Northeast is a bone tossed by the Tennessee legislature fifteen years ago to a rural county that found itself on the brink of economic ruin. The planners of Johnson County had missed an important prerequisite to modern economic survival. They failed to recognize that in order for people to trade in your county or your towns, they need to be able to drive there in less than a half day.
The roads leading to Mountain City are narrow and slow. You can’t get there from anywhere. As a result, nobody goes there. As a result of that, Johnson County couldn’t generate any tax revenue and therefore couldn’t hire enough police or fund their schools.
But in 1991, the great state of Tennessee was about to embark on a vast expansion of its prison system, and it was looking for victims. They lobbied economically depressed counties, and economically depressed counties lobbied them. With the political stars in perfect alignment, Johnson County, in the heart of the Appalachian Mountains and one of the most scenic places in the whole country, was rewarded with its very own two-thousand-bed medium security concrete prison. Their plans, they said, were to put the inmates to work in a public/private enterprise, a slick mixture of capitalism and communism.
As I passed through the front door of Northeast Correctional Facility, a grand total of eighty of the two thousand inmates were participating in the prison’s employment programs. I walked into the reception area and waited for a guard. He asked for my identification, frisked me, and took my photograph.
I signed the log book and he led me across a yard fenced in by twelve-foot chain link topped with concertina. The sky was a vivid blue, and the beauty of the surrounding mountains provided an ironic contrast to the razor wire and concrete.
Once I was in the communication center, a robotic guard in a black uniform spoke to me through bulletproof glass and demanded my identification. I slipped it into a stainless steel tray. It disappeared, and the guard ordered me to move on. I followed my guide back into the sunlight and down yet another fence-framed sidewalk to the maximum security unit, which primarily housed inmates who had attacked guards or other inmates.
Many of the hundred men inside the maximum security ward had killed after being imprisoned.
They were treated the way you’d treat a dangerous animal-with extreme caution. They were kept locked alone in their cells 24/7 except when they were escorted to the shower twice a week. If for any reason they went out, they were cuffed and shackled and trussed. The only way they had of communicating was to yell through the slots in the cell door that allowed food to be passed through.
And yell they did.
When I walked through the fourth security checkpoint and into the cell block, the cacophony began.
A man in a suit could only mean a few things to a maximum security inmate. Cop, lawyer, or prison administrator. They hated them all. By the time I made the thirty-foot walk into the office where I was to conduct my interview, I’d heard every mama, sister, wife, and daughter insult known to man.
The cell block was two-story, open, and oval-shaped. The guard who sat at the desk had a view of all twenty cells on the block, and they all had a view of him through the tiny windows in the cell doors. The guard, a sturdy young man who looked to be about twenty-five, led me into the office.
”I’ll go get him,” he said. ”Won’t take but a minute.”
He started to leave and then hesitated and turned back towards me.
”I feel sorry for you,” he said.
”Thanks,” I said. ”So do I.”
Maynard Bush had been recaptured four hours after his daring daylight escape from the Johnson County jail. Bonnie Tate’s body was found in her car in the parking lot at the Roane Valley golf club.
Maynard had apparently gotten what he wanted from her and then shot her to death as soon as she stopped the car and unlocked his cuffs.
After he killed Bonnie, Maynard headed straight for his mother, who’d kicked him out of her home when Maynard was fourteen years old. Mama Bush saw Maynard approaching the house and called the cops. The cops came running, guns drawn. When they got there, they heard a series of gunshots inside.
Maynard wouldn’t respond to them. The Tennessee Highway Patrol’s SWAT team lobbed tear gas and rushed in an hour later. They found Maynard sitting at the kitchen table, clutching his burned eyes, a half-eaten sandwich sitting on a plate in front of him. His mother’s bullet-riddled body was lying less than five feet away. When they asked Maynard why he didn’t fight, he said he used up all of his bullets on his mama.
I’d spoken to Bernice Bush-Maynard’s mother-
while preparing for Maynard’s trial back in May.
She’d been left to raise Maynard alone after his father was carted off to prison for shooting his neighbor during a property border dispute. The strange thing about it was that Maynard’s father was a tenant-he didn’t even own the property.
Bernice was a slight, feeble woman of fifty-five who lived in a four-room shack about two miles off Highway 67 in Carter County, not far from the Johnson County line. Her place was as run-down as she was. It smelled of dog shit and cigarette smoke.
There were plastic bags filled with Keystone beer cans all over the house and the tiny front yard.
Bernice existed on Social Security disability benefits, food stamps, and the prescription drugs provided to her by TennCare, the state’s noble but misguided effort at providing health care to indigents. She told me that by the age of fourteen, Maynard had become a drug addict. He kept stealing her nerve pills, she said, and had started experimenting with a street drug called ice. He stopped going to school and was running with what she described as a very rough crowd. Sitting there looking at her, I couldn’t imagine a rougher crowd than the one she belonged to.
Bernice said she had an old mutt she called Giggles because of its peculiar bark. When she mentioned the dog, ten years dropped off her face, and her harsh voice softened. One evening fourteen-year-old Maynard came home late and high and sat down on the couch. She went into the room to try to talk to him, but he was rambling and agitated, so she started to go back to bed. Giggles, she said, jumped onto the couch and licked Maynard on the face. Maynard picked the dog up by the scruff of the neck. He carried it, squealing, into the yard at the side of the house, pulled a pistol from his belt, and shot it in the head.
The next morning, after Maynard had sobered up, she gave him a choice: leave or go to jail. He’d been in trouble before and was on probation. They both knew that if she called the law, he’d be shipped off to a juvenile home somewhere. Maynard chose the road. She was glad, she said, because she was afraid if they locked him up she might lose some of her Social Security benefits. He packed up a few things in an old duffel bag and got into a car with some of his friends around three that afternoon. She hadn’t seen him since. She hated him, she said. He killed her dog.
About six hours after Maynard was arrested and hauled back in, Judge Glass had called my office.
”I want to go ahead and reschedule the first trial as soon as possible,” he said, ”and you might as well represent him on the new charges. He’s got an escape, four counts of first-degree murder, two counts of conspiracy to commit first-degree murder, and four counts of felony murder. You don’t mind, do you?”
Did I mind? It may have been the dumbest question ever uttered. Angel’s trial was bearing down on me, I was constantly on the lookout for Junior Tester, my mother was dying, my sister was in jail, and I felt at least partially responsible for David and Darren’s deaths. And to top things off, I knew if I represented Maynard after he’d killed two well-liked deputy sheriffs, I’d make a bunch of brand-new enemies in Johnson County and probably wind up practicing law for another two years. Did I mind?