When the tours passed through, Dixon Bell, inmate number 137389, crawled into his cell-out of sight, but never out of mind. For the past two years, as his appeals dragged on, he had been incarcerated at the Minnesota Correctional Facility in Stillwater. Rick Beanblossom’s hometown. A mirror image of Vicksburg. Through the looking glass. The town was set on the west side of the river instead of the east. High bluffs. Rolling hills. Thick woods. Even an old restored courthouse high on a hill. The prison was just off Highway 95 heading south out of town, with a terrific view of the St. Croix Valley.
But life behind those high walls was monotonous. Dixon Bell found it difficult to keep his mind occupied. Sleep was his only lover now, and he crawled into bed and eagerly waited for her sweet embrace. His thick hair had thinned and gone mostly gray. He had dropped thirty pounds. Again he took to watching television. He learned through TV news that the Death House was nearing completion. It was almost six months behind schedule and a million dollars over budget. Death penalty opponents were still trying to have the funds cut off.
Once in a while he would put pen to paper and answer some of the letters that were delivered to his cell every day during the 3:30 lockup. All of his letters, both incoming and outgoing, were photocopied and reviewed by authorities. The letters were from all over the world, letters of support and letters of hate. Some of the letters enraged him so much he felt like strangling the writer. Others moved him to tears.
Stillwater shattered almost every myth Dixon Bell held about prison life. Inmates didn’t have to put on uniforms.
They were allowed to wear their own clothes at all times. A simple V was cut into the heels of their shoes so they could be tracked if they escaped.
The uniformed guards were totally unarmed. In his past two years at Stillwater he had yet to see a weapon. Most of the guards were young and relatively friendly. They could retire at age fifty-five, and most of them did. The guards that didn’t like being among the inmates bid for the tower jobs. There were even women guards-women guards at a menonly prison. One of Dixon Bell’s favorites was a young woman named Carol. When she first began her duties at Stillwater, she wouldn’t tell him her last name, so he just called her Carol Theguard. Like others in the prison, she slowly warmed up to him.
The prison’s educational system was equivalent to that of a community college. Literacy programs were given top priority. A four-year degree program was offered through the University of Minnesota. Inmates went to school or went to work. The Industry Division turned out a line of farm equipment tops in the Midwest. Stillwater’s rate of recidivism was one of the lowest in the country. Most inmates got a decent education and never came back. When Per Ellefson became governor, he was so impressed with the prison’s overall record he reappointed Oliver Johnson warden despite loud complaints from the right wing of his party. In political circles Johnson was known as a bleeding-heart liberal. They would have had him canned a long time ago for coddling prisoners except that his programs worked. The inmates loved their warden. Dixon Bell respected him. The warden, however, intensely disliked the Weatherman. Dixon Bell once asked him about it.
“I began here as a guard in the laundry room when I was twenty-one years old,” Johnson said. “Just me and thirty-eight inmates. I earned my college degree in this prison, the same degree program offered to the inmates. I helped make Stillwater a model for the country. My greatest fear has always been that a man like you would come along … a criminal so beguiling he could convince an entire community he was good, whereas he was evil … a monster so vile the laws would have to be changed to deal with him. You shined a spotlight on us. Prisons don’t operate well under the spotlight.”
“Did it ever occur to you that I might be an innocent man?”
“No. You killed every one of those women, Dixon. If I didn’t believe that with all of my heart, I’d tell the governor to take his electric chair and shove it up his ass. But I’ll walk you to the chair. Just so that we can be done with you, and I can get back to running a correctional facility. As far as I’m concerned you’re just a cold wind blowing through the system.”
Since there had been no death penalty in Minnesota, there had been no death row, so when Dixon Bell first arrived at Stillwater he was locked in the Segregation Unit. After several months Warden Johnson allowed him to join the general prison population. He was even assigned a teaching position and moved to the educational wing, Cell Hall A-East. When the media reported this move, there was a general brouhaha because the Weatherman wasn’t rotting away on death row. Once again accused of coddling prisoners, Warden Johnson had no choice but to return his most notorious inmate to the Segregation Unit. That’s what the warden meant about the spotlight.
The Weatherman’s cell was six feet by ten feet. It was eight feet high. The bunk was attached to the wall. There was an aluminum toilet. He had a foot locker. He was allowed a small metal desk with a metal chair. In the corner was a portable Sony TV. The walls were painted light blue. The bars on the door were brown and yellow. The whole prison was done in the depressing shades of autumn: brown and gold.
Much like at the county jail, they were locked in their cells only from 10:00 P.M. until 6:15 A.M. Then three times a day they were locked up for about twenty minutes while the guards counted bodies. If nobody was missing, the doors were unlocked and they were again free to roam.
In the day room outside the cells, metal tables and chairs were bolted to the floor. An
RCA
with a twenty-six-inch screen was bolted to the wall. Every time some law-and-order bozo toured the prison he left screaming to the media, “They got color television sets!”
Tall windows climbed three stories to the ceiling. But these windows were screened and barred, and the Weatherman could not always see the sun and the moon. The
Seg Unit had its own exercise yard. Dixon Bell was allowed outside two hours a day. Right now tulips were in bloom around the foundation. The birds were up from the South. Ice was out on the St. Croix River. In Minnesota the rainy season was under way. He took in every last minute of fresh air, no matter how threatening the sky. Even so, he felt he was losing his sense of the weather. He had been too long removed from the elements.
After the brouhaha over the Weatherman’s not being locked up on death row, and to show they weren’t being coddled, whenever the media or the politicians came to inspect the progress of Death House facilities, the guards would hang an ominous black sign over the Seg Unit that read,
DEATH
ROW
. The inmates would scurry back into their cells and the guards would bolt the doors. All television sets would be turned off. The guards would stand at attention and put on their mean and ugly faces. Inmates would wear their most hardened scowls. A couple of them would grunt and groan; a few had developed comically horrifying screams. The tour group would then peek in, looking either very pleased or very scared. As soon as they departed, the cell doors were unlocked, and with a hearty laugh the inmates would go back to doing whatever it was they were doing before being so rudely interrupted.
Most of the men in the Seg Unit went to class or to their prison jobs during the day, but since Dixon Bell was supposed to be rotting away on death row he stayed behind. He read books. He wrote a weather feature for the prison paper. He answered letters. And for two years he watched television. The routine pushed his frustration level to the boiling point.
“Do you have any final words before the will of the people is carried out?”
“Yeah, shit-for-brains, I got some final words. You got the wrong man! It’s not my fucking fingerprint. I was in all those places because the real killer was following me. Following me because I’m on television. I was set up. Can’t you see that? Beanblossom knows. Angelbeck knows, the old bastard just won’t admit it. You dumb assholes got the wrong man. The day after I fry he’s gonna go out there and kill again. Every season another dead body on your hands. What are you gonna do then? Who y’all gonna kill next?”
Few of the inmates believed Dixon Bell would be executed-or so they kept telling him. But the state had spent millions. Sooner or later Minnesota would have to execute somebody. He may not have been sitting on a real death row these past two years, but that Death House they were building out in Industry was as real as rain. There seemed to be a somber feeling among the prison staff that the Weatherman was a dead duck. That his time was near. The sand in his hourglass was running out. Take the strange case of Dr. Yauch.
Dr. D. Yauch, as his nametag read, ran the prison hospital. He appeared to be about the same age as Dixon Bell, but he had the demeanor of an old fart. In school he had undoubtedly been the class nerd. His horn-rimmed glasses were probably surgically implanted on his face during puberty. Every month for two years Dixon Bell was sent to Dr. Yauch and ordered to undergo a complete physical. It was the doctor’s job to see that the Weatherman was fit to be fried. Shortly after the federal court of appeals refused to hear his case Dixon Bell was led over to the hospital and into the good doctor’s office for his monthly exam. As usual, they were left alone.
“Hey, Doc, may be less than six months now. Don’t let it worry your little heart. I’ll see that your bill gets paid.” Ignoring what the Weatherman had said, Dr. Yauch silently wrapped a blood-pressure cuff around his patient’s right arm, then asked, “Do you have trouble sleeping at night?”
Dixon Bell rolled his eyes, snickered at the doctor’s stupidity. He turned his head away, fed up with the whole charade, the sickening ritual of passing a monthly physical examination so that he could be strapped into a chair and electrocuted. The Weatherman made no attempt to hide his disdain.
“I asked you a question, mister!” The doctor’s voice had suddenly changed. It was firm and harsh now, like a commanding officer demanding an answer.
Dixon Bell turned back to him, surprised by the sharp change in attitude. Through those nerdy glasses he could see real anger in the eyes of Dr. Yauch. It was then he realized that the doctor didn’t enjoy these visits any more
than he did. The son of a bitch was human after all. “Yes, I have trouble sleeping at night.”
Dr. Yauch reached deep into his black bag of medicine. “I think what you need, Dixon, is a sleeping pill. Just one pill.” He held up a milky gray pill the size of a lemon drop and lowered his voice to intense, almost conspiratorial tones. “With this pill I’ll give you the same warning that I give to all of my patients. This sleeping pill is very strong. I guarantee it will knock you out for the night. In fact, this type of sleeping pill is so strong that if you were to take four of them at one time, they would kill you. You would quietly pass away in your sleep. Do you understand what I am saying?”
Dixon Bell gulped down his surprise. “Yes siree, I believe I do.”
“Good. Now if this pill works for you tonight, I’ll give you another pill next month.”
Dixon Bell had now saved two pills. God bless the good doctor.
That was another thing about his stay in Stillwater. God was behind bars. There was a Bible in his cell. A sweet lady from prison ministry gave it to him during a visit. She’d had his name printed in it. Probably an old fan. Anyway, once in a while Dixon Bell, a man who thought he knew too much science to believe in God, would page through this Bible, not really sure what it was that he was looking for.
His fellow prisoners would come to see him. A new inmate would stop by to talk almost every day. And, boy, could they talk up a storm. He told them little; mostly he just sat and listened. The way he figured it, the entire inmate population was there because of a woman. They got into a fight over a woman. They stole for a woman. They raped a woman. They killed a woman. Seemed just about every story in Stillwater had a woman in it.
It was 10:00 P.M. Lockup time. The Weatherman could hear the schlocky music. The news was coming on.
Every winter the Electric Star disappeared from the night sky. Every spring it returned. Then every night the star would get brighter and every day the sun would get warmer. But Old Jesse was slowing down. Some nights he wasn’t finishing his chores. This night he made no attempt to finish. He spent most of his shift watching the sparkling star.
They probably thought it was just his age slowing him down, and being as how they all loved the old man he’d be allowed to walk the halls of Stillwater until the day he died. But it wasn’t an aging heart that was bothering him. It was a troubled heart.
He sometimes saw the Weatherman in passing. He recognized him right away from the trial. He remembered watching him on television. Often he wanted to stop and say hello. Even in person he seemed like such a nice man. Maybe ask him about the star. But he never did. For in his troubled heart Old Jesse at last knew why that star was up there. It was up there for him. It hung over the valley for granddaughter Shelly and all of those murdered women. It shone for the Weatherman.
Before he realized how long he had been standing at the window, the morning sun came peeking over the bluff and the Electric Star disappeared. Old Jesse finally pulled himself away and pushed his broom down to the staff bulletin board.
IN
THE
CASE
OF
MCF-STW
INMATE
137389 A
VOLUNTEER
IS
NEEDED
TO
HELP
CARRY
OUT
THE
SENTENCE
OF
THE
COURT
.
PAYS
BONUS
.
SEE
WARDEN
JOHNSON
.
Old Jesse calmly removed the notice from the cork board and stuffed it into his shirt pocket. Then he pushed his broom down the hallway to the warden’s office.
From the bedroom window on the second floor of their South Hill home they could see the golden river, could smell the wind through the pines up from the water. On warm summer nights, as was this night, they could hear the gulls and the geese at play after the boats had docked for the evening. For Rick Beanblossom these sights and sounds were a hallucinogenic drug that sometimes made him forget that he had ever left Stillwater, forget that his face and his innocence were casualties of war.