'Not
just someone,' I interjected. 'Seeing a nigger.'
Father
John looked at me. 'Right, right, of course… that really was the issue at hand,
wasn't it?'
I
shrugged. 'I don't know whether that was the only issue, maybe there was
something else going on, but sure as hell if the rumors about who he was were
true it would be an awful slur on his reputation for his daughter to be seen
with a black guy.'
'The
rumors?' Father John asked.
'That
he was Klan… that he was Grand Wizard of the Empire or Grand Dickhead of the
Realm… whatever these fuckers call themselves -'
Father
John was laughing.
'What?'
'I
like that,' he said.
'What?'
'Grand
Dickhead of the Realm.'
I smiled.
'You know about these characters?' I asked.
'Some.'
'They're
fuckin' nuts, man, fuckin' nuts. Grand-this and Grand-that, and the Invisible
Empire, and the Union of the Snake. Robert Schembri told me all about the shit
they used to do…'
'Still
do,' Father John said.
'Right,
still do,' I said.
Father
John paused for a moment and looked away towards the window.
'So
they left,' he said.
I
nodded.
'And
you went home?'
'Right,'
I said.
'And
that's when you saw them… Nathan and Linny.'
I
nodded again. 'That's when I saw them.'
'Tell
me…'
I was
tired. Once more I had smoked too much, and now we could get coffee I was
drinking too much of that as well. My guts hurt, that kind of acidic burning
when you eat crap and chuck your system full of caffeine.
Carry
on like this and it would kill me.
Irony,
bitter-sweet and poisonous, filled my thoughts.
'Danny?'
I
looked up.
'Tell
me,' Father John prompted once more.
I
nodded, resigning myself to talk until the end.
I
could do that. I could talk.
Father
John seemed willing to listen, and hell, talking to someone was better than
talking to myself.
My
memories were clearer than they'd ever been, and whether this was good or bad I
didn't know.
Again,
for some reason, I wondered where those memories would go after November 11th.
Father
John would keep them, I thought. Father John would keep them for a while, and
then perhaps he would pass them on to someone else. Perhaps we all carried
around five-thousand-year-old memories that had travelled from generation to
generation all down the line. Maybe a hundred years from now someone would be
talking about me, this guy from North Carolina who fucked it all up so badly he
got himself electrocuted in Sumter.
Or
maybe not.
Maybe
it wasn't that important.
I had
wanted so much for my life to mean something. Something of worth, something of
value, something to be proud of. Not for my parents, not for anyone but me.,' wanted
to feel like I'd done something. And how would I be remembered? A white guy who
killed his best friend in a fit of jealousy and rage.
That's
not how it was. Not how it was at all. And there had been a time I believed
everyone involved knew that it could never have been that way.
But
now, more than ten years later, I no longer believed anyone cared.
'Danny?'
I
looked up. 'Father John,' I said, a little sarcastically. 'You're still here?'
'You're
tired,' he said. 'We'll talk some more tomorrow.'
'Tomorrow?'
I said. 'I thought we missed a day.'
'I'll
come tomorrow,' he said. 'We don't have much time. A fortnight will disappear
before you know it.'
I
frowned. 'A fortnight? I have a month.'
'Right,
Danny,' Father John said. 'But I only get to see you for the next two weeks,
and then once more on the tenth.'
I
frowned. 'How come?'
Father
John shrugged. 'It's the rules.'
'They
don't tell you why?'
He
shook his head. 'No, they don't tell me why.'
'Strange
shit goes on here,' I said.
'So,
tomorrow,' Father John said as he rose from his chair.
'Tomorrow,'
I replied.
He
lifted a half empty pack of Luckies. 'You want these?'
I
nodded. 'Sure, thanks.'
'Welcome,'
he said, and reached for the buzzer to call the Duty Officer.
I
would remember that day for a little while - not because of what I'd said, not
because of the clear reminder that Rousseau had given me about my forthcoming
rendezvous with
The Procedure Room -
but because of something I saw as I
left
God's Lounge
and waited for the Duty Second to come and get me.
Rousseau
walked away, down the corridor, a long and seemingly endless corridor that
would take him out of this place. Thirty yards from where I stood he suddenly
paused, looked to his right down an intersecting walkway, and then he was
joined by Warden Hadfield.
They
spoke for a few seconds, and then Rousseau turned, turned and looked directly
at me, and seeing me standing there he seemed to emanate a sense of surprise.
It was not something I saw, more something I felt. He seemed awkward for a
second, standing there beside Hadfield, and then he took Hadfield's arm and
directed him down the walkway and out of my line of sight.
I
wondered what they were saying, whether they were speaking of me or something
else entirely unrelated. That moment left me with a disquieting sense of
unease, and I considered all the discussions, all the conversations that were
taking place, that
had
taken place, about me. About what would happen.
About who I was. About my death.
I
turned as I heard Duty Second approaching. I looked down at my shoes. They
seemed a million miles away, but the sense of foreboding, of fear, was as close
as anything had ever been.
That
sense of fear was within, it was now part of me, and - no matter what happened
- it would walk with me all the way.
That
night, a couple of hours after John Rousseau left, Clarence Timmons came down
to see me.
He told
me that he'd been assigned Duty Officer on my Death Watch. From November 4th
until the end he would spend twelve hours a day with me in two six-hour shifts.
He explained how I would be shackled to wall stanchions, a wide leather belt
circumventing my waist and my hands cuffed to the belt at my sides. He said he
had tried it once, that it wasn't uncomfortable, just exceptionally difficult
to do anything but sit or lie down.
I
listened to him silently. I barely breathed. And when he had gone I waited
until the lights went down and then I sat on my bed in the darkness and
imagined I was elsewhere.
Port
Royal Sound.
Panama
City.
Anywhere
but here.
Eventually
I lay down and slept, slept like Nathan used to sleep.
No
dreams.
No
nightmares.
Nothing
but the sound of my own breathing whispering back at me from the dark.
But
for that I could have been dead.
The
following morning I woke before the bell. I knew it wasn't yet six, but I had
no way of telling the time. From where my cell was situated I could not see the
clock.
Mr.
West was on the Block, you could tell that right away, for as soon as the bell
went everyone was up and making noise, getting busy. Mr. West did not, would
not, tolerate late sleepers.
Plenty
of time to sleep when you're dead, he'd say.
The
Duty Second came down and told me I was on exercise time at nine, a half-hour
round the yard and back. He said if I had cigarettes I could smoke out there.
I
shaved, washed and dressed. We went up for breakfast, three at a time, an
evolution that took more than an hour and a half for twenty-one people. D-Block
could hold forty in all, but it seemed they were slightly more willing to
consider life terms these days. Why, I didn't know. Didn't make any difference
to me.
Breakfast
was cereal, skimmed milk made with powder, two pieces of dry toast, no butter,
a couple of spoonfuls of overcooked eggs and a cup of coffee that tasted like
tepid raccoon piss.
It
didn't take long to eat such a meal. It went down due to necessity alone.
Nine
o'clock came and went. The Duty Second came down maybe fifteen, twenty minutes
later and told me exercise time had been cancelled. Mr. West had decided on a
cell search instead.
Duty
Second should never have told me. Duty Second would have gotten his ass kicked
if Mr. West knew. To tell me was to give me warning, and though I didn't carry
drugs or a knife or anything else, I did carry a small wooden moth. Not exactly
dangerous contraband, but Mr. West was a man who would have taken his time
breaking it to pieces and kicking it out into the corridor. He would have done
such a thing for the revs, no other reason, and he would have gone home later
and jerked off about how excited he'd been.
Though
I had seen him many times, though he had spoken to me on many occasions, I
found it impossible to find the least understanding of Mr. West's passionate
desire for cruelty. He was a precise and systematic thug, a vicious and
uncompromising sadist, and I wondered what could have driven a child to become
such a man. From what he'd said, his father had been killed, murdered by blacks
someplace, but I knew West well enough to be convinced that West was merely a
reflection of his father. I had no doubt that his father had been killed by
people defending themselves, and perhaps he thought that all men were
responsible for how his own life had been. Thus his life had become a means by
which he could exact revenge, and what better place to do that than the Federal
Detention system? What better place to find victims who were incapable of
fighting back, men who had long since given up all hope of reprieve, who were
already beaten and broken and cowed? He was singular in his predilection for
ridicule and abuse, exacting in his demands for subservience, and with every
word that passed his lips he would find a target. This was his life, this was
who he was, and he took the greatest pleasure in practising until perfection
was achieved.
I
didn't see Mr. West until after my cell had been searched. I was given
clearance without any question. The moth I'd held in my hand the whole time.
They didn't look at my hands. They felt along the cuffs of my pants, around my
waistband, they checked inside my shoes, the collar of my shirt, but they
didn't check my hands. Figured perhaps that anyone stupid enough to actually
hold something during a cell search was ballsy enough to get away with it.
And I
did.
After
they'd gone I lay on my bed and slept for an hour or so.
Father
Rousseau would come later, mid-afternoon, and between now and lunch there
wasn't anything to interest me.
Lunch
came and went, another revolving evolution of three men in, three men out, and
by the time the meal was over it was close to 2.30 p.m.
Rousseau
would be here within the hour. I wanted him to come. I
needed
him to
come. He'd told me he'd read the trial records, that he'd come away with the
feeling that I'd never fought back. He was right. I went down, and I went down easy.
They weighted evidence against me. I even gave them a confession, a bullshit
confession granted, but good enough to get me here.