Everything She Ever Wanted (52 page)

didn't seem to have much sense of tact about how Tom might feel.
 
It

seemed like the further down he got, the more she picked away at him.

Tom put it down to her own unhappiness; she had no idea what she was

doing to him.

To be sure that she was taken care of while he was in prison, Tom

willingly'acceded to Pat's request that he sign over his power of

attorney to her.
 
That way she could handle their affairs and parcel

out what little money they had left without having to travel down to

Jackson to get his signature.
 
That way she would be making decisions

about his children.

. . .

Before the dogwoods budded out in the spring of 1976, Tom was on his

way to Jackson, handcuffed to another prisoner, both of them chained to

another pair of prisoners in the bus seat behind them.
 
That was "the

chain," and it was as long as short as the number of prisoners

shuffling off to "the or walls."

Once Tom was in Jackson, Pat made sure that she would be source of

information.
 
She told everyone that only his primary "immediate family

members" were allowed to write to him.
 
No one else wrote to him for a

long time, believing it was forbidden.

Tom viewed all events through his wife's letters.
 
The state of Georgia

and his wife controlled his life.

Although Pat's doctors had doubted she would be able to stand the

fifty-mile trip down to Jackson, she managed amazingly well.

While Tom was still in the "fish tank"-the diagnostic testing that all

new prisoners go through-he was allowed no visitors for six weeks.

After that, Pat visited, in a setting where they could touch.
 
There,

Pat spoke openly for the first time of a plan she had been hinting

at.

Since Tom would be locked up for so long, she had come to realize that

the only way they could be reunited was to pledge to commit suicide.

Initially, he didn't take her seriously.

When Tom finished his diagnostic tests in Jackson, he was put to work

as an inmate clerk and became "a pretty good secretary."

He did well.
 
Somehow, finally being in prison wasn't nearly as bad as

the two years of waiting in the Fulton County jail.

Whenever he and Pat visited or talked on the phone, she would mention

the suicide pact.
 
Tom always refused to discuss it.

Talking softly and fervently to his wife from a pay phone in Jackson,

he murmured, "Shug, don't say we'll never be together again.

Never-that's like a steel door.
 
'Never gonna come home.

Never gonna do this.
 
Never gonna do that.
 
I've gotta have hope,

Shug.

Pat, I would do anything in this world for you-" "Almost, Shug," she

said, so quietly that he could barely hear her.

'%%at?"

"Almost.
 
Almost anything."

He knew what she meant, and he realized she had trapped him.

She kept talking.
 
"Can you do something for me?
 
Say you love me more

than anyone, but don't say you love me more than anything.

"Why don't you want me to say it?"

"Because it's not any thing."

He sighed.

"I know you love me more than anybody," she argued.
 
"But not more than

any thing.
 
You love life more than any thing.

Gently, Pat reminded him that he had betrayed her in the most basic

way.
 
But as she kept talking about it, he had the odd sense that a

rabbit had run over his grave.
 
It was not fair, she complained, that

he was not willing to kill himself so that he could be with her in

eternity.
 
She had no one to take care of her and he was thoughtless

and uncaring to expect her to go on alone when, if he truly loved her,

they could be together in death.
 
Her quiet sobs echoing in his ears,

Tom went back to his cell feeling useless and depressed.

Even so, he was glad for the next call, the next visit.
 
Tom looked

forward to seeing his wife on visitors' day and to getting letters from

her.

She was his world-all the world that mattered to him.

Her visits, however, were sometimes as upsetting as her calls.
 
Tom was

a little chagrined at Pat's behavior when she came to Jackson.
 
Pat

waged full-scale war on the authorities who controlled her husband's

destiny.
 
She never failed to cause, at the very least, a hassle-and

often a scene.

All mail was censored.
 
Tom's letters to Pat had to be handed unsealed

to the guard for mailing, and all of her letters were read before they

were given to him.
 
Pat's letters were full of references to various

prison officials, derogatory and inflammatory comments.
 
It was almost

as if she were deliberately taunting them.
 
"Here I was doing my best

to be a model inmate," Tom said later, "and she kept making accusations

against the system."

Whatever she did, Tom still longed for Pat with a steady ache, and he

went to sleep nights listening to the poignant love songs -their

songs-that bespoke unspent passion and endless frustration.
 
It well

nigh killed him that he couldn't be with her-to help her and to take

care of Paw and Ma.
 
Pat continued to remind Tom not to talk to

anyone.

He must remember that he couldn't trust anyone else-not even his

lawyers.
 
Sometimes he wondered what the point was.
 
He was in prison,

and it looked as if he were going to stay there for a long, long

time.

His appeals were almost exhausted.

As the months dragged on, Pat was no longer vague about when and how

she and Tom should commit suicide.
 
She reminded him constantly that it

was the only way for them to be together.
 
"One time, she told me we

were going to do it next week," Tom recalled later, grimacing.
 
"She

didn't show me what she had, but .
 
. . she even tried to bring some

stuff into Jackson, and she wanted me to commit suicide with her right

there.
 
It was supposed to be some sort of pills or something.
 
I told

her, 'I ain't ready to die yet."
 
She told me to take them, and then

she'd go out and take some herself, and we'd both be dead, and we could

be together.
 
I couldn't.
 
It didn't make any kind of sense.
 
Besides,

I didn't believe in suicide, and that's what she wanted Pat was asking

him to make the supreme sacrifice for their love.
 
She was asking him

to die for her-and trust that she would die for him.
 
Tom wouldn't do

it, perhaps because, for the first time, he was beginning to have

serious doubts about his wife.

Dr. R. Lanier Jones had his own practice, specializing in internal

medicine, on Church Street in East Point.
 
Nona and Paw Allanson had

been his patients for almost a decade.
 
Jones was one of a vanishing

breed of doctor; he actually made house calls.
 
iOn the night of the

double murder of Walter and Carolyn, he had gotten out of bed and gone

over to see to the elder Allansons.

Old Walter was a brick wall of a man.
 
He had started in steelwork in

1926, farming in his spare time, and didn't quit until he was over

sixty-five.
 
Nona, younger than Paw by seven years, had not enjoyed the

same robust health.
 
Dr. Jones had treated her for two massive

strokes, in 1968 and 1974.
 
Nona's right arm and both legs were

completely paralyzed, she had only partial use of her left arm, and she

had difficulty swallowing.

Her speech was slurred so badly that only those close to her could

decipher what she was saying.
 
All of her life she had been active, and

she was a proud woman.
 
Now, she could do virtually nothing for

herself.

Paw and Nona had been married for forty-n'the years.
 
Not openly

demonstrative people, they were a quiet love match, and Dr. Jones was

impressed with Paw's tender attention to his wife.
 
"He had been

extremely strong.
 
. . . He lifted her, 'turned her frequently through

the night, helped her into her chair.
 
[All the] bodily care of her

through the years.
 
I thought he was an extremely strong person."

Paw kept his wife spotlessly clean and well fed.
 
He tempted Nona's

appetite with his corn muffins and coconut-sweet potato pie.
 
Most

stroke patients get bedsores, but Nona didn't.
 
She needed an enema

every night, and Paw took care of that with sensitivity and as little

fuss as possible.

Paw was not a smoker or a drinker, and he took few pills.

"He just didn't want it-didn't need it," his doctor recalled.
 
The old

man had suffered stoically through the loss of his only son and

daughter-in-law, the conviction of his grandson, and then had borne

much of the cost of Tom's defense.
 
But at seventy-nine, the burdens

had taken their toll.
 
In the middle of January 1976, Paw called his

doctor complaining of a tightness in his chest and some pain.
 
Dr.

Jones sent his own nurse out to Washington Road to drive Paw back to

his office.
 
Paw insisted he was just fine, but Jones determined that

he had had a heart attack and sent him immediately to South Fulton

Hospital.
 
A blood clot had blocked a coronary artery and a portion of

Paw's heart muscle had died.

Dr. Jones had Nona admitted for temporary care in a nursing home, but

she was miserable there without Paw so she was transferred to South

Fulton too and placed in a room right next to Paw's.

Jean Boggs learned belatedly about her father's heart attack from her