'Yes.'
'Didn't you read that confession?'
'I read it.'
'They beat me, those bastards.'
'They admitted hitting you once or twice…'
'Once or twice! Christ! That's nice. They probably said it was like some little love taps or something, huh? More like a little mistake than an actual beating, right?'
'That's pretty much what they implied.'
'Bastards!'
'Take it easy
'Take it easy! You tell me, how am I to take it easy? Those lying sons of bitches can just sit out there and say any damn thing they want. Me, all I've got are the walls and the chair waiting.'
Ferguson's voice had risen and his mouth opened again, but instead he grew silent and stopped abruptly in the middle of the room. He looked over at Cowart, as if trying to regain some of the cool that had dissipated so swiftly. He seemed to think hard about what he was going to say before continuing.
'Were you aware, Mr. Cowart, we were in a lockdown until this morning? You know what that means, don't you?' Ferguson spoke with obvious restraint clipped to his voice.
'Tell me.'
'Governor signed a death warrant. We all get locked down into the cells twenty-four hours a day until the warrant expires or the execution takes place.' 'What happened?'
'Man got a stay from the fifth circuit.' Ferguson shook his head. 'But he's running close to the edge. You know how it works. First you take all the appeals that stem from the case. Then you start in on the big issues, like the constitutionality of the death penalty. Or maybe the racial makeup of the jury. That's a real favorite around here. Keep arguing away at those. Try to come up with something new. Something all those legal minds haven't thought of yet. All the time, ticktock, ticktock. Time's running out.'
Ferguson walked back to his seat and sat carefully, folding his hands on the table in front of him. 'You know what a lockdown does to your soul? It makes it grow all frozen cold inside. You're trapped, feeling every tick of that damn clock like it was tapping at your heart. You feel as if it's you that's gonna die, because you know that someday they're gonna come and lock down the Row because that warrant's been signed with your name on it. It's like they're killing you there, slowly, just letting the blood drip out drop by drop, bleeding you to death. That's when the Row goes crazy. You can ask Sergeant Rogers, he'll tell you. First there's a lot of angry shouting and yelling, but that only lasts for a few minutes. Then a quiet comes over the Row. It's almost like you can hear the men sweating nightmares. Then something happens, some little noise will break it and pretty soon the silence gets lost because some of the men start yelling again, and others start screaming. One man, he screamed for twelve straight hours before he passed out. A lockdown squeezes all the sanity out of you, just leaves all the hate and madness. That's all that's left. Then they take you away.'
Ferguson spoke the last very softly, then he got up and started pacing again. 'You know what I hated about Pachoula? Its complacency. How nice it is. Just damn nice and quiet.'
Ferguson clenched his fist. I hated the way everything had a place and worked just right… Everyone knew each other and knew exactly how life was going to work. Get up in the morning. Go to work. Yes sir, no sir. Drive home. Have a drink. Eat dinner. Turn on the television. Go to bed. Do it again the next day. Friday night, go to the high-school game. Saturday, go on a picnic. Sunday, go to church. Didn't make any difference if you were white or black – 'cept the whites ran things and the blacks lifted and carried, same as everywhere in the South. And what I hated was that everyone liked it. Christ, how they loved that routine. Shuffling in and out of each day, just the same as the day before, same as the day after. Year after year.'
'And you?'
'You're right. I didn't fit. Because I wanted something different. I was going to make something of myself. My granny, she was the same. The black folks down there used to say she was a hard old woman who put on airs about how fine she was, even though she lived in a little shack with no indoor plumbing and a chicken coop in the back. The ones that made it out – like your goddamn Tanny Brown – couldn't stand that she had pride. Couldn't stand that she wouldn't bow her head to no one. You met her. She strike you as the type likely to step aside on the sidewalk and let someone else pass?'
'No, she didn't.'
'She's been a fighter all her life. And when I came along, and I wasn't a get-along type like they wanted, well, they just came after me.'
He looked ready to go on, but Cowart stopped him. 'Okay, Ferguson, fine. Let's say that's all true. And let's say that I write the story: Flimsy evidence. Questionable identification. Bad lawyer. Beaten confession. That's only half of what you promised.' He had Ferguson's full attention now. 'I want that name. The real killer, you said. No more screwing around.'
'What promises do I have…'
'None. My story, to tell as I report it.'
'Yeah, but it's my life. Maybe my death.'
'No promises.'
Ferguson sat down and looked over at Cowart. 'What do you really know about me?' he asked.
The question set Cowart back. What did he know? 'What you've told me. What others have told me.'
'Do you think you know me?'
'Maybe a bit.'
Ferguson snorted. 'You're wrong.' He seemed to hesitate, as if rethinking what he had just said. 'What you see is what I am. I may not be perfect, and maybe I said and did things I shouldn't have. Maybe I shouldn't have pissed off that whole town so much so that when trouble came driving down the roadway, they only thought to look for me, and they let their trouble just drive on past, without even knowing it.'
1 don't get it.'
'You will.' Ferguson closed his eyes. 'I know I may come on a bit strong sometimes, but you got to be the way you are, right?'
'I suppose.'
'That's what happened in Pachoula, you see. Trouble came to town. Stopped a couple of minutes and then left me behind to get swept up with all the other broken little pieces of life there.' He laughed at Cowart's expression. 'Let me try again. Imagine a man – a very bad man – driving a car heading south, pulling off the roadway into Pachoula. He stops, maybe to eat a burger and some fries, beneath a tree, just outside a school yard. Spots a young girl. Talks her into his car because he looks nice enough. You've seen that place. It ain't hard to find yourself out in the swamp in a couple of minutes, all alone and quiet. He does her right there and drives on. Leaves that place forever, never thinking about what he did for more'n one or two minutes, and that's only to remember how good it felt to him to take that little girl's life.'
'Keep going.'
'Man zigzags down the state. A little trouble in Bay City. A bit in Tallahassee. Orlando. Lakeland. Tampa. All the way to Miami. Schoolgirl. Tourist couple.
Waitress in a bar. Problem is, when he gets to the big city, he's not quite as careful, and he's busted. Busted bad, busted big time. Murder one. Sound familiar?'
'Starting to. Keep going.'
'After a couple of years in court, man ends up right here on the Row. And what does he discover when he gets here? A big joke. Biggest joke he could ever imagine. Man in the cell next to him is waiting a date for the crime he committed and nearly goddamn forgot about because there were so many crimes, they all sort of got rolled together in his mind. Laughs so hard he'd like to split a gut. Only it isn't so funny for the man in the next cell, is it?'
'You're telling me that…'
'That's right, Mr. Cowart. The man who killed Joanie Shriver is right here on Death Row. Do you know a man named Blair Sullivan?'
Cowart breathed in sharply. The name exploded like shrapnel in his head. 'I do.'
'Everyone knows Blair Sullivan, right, Mr. Reporter?'
That's right.'
'Well, he's the one that did her.'
Cowart felt his face flush. He wanted to loosen his tie, stick his head out some window, stand in a breeze somewhere, anything to give himself some air. 'How do you know?'
"The man told me! Thought it was the funniest damn thing.'
'Tell me exactly what he said.'
'Not too long after he got sent up here, he was moved into the cell next to mine. He's not all there, you know. Laughs when nobody's made a joke. Cries for no reason. Talks to himself. Talks to God. Shit, man's got this awful soft voice, kinda makes a hissing sound, like a snake or something. He's the craziest motherfucker I've ever met. But crazy same as a damn fox, you know.
'Anyway, after a week or two, we get to talking and of course he asks me what I'm doing there. So I tell him the truth: I'm waiting on the death man for a crime I didn't do. This makes him grin and chuckle and he asks me what crime. So I tell him: Little girl in Pachoula. Little blonde girl, he says, with braces? Yeah, I say. And then he starts to laugh and laugh. Beginning of May? he asks. Right, I says. Little girl all cut up with a knife, body tossed in a swamp? he asks. Right again, I say, but how come you know so much about this? And he keeps giggling and laughing and snorting and just rolling about, wheezing, he thinks it's so funny. Hell, he says, I know you didn't do that girl, 'cause I did. And she was mighty fine, too. Man, he says, you are the sorriest fuck on this row, and he keeps laughing and laughing. I was ready to kill him right there, you see, right there, and I start screaming and yelling and trying to get through the bars. Goon squad comes down the row, flak jackets and truncheons and those helmets with the plastic shit in front of their eyes. They pound my ass for a bit and haul me off to isolation. You know isolation? It's just a little room with no window and a bucket and a cement cot. They toss you in there naked until you get your act together sufficiently.
'By the time I got out, they had shifted him off to another tier. We don't get exercise the same time, so I don't see him. Word has it, he's really off the deep end. I can hear him sometimes at night, yelling for me. Bobby Earl, he calls out, kinda high-pitched and nasty. Bobbbbby Earrrrll! Why won't you talk to meeeeee? Then he laughs when I don't call back. Just laughs and laughs and laughs.'
Cowart shivered. He wanted to have a moment to stand back and assess the story he'd heard, but there was no time. He was locked in, fastened by the words that had flowed from Robert Earl Ferguson.
'How can I prove this?'
I don't know, man! It ain't my job to prove things!'
'How can I confirm it?'
'Damn! The sergeant'll tell you they had to move
Sullivan away from me. But he don't know why. No one knows why, except you and me and him.'
'But I can't…'
'I don't want to hear what you can and can't do, Mr. Reporter. People all my life have been telling me lots of can'ts. You can't be this, you can't do that, you can't have this, you can't even want that. That's my whole life, man, in one word. I don't want to hear it no more.'
Cowart was silent. 'Well,' he said, 'I'll check…'
Ferguson turned swiftly, pushing his face toward him, his eyes electric with fury. 'That's right. You go check' the prisoner said. 'Go ask that bastard. You'll see, damn you, you'll see.'
Then Ferguson rose abruptly, pushing himself away from the table. 'Now you know. What you gonna do? What can you do? Go ask some more damn questions, but make damn sure I ain't dead before you finish asking 'em.'
The prisoner walked over to the door and started pounding on it. The noise was like gunshots reverberating in the small room. 'We're finished in here!' he called. 'Sergeant Rogers! Damn!' The door staggered under the violence of his assault. When the prison guard swung the door open, Ferguson tossed a single look back at Cowart, then said, I want to go back to my cell. I want to be alone. I don't need to make any more talk. No, sir.' He held out his hands and they were cuffed. As the manacles were clicked shut around his wrists, he looked once more at the reporter. His eyes were piercing, harsh, filled with challenge and demand. Then he turned and disappeared through the doorway, leaving Cowart sitting quietly, feeling for all the world as if his legs were dangling over the edge of a whirlpool, threatening to suck him in.
As he was being shown the way out of the prison, Cowart asked the sergeant, 'Where's Blair Sullivan?' Sergeant Rogers snorted. 'Sully? He's in Q wing.
Stays in his cell all day, reading the Bible, and writing letters. He writes to a bunch of psychiatrists and to the families of his victims. He writes them obscene descriptions of what he did to their loved ones. We don't mail those. We don't tell him that, but I think he suspects.' The sergeant shook his head. 'He's not playing with a full deck, that one. He's also got a real thing about Robert Earl. Calls his name out, kinda taunting-like, sometimes in the middle of the night. Did Bobby Earl tell you he tried to kill Sullivan when they were in adjacent cells? It was kinda odd, really. They got along fine at first, talking away through the bars. Then Robert Earl just goes crazy, screaming and thrashing about, trying to get at Sullivan. It's just about the only real trouble he's ever given us. Landed in the hole for a brief vacation. Now they're on the separation list.'
'What's that?'
'Just what it sounds like. No contact whatsoever, under any circumstances. It's a list we keep to try to prevent some of the boys from killing one another before the state has the opportunity to juice them all legal-like.'
'Suppose I wanted to talk to Sullivan?'
The sergeant shook his head. 'The man's genuinely evil, Mr. Cowart. Hell, he even scares me, and I've seen just about every kind of head case killer this world's got to offer.'
'Why?'
'Well, you know, we got some men here who'd kill you and not even think about it, means nothing to them to take a life. We've got madmen and sex killers and psychopaths and thrill seekers and contract boys and hit men, you name it. But Sullivan, well, he's twisted a little different. Can't exactly say why. It's like he would fit into any of the categories we've got, just like one of those damn lizards that changes color…'