On August 25th, 2006, my brother, Tad Dellinger, was released from prison. Looking back now, I know that it was on this day when the first domino fell, leading me to today: a day I’m certain will be my last.
***
I’d been waiting for his release for five years. He wouldn’t let me visit him, which pissed me off, until I got older and understood why. I thought he was just a jerk, but by the time I turned eighteen, I knew exactly why he wouldn’t let me see him. To him—his ideology, if you will—an older brother is supposed to protect you. Be there for you. And, I guess, in a way he felt guilty for his absence. It’s quite funny, because I, too, felt responsible. There we were, two brothers feeling guilty and ashamed for five years, because of one asshole who drank a little too much and drove a little too poorly one morning.
I don’t remember seeing the truck crash into my door. The only thing I do remember is my mother’s screams and the bowl of cereal flying through the air. Sometimes it comes back to me, though, in quick, little flashes. But—and this is probably for the best—I can only see my mother’s blonde curls bouncing, and sometimes when the memory comes back stronger, I can feel the cold spoon on my tongue and the soggy Cocoa Puffs melting in my mouth. Then, just darkness. I was in a coma for a month after the accident, and when I woke up, I couldn’t feel my legs. I never did again.
I don’t know what sent Tad over the edge, and I never asked. I assume it was nestled somewhere between the cold truth that I’d be in a wheelchair for the rest of my life, or that Mr. Ray Wilmer—the drunk driver—would only spend ninety days in jail, followed by three years’ probation.
“Had it been any other man or woman on this earth,” my mother would say throughout the years, “they would’ve been rotting away in prison, and they sure as hell never would’ve been allowed to drive again.”
Mr. Wilmer had three previous DUI violations, all of which amounted to a minor slap on the pecker, before he damn near killed me and my mother. But, he was a congressman for the state of Florida, and had more cops, lawyers, and judges in his pocket than a fat kid had Little Debbie’s.
Tad wasn’t an angel himself. He’d gotten involved in a gang when he was sixteen. They called themselves the Burning Suns. And they were who put him up to it. You see, I didn’t just lose my legs when I woke up; I lost my brother, too.
Tad had become obsessed with Mr. Wilmer, and every day he was on the street with the Suns, they plotted revenge. The word got out that Mr. Wilmer had an awfully soft spot for a pair of young tits, and especially an expensive girl named Molly. Lucky for Mr. Wilmer, he could find Molly and fresh tits at a club called Exotic, down in Orange County—about an hour south of where we lived at the time: Leesburg, Florida.
Tad and his boys, Jim Hawthorne and Lucas Benton, trailed him down I-75, into Orlando. When they arrived, Jim and Lucas went inside Exotic, while Tad waited in the car with an UZI resting on his lap. The plan had been to drop some roofies in Wilmer’s drink, then bring him back to the car when he started to lose consciousness. According to Jim’s and Lucas’s testimony, the plan had worked. They drug him out of the club, acting as if he were “that friend” who had ruined the night for everyone. Nobody said a thing as they stuffed him into the backseat of Tad’s Nissan.
There’s this abandoned warehouse a few miles away from Exotic, at the corner of Mission Rd and W Robinson St. I’ve been there myself. And, let’s just say, no one would be around to witness what happened that night. No one except the four of them.
They had cut the padlock off one of the doors with a pair of bolt cutters, and had gotten inside. Jim and Lucas held Mr. Wilmer up by the arms while Tad went to work. I saw the photos; it was messy. Like I said, this was all according to Jim’s and Lucas’s testimony. They said that Tad put the UZI on Mr. Wilmer’s forehead, and if it weren’t for their divine intervention, Mr. Wilmer would have been shot that night. Instead, Mr. Wilmer suffered three broken ribs, four fractures to both arms, and a severe concussion that almost killed him. Almost. That was the key.
If Wilmer had died that night, I wouldn’t be sitting in this empty mansion, waiting for death myself.
Jim and Lucas had records as long as a boardwalk on the beach, but Tad was clean. That’s exactly how he ended up in prison for only five years. It would’ve been fifteen for attempted manslaughter, but he plea-bargained for aggravated battery instead.
Jim and Lucas sold Tad out, along with some mid-level dealers; they only got probation. Cried on the witness stand and everything, saying that it was Tad’s plan, and that he said he would kill them if they didn’t cooperate.
The bad publicity is what expedited the process, though. There were articles in the papers about Mr. Wilmer driving drunk and crippling me. A lot of people started getting behind Tad, saying that Mr. Wilmer got what he deserved. In order to save face, he pulled one of those judges out of his pocket and settled with my brother going to prison for five years instead of fifteen.