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  A couple dozen guys and girls partied in the warm summer waters Lake Hamilton style, on a flotilla of pontoon boats and speed boats, various inflatables or skis in tow. With ice chests overflowing with cold drinks and music blaring, the girls sunbathed and the guys showed off with backflips. And in the middle of it all was Adam, life jacket fastened securely. His buddies taunted him, “Dude, Adam, your mom’s not here!” To which Adam replied, “Naw. It’s no big deal. I promised.”

  Jeff Buschmann and Adam after running a logging road in the Ouachita woods. Jeff recalls that the stick had something to do with fending off rattlesnakes.

  “Adam was like no other kid I ever met,” says Roger Buschmann, who was privy to Adam’s resolve that day. He was even more impressed a few months later when Adam was one of five buddies invited to the Buschmann home for a sleepover. “At two in the morning I heard a knock on our bedroom door,” he says. “It was Adam, holding a phone. Ends up the boys had snuck out to crash a girls’ slumber party but got caught by the mother, who was not pleased when she called me to come get them.”

  As Roger Buschmann was leaving the house, he asked Adam why he hadn’t gone with his buddies.

  “My parents told me not to leave the house without permission, sir.”

  They might be able to out-party Adam, but none of his buddies could beat his crazy stunts. While they’d all jump from the 70 West bridge forty feet into the lake, Adam would add flips and gainers, a forward dive with a reverse rotation. At football camp he was the undisputed belly-flop king, doing five in a row—off the high board.

  Then there was his penchant for jumping into (not out of) trees. On his first attempt off a twenty-five-foot-tall bridge into a thirty-foot elm, he missed entirely the branch he was aiming for. The one he did hit snapped, along with others that slowed his fall to the base of the tree, where he landed feet first, a shower of leaves fluttering down around him.

  Figuring he’d chosen the wrong genus of tree, Adam tried leaping into a large evergreen off the second-floor deck of a friend’s house a few weeks later. The branch bowed under his weight, then broke. Jeff Buschmann, on hand to witness the carnage, heard a succession of grunts as Adam hit branch after branch on his way down.

  “Please don’t do that again,” he told Adam, who walked away bruised but not broken. “You’re going to hurt yourself.”

  Adam considered his friends—including Jeff, Heath Vance, and Richard Williams—an extension of his family, and they bonded like brothers in what all of them felt was an idyllic country-boy upbringing. Playing football, swimming and boating in the lake, hiking in the woods, making out with girls, drinking beer, having bonfires, backyard basketball games, house parties, and fistfights—usually with each other—and pulling pranks.

  One night when they were sixteen, Jeff, Richard, and Adam rolled a house in an entire case of toilet paper, then tore through the woods to get back to the car they’d left discreetly parked on a different street. Their escape was almost complete when a dark figure materialized by the car, waiting patiently.

  Moments later, they were in the backseat of a police cruiser, Jeff and Richard squeezed in on either side of Adam, who kept saying, “My momma and daddy are going to be so disappointed.”

  “He started crying like a baby,” says Richard, “and Buschmann looks over at him and says, ‘Adam! Stop your crying! Don’t you have any more respect for your father than that?’ ”

  He cried most of the way to the station, and when Larry showed up, he started again. Early the following morning Larry drove him over to the house to help clean up the mess with the other culprits. No other discipline was necessary, because “the ride in the police car did the trick,” says Janice. “He apologized for weeks.”

  At the beginning of the summer before their senior year, Adam sat down with Jeff, Heath, Richard, and a few of the other varsity football players. In one year Adam had shot up to almost six feet out of the six foot two he’d eventually reach. He was lean and lanky and, on the field, anything but graceful. “He was proof that you didn’t have to be the biggest or the fastest to be a leader,” says Richard. “It was his heart—his spirit—that drew people to him.”

  Indeed, Adam was passionate about his final year as a Wolf. In his junior year, they’d made it to the state semifinals, which wasn’t bad, but Adam was emphatic: if they really wanted to put Lake Hamilton High on the map, they needed to make the finals. The only way to accomplish that would be to work out, eat right, not drink a drop of beer, and hold conditioning practices on their own before the start of the football season. A pact was made, and to the beat of songs like “Kickstart My Heart” by Mötley Crüe and “Eye of the Tiger” by Survivor, the teammates pumped iron in the weight room, ran the bleachers and did wind sprints, and cranked out push-ups, sit-ups, and leg lifts.

  When the official two-a-day practices began in late August, “We were stunned by the team’s level of fitness,” says Coach Anderson.

  “We would have been mediocre that season if we hadn’t rallied the way we did,” says Richard. “It took leaders like Adam to inspire so many guys to get out there and sweat their summer away for a long shot.”

  The Lake Hamilton Wolves won their first game. Then their second, and third—and they kept winning, all but one game, landing them in the state finals and inspiring Adam to shave his jersey number, 24, into the cropped sides of his mullet.

  Although the team ultimately lost the state championship, as Arkansas State runner-up champions, it surpassed everyone’s expectations and earned bragging rights throughout Garland County. The 1991 Wolves would forever be remembered as the players who put Lake Hamilton on the high school football map in Arkansas.

  Over the Christmas holiday break, Richard and Adam were watching a video at the Williamses’ house when they saw an action-packed preview for the movie Navy SEALs, which began with Lieutenant Dale Hawkins (played by Charlie Sheen) jumping from the back of a speeding Jeep off a highway bridge into water at least fifty feet below. This spectacular stunt was followed by gunfire, explosions, and a deep, melodramatic voiceover and monologue: “When danger is its own reward, there are men who will go anywhere, dare anything. They’re Navy SEALs, a unique fighting force who doesn’t know how to lose.… Navy SEALs get paid to take risks; they’re paid to die if necessary.… Together they are America’s designated hitters against terrorism. Born to risk, trained to win … Navy SEALs …”

  In 1991, the Lake Hamilton Wolves seniors led the team in a historic season to become runner-up Arkansas State champions; #24 Adam, #20 Heath Vance, #19 Jeff Buschmann, and #16 Richard Williams.

  Danger is its own reward? Go anywhere, dare anything? Hell, Richard thought immediately, they aren’t talking about the Navy SEALs—they’re talking about Adam.

  Adam, on the other hand, was most inspired by the stunt. “I’m gonna do that,” he said to Richard. “I’m going to jump out of a car when we’re crossing the 70 West bridge.”

  “You’re crazy,” said Richard.

  As senior year progressed, every time Adam drove across the bridge, he brought the topic up to whichever buddies he was with.

  “We all jumped off that bridge,” Jeff says, “but to do it from a speeding vehicle … let me tell you, it’s scary enough standing still and doing it.”

  “I don’t want any part of it,” Jeff informed Adam. “And you are not using my Jeep.”

  As Adam and his friends walked out to the school parking lot following the end-of-year athletic banquet, Adam announced he was ready for the bridge. Jeff remained steadfast in his refusal to allow Adam to jump from his car, and Richard, who was driving a Pontiac Grand Am, didn’t have the right type of vehicle. Another friend volunteered his Suzuki Samurai, and they headed out into the night, a convoy of a half-dozen vehicles with Adam riding in the back of the open-topped Samurai.

  Richard drove directly behind the Samurai, nervous but also confident that nothing would happen to Adam. “He’d bend, he’d get hurt,” says Richard, “
but he never broke. He never didn’t get up.”

  The convoy slowed to about thirty miles per hour halfway across the bridge. The water below was dark, making it impossible to spot any boats or floating debris—not that Adam cared. Richard watched the Samurai edge closer and thought, Maybe this isn’t such a good idea. The Samurai was now in the bike lane, just a foot or so away from the waist-high concrete wall. Then the silhouette of Adam rose up in the back, held on to the roll bar for a second, and dived into the abyss.

  Richard threw on his hazard lights and screeched to a halt as Jeff sped past to get to the other side, where Adam would exit the water. The other cars pulled over as well, and Adam’s buddies scrambled out and leaned against the bridge wall, scanning below. There was just enough ambient light for Richard to see Adam swimming to shore.

  “You all right, Adam?” he shouted.

  “Yeah!” Adam yelled up.

  Sprinting down the trail, Jeff reached the water’s edge the same time Adam did. “Damn, Adam,” he said, offering a hand. “How was it?”

  Adam explained that when he’d dived out of the Samurai, he had hoped to straighten out and land feet first. Instead, he’d hit the water sideways, which from that height and with the forward momentum was more than he’d bargained for.

  “I don’t think I’ll do that again,” was his response. “Slapped the water pretty hard, but I’m glad I did it—it would have eaten at me forever.”

  4

  Slipping

  DECKED OUT IN WOLF COLORS, MAROON AND GOLD, the Hot Springs Convention Center was the only building in town that could hold the crowd for Lake Hamilton High School’s 1992 graduation ceremony. Along with the rest of the school board, Larry Brown was seated on stage, taking turns presenting diplomas as principal Curtis Williams called out the graduates’ names. In the audience Janice nudged Shawn when Larry stood up and approached the podium. Adam’s and Manda’s names were coming up; they were both graduating with honors.

  “Adam Leroy Brown,” Principal Williams spoke into the microphone. The nearly three hundred graduates erupted in laughter.

  “I didn’t know Adam’s middle name was Leroy,” Shawn said to his mother.

  “It’s not,” replied Janice, shaking her head and a little perturbed as she watched Adam strut up to his dad to receive his diploma.

  “He grinned real big when he shook my hand,” says Larry, “because he had just put one over on the principal by telling him his middle name was Leroy, not Lee.”

  Once the laughter subsided and people stopped shouting “Leroy Brown!” Manda’s name was called, and when she shook her father’s hand, she smiled and rolled her eyes.

  At the end of the ceremony, the grads threw their caps in the air. Adam ended his high school career with a bang, literally, as he walked out the door, but once Manda and he had posed for photos and said their good-byes to friends, Adam became melancholy. Always sentimental, he made sure to tell Jeff, Richard, and Heath, “No matter where we are, no matter what we’re doing, we’ll always be there for each other.”

  Right before heading off to college, Richard drove Adam home through the winding roads of Hot Springs. It was dusk, the windows were rolled down, the warm summer wind was on their faces, the familiar woods of their youth blurred by, and they hung on to every chord of Hank Williams Jr.’s guitar as they sang along to “Country Boy Can Survive.”

  Soon after, the country boys from Lake Hamilton scattered in pursuit of their educations. Jeff went to the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville with plans to attend Officer Candidate School and become a Navy pilot. Heath headed to the University of Central Arkansas in Conway, where he had mapped out an education in sports medicine in order to stay involved with football. Having earned a full-ride football scholarship to Ouachita Baptist University, Richard was living the dream—as well as studying accounting.

  While Adam had dreamed of playing college football for the University of Arkansas Razorbacks, a scholarship wasn’t in the cards for him. “Adam was like Rudy wanting to play for the Fighting Irish,” says Richard, referring to the true story of Daniel “Rudy” Ruettiger, a steel mill worker’s son who had all the heart but not the size, financial means, or grades to attend, much less play for, Notre Dame. “That movie [Rudy] came out around that time, and when I saw it, all I could think about was Adam. His desire far outreached his size and skills, just like Rudy.”

  Still, Adam was pleased to attend Arkansas Tech University, a smaller college two hours from home, where he was confident he would be a star on the football team. He “walked on” for the Wonder Boys, and his toughness earned him a spot on defense, but he barely touched the field the entire season, playing just a few downs in three of the games.

  “It was the first time Adam realized he wasn’t everything he thought he was on the football field,” says Larry, who with Janice attended all his home games and some of the away ones. “He wasn’t fast enough or big enough to compete at the college level.”

  In high school Adam was a popular standout who had thrived on his crazy, unstoppable reputation. But at Arkansas Tech he was just another student, another face, and another forgettable jersey on game day. His grades were mediocre: biology, C; chemistry, D; college algebra, C; sociology, B. In a family where Cs were unacceptable, Adam was slipping.

  He vowed to his parents that he would do better second semester, but his grades were the same for the follow-on courses in biology, chemistry, and algebra: C, D, and C. His one A was in bowling. He worked at a retail store as a clerk to help offset the expenses paid by his parents, and in his free time he would go to parties and hang out at the bars and clubs around campus with friends he’d made in class or on the team. But for the first time in his life, he seemed out of sync.

  “Adam went through his awkward stage later than most,” remembers Manda. “We’d talk on the phone, and you could tell he was unhappy, didn’t really fit in with any one group, and that’s what I mean by ‘awkward.’ Adam had always been friends with everybody, and in college that changed. Lots of acquaintances but no real friends.”

  The summer after his freshman year, Adam returned home to work for his father. Being in Hot Springs recharged his batteries for the fall of 1993, when he transferred to Henderson State University in Arkadelphia—the same college where Shawn had been on a football scholarship until he’d blown out his knee.

  Although Adam had never quit anything in his life, he read the writing on the wall. He could not stand being sidelined and made the hard decision to put football behind him. His new sport was drinking, and his new “party friends” had a hard time matching Adam’s abilities with a beer funnel.

  Over Christmas break their sophomore year, Adam, Jeff, Heath, and Richard slid into the bench seat of Adam’s black Ford F-150 pickup to head to a party across town. Within moments of their reunion—the first time they’d all been together since the previous summer—Adam elbowed Jeff in the ribs and said, “It’s like a day hasn’t passed, and here we are together again.”

  Around midnight they were returning home on Central Avenue when a truck sped up to their tail, swerved back and forth, then nearly ran them off the road as it passed.

  “They can’t do that in our town!” Jeff said angrily.

  “Hell no!” said Adam. “Let’s slow these guys down.” Stepping on the accelerator, he pulled alongside the truck and shouted, “Slow down!”

  Four guys in their early twenties looked over. “Yeah?” the driver yelled back. “Pull over!”

  Both vehicles pulled off the road near McClard’s Bar-B-Q, then, as though straight out of a scene in a movie, the two groups of four got out and moved slowly toward each other from the black night into the dim white glow of a nearby streetlight. The driver was the biggest, and like the others, he had both hands balled up in tight fists and came in swinging. “We’re from Little Rock!” he yelled. “You don’t want to f— with us!”

  A solid right jab from Adam hit the guy square in the mouth, and a full-on brawl
erupted between the two groups. Jeff took a hard punch to his ribs. Shoving back, he saw a stiletto blade in the shaking hand of the guy who had hit him, and felt warmth moving down his side. When he tore open his flannel shirt to look, the white undershirt was turning dark red and blood was pooling at his beltline. Anger surged to rage, and Jeff grabbed the guy by the hair, yanked him to the ground, and began pounding his face with the other fist.

  “What the hell are you doing?” Adam yelled, pulling Jeff away. “You’re going to break his skull open!”

  “He f—ing bladed me, man!” said Jeff, holding his shirt open and beginning to stumble.

  Just as the guys from Little Rock jumped back in their truck and slammed the door, Adam let out what Jeff describes as a “primal roar,” charged straight at the front of the vehicle, and launched himself into the air. Clearing the hood, he rammed his head like a torpedo into the windshield, which caved in with a sickening thud—a spiderweb of cracks extending from the hole. After rolling off the side of the hood, Adam stood up.

  The truck door swung open and there was a loud, ominous chu-chunk. One of the guys had chambered a round in a shotgun and leveled it at Heath, who raced for cover behind Adam’s truck.

  Boom! Boom! the shotgun went off, and Richard scrambled under Adam’s truck. When he stood up on the other side, he saw Jeff stumbling toward him, noticed the blood, and assumed he’d been shot. “Richard!” yelled Jeff. “Help me.”

  Half carrying, half dragging a nearly unconscious Jeff to a retaining wall beside the truck, the friends ducked down as two more shotgun rounds blasted off. Blood had now soaked the front of both of Jeff’s shirts.

  “If we don’t do something, Busch is going to die,” Richard said. Adam immediately jumped over the wall and ripped off his shirt. Shaking his fists in the air, he walked toward the guy with the gun, yelling, “If you’re going to shoot me, f—ing shoot me!” Visibly shaking, the guy didn’t say anything but also didn’t put down the gun, so Adam kept walking until the barrel was only a couple of feet away and pointed straight at his chest. “Then I’m going to take my friend to the hospital.”