The Life of the World to Come (23 page)

[The ELDERLY MOTHER of BEAU WADE DEAN bursts into tears in the gallery.]

DASHER (cont.)

Broken, yes, like the
criminal justice system itself!
And what's broken … is a promise—a simple, sacred promise our forefathers made to each other more than two centuries ago: that this nation would forever stand for the highest ideals of justice, for what Abraham Lincoln called “the better angels of our nature.”

PROSECUTING ATTORNEY 1

[Rising cynically] Your honor, where is this going?

OLD JUDGE

Yes, I agree. Mr. Dasher, what is the meaning of all this?

DASHER

Meaning, your honor? Heh. Sometimes I don't even know myself. I guess I let my emotions get the best of me. You know, it's a funny thing, emotions—they can make you do things you wouldn't ordinarily do, say things you wouldn't ordinarily say, even
see
or
hear
things that aren't really there, just because you want to see or hear them. Just because you want an explanation for something that can't be explained, for something … that has broken your heart. When we let ourselves be ruled by our emotions, well, that's when we crave things like vengeance. But justice … justice isn't about our emotions. Justice is about mercy; it's about reason. It's about looking at a man—a man like Beau Wade Dean—and saying, I will listen to your side of the story. I will listen not with my heart, but with my head.

OLD JUDGE

Mr. Dasher, if you do not arrive at something resembling a point very soon, I'm going to have to—

DASHER

I'm sorry, your honor. In fact, I'm sorry to everyone here. Because the truth is I'm not a very good lawyer.

[EVERYONE murmurs and gasps again.]

DASHER (cont.)

I'm not even a very good man. In many ways, I guess you could say I'm a lot like Beau Wade Dean here. I've lied and I've cheated. I've let my emotions run wild—I guess you've seen me do that right here in this courtroom. But you cannot hold Beau Wade Dean responsible for my emotions … for my
failings
 … any more than you can hold him responsible for the emotions of the witness who maybe couldn't quite see through the rain, or the other witness who maybe couldn't quite hear over the sound of the construction noise. That would not be justice. Because justice lies in that shadow of a doubt, in the feeling you're getting right now, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, in your heads, even if it isn't a feeling you have yet in your hearts. That feeling … is justice.

PROSECUTING ATTORNEY 2

[Snidely] Objection, your honor!

OLD JUDGE

On what grounds?

PROSECUTING ATTORNEY 2

Relevance! What does all this talk about hearts and heads have anything to do with … [He struggles for words]

OLD JUDGE

Yes, counselor?

DASHER

With justice, your honor! He wants to know what it has to do with justice, and I for one don't blame him. Because in all this legalese, well, something has been lost. And that something … is truth—pure, simple truth. And the truth is, a man is dead. And the truth is, he won't be coming back. And the truth is, executing Beau Wade Dean won't make a lick of difference. And you know—
in your heads
—that you aren't certain what happened on that day. You've got what we lawyers call a reasonable doubt. And if what I'm saying is starting to make sense to you, if you're beginning to feel just that slightest twinge that you're not sure … well, there's only one thing for you to do. Stop the bloodshed. Open your hearts to the family of the victim. And open your head to the Constitution of the United States of America. Because justice deserves more than the brunt of our emotions. Thank you.

[DASHER sits back down, sweat dripping from his brow, brooding with an emotion. Exhausted, he slowly pours himself a glass of water at the defense table. We cut to commercial.]

There's a science to putting people to death, an actual field of study with concepts and literature and its own name: ktenology. The Austrian-American psychologist Leo Alexander coined the term not long after serving as a medical advisor during the Nuremberg Trials; he'd observed a number of Nazi euthanasia experiments at Dachau, and was well-versed in the means by which a state might execute one of its own. He had a long career at Tufts, broke ground on multiple sclerosis research and the study of various neuropathologies, and even helped police crack the infamous Boston Strangler case. Dr. Alexander died in 1985, and my mother was fascinated enough by his impressive obituary in the local paper that it lingered in her memory for a full year: this is why my name is Leo.

When the state of Georgia decides that they want you to die, here is what happens: the death chamber is a sort of operating theater, and they bind you to a long metal gurney that gets wheeled to the center of the stage; heart monitors are affixed to your chest; you lie in silence while masked attendants pepper you with intravenous hookups, dry for the moment, but not for long; a supervising technician paces the room with purpose, checking at various stations your vital signs and the apparatuses that shortly will kill you; the tubes in your arms coil through small holes in the concrete wall and terminate in another room, where waits a bag of saline solution and a bag of your deadly cocktail; the saline starts to flow; the warden says “alright,” and an actual curtain draws back to reveal a third room—this with a plexiglass window for viewing—where a smattering of prison officials, your lawyer, and your uncle by marriage are standing by.

“I will shortly be granted my heavenly manumission,” said Michael Tiegs through the window, his voice faint but clear. It wasn't his time to speak, though, and the warden motioned to the supervising technician, who motioned to Tiegs in turn.

“I was thinking,” Tom Jones whispered, scratching freely at the thistles of his beard, “maybe this is what needs to happen. I think he's ready. I think it'll bring some peace to some folks; I know it'll bring some peace to poor June.”

On stage, they adjusted the gurney so that the onlookers could see. It must have been a one-way window; Michael didn't seem to be aware of us, as close as we were. His face was severely etiolated, and his skin looked slick. The supervising technician seemed unimpressed by the proceedings—neither he, nor the warden, nor the officials huddled to my left, nor even old Tom Jones betrayed any hint of the day's gravity. All was orderly, and the rooms were so much brighter than they'd been in my dreams.

“Brother Leo!” rang out Michael's voice from beyond the plexiglass, and I jolted and gasped. Then again: “Brother Leo!” I was frozen like that: jolt and gasp, paralyzed, mouth gaping, like a fish being hauled up into the suffocating sky for the first time in its life.

“I think he's talking to you, son,” whispered Tom Jones; I thought maybe he was whispering because of the prison personnel in the room.

“I know,” I said, then, coming to, I turned to the closest official and asked if Michael could hear me through the window.

“No sir,” he drawled, and though I hadn't noticed before, I realized now that this was the man in the brown suit. “What you're hearing from in there gets piped in over an intercom. That's why the sound's a little distorted. No, sir, these rooms are all soundproof.”

“I see,” I said.

“Lotta times, you get the victim's family in here to watch—mommas and grandmommas and orphaned children and all that; brothers with anger in their heart. Can't have them spouting off at the prisoner. Not at a time like this.”

The man in the brown suit went back to his cluster of officials, and I turned again to the window in time to hear Michael call out once more, in the throes of some delirium, some clear fever which terrified me to no end.

“Brother Leo! This is a test! This is just a dying body! My sleeping soul, and this is only a test!”

His eyes were wider than they'd ever been, wider than seemed possible. I looked away.

“He's raving,” whispered Tom Jones. “He's stark raving mad. Just talking nonsense—what's he even saying, now?”

The warden motioned to the supervising technician, who imparted something quietly to Tiegs. Right on cue, one of the prison officials pulled up alongside me and Tom at the window, a notebook and pen at the ready.

“I've been asked to say words,” came Michael's voice through the intercom. He paused a moment, and shut those eyes for the last time, and spoke.

I knew what was coming—he'd recited those words for me just three days prior on my last visit to the neon-lit room. The moment he finished, the warden motioned to the supervising technician again, and a stream of pentobarbital coursed into Michael's arm, anesthetizing him almost immediately. A second signal brought the pancuronium bromide, which petrified his muscular system and stopped his breathing; here he began to seize violently against the gurney. The warden's final motion ushered in the potassium chloride, relieving his spasms and arresting his heart.

“May God have mercy on that boy,” whispered Tom Jones as he placed a heavy hand on my shoulder.

We watched the light spill out of him, calm in the going, and this world ended.

*   *   *

When I left Georgia for the last time, I was drunker than I'd ever been in my entire life. General Sherman burned this state to the ground in 1864; he marched boldly to the coast, ensorcelled by carnage, while James Buchanan waited out the embers of his second life in Pennsylvania. One hundred and fifty years later, I fled Atlanta in the very last row of a walty jet, so close to the beverage cart I could hardly catch my combustible breath. We tangoed with every stiff wind the Eastern seaboard had to offer, dipping and diving and quaking and I swear making these sounds like breaking metal parts. Each new bit of turbulence required a corresponding cocktail—such were my suffering nerves—and I landed in New York a plastered mess, geminating the Earth with my woozy brain.

As I filed off the plane, it occurred to me that I would not have to fly again in the near future. And though I felt depleted, emptied out by the thing that I had seen, for the first time in months I knew that I was safe from harm. Emily—a terrific friend, as it turned out, and the only person I knew who owned a car—had offered to pick me up on the occasion of my final voyage home. As I crossed briskly from the jetway into the terminal, I was struck by something: it was a motorized baggage cart. On the way to the ground, a part of my knee that was not generally permitted to twist in a certain direction did, in fact, and snapped. The airport spun with the dual force of intoxication and searing pain, and I fell silent as an army of navy-sweatered personnel gathered above me; all I really heard was soft jazz and a lot of bored folks saying “sir?” One queasy hour later I found myself in a hospital I'd been to (as a visitor) once before—when could that have been? There were X-rays and hushed conversations and I ended up crutching over to a bright new wing. Medicated and spent, I dozed off in a waiting room until I heard a voice, soft and even, say: “I have a theory about your knee.”

 

NINE

M
Y EYES BOLTED OPEN AS MY MOUTH
parceled together the raw materials of an apology—I was being addressed by a woman in scrubs.

“I said, ‘I have a theory about your knee,'” she repeated, adding: “You're not still drunk, are you?”

I had to think about it for the full six seconds it took to prop myself up in the chair.

“Oh,” I said. “I mean, no. I'm not. That was for … I'm kind of a nervous flier. I mostly just drink on planes. And I had a—I had a difficult week, at work.”

“Uh-huh,” she mumbled casually, jotting something down on her frayed clipboard. The room was strictly yellow, and beyond the waiting area I could make out sleek machines.

“So I know that this is the sort of question that a drunk person would ask, but … is this still the hospital?”

“This is in-patient physical therapy,” she replied without looking up.

“And you're my doctor?”

“I'm your physical therapist.”

“Oh,” I muttered humbly. “Right. You're dressed like a doctor.”

“We dress this way here,” she answered back coolly, still jotting.

My vision came to rest on the nametag which hung from her cornflower smock: J. Dailey. She was angular and tall, with good posture—or maybe just average, perhaps, for a physical therapist—and a farrago of auburn curls.

“Got it,” I said, although she didn't seem to hear.

The ordeal was beginning to come back to me, and I used both hands to prod at the thick black spongy brace wrapped vice-like around my tumid left knee.

“So what's your theory?” I asked, and she looked up quizzically. “You said you had a theory about my knee?”

“I think you sprained your ACL pretty badly,” she said, dropping right back down to her clipboard.

“Just a sprain? I felt something snap.”

“You were drunk.”

This was fair. The therapist finished her notations with a flourish, sighed, then looked me over.

“We won't know anything for certain until a doctor goes over your X-rays,” she went on. “But they wouldn't have brought you here if they thought it was something terribly serious. And they definitely wouldn't have left you here, drunk and unsupervised, if they were worried you might cause yourself any long-term damage. I'm going to be assisting you with some things that will help you heal—twice a week, until you're back to normal. Do you go by Leonard?”

“Leo,” I said.

“Leo. We're going to get you back on your feet very soon. I'm Jane.”

When I hobbled into Aunt Luz's apartment later that afternoon, Lita was in her rocking chair, knitting serenely. Though I'd been gone for nearly two weeks and was now returning injured—luggage jerry-rigged to my crutches—she did not seem to notice my labored arrival in the living room. Rafael Uribe Uribe confronted me uneasily as I poured myself onto the couch. I offered him a hand of peace and fellowship along with a weary “Hola, Rafi,” and he skidded away in terror.