. Or a hospital room. No, wait, it IS a hospital room. How did I get here? I look down to where my body is covered with a white sheet. I can see from my stomach area down to my toes, which stick up under the sheet like two little tents. I can see straight ahead to where there\u2019s a dry-erase board on a white wall. My name is written on the board in handwriting I\u2019ve never seen. Willie Ray Rivers. Yes, that\u2019s my name, and scrawled under my name are the names of Dr. Jamison and Nurse Watkins. Further evidence that I\u2019m in a hospital.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n And here is Willie Ray\u2019s run-in with the law in 1986 in the little town of Ellisville:<\/p>\n\n\n\n Amanda and I parked on the side of a secluded road and did some grass and climbed into the back seat and did some heavy petting, but she stopped me before we went all the way. She said stop, and I stopped.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Later. I had just dropped her off and was heading home. The road was dark and curvy, maybe not a safe road, but I knew it so well I could drive it blindfolded. I had a missing taillight on my sixty-three Chevy. The old car was pretty much held together with bent coat hangers and chewing gum. I didn\u2019t know I had a missing taillight.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cLicense and registration,\u201d the deputy demanded, speaking around a wad of chewing tobacco in a slow and slurry tone while leaning against the driver\u2019s side window and shining his flashlight in the car. I hitched my butt up and reached in my hip pocket to dig out my wallet for my license, and then I reached to the glove compartment to pull out my registration papers. The deputy aimed his light at the open compartment. \u201cWhat\u2019s that?\u201d he demanded.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWhat?\u201d I knew I was in big freakin\u2019 trouble.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThat little purple pouch in there. What\u2019s in it?\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cOh, uh . . . Tylenol. I get headaches. I always keep a few.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n That was true. I had been plagued with debilitating headaches most of my life. I always kept a stash of pain meds on hand. But pain medication wasn\u2019t the only thing I kept in that pouch.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cHand it over.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI . . . uh . . . it\u2019s just aspirin, I mean Tylenol. I promise.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cStep out of the car, son.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n I was a goner, and I knew it. He opened the door and held it open for me to get out. He patted me down, finding nothing but some change. He spit tobacco juice into the dirt on the side of the road, and then walked around the car to open the passenger side door, his flashlight stabbing the muddy field to the right and a forest of pine trees in the distance, like I was some desperado, and he was checking to make sure I didn\u2019t have an accomplice sneaking up on him. And then back to the glove compartment, fishing around with the beam of his flashlight, which came to rest on that purple felt bag with the leather drawstring. A girl I had dated a few times gave it to me. There was another bag inside the bag, a plastic baggie holding a bit of marijuana.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n It was a muggy night, the heat of the day lingering until almost midnight despite it being fall, almost Halloween. The deputy didn\u2019t look like he was none too happy. He took off his hat and wiped sweat from his brow with his shirt sleeve and said, \u201cI guess I gotta haul you in, son.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n He said he didn\u2019t want to do it, but it was his duty. I thought, if you don\u2019t want to, don\u2019t do it. Who\u2019s to know?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n He took me to the Forrest County jail in Hub City.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Inside, I was taken to a little check-in window. The cop in the window wore sergeant stripes on his sleeve. \u201cName?\u201d he asked.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWillie Ray Rivers.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWould that be short for William Raymond?\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cNo sir. Just Willie Ray. That\u2019s the whole name my mama gave me.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cDate of birth?\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cJune 12, 1958.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cAddress?\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cFourteen twenty-nine South Church Street, Ellisville.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n I was stripped of my wallet and change, the Bulova watch Mama gave me for my last birthday, and my leather belt. A guard marched me down a semi-dark corridor with bars on either side, carrying a large white plastic bag. I barely noticed the almost silhouetted figures of men behind the bars. They stared in silence. I guess it\u2019s only in the movies that jailbirds shout taunts at new arrivals. The guard stopped and opened a cell and said, \u201cThis here\u2019s your new home, fella,\u201d and gave me a little shove in the back to make me step in. There were three men in the cell, one sitting on a top bunk on my left and two more on the other bunk bed on my right. I looked back to see the guard step in behind me and close but not lock the bars behind us. Across the corridor I glimpsed what looked to be five men in another cell. They were all Black which I couldn\u2019t tell in that first look but learned the next morning when there was more light. The cells were racially segregated, which I thought was coincidental. \u201cOh no,\u201d one of my cellmates corrected me. They do that on purpose. Can\u2019t let them jigaboos in the same cells with white men.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n There was no furniture in my cell other than the two bunk beds, metal springs for slats and a two-inch thick mattress, a brown wool blanket on each, no sheet. The cellmate perched on the edge of the top bunk with his legs hanging off was rhythmically scissoring the air with his bare feet in time to music he was humming. I recognized the song. It was George Harrison\u2019s \u201cMy Sweet Lord.\u201d His feet were pink. His toes were gigantic. He was shirtless, and wavy blonde hair hung over his shoulders. On top of the other bunk sat a huge guy with curly red hair and a chest and gut that looked like boulders. The third guy was a scrawny little man who looked like a possum. They watched as the guard directed me to take off my clothes and hand them to him. I stripped down to my underwear.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n