First
time I met Mr. West he spat at me. Spat right in my face. My hands were cuffed
and shackled around my waist. My feet were shackled too. I couldn't even wipe
my face. I could feel the warmth of his saliva as it hit my forehead, and then
it started its slow progression over my eyelid and down my cheek. Later I could
feel it drying, and it was as if I sensed the germs alive on my skin.
Mr.
West possessed a single, simple purpose. That purpose manifested itself in many
colors - humiliation, degradation, violence, an impassioned cruelty. But the
purpose was the same: to demonstrate authority.
Here,
in this place, Mr. West was God.
Until
the time came, until you walked the walk and danced the dance, until your bare
feet did the soft-shoe shuffle on the linoleum floor, until you actually did
meet your Maker, then Mr. West was God and Jesus and all the disciples rolled
into one unholy mess of madness that could come raining down on you like a
thunderstorm, provocation or not.
Mr.
West was Boss down here, and the other warders, despite their years of service,
despite their experience and pledge of commitment to the United States
government, the Federal Detention system and President Reagan, still
acknowledged only one Boss.
They
all called one another by their given names. All except Mr. West. To everyone, the
Prison Warden included, he had always been, would always be, Mr. West.
If
there was a Hell, well, that's where he'd come from, and that's where he'd
return. I believed that.
Had
to believe that. To believe anything else
would have tested my sanity.
I am
thirty-six now. Thirty-six years back of me, thirty-six years of love and loss
and laughter. If I weigh everything up it has been good. There have been times
I couldn't have asked for better. It is only now, the last ten years or so, that
have been tough. Too easy to ask myself what I could possibly have done to have
arrived at this point. If there is in fact a balance in all things, then I have
found my balance here. Like Zen, karma, whatever this stuff calls itself. What
goes around comes around: you get the idea.
I
feel sorry for the kids. The ones I never had. I feel sorry for Caroline
Lanafeuille whom I loved from a distance for years, but never kissed enough,
nor held for long enough. Sorry for the fact that I could not have been there
for her through everything that happened with her father and how they left. And
had I been there it perhaps would never have turned out the way it did. And for
Linny Goldbourne, a girl I loved as much as ever I loved Caroline. Though in a
different way. Sorry too for Sheryl Rose Bogazzi. She was too beautiful, too
energetic and uninhibited, and had she never been crowned County Fair May Queen
she would never have met the folks from San Francisco, and had she not met them
she would never have believed she could captivate the world. But she was
crowned, and she did meet them, and her mom let her go all the way out there to
follow her star. A star which burned brightly then fell like a stone. Six
months in San Francisco and she was dead from a
methadone
overdose in a filthy tenement room. She'd been pregnant too, no-one knew by
whom. Apparently she'd fucked everyone on the block, and most of their
relatives.
I
feel sorry for my folks, even though they're not alive and weren't alive when
all this happened. At least they were spared that much.
Feel
sorry for Nathan's folks, because their son is dead and he should not have died
the way he did, and never for that reason. Nathan's father, a Baptist minister,
is a powerful man, a man of faith and strength and endless forgiveness. He
knows the truth, always has done, but there is nothing he can do. Said to me
one time that he believed his hands had been tied by God. Didn't know why.
Didn't question why. Knew enough to believe there was a reason for everything.
But despite his faith, his trust, his passion, I still saw him cry. Cry like a
child. Tears running down his broad, black, forgiving face, and the way his
wife held his hand until I felt their fingers might fuse together and never be
separated.
And
they stood there in the Commune Room, me behind the protective screen, my hands
cuffed to the chain around my waist, and I saw Nathan's ma look at me, look
right through me, and I knew she believed too.,'
know you didn't kill
Nathan,
her eyes said.
I know you didn't kill Nathan, and I know you
shouldn't be here, and I know what they're doing to you is bad… but I can't
help you now. No-one can help you now except the Governor or the Lord Jesus
Himself.
And I
smiled and nodded at her, and I made it okay for her to feel she could do
nothing more. They had done all they could, all they could dare to do, and I
was grateful for that.
Grateful
for small mercies.
It is
hard to believe that all this time has passed since that day, but then again
that day seems like yesterday, even Nathan's face, as alive in my mind now as
if we had shared breakfast together. I recall the sounds and colors, the rush
of noise, the emotion, the horror. Everything intact, like a glass jigsaw
puzzle, each piece reflecting some other angle of the same design.
It is
hard to believe… well, just that. It is hard to
believe.
Sometimes
I take a moment to imagine I am elsewhere, even someone else. Mr. Timmons came
down the other day with a transistor radio that played a song, something by The
Byrds called 'California Dreamin", and though his intent was nothing more
than to lift my mood, to lighten my day a little with something different, it
saddened me to hear such a song. I recall Hendrix and Janis and The Elevators
and Mike Bloomfield playing the Fillmore. I remember Jerry Garcia, Tom Wolfe
and Timothy Leary with The Merry Pranksters. I remember the Kool-Aid Acid Test.
I remember talking with Nathan about Huddy Ledbetter and Mississippi Fred
McDowell, and I remember the invasion from England of The Rolling Stones and
The Animals… all of this as we perceived it then: a mad rush of passionate fury
in our hands and heads and hearts.
Mr.
Timmons never understood the culture. He understood JFK. He understood why it
was so important to reach the moon first. He understood why the Vietnam War
started and how communism had to be prevented. He understood this until his own
son was killed out there and then he didn't speak of it again. He was
passionate about baseball and Chrysler cars, and he loved his wife and his
daughter with a sense of duty and integrity and pride. He watched the Zapruder
film, and he cried for the fallen King, and he prayed for Jackie Bouvier, and
if truth be known he prayed a little for Marilyn Monroe, whom he loved from
afar just as I had loved Caroline Lanafeuille and Linny Goldbourne. Just as I
had loved Sheryl Rose Bogazzi in 9th grade. Perhaps Mr. Timmons believed that
had he been there he could have saved Marilyn just as I believed I could have
saved Sheryl Rose. We believe such small things, but believing them makes them
important, and sometimes they have to be enough, carrying such things and
believing perhaps that they will in some way carry us.
Mr.
Timmons also believes I didn't kill Nathan Verney in North Carolina on some
cool night in 1970. He believes this, but he would never say it. It is not Mr.
Timmons' job to question such things, for there is the way of the law, the way
of justice, the Federal and Circuit and State and Appellate Courts, and there
are tall grave men with heavy books who look into such things in detail, and
they make the laws, they
are
the law, and who is Mr. Timmons to question
this?
Mr.
Timmons is a Death Row warder down near Sumter, and he does what he does, as he
abides by the code, and he leaves such matters as innocence and guilt to the
Governor and the baby Jesus. He is neither expected nor paid to make such
decisions. And so he does not.
Easier
that way.
Mr.
West is another story. Some of the guys down here believe he was not born of
human parents. Some of the guys down here believe he was spawned in a culture
dish at M.I.T. or somesuch, an experiment in running a body without a heart or
a soul or much of anything else at all. He is a dark man. He has things to
hide, many things it seems, and where he hides them is in the shadows that lurk
back of his eyes and behind his words, and in the arc of his arm as he brings
down his billy across your head or your fingers or your back. He hides those
things also in the way his shoes creak as he walks down the corridor, and in
the way he peers through the grille and watches your every move. He hides those
things in the insectile expression that flickers across his face when the mood
takes him. And in leaving the lights on when you want to sleep. And in
forgetting exercise time. In dropping your food as it is passed through the
gate. In the sound of his breathing. In everything he is.
Before
I came here, the brief time I'd spent in General Populace, a man called Robert
Schembri had warned me of Mr. West, but what he'd said had been confused in
among a great deal of things he'd told me.
No
matter what had gone before, I could never have forgotten the first time we
met, Mr. West and I. It went something like this:
'Gon'
lose your hair there, boy. No hippy hair down here. What the fuck is this here?
A ring? Take it off now 'fore we cut your goddam finger from your hand there.'
I
remember nodding, saying nothing.
'Nothin'
to say now, eh, boy? They got you by the C.O. Jones that's for sure. You done
kill some nigger I hear, cut his goddam head clean off of his body and left it
for the crows.'
That
was the time I opened my mouth. The first and last.
His
face was in mine. I remember the pressure of the floor behind my head, the
feeling of that billy club across my throat like it would force my jaw up
through my ears and into my brain. And then he was over me, right there in my
face, and I could
feel
the words he spoke as he hissed so cruelly.
'You
don't got nothin' to say, boy, you understand? You have no words, no name, no
face, no identity down here. Here, you're just a poor dumb motherfucker who got
fucked by the system whichever way you see it. You could be as innocent as the
freakin' Lamb of God, as sweet as the cherubims and seraphims and all the Holy
Angels rolled into one almighty bag of purity, but down here you are guilty -
guilty as the black heart of the Devil himself. You understand that, you
remember that, you don't ever forget that, an' you and me are gonna get along
just fine. You are nothing, you have nothing, you never will be anything, and
this is about as good as it's ever gonna get. Yo' gonna be here a long time
before they fry your brain, and hell if I ain't gonna be here long after you're
gone, so understand that when you're in my house you abide by my rules, you
mind your manners and say your prayers. Are we on the same wavelength now?'
I was
unable to move my head, barely able to breathe.
'I
will take your silence as an expression of understanding and compliance,' Mr.
West said, and then he gave one last vicious dig of the billy and released me.
I
came up gasping, half-suffocated, my eyes bursting from my head, the pressure
behind my ears like a freight train.
It
was Mr. Timmons who helped me back to the cell, helped me to lie down, brought
me some water which I was unable to drink for a good twenty minutes.
And
it was Mr. Timmons who told me to watch Mr. West, that Mr. West was a hard man,
hard but fair, and I knew in his tone, from the look in his eyes, that he was
all but lying to himself. Mr. West was an emissary of Lucifer, and they all
knew it.
And that
was eleven years ago, best part of. Arrested in 1970. A year in Charleston Pen.
while the first wave of protests erupted, died, erupted once more. And the
appeals, the TV debates, the questions that no-one wanted to answer. And then
to Sumter, a year or so in General Populace while legal wrangles went back and
forth in futile and meaningless circles, and then to Death Row. And now it's
1982, summer of '82, and Nathan would have been thirty-six as well. We'd have
been somewhere together. Blood brothers an' all that, you know?
Well,
maybe that ain't so far from the truth. Because if Mr. Timmons is right, and
God knows who's guilty and who's innocent, and if there is some place we all go
where sins are called to account and judgement is fair and just and equitable,
then me and Nathan Verney look set to see each other once more.