'To
the State Psychiatric Hospital, yes,' I said.
'And
for the duration of the trial she was classified mentally unfit to testify?'
'You're
asking me questions you know the answers to.'
Father
John smiled. 'I'm sorry. It's just that even now I find it so hard to believe
that the entire thing was constructed around circumstantial evidence, that the
only witness was classified as mentally unfit to testify and kept in Charleston
State Psychiatric Hospital, and the State Defender never challenged any one of
the aspects of evidence put forward by the prosecution.'
I
shrugged. 'I think he was paid not to challenge them.'
Father
John looked up. 'By whom?'
'Linny's
father.'
'Because
it was his people that killed Nathan, the two men that stopped you at Eve
Chantry's house.'
'Right.'
Father
John sighed resignedly. 'And then there was the axe,' he said quietly.
I nodded.
'The axe from the woodshed, the axe I'd used that very same day to cut logs
outside.'
'And
that was what they used to decapitate Nathan Verney.'
I
nodded in the affirmative.
'And
there were no other fingerprints?'
'That's
what I was told.'
'By
Garrett?'
'Yes,'
I said. 'And then all the details over again in the trial. Forensics said there
were no indications of anyone but Nathan, myself and Linny having been in the
room, that the axe had only my fingerprints on it, that the footprints left in
the blood on the floor and the landing were concurrent with my entry and exit
to the room, with Linny's running away… you know the routine.'
'Okay,'
Father John said. 'Enough for today.'
'You
have somewhere better to be?' I asked.
'Somewhere
to be, though not necessarily somewhere better,' he answered.
He
started to rise from his chair.
'Father
John?'
He
looked at me.
'I
wondered if you could do something for me.'
'Sure,'
he said. 'What?'
'Do
you think you could find someone?'
He
shrugged. 'Who do you want me to find?'
'There
was a girl I knew in Greenleaf, a girl I went out with for a short while. Her
name was Caroline Lanafeuille, spelled L-A-N-A-F-E-U-I-L-L-E. She left
Greenleaf suddenly in August of '65, and I never knew where she went.'
'And
you want me to find out where she is now, seventeen years later?'
I
nodded. 'If you can.'
Father
John sat down again. 'Why, Danny?'
I
smiled and shrugged. 'Curiosity. She was the first girl I loved… hell, the way
I see things now, she was the
only
girl I ever loved.'
'And
what do you want to know?'
'If
she's okay, if she's married, does she have kids, anything at all really… if
it's possible.'
'Anything's
possible, Danny,' Father John said.
He
reached out and closed his hand over mine.
'And
if you find out these things or - a worse scenario - you find out she's not
okay, or even that she's dead… what then?'
'Then
nothing,' I said. 'I just want to know, that's all. Whatever the situation, I
just want to know. You think you can do that for me?'
Father
John nodded. 'I can try, Danny, best I can do is try.'
'Then
try, okay?'
Father
John smiled, squeezed my hand reassuringly, and once again rose to his feet.
'I'm
gonna be gone a couple of days now, Danny, maybe three.'
I
looked up. 'I will miss my interrogations,' I said.
'As
will I,' he replied. 'You take care, okay?'
'I'll
take care.'
Father
John reached for the buzzer.
I
stood up and waited for the Duty Officer to come take me home.
Later,
much later, I lay on the thin mattress in my cell, my eyes closed, and replayed
the events of that terrible night. I was tired, my eyes scattered with sand,
but I could not sleep. I turned everything over and over time and again, and I
could never get away from the feeling that I had created my own fate by my
omissions. Hindsight - our cruellest and most astute adviser - flickered in the
rearview mirror of my mind. It haunted me, taunted me with names and
accusations, and I watched it close up against me and
then
retreat, and then close up against me once more as if to remind me that
whatever I might think, however I might seek to justify my actions, it would
always be there. Every once in a while it carried Nathan's face, and then the
face of my mother, and at one point it looked like Caroline as she walked away
from my house that morning.
My
thoughts were disturbed by a sound to my right. I turned and, my eyes
accustomed to the dark, I saw a figure standing against the far wall a good
fifteen feet from where I lay.
The
figure moved, moved again, and then with half a dozen swift steps whoever it
was had reached the bars of my cell and stopped.
'Can't
sleep, little man?'
Mr.
West.
My
breath stopped in my lungs. My throat swelled and tightened with tension. I
tried to close my eyes, to block him out, but there was something far more
powerful forcing me to watch him.
He
shifted sideways and gripped the bars ahead of him. He brought his face up
close, and even through the darkness I could see the shadows beneath his eyes,
and above those shadows the direct and unflinching gaze that held me cornered,
barely able to move.
'Have
been thinking of you, Ford,' he whispered.
The
idea of Mr. West thinking of me disturbed me greatly. Like a killer selecting
you as his next victim, tailing you, stalking you, learning your routines and
habits, and all the while you know nothing.
'Have
been thinking about the hollowness you must feel right now, the pointlessness
of everything that you are, everything you have ever done… except when you
killed the nigger.'
West
laughed, a gentle creeping sound that echoed back at me from the walls and
ceiling.
'That,
my friend, was perhaps the only worthwhile thing you ever did.'
West
moved again, squatted down on his haunches so his eyeline was level with mine.
He was a good ten feet away, but in that moment it was almost as if I could
feel his breath against my skin as he spoke.
'And
the priest… what the fuck he comes down here for I don't know. Wasting what
little time you have left justifying your pitiful existence. Haven't you
figured out that there is no God yet? If there was a God would he have let you
rot here? Would he have seen you walk all the way to the chair and never once
raised his hand to help you? I think not.'
I
closed my eyes for a second or two. There was blackness behind my eyelids,
black and deep enough to swallow me. In that moment I wished it would.
West
stood up. He pushed himself away from the bars.
'Count
the days, Ford… count the days. Sleep if you can, but remember that for every hour
you sleep you lose another hour of the few you have remaining. It goes so fast.
Look at the last year… seems to have vanished into yesterday, right?'
I
shuddered. He was right. The last
twelve
years had folded neatly into a
heartbeat that I hadn't even noticed.
'Watch
it disappear, Ford… watch it all disappear…'
And
then he was gone. In the moment that it took to close and open my eyes he was
gone.
I
could hear the sound of my own heart beating. Conscious then more than ever of
that sound, I imagined it was slowing down. My heart knew the end was coming.
It was preparing itself. Preparing itself to stop.
And I
would stop with it.
That
simple.
It
was the 17th by the time Father John Rousseau came back.
The
previous four days had disappeared quietly, soundlessly, into nothing. Time had
become intangible, immeasurable, and though I knew when the days began and
ended because the lights came on and went out, it was still unsettling to
realize that only twenty-four remained. A little more than five hundred hours.
Clarence
Timmons came down to tell me Father John had arrived.
'How
you doing there, Danny?' Mister Timmons had asked.
I
looked up. I felt the heaviness of my face, the nothingness in my eyes.
'Don't
want to die, Mr. Timmons,' I said.
'I
know, son, I know.' His tone was that of a father comforting a child. 'You go
see Father Rousseau now, you talk to him, okay?'
I
nodded, rose from my bed, and waited for Mr. Timmons to pass the belt through.
'I
found her,' Father John said as I walked into the room.
I
frowned.
'Your
girlfriend, the Lanafeuille woman.'
The
Lanafeuille
woman.
She would be as old as me. I had not thought of this.
When I thought of her I saw a teenager.
'You
found her?'
I
didn't know what I felt. Something powerful. Something indescribable.
Father
John sat down. 'And you won't believe what she's doing.'
'What?'
Father
John smiled. 'She's a lawyer.'
I
started to laugh. I laughed at the irony, perhaps at the fact that she even
existed.
'You
spoke to her?' I asked.
'No,
Danny, of course I didn't speak to her.'
'How
did you find her?'
'I called
Greenleaf High School, got the details of the school she transferred to in
1965, and then I just followed the trail. It was easy to find her, a lot easier
than I thought.'
'Where
does she live?'
'In
Charleston.'
'She's
still here, in North Carolina?'
Father
John nodded. 'Yes, she's still here.'
'And
she's a lawyer.'
'A
conservation lawyer,' Father John said.
'A
what?'
'A
conservation lawyer. She handles cases to do with land rights and violations of
public ordinances regarding waste dumping, that kind of thing.'
I was
quiet for a moment. I could see her face. I could smell her as she leaned over
and kissed me as she left. I could remember not wanting to look out the window.
Not wanting to remember her leaving.
'Danny?'
I
looked up.
'You
okay?'
'Sure,'
I said. 'Sure.'
'Does
this upset you?' Father John asked.
I
shrugged my shoulders. 'I don't know what I feel… upset, happy to hear she's
okay… I don't know.'
'Why
did you want me to find out?'
I
shook my head. There was a tightness in my chest, a feeling that tears would
well into my eyes if I didn't grit my teeth, clench my fists, hold it all in…
But I
couldn't.
Someone,
something, was gently, irrevocably pushing me towards somewhere I didn't want
to go. I started to cry. I could feel the rush of pain through my chest, my
head, my whole body. I began to shake, to sob, and I sat there rocking back and
forth as Father John came round the table and placed his hands on my shoulders.