Richard said, “I know about engraving, you know that? Neal Harverry, the greatest forger ever, probably one of them, he was in the old Death Row and him and me receive a Federal contract making forty-five cents per hour. Seem like nothing, but it was rich back then. That gentleman taught me everything there is about forgery. I could be rich if they let me go one time. I take a week off. I take two days off—I bring you back a stack of money, Jack. I engraved a mold of stone, three feet by four feet, almost. It weighed seventy-eight pounds, they going to make a sign for a national seashore park that say: Ancient Indian Well. Corngrinding Area. It’s a map for you to look at and know where you are, and it say on there with an arrow, ‘You are here.’ But you ain’t here.” He was emphatic on this point, drilling Bill Houston with his gaze through the window in the wall of paper between them. “You are not here.”
He waited for Bill Houston to form an appreciation of this fact, and then went on: “Neal Harverry said imagine about standing in the middle of a marsh in Massachusetts. Imagine about standing at the national seashore park. You be looking at that big cast-iron map. A completely stupid person. You wouldn’t have no idea of the fact of a killer talking to you, telling you, ‘You are here.’ He said about a marsh, when the cattail plant get dry in the autumn, they sound on fire, you know, when the wind blow down on them. They crack like a battle was going on.” He breathed heavily, and squirted shaving cream from an aerosol can into the palm of his hand. “You are not here,” he said.
“They can’t kill me because I have the poem. The poem lives forever,” Richard told Bill Houston. “I connected to the creative forces on the day I wrote it.”
The poem’s history was known to Bill Houston. The poem had actually been written as an essay based on a letter once published in a newspaper. For most of its life it had been repeatedly plagiarized by members of the prison’s community college English composition classes, and edited and revised by any number of teachers.
But if the essay had been everyone’s, it was Richard who’d hit on the idea of breaking it into lines resembling verse. He hinted that he’d made many other improvements. Now in his view the poem was the child of his own creation. He kept it folded up inside a small plastic box for a stereo cassette, and it galled Bill Houston, who didn’t read much, that Richard acted as if this piece of paper were better than money. From it he seemed to take much more than the pride of accomplishment. It was food and drink to Richard’s ego. “I’m going to read it for my last words.” Richard lifted up his chin; Bill Houston almost gagged. “Then they’ll all know bitterly that they can never kill me.”
Bill Houston pretended to be interested when Richard let him read it. But he really couldn’t understand why Richard insisted on personally owning this masterpiece. It didn’t rhyme, and the words were plainly not Richard’s—it even talked about a “nigger”—and anyone could see that somebody had typed it and then Richard had squeezed things in here and there by hand. It wasn’t actually a poem: it used words of a sort that Bill Houston used himself all the time, but didn’t care to see written down. He handed it back by way of Brian, because they weren’t allowed to pass things directly to each other. “This is a real good poem, Richard,” he said.
Brian read some of it, too, and said, “Hm! It’s a work of art.” He didn’t seemed particularly excited, but he handed it over to Richard with a noticeable amount of respect. Bill Houston shared the guard’s uncertainty about it.
Later, Bill Houston wanted to read it again. He borrowed it and kept it for a while after supper. It was just nice to have a document created by other prisoners. He couldn’t make any sense of the poem, but sadness overcame him when he looked at it. He gave it back to Richard without comment.
But he thought about it off and on all night, and the next day without any preliminaries he said, “That’s a beautiful poem, Richard. I’d like to take a copy with me on my ride.”
Richard said nothing, but he jumped up and moved about his cell. “I’ll think about it,” he said finally.
Bill Houston and Richard talked a lot about what each was going to have for his final meal. Bill Houston wanted steak. Richard couldn’t decide between chicken and pork. Bill Houston was grateful to know they wouldn’t be eating the same thing. It seemed appropriate that the State of Arizona should provide them with a variety of foods before their big finish. Bill Houston didn’t like to hear the guards calling it The Last Supper. It was a common prison expression, but he’d already heard enough about how Richard Clay Wilson would turn out to be his savior.
It was getting on his nerves. “I never asked you to die for me,” he told Richard.
Richard only put his earphones over his head and pretended to be alone in the universe.
“C’mon, Richard.” Bill Houston waved his hand before their window. “Hey. C’mon.”
When Richard removed his earphones, tiny music came out of them like the whirring of a bug.
“Listen. How about reading me your poem one time?”
Richard appeared lost in a haze of considerations.
“Fact is, I read terrible, Richard. So that’s why I’m asking you.”
Richard opened the small stereo cassette box that housed the poem like a jewel. He unfolded the document and stepped back, standing himself up on the far side of his cell where Bill Houston could get a bigger picture of him. But he cast his gaze toward the corner, where there was nobody. “Talking Richard Wilson Blues,” he said. “By Richard Clay Wilson.” And he read in a Baptist sing-song:
“I felt like a man of honor of substance,
but the situation was dancing underneath me—
once I walked into the living room at my sister’s
and saw that the two of them, her and my sister,
had turned sometime behind my back not exactly
fatter, but heavy, or squalid, with cartoons
moving on the television in front of them,
surrounded by laundry, and a couple of Coca-Colas
standing up next to the iron on the board.
I stepped out into the yard of bricks
and trash and watched the light light
up the blood inside each leaf,
and I asked myself, Now what is the rpm
on this mother? Where do you turn it on?
I think you understand how I felt.
‘I’m not saying everything changed in the space
of one second of seeing two women, but I did
start dragging her into the clubs with me. I insisted
she be sexy. I just wanted to live.
And I did: some nights were so sensory
I felt the starlight landing on my back
and I believed I could set fire to things with my fingers.
But the strategies of others broke my promise.
At closing time once, she kept talking to a man
when I was trying to catch her attention to leave
It was a Negro man, and I thought of black limousines
and black masses and black hydrants filled
with black water. I thought I might smack her face, or spill a glass,
but instead I opened him up with my red fishing knife
and I took out his guts and I said, ‘Here they are,
motherfucker, nigger, here they are.’
There were people frozen around us. The lights had just come on.
At that moment I saw her reading me and reading me
from the side of the room where I saw her standing,
the way the sacred light played across her face.
“Right down the middle from beginning to end
my life pours into one ocean, into this prison
with its empty ballfield and its empty
preparations. If she ever comes to visit me
to hell with her, I won’t talk to her.
God kill you all. I’m sorry for nothing.
I’m just an alien from another planet.
“I am not happy. Disappoin
tment
lights its stupid fire in my heart,
but two days a week I staff
the Max Security laundry above the world
on the seventh level, looking at two long roads
out there that go to a couple of towns.
Young girls accelerating through the intersection
make me want to live forever,
they make me think of the grand things,
of wars and extremely white, quiet light that never dies.
Sometimes I stand against the window for hours
tuned to every station at once, so loaded on crystal
meth I believe I’ll drift out of my body.
“Jesus Christ, your doors close and open,
you touch the Maniac Drifters, the Fireaters,
I could say a million things about you
and never get that silence. That is what I mean
by darkness, the place where I kiss your mouth,
where nothing bad has happened.
I’m not anyone but I wish I could be told
when you will come to save us. I have written
several poems and several hymns, and one
has been performed on the religious
ultra-high-frequency station. And it goes like this.”
Without waiting for any applause, Richard went immediately back to his bunk and returned the poem to its case.
Foster, the elderly suppertime relief guard, had joined them during Richard’s recital of the poem. “Who’s a maniac drifter?” he asked now. Bill Houston was embarrassed. He thought it must be an insult to ask any questions about Richard’s poem—Foster ran the risk of revealing that parts of it were stupid.
“That’s a gang on the Southside,” Richard said, “and the Fireaters, too. I was a friend to them. Once upon a time I carried a message. And then they had a war.” He held up his head in his annoying way. “They in my poem,” he said with genuine pride.
The three of them stood chained together by an awkward silence, and yet separated by prison bars. “I’m not supposed to tell you this,” Foster said. And then he didn’t tell them anything.
“Well?” Bill Houston said.
“They’re not going to say anything till the last minute,” Foster said. “But I know for a fucking-A fact that Richard’s appeal went through this afternoon. My sister works over in the Court of Appeals. They’re going to hang up the paper so you don’t: find out for a while—but I hate to see you sweat, Richard.”
“I ain’t sweating.”
“What about my appeal?” Bill Houston felt his supper turning to stone inside him.
“Well, I just told you everything I know.”
“Can’t you find out for me? C’mon, Mr. Foster.”
“I can’t because it’s Friday. If anything happens now, it’ll be off-hours, and my sister wouldn’t know about it anyway.”
“Man—I ain’t even been worried.” His legs went soft on him. “I need to get prepared.” He sat on the bunk. He couldn’t see Richard now, only Foster. “I need some reasons for this shit.”
He felt the sympathy in their silence, but it was only silence.
“When you go up the pipe—does it hurt?” he asked Foster. “How does it feel?”
“I don’t know. You tell me. Drop us a line, okay?” Even Bill Houston laughed at this, and he realized he was taking an attitude that made him look small. He should have been the one to say, “I’ll drop you a line.”
He resolved to be a better sport and show a cheerful disposition. Five AM Tuesday was the scheduled hour of his execution.
Did it ever cool off in this town? A downpour that morning had made a flood, but only three hours later no record of it lay anywhere on the hospital grounds, except for two puddles in the basins gouged out by children’s feet beneath a pair of swings.
There were a sandbox and a push-me-go-round beside the swings, which were near the front gate. To see them made Jamie think for the first time that of course children must be housed here—children born crazy, and never sane in all their lives. If I’m a little out of it now, she thought, at least I can call up a few memories of the real days.
At the kiosk by the gate, she handed the guard her pass. “So! Three hours!” He fastened the pass to his clipboard and began studiously copying data from it onto his gate-list.
“I could be back a lot sooner. This is my first shot out of the box.”
“I guessed that.” He was an old man. “First time is always three hours.” There was whiskey on his breath.
“I don’t know if I can really handle it,” Jamie said.
“You can handle it.” He returned her pass and she signed his list. When she turned to go he said, “My pen.”
“I was going to give it back to you. You think I’d steal your old pen?”
He gave an exaggerated shrug, his eyes glittering pinkly. You’re happy now, you old drunk. But wait till you’re watching The Movie Only You Can See.
Wait, she told herself; attitude. Attitude of Gratitude.
For the first time this summer, she stepped out onto the streets. Now she was grateful for her Welfare tennis shoes: a half-block west of her down Van Buren, three prostitutes loitered at a bus stop in festive dresses and bright stretch-pants and hip boots and spiked heels; but no one would mistake a goony little thing like herself for one of the day shift.
Before she could grow accustomed to the feel of pavement, her taxi arrived, a bright yellow Chevy. On the door she reached out and opened was stenciled: C.O.P.S.—Cabs On Patrol.
“Air conditioning!” she said.
“I wouldn’t go near this cab if they didn’t give me refrigeration,” the driver said. He had a head of pitiful brown hair that reminded her of Bill Houston’s, and it made her sad. “You’re the one going to the Annex?” he said.
“You got it,” she said.
Their route took them south and east, through the downtown, toward the freeway, and now she saw all the signs of the recent deluge—wet spots on the pavement, some oily pools in the gutters—she understood Phoenix had no sewers—and dark stains on the scaly hide of palm trees, beneath which lifeless brown fronds, some of them long as a man, had been scattered by the winds. The smog had washed out of the air, and as they rode the freeway, the flatness of the Southside to their right and the tall buildings of central Phoenix to their left looked beautifully varnished and free of imperfections.
This was the way she had hoped it would be—clean and clear.
Far to the east, she saw some mountains that she and Dwight Snow had spent some time watching one day, a day they’d seemed more like monsters. It was enough for them now to look like mountains.
“Wow. Kind of a no-man’s-land out here, huh?” She counted her change carefully, and then got out of the cab and stood beside it.
“Probably someday, this whole desert is going to be a jail,” the cabbie said. Jamie tipped him a dollar and he drove away.
The Maricopa County Jail Annex—out here in the middle of nothing, two or three miles from the Phoenix Sky Harbor—looked a little flimsy to Jamie, a little too chain-link and pre-fab to hold any person bent seriously on escape. The complex of structures was dominated by a long yellow building of a single storey that seemed just to peter out. They were still building it; it grew hideless and then skeletal and then collapsed into piles of unshaped materials at its far end, near a dirt exercise yard with a couple of basketball hoops standing around in it hopelessly.
She displayed her pass to the guard at the front gate, but he refused her entrance, directing her instead to the Visitors’ Gate on the compound’s other side, quite a ways down the road. “If I faint in this heat,” she said, “please come rescue me.”
The day was humid after the rain. Perspiration burned in her eye sockets and ran down out of her hair. She started to feel overwhelmed, walking by a prison compound through the searing moonscape beside the dry bed of the Salt River. A breeze brought the stench of the City of Phoenix Landfill d
own the empty river and wrapped it around her face.
The Visitors’ Gate gave way to a tiny compound separated by chain-link and razor-barb from the jail proper, and occupied solely by a large sky-blue house trailer. The guard at the gate accepted her pass. But stepping through the archway beside his kiosk, she made the metal detector speak with crazed alarm.
She was afraid. “I gave you everything.”
The guard appeared unruffled. He ran his hand-held detector up her left leg, over her head and down, it squeaked when it neared her teeshirt’s breast pocket. “That a pack of smokes?”
“Yeah, but they ain’t metal,” she said.
“Even the tin foil in a cigaret pack sets it off. These are high-powered. Not like the airport.” Jamie had never been in an airport.
He accepted the pack from her and added it to her coins and keys—keys to doors she would never confront again—in a small plastic tray. He placed her property in a locker inside his kiosk.
“You mean I can’t take in my cigarets?”
“Sorry. Not in an open pack.” Together they went up the brief walk and into the visitors’ trailer.
Inside, the air was crisp, and her perspiration began to dry. The area was furnished like a lunchroom—vending machines, fluorescent lighting, plastic chairs, tables of indestructible blond false wood. She spent a good two minutes drinking from the humming grey water fountain, giving herself a headache. She was still standing beside it, breathing hard, when two guards escorted Burris through the trailer’s opposite door. He was handcuffed. And it was obvious nobody liked him. It was the first thing she sensed from the three guards in the room.
But the guards retreated to opposite ends of the trailer, giving them a form of privacy. Burris sat across from her at one of the cafeteria-style tables. He was really happy to see her, that much was plain. “Hey—all right. Jamie,” he said. “Welcome to the fort.”