The Reservoir (26 page)

“Just be careful,” Tommie tells him.

A week goes by, and with Jane’s influence and Crump’s assurances, Tommie is again allowed to move about the jail and yard from noon to four, and to receive visitors up in the dispensary. Anyway, the afternoon hours have been the worst for strangers snooping around for a look at the prisoner, some of them trying to get in a nasty word about applying for the hangman’s job, until it has become more a nuisance for the guards to have him in solitary confinement than out with his fellow prisoners. One day there’s a stir when a young man claims to have seen Tommie at the Dime Museum on the night of March 13. This lifeline is quickly withdrawn when it turns out that he’s a drifter hoping for remuneration. The loss of a potential alibi puts Tommie in a foul, half-desperate mood for days.

What sustains him in the darkest hours is an evolving idea of his transfiguration into something better and more innocent than even the most innocent of children. He doesn’t picture himself as a martyr, because he cannot bear to think of his end, his life extinguished, and the humiliation of a public hanging. It simply cannot be. He prays several times a day now for guidance, for a sign showing him how to act and what to think and say. He prays every day for Lillian, and he asks God how guilty he is and whether he deserves to die. He listens for an answer and tries to make out word sounds in the rain spattering the roof, or wind fingering the chimney flue. But the words are indistinct, and the voice inseparable from the one in his own head.

He desperately wants to speak with Reverend Hatcher because he cannot keep doubts out of his head. If God is out there, why will he not answer? Tommie lies on his cot, staring up at the raven’s wing, afraid of his own doubts. If there’s no God, the end is just a void: October 16, four months away. A void. But if there is a God, he’ll punish me for losing faith. And then what? Flames? Anguish? Eternal suffering and damnation? The worst pain imaginable—a stomach illness, a burn, a deep cut—multiplied times a hundred and never stopping? Why would the universe be devised in such a way? What purpose could that possibly serve? Should I confess and save my soul, or is confession just a trick to make desperate people exonerate the public? On the other hand, my giving them something—isn’t that a final act of mercy and contrition I could show? Crump and Evans have yet to decide what strategy to take. But is there now a moral obligation beyond legal maneuvering?

He thinks about Willie, chopping wood in a forest where birds are singing, and he begins drifting off. But then he finds himself thinking of Lillie, standing there waiting, just beyond Willie’s hearing. “I did it,” he whispers. “I killed her. I killed her!” He sits up, wide awake, panting and sweating. Had he spoken out loud? How loud had he said the words he can hear even now? All is quiet again, and he lays his head back down and prays, “If there is a heaven, God, I know I don’t deserve to go there. But why would you create a hell? Wouldn’t the void be better for people like me? Please help me, God.” He feels a weight on his chest, a sense of desperation, as after days of cloud cover when all you want is a hole of blue to pin your hopes on, or just the song of a sparrow in the morning.

• CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE •

T
OMMIE’S HOPES
rise and fall on the faintest glimmerings of news—from visitors, from his lawyers, from bits of overheard conversations which he later, in the endless hours, tries to reconstruct and interpret. When the newspaper carries no story of his case he feels abject and lonely and forgotten—anything, even a report of a North Carolina spiritualist who can divine the truth by communicating with Miss Madison, means that attention is still being paid his case.

Tommie gets out of jail only to make application to the state supreme court of appeals for a writ of error and supersedeas to the judgment of the lower court. The court decides to hear his case, but not until October. And so, with a simple stroke of the pen, he is granted another few weeks of life.

Reverend Hatcher has been on vacation, but when he returns he makes a visit one afternoon to the city jail. He is still the affable, ingratiating, youthful man Tommie remembers—slightly unsure of himself, never overtly religious. His appearance is of a young man disguised as a middle-aged Baptist minister, with white beard and hair and a way of studying one’s face as though he wants some deeper level of friendship than one is prepared to offer. Tommie had warmed to the man’s intelligence and his lack of utter confidence in himself, which was so very different from Reverend Ryland’s dullness and studied gravity.

And yet when Hatcher comes into Tommie’s cell, he seems older and more cautious, not unfriendly, but cognizant that there is now a border which his former congregant has crossed—he can only shout encouragement from the opposite shore. Tommie offers him the chair, then sits on the edge of the cot.

“I thought you might call for me,” Hatcher says, “and I’m glad you did, my friend. I didn’t want to press myself on you, in case you had another spiritual counselor. And if you do, that’s fine with me. I should tell you right off that I come to you expecting nothing other than what you ask of me. I’ve ministered to many men in jail.” He stops a moment. “Never to one in your situation. But I think I can give you comfort, and, if you should want it, guidance. I’ll pray with you, sit with you, talk with you.”

“About?”

“About whatever you like. About your case, if you care to.”

“Is that what you want to talk about?”

“I’d be happy just to sit and pray quietly with you, or just sit.”

Tommie mulls this over, and then stands and paces. “Have people asked you about why you’ve come?”

“A few. Not many know I’m here, other than my family. They’ll find out, and, yes, they’ll want to know. People are curious. But I want you to understand that whatever we say here is in the strictest confidence.”

Tommie waits for Hatcher to go on, but the minister seems uncertain and so Tommie, not wanting him to feel awkward, says, “God has always been an important part of my life. Maybe you’ve read that in the papers. Some people have mocked it as false piety.” He takes a seat again, gripping the edge of the cot.

“Never mind about the newspapers. And lawyers, as you know, say what they have to to win cases.”

“Yes, well, I don’t think I could have stood what I’ve gone through without the words of Jesus.” Tommie holds up his Bible, its leaves marked with slivers of paper. “But …” He hesitates, because he is not sure what Hatcher really means by “strictest confidence.” Yet Hatcher’s face in the half-light of the cell is so young and honest-looking, and he feels himself so much older by comparison that it is as though he were talking to a person from the distant past, or some out-of-joint time. “I guess I’ve lately felt unsure—about what comes after.”

Hatcher clears his throat, and Tommie can see that it’s hard for him to remain natural and relaxed under the circumstances. “These doubts,” Hatcher says, “are ones that everybody has from time to time.”

“Yes, it’s just that I’ve never expressed them to anybody. Except maybe to my brother.”

“Tell me about these doubts.”

“I suppose you’re right,” Tommie says. “They’re nothing out of the ordinary. Nothing that a man on his deathbed or on the battlefront doesn’t face all the time, everywhere. It’s just that I didn’t expect to face them so soon.”

“Remember that our Savior faced doubts, more troubling than any of ours. He asked God, his father, if the cup could not be taken from him, but it was the cup of salvation and he knew that he had to drink it. And then on the cross he cried out that he was forsaken. But he was not.”

“But he wasn’t an ordinary mortal.”

“In that sense, I think he was. He suffered what we suffer. He felt the pain of mortals. He prepared himself in the wilderness for what he knew lay ahead—his own death—and he was tempted by doubts.”

“That’s some comfort, I reckon, but I’m not part of any grand scheme or prophesy like that.”

“But we all are, Tommie. We’re all part of the grand scheme. Christ played his part, just like we all play ours. He could have run off, but he did not. He stayed and was executed as a common criminal. And, Tommie, you must understand that he did that for you and me. We’re sinners, and he offered to take away our sin, to bear it himself, and so to wash us clean with his forgiveness and love. That’s what he was doing up there on the cross—taking our sins. It was hard and it was humiliating and it was painful. And of all the miracles he performed, you’d think he could manage that of leaping off the cross. But God had a higher purpose for him. God wanted him to suffer and die, just like we all do. And you know why, of course.”

Hatcher leaves the question hanging, but Tommie is thinking about the public, horrible death that Christ chose, instead of the quiet deathbed, and wondering how he himself would handle it. He nods vaguely.

“He had to die so that he could come back to life. That was the ultimate, unexpected miracle. Not saving himself, but giving himself over to God to save him. And through his son, God showed that we too have eternal life.”

“But as he was dying, Christ didn’t trust God,” Tommie says. “He lost his faith, even at the last minute.”

“I don’t think so,” Hatcher says, “and I don’t think you should be troubled by that anyway. Why don’t you turn to Luke and see what his last words were? He says to one of the robbers beside him, ‘Today thou shalt be with me in paradise.’ And then in a little while, ‘Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit; and having said thus, he gave up the ghost.’ ”

Hatcher gives Tommie some other Bible verses to read, then promises to come back whenever Tommie needs him.

Willie in the meantime has been making inquiries back at home. One day he makes a visit to the home of Marcellus Gateweed, a small man who has a small, invisible wife and no children. They live in the village of King William in a tiny house with a vegetable garden in front and a horse and a donkey out back. Willie knocks on the door at dinnertime, and Gateweed answers, napkin tucked under his chin as though to point out the fact that he has been interrupted. “Mind if I have a word with you?” Willie asks.

Gateweed squints at him, his trim mustache nearly sliding off his face. He reaches into his vest pocket for a monocle. “I don’t believe—”

“You know who I am,” Willie says, stepping in. “Brother of Tommie Cluverius. I only want to know if somebody put you up to it.” Again Gateweed squints at him, but also glances nervously out to the dining room. His hand goes to the napkin at his neck. “Did Madison ask you to say you recognized that key as my brother’s?”

“I think you should go,” Gateweed says, trying to shut the door with Willie in front of it.

Willie doesn’t move a step. “If he did, you can sign a statement. If there’s a perjury charge, I’ll pay—you won’t likely go to jail. I’ll find out either way, so the best thing for you to do is sign a statement.”

Gateweed’s wife is calling him back to the table. “I don’t know anything about this,” Gateweed says, again trying to shut the door on Willie’s immovable foot.

“I think you do, Mr. Gateweed, and believe me, whatever threat Madison issued is nothing compared to what’s coming from me.”

“I’ll send for the sheriff if you don’t leave now,” Gateweed says, his voice trembling. “I think Mr. Madison is the person you want to see.”

“I aim to.” Willie stands there eyeing Gateweed’s frightened fox face.

“Look, Mr., uh, Cluverius. I run my shop and mind my own business. Madison came in two months ago and asked me if I knew anything about this Tommie Cluverius. I said, ‘Of course I do, I read the newspapers same as anybody.’ So he says, ‘The man ought to hang for what he did.’ And I told him, ‘Every man deserves a fair trial.’ ”

“You said that?”

Gateweed nods rapidly. “Yes, I did, I said words very much to that effect, and then he asked if I knew the suspect. I told him the truth. I knew him by sight—he’d come to my store many times on court days. Well sir, he leans his knuckles on the counter and looks at me and says, ‘You know he wears a gold watch key?’ I told him I had noticed such an item. And he says, ‘Well then you’ll recognize it as this key, won’t you?’ And he slaps a picture from the newspaper down, and I looked at it and nodded because it did look like it and the way he said it made me feel uncomfortable. And he wanted to know what I’d say if anybody were to ask me about it, so I told him of course I’d say I recognized it. What would you have said?”

Willie shakes his head, thinking it was no wonder that Madison came hunting for such a man. Joel had no doubt the same cowardly soul, but he’d deal with him later. “Go on then,” Willie says, “write up what you just told me and put your name to it. And put that you were wrong about the key, that it wasn’t my brother’s.”

“Well, the truth is that I don’t really know which was which.”

“Then put that down!” Willie shouts, growing impatient with Gateweed’s sudden finicking over the truth. “I’ll wait here.”

Gateweed goes out and says something to his wife, and a few minutes later comes back out with a piece of paper and a feather pen that he seems to have no ink for. “And you a shopkeeper,” Willie says. “You can use my pencil.”

Gateweed laughs nervously. “This could take some time, and I don’t know if it will stand in court.”

“I’ll trouble with that,” Willie assures him.

When he has the document secured in his leather pouch and slung across his chest, he mounts his horse and rides for home. He can hand it to Crump first thing in the morning. What troubles him is whether one coercible witness will do any good now.

Malachi is released in the middle of August, around the same time a telephone agent with a hunted look is brought in for killing a Kentucky gambler he suspected of sleeping with his wife. The word around jail is that he’ll get off with no more than five years. With Malachi’s departure, Tommie is offered the yardmaster position, but he gratefully declines—he has all the privileges he needs, and he’s afraid that the goodwill of his fellow inmates might turn to resentment if he held any authority over them.

The weeks of anxiety and waiting until the court of appeals hears Tommie’s case are nonetheless weeks that he is alive and has hope. Then the counselors present their sides of the case to the court, going over much the same ground as before. Tommie is not allowed to attend. They have decided, after much thought and consultation and late-night pencil chewing, not to introduce Tommie’s latest version of events.

During the entire week of the arguments there are torrential rains across the state, like nothing people have seen in years. Is it a sign? Tommie wonders, watching the rain fall like spilt nails across the prison yard and blow in whickering cold waves against the walls. Even inside, you can hear it, pelting interminably on chimney flues and ceaselessly murmuring in many tongues on the gray slate roof. Not since the freshet of 1870, people say, has there been such a flood. That was the year Jeter Philips was hanged for killing his wife, and no one knew he was even married.

By Thursday, the day Crump speaks for three hours, the rains are continual and the river has risen to perilous heights, rising as the waters of a thousand and more streams swell its banks. It rises and rises, four inches an hour, then six inches, until it’s running two feet beneath the Mayo Bridge. In the afternoon a tremendous log comes smashing into the bridge, threatening to destroy it. Sawyers come and cut away enough planking to let the log pass. Then the gasworks gives out, and except for the few electric lights of downtown, the city falls into darkness. Candles and oil lamps flicker on here and there as in olden times. Down at the warehouses, sweaty-faced men load hogsheads of tobacco into drays and drive the cargo to higher ground, while up near the jail Shockoe Creek is spilling from its banks. The prisoners can sense that something is on the verge of happening, something beyond even the control of the officers. A little closer and they could be free …

Finally the waters recede, and in the days before the supreme court issues its decision, Tommie goes about his life as before, giving no one any trouble and maintaining a pleasant disposition from morning to night. His routine is unvarying, and there are no complications other than the arrival of new prisoners. He mostly avoids making new friends. The great majority are in for a much shorter stay; already the telephone man has been convicted and sent to the penitentiary for seven years. Everything Tommie needs is provided, and nothing whatsoever is expected of him except good behavior. The only real source of disquietude is the uncertainty ahead. Sometimes he finds himself thinking that if he knew for certain he was going to die, he would find more peace. But the hope of life, of walking out and going anywhere he likes, doing whatever he wants, running down to the river and leaping in if he feels like it, keeps him agitated from one day to the next. These are private thoughts, shared only with his brother, and sometimes Evans or Crump, and it’s always a relief to unburden himself of these fantasies. “When you get out,” Willie tells him, “we’ll get you a new suit, made to order at Carter Brothers.”