The Innocent Man

Ron moves to Tulsa, where he takes a job selling upscale menswear. He reconnects with Bruce Leba and the two return to their hard-partying habits, staying out late and chasing women. Ron can’t let go of his dreams of making it in the big leagues, though Bruce tries to convince him to face the reality of his situation. His family also notices changes in Ron’s personality. At family gatherings, he either loudly dominates all conversations, ranting about topics that interest only him, or locks himself in his bedroom and ignores everyone else. He exhibits drastic mood swings, from sullen depression and anger to outgoing charm that borders on hyperactivity. He drinks heavily and uses various recreational drugs. But when his father is diagnosed with cancer, Ron is distraught, and cries for hours at his father’s bedside, begging for forgiveness for his selfishness.

When Ron’s father dies, Ron is sharing an apartment in Tulsa with Stan Wilkins. The two friends enjoy playing guitars together for hours at a time. They also frequent the disco scene. Ron tries to take home a different woman every night, and he often succeeds. About a month after his father’s death, though, Lyza Lentzch accuses Ron of raping her. Ron claims they had consensual sex. He is arrested, posts bail, and hires a lawyer. Before the case comes to trial, another woman, Amy Dell Ferneyhough, also accuses Ron of raping her. Again, Ron claims they had had consensual intercourse. Ron is found not guilty in both cases. He keeps the details from his family, but they observe that his mood swings become more violent during this time, and his drinking gets even heavier, so that “the alcohol fueled the depression, or maybe the depression required more alcohol” (28). He quits his job and spirals downward. When he arrives on his mother’s doorstep with no place else to go, he looks “awful—long hair, unshaven face, dirty clothes” (29).

He moves into his mother’s house but sleeps on the couch (up to 20 hours a day) because he is afraid to enterhis old bedroom. Though he occasionally leaves for a few days, sometimes to look for work and sometimes to follow the nightlife, he always returns exhausted and collapses on the couch again. His mother sets up an apartment for him in the garage where he can drink, smoke, and play guitar. She convinces him to see a mental health worker, who diagnoses him as manic-depressive and prescribes Lithium, which Ron refuses to take. A series of mental health consults follow, but each time, Ron is unable to follow through with the professional’s recommendations. In residential treatment, he is noncompliant and angry; when living at home, he misses appointments, neglects his prescribed medications, and drinks heavily. Doctors describe him as having “bizarre and sometimes psychopathic behavior” and speculate as to whether he is “a schizoid individual with sociopathic trends, or the reverse, [a] sociopathic individual with schizoid trends” (30).

Ron works intermittently for the same door-to-door sales company that had employed his father and becomes a regular in the bars of Ada. He is “a sloppy drunk, talking loud, bragging about his baseball career, and bothering women” (30). The local police hear about his rape charges and began keeping an eye on him, jailing Ron in 1980 for drunk driving. When he gets out, he continues drinking, “borrowing” money often from friends and family. After a second DUI, he shows up unexpectedly at the home of his sister,Renee, and her husband. He stays with them for a while, but his talk is delusional, he is unable to keep a job as a farm hand, and he disrupts the family’s schedule by staying up all night watching TV at full volume and sleeping through the day. Eventually, he goes back to his mother’s house. More drunk-driving arrests and more visits to mental hospitals follow, but nothing changes Ron’s condition.