Walking Through Shadows (24 page)

A woman behind me sobbed, and I imagined that it must be the boy’s poor mother. I swallowed and gripped my pen. Stoney shifted his guitar on his knee and said, “Sheriff says I got time for one more, and then I got to go back to my cell. This last one you all know, ‘Down in the Valley.’” I wondered if he knew the genesis of the song. The Birmingham Star had run a story about it. The lyrics were written by a prisoner in the Raleigh State Prison in the form of a letter to his girl in Birmingham. After the Star published the lines, it had become popular with criminals and citizens alike. I guessed though that Stoney chose it because of the romantic line, “Roses love sunshine and violets love dew, Angels in heaven know I love you.”

When the last chord died in the crisp night air, Stoney stood and bowed from the waist. Before anyone clapped, he raised his hands above his head reminding me of a preacher giving a benediction. “Folks, tomorrow morning, y’all are executing an innocent man. I loved my wife, and I didn’t mean her no harm.” Someone switched on a torch, illuminating his face. “Turn that thing off,” the sheriff yelled. Stoney moved a step sideways. “Good-bye, everybody. I’ll see you all in heaven someday.” And then he was gone. I stood looking at the guitar lying on the top step, and I fought the urge to lift it, to feel the warmth of his hands on the wood. If not for the children calling out to each other, I might well have thought this night had been a bizarre dream.

I done all right playing for them folks, I guess. I wish I had had more time to practice, but I reckon it went okay. Ma said she’d always think of me when she heared them songs, and Daddy said he would too. I asked them to go on home. I knowed they was wanting to, even though they said, no, they’d sit with me the rest of the night. I told that preacher to go home too. He stood in between Ma and me and said that I needed to get right with God, ask for His forgiveness before I died. And I told him, I ain’t needing no forgiveness ’cause I ain’t sinned none. That preacher, I don’t even remember his name, left his Bible on my cot, said he’d be back in the morning. Ma was the last to leave, but Daddy had to come back to help her down the hall. Her knees gived out on her. When she first come into the cell after I got back from playing on the steps, she said to me she knowed I was innocent and someday people was gonna know that Earlene had lied about Hugh and Sheila, and about me saying I done it. She hung onto my sleeve and said how was people gonna live with it when they found out they’d executed the wrong man. Then she got to talking about what a pretty baby I was, and remembering how the very first time I picked up a guitar, I started making music out of it. She kept on talking, going over things that had happened in my life, crying, then talking some more. Daddy just stood staring down at his Sunday shoes. Before he left, he shook my hand, said “I love you.” He ain’t never said that before this night.

I ain’t gonna think on them no more. I got to live through this time I got left the way I planned out. It’s gonna be just me and Sheila, nobody else. I know she’ll come. I got to make sure she understands how it was with me that night, tell her how I tried to get her back, that there weren’t nothing else I could’ve done excepting what I did. She knows that, I reckon. Sheila always knowed things that was in my head, sometimes before I knowed them myself. But she didn’t know I couldn’t have no babies. I wish I had told her that. If’n I had, I don’t reckon things would have turned out no different though, but maybe they would’ve.

It’s so cold in here I can’t hardly stand it. I ask the sheriff for another blanket, and he brung me an old holey yellowed one, said that was all he had. He’s staying down here at the jail all night, even though he don’t usually. When Sheila comes, I’ll tell her how much I loved her, how she were the only one who knowed me, who could get her mind around the why of things I said and done.

I can near ’bout see her that night, her standing in the bedroom in that green nightdress. I told her she looked pretty in it. Beautiful, I said. Then she was lying there beside me, smiling, as big a smile as I’d ever seen on her face. I remember her words, “Stoney, you and me is gonna have a baby.” Baby, baby, baby, that word kept on going around the room. I said, “It ain’t mine.” I know I said that out loud. “It can’t be mine.”

And that’s when the red fog come on me and it gets harder to remember just how it was. I know I dragged her off’n the bed, twisted her arm up behind her, felt the bone between my fingers. “Whose is it? Who? who? who?” She said my name first. I heard it over and over, “Stoney. You. Stoney. You. Stoney. Please.” Her throat was so white in the red fog. I could see it stretched up, her mouth open above it. Her hair slid through my fingers like oil. Her eyes, they was too big. When she screamed his name, “Hugh,” I felt her tears wetting my hands. “Forced me. Hurt me. Don’t kill him.” All them words she said that didn’t mean nothing to me right then. I couldn’t hear some of them through the red air. And then her tongue bowing up, blocking up her words. And she were laying there on the floor, so quiet. I dragged her in the front room, told her she was gonna be okay. I had to leave her and I was running in the rain then. Drawing water, hurry hurry. It ain’t too late. The dishpan, the rag. Hurry, Stoney! Mopping her face. Hurry. More water. I seen it go in her mouth, but she don’t swallow. Her eyes won’t quit staring at me. “Sheila, Sheila, oh god, Baby, come back. Oh god, I didn’t mean to.”

She’ll come back. Tonight she’ll come. She ain’t gonna let me die alone. She knows I didn’t mean to. She knows I loved her, love her still.

If I could just get warm, maybe I could eat some of the turkey and dressing Ma left for me. But I can’t eat nothing.

I got this Bible here beside me, but I can’t open it. I don’t need to read it noways. I know what it says in there. Jesus loves me.

“Now I lay me down to sleep. I pray the Lord my soul to keep. If I should die… Oh, sweet Jesus, have mercy on my soul.”

I didn’t sleep at all, didn’t even get out of my clothes. I sat in the green armchair by the window looking out on the starless night. The crescent moon shone pale yellow through the clouds intermittently through the night, until the sun began its ascent, tinting the sky pink and purple and tangerine. I changed my clothes in silence. Usually, I listened to Mozart, Beethoven, or some other classical music in the morning, but not today.

I left the house before Mother rose. I needed no conversation, no worried looks, no free advice. I wished I could avoid everyone. When I arrived at the jail at 6:00 sharp, Calvin Nunnery was backing his truck into the narrow alley behind the jail. I followed him into the storeroom that would serve as a death chamber today. The sheriff was pale, unshaven. His hand shook as he held it out to me in greeting. Without words, I entered the room and sat on the first folding chair of the second row of four. Behind me, stacks of boxes rose nearly to the ceiling, and beyond the empty chairs to my right, more boxes, and a table with a broken leg. The brick wall on my left was bare and cold against my hand when I reached out to touch it.

Sheriff Vairo, Calvin Nunnery, and Sam carried in the heavy chair. It was wooden, slatted, and made of red oak lumber, and they grunted as they laid it on the square mat of thick black rubber in front of me. I didn’t think of its use as I wrote the description. “Leather straps on the chair arms, a larger waist strap, foot braces, leg shackles, two wires for the electrodes which will be connected to the portable generator on the truck bed behind the jail.” While I wrote the other witnesses had entered through the door leading to the front office. I knew some of them. I recognized the reporter from Jackson and nodded to him, but I crossed my legs and turned my back to the men who were nervously talking in loud tones. Someone told about the last Texas execution, another man called out to the sheriff, still standing in front of the chair helping Calvin adjust the straps, “Hey, Clyde, you need to take a rest. Have a seat there in that chair.”

The sheriff ignored him, but when the Jackson reporter said, “The boy will probably shit in his pants before he dies,” he turned around and said, “That’s enough. No more talking.” The room fell silent, and just at that moment, Mr. Carruth walked in, his hat dangling between his large hands. Sam followed Carruth and handed out paper bags to each of us. “What’s this for?” someone asked. Sam smiled. “In case you puke, Dave. Sheriff don’t want vomit on his floor.”

It seemed like we sat for hours in the cold room, listening to each other’s coughs, shoes scraping on the cement floor, pocket watches clicking shut, throats clearing, and in absence of those sounds, we could hear each other breathing, assurance that we were all alive on this gray morning.

When Sam and Sheriff Vairo brought Stoney in, his eyes went to the chair and his legs gave way, but he regained them and walked calmly across the room. As he turned and sat in the chair, I noticed that both legs of his gray pants were slit to the knee. The sheriff held out a glass half-filled with amber liquid to him. “You want a shot or two before you get strapped in?” Stoney’s hand shook as he took the glass, and Clyde Vairo moved his hand over Stoney’s and held the glass to his lips. He took two swallows, nodded up at the sheriff, and then lifted his arms to the straps. After he was strapped in, the electrodes checked, the sheriff asked him if he had any last words to say to the world. He hesitated for a moment, then said in a loud voice, “I’m off to heaven now. Good-bye, everybody.”

He was crying when the mask was pulled down over his face, and so was I.

I didn’t write that it took two charges of 2,400 volts to enter his twitching body before it stilled. I wrote only these facts. “Stonewall Buford Barnes was pronounced dead at 7:18 a.m.; he was eighteen years old.”

I don’t know if things are ever going to return to normal around here. Today is Thanksgiving, and we always go over to Mama Bancroft’s for turkey, but we’re having the big feast in our dining room this year. Rowena is in a snit because Annette’s run off somewhere and she was supposed to be helping out in the kitchen. That daughter of ours is a big worry to her mama right now. I know she’s been through a lot, finding out about me and Virgie Nell, losing Sheila, hearing about her getting raped, and then the kick in the teeth, Stoney dying in the electric chair. But she needs to snap out of it, get on with her life. We can’t just sit around crying over what can’t be changed. Hell, if I did that, I’d still be living with my daddy eking out a living selling farm equipment. I can’t afford to sit around and mope over life not going the way I want it to; we got another child coming. And the Ayrshires will be coming to term before long too. I’ll have to get Henry Blankenship out to look ’em over soon, make sure there won’t be no big surprises when they’re ready to drop calves. Rowena now, I reckon she’s stronger than I thought. I reckon both of us are feeling such relief that the truth has come to light. My god, for a while there, I was wondering if Clyde Vairo was gonna drive out here one day and arrest me. I never told Rowena I thought that, but the words didn’t have to be said out loud for both of us to see the fear in each other’s faces. I kept thinking, if Rowena hadn’t made me hire Sheila in the first place, none of this would have happened, but it isn’t her fault. Who could have ever known? And I will say Sheila was a good worker, a fine friend to Annette and Rowena, and I had a heart for the girl. The boy too, I reckon. Stoney had his good points; he was crazy though. Had to be to do what he done. But I’m putting all that behind me. Won’t spend any more time thinking on Sheila or Stoney or what might have been. I just hope we don’t get into war; that’s all I need. The draft is already beefed up, and if things continue on the way they look, I’ll be losing all my help to Uncle Sam. But I’m not gonna borrow trouble; I leave that to Rowena and her mama. Women, they always come up with something or other to worry over before long.

I am going to skin Annette’s hide when she gets back here. In one hour Mama and Leda and Sylvia will be here, expecting the table to be set. And Lloyd hasn’t been a bit of help to me either. He might still be mad at me about my going out to Earlene Barnes’ house for a visit. He doesn’t like me driving anymore, but if he won’t take me, then I’ll just have to drive myself. Poor Earlene needs a friend right now. Mama wasn’t too happy either when I told her I’d gone out there yesterday, but she’ll just have to get over it, too. I told her that all the rumors the Barnes are spreading just aren’t true. They’re saying she is crazy, that she made up that story, that Hugh hadn’t done any such thing as rape his sister-in-law, that he’s off on a business trip. But if that’s so, I said to Mama, then why don’t any of them know where he is? That reporter, Leland Graves, believes Earlene. He came by while I was visiting her and asked if he could be of help to her. The good Lord knows she needs help. Earlene is putting her house out on Dawber Road up for sale; she said she can’t live in this town any longer, not with all the nasty gossip about her. And she’s worried sick over her boys; Mr. Barnes has threatened to steal them from her, he’s saying she’s not a fit mother. Oh, I know different. I’ve seen her with them; she keeps them spic and span. Last time I went there I smelled hair tonic on them both, and they were dressed in nice trousers and polos, cute as they come. That’s what I told her, “These boys are cute as they come.” I hope I have a boy. Not that Lil’ Bit could ever be replaced in my heart, but I long for a son more than I’d ever admit to Lloyd. I tell him, just so it’s healthy, that’s all I care. And truly that is all that matters, but still a son is what I’m asking God for. Along with help handling Annette. I swear to goodness, I don’t know what to do about her. Ever since she found out Stoney was guilty, she’s been staying in her room, mooning over old pictures of her and Sheila and Stoney, writing in her five-year diary which she locks every morning with a key she wears around her neck. She puts on her sadness like a heavy cloak everywhere she goes. Annette was hanging onto hope that Stoney would be saved, and for a while, I let her hang onto that wish, but finally, I told her the truth, that there wasn’t going to be any appeal. Mr. Bill Calloway returned to Jackson to his fancy law offices, and Stoney’s family didn’t have any funds for a new lawyer. He had to pay for his sins. That’s all there is to it. And although I’d never say it to Annette, I say good riddance to bad rubbish. I’ll never forgive him for hurting our family the way he has. I told Annette that she’s got to learn that bad things do happen, and there’s no escaping pain in this world. We’ve got to accept that. I think about how Sheila never seemed to feel much pain. All those beatings beginning with her papa, then Stoney, Hugh. She never complained, always saw the good in others, in life itself. I remember her standing there in our bathroom grinning down on me sitting there in my birthday suit in the midst of all those flowers. That first morning when she came to us, I would never have believed that I was going to learn one thing from her, but wisdom can come from unexpected sources. And in a way I guess she did possess magical powers. I think God gave them to her because He knew she was going to need them for the short time she lived on this earth. Well, none of us know how long we’ve got and that’s why Mama says you’ve got to live each day as if it were your last. But I know Mama is planning on living long enough to eat a lot more Thanksgiving dinners. I’m not going to cry. I will not grieve for those I have loved and lost; there’s Sheila, Doris, Lil’ Bit. I still miss my daddy. No, I can’t keep on with this sorrow, this heaviness in my heart. Today is the day set aside to count our blessings and give thanks to the Lord for all He has bestowed on our family. “Thank you, Jesus, and make Annette get herself back here in time for dinner.”

I couldn’t take being in the house any longer. Before I came down here to the creek, I told Mama that I couldn’t think of a thing to be grateful for, and real quick she said, “What about our baby?” I’m sick of hearing about her miracle child. Mama thinks I’m fooled by her smiling like she’s got a lot to be happy about, but I saw how she hung her head down while she was whipping the red velvet cake batter around in the bowl. She was hiding tears. I think I’m all cried out. I don’t feel like I’ve got anything inside me at all. It’s like I’m a paper doll, flimsy, one-sided, unable to stand without help. But I walk, talk, act like a real person with eyes that see everything around me. I sit here on the bank of this creek and I see that it is low, the water sluggish and dark.

The creek was low on that day when Sheila and I came down here to catch frogs. I remember that, like today, it was sunny with thin, wispy clouds sauntering across the sky. We sat on the bank watching the dragonflies swooping over the brackish water. The switchgrass and alligator weed that lined the far side of the small stream have died, but I’ll bet that pickerel frog we saw that day is still around here somewhere. Sheila heard him first. With his snore-like cry, he hopped out of the grass, and I saw the flash of dark brown spots, white stripe, and yellow underbelly as it leapt into the water. Sheila jumped up and dove for him. She had heard that folks in Louisiana ate frog parts and she wanted to fry one up for Stoney. She didn’t catch the frog though and disappointment showed on her face as she stood looking down into the grass for another. “It doesn’t matter if you don’t get one. Stoney wouldn’t eat it anyway,” I said.

Sheila grinned. “I wouldn’t tell him it was frog meat; I’d say it were rabbit or squirrel or chicken gizzard. I trick him all the time.”

I was surprised. Sheila was so honest. “You fool him?” I had asked her.

She squatted down, her bare toes digging in the mud. “Sure do. Once I told him I was a fairy just pretending to be a human girl. I was going on from a story my mama had telled about this fairy that sprinkled magic dust on things that turned them into gold. I pretended cornmeal was fairy dust and sifted it through my fingers onto Stoney’s boots. Then I put them under our bed and told him that in the morning they’d be solid gold.”

I giggled. “Oh, Sheila, he didn’t believe you.”

She wagged her finger in my face. “Don’t be so sure of that. Next morning I opened one eye and seen Stoney hanging upside down looking under our bed. He said he knowed I was teasing and he was just making sure I hadn’t hid them boots somewhere else in the night.” She poked the grass with a stick. “Huh. I fooled him. He wouldn’t own up to it, but I know he was expecting to see two big lumps of gold winking out of the dark.”

But Sheila’s cornmeal held no magic and she hadn’t fooled Stoney into believing Hugh’s baby was his. I wonder what would have happened if Stoney had been able to bear children? Would he have killed her someday anyway, over something else? Or would she be sitting here beside me cradling a baby in her arms? But Stoney did kill them both. He did it. I have loved a murderer, and I know now that for the rest of my life, I can’t trust my heart.

I have to go home, back to the house to pretend I care about getting the turkey leg on my plate. I think of all those times Sheila and I ran across this ground, laughing, singing, feeling the joy of just being alive and having a friend. I have betrayed my Best Friend, believed she was a sinner. I was happy that she was burning in hell for cheating on Stoney. She would never have doubted me the way I have her. I’m the stupid one, not Sheila. If she were here, I would beg her to forgive me, and I know she would, too. She would put her arms around me and smile and tell me to just walk through that old shadow.

And I did one time, on the day that Lil’ Bit left us. The sun sat up in the sapphire blue sky exactly where it is now. I can nearly see Sheila pulling me out into the field of crimson clover, hear her saying, “Look, Annette, ain’t it pretty?” This shadow walking along beside me now doesn’t show the changes I feel inside. It looks exactly the same as it did that day, big head, long legs and long arms, but Sheila isn’t here to tell me when to turn and take a step. I didn’t learn half the things she tried to teach me. And now she’s in the ground and I guess Stoney is too. There was no funeral for him, no visitation, no after-burial feast. Grandma said she was sure the Barnes had a graveside service for him, and although I can’t forgive him for what he’s done, I hope that Grandma is right about that. If they did pray for his soul, Sheila would have been glad. I don’t know how I know, but I’m sure that she has forgiven Stoney. He took her life, but he couldn’t take her love. I remember her saying that it’s a lot easier to hang on to love than it is to cling to hate.

I know what I have to do. I’ll stand here and watch the sun exactly like Sheila did that day, and I’ll remember what my Best Friend taught me. I’ll know the true moment to take my step and then I will walk through this shadow of me. If I can get it right, do it perfectly, then I will forgive myself and Stoney too, and maybe someday I will believe in magic again.