One night he called, said it was important. Although I wasn't inclined to jump when he called these days, there was something in his voice I had never heard before, so I zipped over to a motel where he was laying low. He explained he had a little problem. Some people who did not have his best interests at heart were at that moment trying to ascertain his whereabouts. I knew of them, and decided for him that it was best if he just disappeared. The next morning I drove him to the train station and sent him to points north. It was the last time I saw him.
Oh, I got e-mails. New York City. Buffalo. And his last stopping-off point, Pennsylvania. Then the missives stopped. I found out from a friend his new address: the Bradford County jail.
Steve Satterwhite
Hood in happier days, when he cut a dapper figure in clubland and anarchy followed in his wake
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"So good of you to write," Hood began after I sent him a note. "Where to begin? Buffalo was a bust. Voted the Most Popular Guy who Ever Slept In An Old Buick, which, while nothing to sneeze at was not my idea of upward mobility. The nickel & dime hustles I had to pull in order to feed my newfound habit didn't cut it either. I fled before the snows hit & my life became even more miserable. Over rivers & through woods & suffering not a few maladies I made it back to the mini-mountains of Pennsylvania, where I was about as welcome as a leper." One thing led to another, and he got popped for robbery -- bank robbery. Apparently on November 1, 2001, he went into a little state bank in pipsqueak PA and threatened to shoot a teller if she didn't fill a bag with cash. He was caught the next day checking himself into a rehab clinic. "All indications are he did not have a gun," says Bradford County DA Stephen Downs. "He just threatened to shoot. A sad case really. I felt sorry for the guy. He said he went to Yale and wrote for Rolling Stone magazine. Is that true?"
He pleaded guilty on May 21, 2002. I was proud he copped to what he had done. "As you well know, bad habits tend to do strange things to people," he wrote. These are the words he said he told the judge the day of his sentencing. "Yes, it was I & I alone who pulled the rug out from under myself & I'd be a fool to ask for a magic carpet as a replacement. Instead I request only a needle and some thread, the materials with which I can reconstruct my own peculiar tapestry."
The judge sentenced Hood to three and a half to ten years in prison. "For at me they threw the proverbial book ... I really was hoping for a much more slender volume.
"Am I afraid, not very. If anything I'm anxious to get myself outta this pipsqueak hellhole I got myself into & restart the engine. Well, I've always wanted to write & now I've a chance to do almost nothing but. In fact, you might consider this a kind of working sabbatical. A harrowing blessing in disguise.
"Well, that's it for now. Stay true. Your pal in the pokey, Hoodlum."
Right back at you, Hood.
