Somehow - I still don't even know how - a bunch of people found out I was cooking meth. Instead of going to the police, they started coming after me themselves. Joel was running for me back then, and we had no way of knowing how much they'd found out about him, but they had a way - like a magic powers kinda way - to get the truth outta me if they really wanted to. If I was going down, I was scared he'd go down with me.

Didn't end up happening, thank god. I got death-marched out to the woods for an old-fashioned questioning-plus-execution thing, but I never told 'em about Joel. And they never ended up pulling the trigger, anyway.

No more trouble now, since I been a good boy and stopped cooking. But that ain't gonna last.