Candlemoth (49 page)

    'And
the defense didn't object.'

    I
leaned back and smiled, somewhat half-heartedly. 'Father John, you've got to
understand that very little went on in that courtroom that made any sense at
all. The public defender assigned to me was nervous about the whole thing,
sweated like a pig, fidgeted with his papers, his pens, spilled water down his
pants at one point and had to leave to get changed. The trial was less of a
trial and more of an opportunity for as many people to say as many bullshit
things as they could possibly think of, and for no-one to protest or object or
imply anything was a leading question. If that was a trial, then hell I
was
guilty.'

    Father
John smiled. 'Careful what you say, Danny. This is all on tape, remember?'

    I
shook my head and sighed.

    Father
John reached out and closed his hand over mine. 'I'm sorry… I'm just amazed
that all of this hasn't been chewed to pieces on appeal.'

    'Because
of me,' I said. 'Because I didn't want to go through it all over again. Because
I didn't want my hopes raised and crushed…'

    'And
because you felt guilty for not saying anything to Nathan.'

    I
nodded. 'Because I felt guilty for not saying anything to Nathan.'

    'And
now?' Father John asked.

    I
leaned forward. I was tense, wound-up inside, and yet there was a wave of desperation
and grief rumbling along the edges of my awareness. I could feel it there, like
a shadow, a ghost of everything I should have felt over the last twelve years,
but never did.

    'I
don't want to die,' I said, my voice a whisper. 'But it's a little too late to
say that now, isn't it?'

    Father
John gripped my hand. He smiled as best he could.

    'I'm
afraid so, Danny… I'm afraid so.'

    The
wave of grief arrived.

    I
folded soundlessly beneath it.

    That
night, long after Father John had left, I lay in my bed and thought of the
years I had spent in this cell, these four walls, and the world that lay beyond
them.

    Despite
the absence of Frank Wallace and Cindy Giddings out of CKKL, Mr. Timmons had
still left that small transistor radio playing, punctuating our existence with
news from a different time and place, somewhere all of us knew we would never
see again.

    I
recall Jimmy Carter being elected President in 1976, and twelve days later how
his home town of Plains, Georgia at last ended the color bar. That brought it
home to me once more that all the things we believed back then were true.
Nathan had said he wouldn't see the changes that Martin Luther King fought for
realized in his own lifetime. How right he was.

    Before
stepping down, Gerald Ford had pardoned Richard Nixon for his involvement in
Watergate, the last act of a desperate man working his authority for the
benefit of his compadres and co-conspirators.

    We
heard of Gary Gilmore, the first man executed in the States for ten years. After
a lengthy campaign across the country against the return of the death penalty,
he walked from his cell in Utah State to the firing squad with the words
Let's do it.

    James
Earl Ray broke out of the penitentiary in Tennessee, went on the run for three
days. A month later Carter gave Martin Luther King a posthumous Medal of
Freedom.

    And
then Elvis died.

    Grown
men cried in their cells like it was their mother who'd gone.

    Riots
ensued after Leon Spinks beat Ali in February of '78, and a little-known
research study showed that murder was the primary cause of death of young
blacks in the United States. Regardless, in August of the following year, a
fifty- mile White Rights March from Selma to Montgomery reminded the world that
the things we'd believed we were resolving nearly twenty-five years before were
still alive and well and living in the good ol' U.S. of A.

    Nine
months later five people were killed in race riots, and the National Guard was
called in.

    Reagan
became President.

    John
Lennon was shot by a man with three names.

    Reagan
gave a million and a half dollars to investigate the murdered and missing
children of Atlanta.

    Someone
took a shot at Reagan too.

    These
things, such things as we were told through that small window into the world,
were simply reminders that it was crazy out there, perhaps as crazy as it was
in here.

    It
told me that there was no such thing as true justice. That a great deal of life
was a lie. Bitter, yes. Cynical, definitely. Hopeful… not any more.

    I
slept with the face of Caroline Lanafeuille floating behind my eyelids.

    I was
happy she was alive and well and living somewhere down in Charleston.

    October
18th, a Saturday.

    Outside
it was raining heavily. I could hear it when I woke.

    I lay
for a time imagining that I was elsewhere, somewhere quiet, somewhere free from
bars and guards and the promise of dying.

    My
imagination worked overtime but did not succeed in vanquishing the awareness of
these things.

    These
things were certain, constant and finite. They were there when I closed my
eyes, there when I opened them, there whether sleeping or waking, and they
would not change.

    Duty
Second came down before the bell went. Told me a message had come from Father
John. He would not be able to see me again for five or six days, the best part
of a week. And some time after that I would move to Death Watch and I would
have a week left. One hundred and sixty-eight hours. Ten thousand and eighty
minutes. Just over six hundred thousand seconds. And how long would it take to
count those seconds? Same amount of time it would take to live them.

    It
didn't seem that long.

    I
walked to breakfast in a quiet daze. I felt distant, disconnected, out of
touch.

    Someone
spoke to me, another shoved past me in his hurry to eat, and these things went
by like ghosts.

    
Dead
meat walking
.

    For
the first time in nearly twelve years I understood what Mr. West meant.

    Two
days later they shaved my head.

    They
stripped and searched my cell.

    They
found my wooden moth. Duty Second gave it to Mr. West who snapped it into four
and kicked the pieces across the landing. I heard them rattle down the metal
stairwell to the gantry below.

    He
came in and cornered me against the far wall of my cell.

    
Fucker,
he said. You dumb motherfucker. You've got twenty- two days left you piece of
shit. Twenty-two days is an awful long time if you wanna make someone's life a
misery. Don't fuck with me, okay?

    I
didn't say a thing. A response was neither expected nor required. I got the
message and Mr. West knew it.

    He
left then and I started putting my bed back together.

    When
it was done I lay down on it and counted the silences between things. There
were a great many of them. I lost track eventually and fell asleep. I dreamed.
I think I dreamed. A vision of myself stumbling from the edge of Lake Marion
carrying my own lifeless body.

    I
woke with a start.

    When
the morning bell went I realized another one thousand four hundred minutes of
my life had disappeared.

    I got
thirty minutes' exercise time. It was raining again but Mr. Timmons said I
should go out regardless.

    I
did. I went out into the yard and stood looking up at the sky. The rain came
down, a fall rain, fine and cool, and I appreciated the sensation on my face
and hands.

    I
looked for God out there. I didn't see him. Figured maybe he had better things
to do.

    Thursday,
October 23rd. I waited all day for Rousseau, but there was no sign, no word.

    
Hell,
you don't phone, you don't write…

    Mr.
Timmons came down and told me that his wife was responding well to her physiotherapy
and had lost a little more weight. I told him I was pleased for her. I lied. I
didn't give a damn.

    He
left me then, walked back the way he'd come until I could no longer hear his
footsteps on the gantry.

    There
seemed to be a heavy silence. More than before.

    I
leaned my head against the corner of my cell, stood there for nearly an hour,
stood there until my head hurt bad, and then I lay down.

    I
think I cried myself to sleep.

    I
don't remember.

    Maybe
that was last night.

    Friday.

    It
didn't rain, at least I didn't hear any.

    Rousseau
didn't come again. Not even a message. No word at all.

    He'd
heard what he wanted to hear, justified his own piety and innocence, played God
for the dead guy down at Sumter, and now he was busy elsewhere, fooling folk
into believing that something better was on the way.

    Fuck
him.

    Fuck
'em all.

    'Ford?'

    I
opened my eyes.

    I was
lying on my bed and could see through the bars behind my head.

    Duty
Second stood there.

    'You
awake, son?'

    I
turned over and sat up.

    'Call
for you… think it's the priest.'

    Duty
Second passed the belt through the bars. I put it around my waist, put my hands
in the cuffs and snapped them shut.

    I stepped
towards the bars and turned to the right for Duty Second to check the cuff was
firmly closed. I turned one hundred and eighty degrees and he checked the
other.

    He
called down the gantry, the buzzer sounded, the door unlocked and he dragged it
back.

    I
stepped towards him and he had me raise my right foot to put the ankle shackles
on.

    I
shuffled noisily down the gantry after him, turned left at the end and went
down the short flight to the cage.

    Mr.
Timmons stood inside.

    He
held the receiver in his hand.

    Duty
Second opened the cage door and I stepped towards it. As I entered and took the
receiver Mr. Timmons stepped out through the other side of the cage and locked
the door.

    Duty
Second gave me the nod and I took another step.

    He
closed the cage door on his side, and they each stood sentinel.

    I
raised the receiver to my ear.

    'Daniel?'

    'Yes,'
I said.

    'It's
Father John,' the voice said unnecessarily.

    'Right,'
I said, my voice flat and emotionless.

    'How're
you doing, Daniel?'

    'How
the fuck d'you think I'm doing?'

    There
was silence for a moment.

    'I'm
sorry I haven't been for a few days,' Father John said. 'I have been busy -'

    'Whatever,'
I said. 'You stay busy, I'll stay here, we'll do fine. Anything else you wanna
say?'

    There
was a moment's silence.

    'Fine,'
I said, and hung up.