Authors: Mary Willis Walker
It’s never to late to pick up
the pieces
And find your way to Jesus.
Sister Addie teaches
Preaches
Nothing’s too bad for God
to forgive
No matter how wicked you might
live.
She says just lay down your load.
Course she never seen what I left
on the road.
LOUIE BRONK
Death Row, Ellis I Unit,
Huntsville, Texas
T
he manipulative son of a bitch wasn’t going to suck her in like that. No bloody way. God, you could chain him up, lock him in a cage, and that didn’t stop him from trying to control people. Well, she was not about to get conned into some wild goose chase through the junkyards of Fort Worth, for God’s sake, just to make drama out of his last days on earth.
Let him rot in hell. Not that she believed in hell. But if there was anybody in the world who was likely to rot there, it was Louie Bronk.
Molly approached the first gate and looked up to the top of the picket for the guard to buzz the gate open. Instead, he came out on the walkway and leaned over the railing. “Miz Cates,” he called down, “the warden just phoned. Asked if you’d stop by his office please before you leave.”
Puzzled, Molly waved at him and turned around.
This time, she turned right when she entered the prison and
walked down the corridor where the administrative offices were located. She stopped at the third door, the one marked “Warden Steven Demaris.” It was open.
The warden sat at his desk talking to a fat woman in a pastel print house dress. She was knitting and the two of them were leaning toward one another, so deeply engrossed in conversation they didn’t see Molly at first. When the warden saw her, he got to his feet and came forward to shake Molly’s hand. “Thanks for stopping by, Miz Cates. This here”—he gestured to the fat woman—“is Sister Adeline Dodgin.”
Molly looked down into the woman’s large, placid white face. Of course. Louie’s Sister Addie.
Adeline Dodgin smiled up at Molly without dropping a stitch from her knitting, which was something large in brown and pink—a shade of pink so garish it was almost neon.
“Could you sit and visit with us for a minute?” Warden Demaris asked.
Molly glanced at her watch. “I can stay for a minute,” she said, feeling bushwhacked.
Sister Addie Dodgin looked up at Molly with the kind of sweet Christian charity smile that always set Molly’s teeth on edge. She wore an enormous wooden cross tied around her neck on a braided lanyard. Molly had hated this brand of Christianity ever since she was nine years old and the Baptist women of Lubbock had gone on a campaign to save her soul after her mother died. They dropped in at the ranch regularly to bring tuna casseroles and tell Molly and her daddy they were destined for hellfire sure as Judgment Day if they didn’t start coming to church. It wasn’t until one of them, who looked a whole lot like this woman here, had suggested that Molly’s mother had got cancer and died because none of them ever set foot in church that her daddy threw the woman out and told her never to darken his door again. When they moved to Austin one of the things both father and daughter had relished was the scarcity of Baptists.
It was a bias that had remained with her. She looked down at the woman without returning her smile.
Steve Demaris patted the back of the chair right next to Sister Addie’s. “Have a seat,” he said.
Molly sat down and watched the warden walk back around the desk. She hadn’t seen Demaris in several years, since he’d been
promoted from assistant warden to the top job. He used to be a lanky, dashing cowboy, but no more; his body had thickened everywhere, especially around the neck and waist. It seemed that men in law enforcement were compelled to honor a tradition of taking on bulk with increased responsibility.
Demaris sat in his chair and tilted it back until it bumped the wall. “Miz Cates, I’ve been wondering since your call on Wednesday what’s going on over there in Austin. Do they have a suspect in this new McFarland killing?”
“Not that I know of,” she said.
He clucked his lips. “Well, too bad. What a sad business—Mr. McFarland having something like that happen twice.” He studied Molly for a few seconds, then said with the attempt of a smile, “Are you here on business today, Miz Cates? Maybe fixing to write some bad things about us in that liberal magazine of yours?”
Molly smiled at him. “You know better than that, Warden. For you, and the work you do here, I have nothing but the deepest respect. You do a difficult job in a very professional way, and I admire that.” She meant it and watched his face to see if he accepted it.
His ruddy face deepened in color. “But that’s not going to stop you from writing about how we’re guilty of killing all these poor misunderstood boys like your Mr. Bronk, is it?”
“Mr. Demaris, you’ve got the job of carrying out the policies of the state. It’s not you I have a quarrel with.”
“But I support the state policy. You liberals, you’re always saying we need to do away with capital punishment and have life without parole instead. That’s because you’ve never put yourself on the line working in a prison.” He brought his chair back to the floor. “A guy like Bronk—you get him in here on a life term, he’s got nothing to lose. He rapes other inmates, attacks my officers. The only safe way is to keep him locked down twenty-four hours a day, and the courts don’t allow us to do that.” He slapped his palms down on the desk. “No. If you got someone so dangerous he needs to be locked up for the next fifty years it’s better to kill him.” He shifted his gaze to Sister Addie. “Sorry, Addie. You may see me as guilty of butchery, but that’s the hard truth of it.”
Molly was sorry she didn’t have her tape recorder along. The
warden would be a good interview for her Bronk article. She said, “You’re no more guilty than Miz Dodgin and I are as citizens.”
The woman turned to face Molly. “Please call me Sister Addie,” she said. “Everybody around here does.”
In a pig’s eye I will, Molly thought, barely able to meet the woman’s gaze.
“How was your visitation?” Steve Demaris asked.
“Oh, it was vintage Louie Bronk. He’s denying the McFarland murder now. Trying to work his con on anyone who’ll believe it.”
“So I heard,” he said. “Now, I’m inclined to your way of thinking, but Sister Addie here, she sees this one different. She wondered if she could have a word in private with you?”
So that was it! Well, she was trapped now, but since she was, the situation had certain interview possibilities. She looked directly into the large woman’s faded blue eyes. “Certainly, Miz Dodgin. I’m doing a story on Louie for my magazine and I’d like to ask you some questions, too. I hear you’ve been a big influence in his life lately.”
The warden got to his feet. “You ladies can talk right here; I’ve got some duties to attend to. Can I get Ginger to bring you a cup of coffee or a soda?”
“Oh, you know me, Steven,” Addie Dodgin said, still knitting steadily. “I surely would enjoy a Co-cola.”
“Miz Cates?”
“No. No thanks,” Molly said.
As he left, Molly could hear him asking his secretary to fetch a Coke for Sister Addie.
Molly rested her notebook on her lap, pulled her pen from her jacket pocket, and watched Addie Dodgin take a handkerchief from her pocket and wipe her damp face with it. Molly had once thought of doing a story on the women who took an unusual interest in prisoners—sort of criminal groupies. Some of them just became pen pals with inmates or visited them regularly. Others went so far as to marry them, even men on death row. Yes, it might make an interesting story. And this might be just the one to start with; how on earth did this woman with her graying tight-permed hair and her doughy face ever get hooked up with Louie Bronk?
“It was Thanksgiving two years ago when I was making my rounds,” the woman said, resuming her knitting.
“What?”
“The way I got involved with Brother Louie,” Addie Dodgin said, looking Molly square in the eye.
“Oh.”
“Yes. I was delivering Bibles from my Sunday school in Waco like I always do before holidays—holidays are such a lonely time for these men—and he was huddled in the corner of his cell looking like a miserable sack of meal. I said, ‘Brother, have you heard the word of God that echoes through these halls like trumpets?’ ” She smiled and seemed to be recollecting the moment with pleasure. “In that thin voice of his he says, ‘All I hear is punks jerking off and taking craps.’ ” Adeline Dodgin grinned, showing tiny, pearl-white, babylike teeth. “And I said, Then you
have
heard the voice of God, brother.’ ”
Almost against her will, Molly found herself returning the smile.
“I asked him if he’d like a Bible. He said he wasn’t much of a reader and I said it would be my pleasure to come read it to him. That’s how it started. It was a month or so after you finished your talks with him and he missed the attention, I think.”
Molly didn’t know what was happening to her. The backs of her eyes got hot as if she were going to cry. Ridiculous. This emotional seesaw must be a delayed reaction to the scene with Louie.
The door opened and a young woman entered with a can of Coke on a plastic tray.
“Thanks, Ginger, honey,” Addie said, reaching up to take the tray. As she turned her head, Molly could see snaking down the left side of her neck, from the earlobe down the side of the neck and disappearing into her dress, a long scar, raised and red. It was the kind of scar Molly had seen before—on gang members who had been in knife fights.
Ginger stopped and rumpled the fat woman’s hair on her way out.
“Nothing like a cold can of Co-cola in this heat,” Addie murmured, turning back to Molly and taking a long drink. “Louie’s talked a lot about you, Miz Cates.”
“Oh?” The idea of Louie discussing her had never occurred to her. Now that it did, the thought made her very uneasy.
“My, yes. He says some nice things about you—that you’re a real handsome-looking woman, and you listen good. Louie says you’ve treated him fair and that you have the stick-to-it-iveness of a pit
bull.” She set the can down on the desk and smiled at Molly. “He also says you hide your feelings real good.”
“What did he mean by that?”
“He didn’t say, but I suppose he means that the disgust you feel for him is almost imperceptible.”
Molly was stunned; she didn’t know if it was because of the woman’s use of the word “imperceptible” or her insight into Molly’s feelings. The disgust was certainly there. But who could hear those things without disgust? Who could look at Louie without feeling it? It was impossible.
“It’s hard, I know,” Addie Dodgin said, “to separate the man and his immortal soul from his hateful acts.”
“Can you?” Molly asked in a more challenging and aggressive tone than she’d intended.
The only sound in the room was the click of knitting needles. “Sometimes,” Addie said finally. “I think I’m getting better at remembering that we are—all of us—forgiven.”
“Well,” Molly said, “that’s something I’ll leave to you. But I’ve spent twenty years interviewing criminal offenders, Miz Dodgin, and I’ve always before been able to see our common humanity. Louie is the first one I haven’t been able to …” Unable to finish the sentence, she let it trail off.
Addie chuckled. “Louie is a challenge.”
Molly leaned forward. “But how can you stand it?” she said. “You’ve seen the phoniness just like I have—how when their parole hearing gets near, or a court appearance, they all miraculously find God. It’s such hypocrisy. Like Louie now. Surely you aren’t taken in by his so-called conversion.”
Addie Dodgin smiled and Molly suddenly realized that it wasn’t one of those Christian charity smiles at all; it was a smile that contained a lot more knowing irony than sweetness. “Of course, they do it for reasons of their own. They pretend at first, but it doesn’t matter.”
“Doesn’t matter!”
“No. Not at all. The reason they begin talking with God is not important; at least they are going through the motions, learning the words. And when the time comes that they need the words, they have them. Then it becomes real. Very real.”
Molly thought about Louie on Monday getting ready for the executioner, being strapped down on the gurney.
“The nearness of death can work wonders,” Sister Addie said. “On the last day, when they’re taken from here to the holding cell over at the Walls—that awful, melancholy place next to the death chamber—and when the jailers ask them if they’ve made provision for their possessions and for the disposal of their body, then the words become real right quick, even if they haven’t been before. And they usually die well—real well.”
Molly was silent for a minute before remembering that she was trying to interview this woman. “You stay with them at the end?” she asked.
“When they’re particular friends of mine, like Louie, the chaplain usually asks me to keep them company and pray with them that last hard day.”
“Is it true that they usually admit to the crime then?”
“Oh, yes. They talk freely then. When the appeals are done and there’s nothing left to lose, when they know for sure they’re going to die.”
“But Louie seems to be an exception to the rule. He’s waited to the end to start proclaiming his innocence.”
“That’s one of the reasons I believe him.”
Molly shook her head; she didn’t want to hear the other reasons. “How on earth did you manage to get his statement picked up by the Associated Press?” she asked.
Sister Addie put her head back and laughed a rumbling, deep laugh. “That’s another story. I won’t bore you with it. But Jim Ledbetter, the AP writer in the Dallas bureau, is a dear ol’ boy who was on the board of Amnesty International when I was. He believed I once did him a good turn and that he owed me one.” She laughed again. “Now I owe him a couple. The eternal favor bank, huh, Miz Cates? I’m afraid it’ll be like that even in heaven, should we be lucky enough to get there.”
Addie’s expression turned serious. “Did you agree to do what Louie wanted you to do?” she asked.
Molly sat back and her pen rolled off her lap onto the floor. She looked down at it where it came to rest near her left foot. This woman had a hell of a nerve. She didn’t have to answer a question like that. She leaned over and picked up the pen.