Candlemoth

by R.J. Ellory

  Schembri stood up straight.

  He nodded his head.

  'Not a word,' he repeated, and walked away.

  He didn't look back. His stride was purposeful and determined.

  As I watched him go, I was none the wiser, all the more frustrated for realizing I really knew nothing significant at all about what had taken place. I wanted to speak with him again, I needed to speak with him, but I never found him again.

  A little more than a month later he went up against the Warden of Sumter Penitentiary with an armful of legal books and some quotes from the Constitution. Apparently he intended to sue North Carolina State for violation of his basic human rights.

  Two days after that particular conversation he collapsed in his cell with a massive coronary seizure. The bruising he suffered to his chest and back was apparently the result of falling against the sink when he went down. How someone can fall both backwards and forwards simultaneously I don't know, but Robert Schembri did it, and did it with style.

  He was buried in a Penitentiary plot. No-one came. Apparently he had no living relatives. He was one of a kind.

  Some months after his death I was moved to D-Block, the place of my execution, and I would look back and recall the people I knew and realize that, aside from Schembri, I never really connected with anyone. I had spoken to the man no more than three or four times, and more often than not there was that feeling that he didn't even know I was there. But what he said influenced my thinking, broadened my perspective of the world from which I'd come, the world from which I would depart. And above all this he had placed a belief in my mind. That perhaps this Mr. West knew something of Nathan Verney, that he might have been involved in the very reason I was there. But I could not let myself believe that, could not dare to imagine that such a thing could run in so concentric a circle. But the thought was there, and as someone once said a mind stretched by an idea never again regains its former proportions.

  My mind was stretched. It would never again be the same.

  The world was crazy. We knew that in Florida. We knew that when we heard of the tens of thousands of dead in some far-away war that possessed neither motive nor meaning.

  It was becoming harder and harder to gain anchorage.

  I took some sense of comfort in the belief that there was a reason for everything.

  Shame that no-one told me what it was.

  * * *

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Christmas Eve 1969.

  I remember standing on the porch of my house watching a dog run back and forth across the road. Crazy fucking dog. Chasing something I couldn't see. Eventually it paused right there in the middle of the road and started barking. It vanished as soon as a car appeared around the corner.

  I turned and walked back into the house.

  Nathan was upstairs, sleeping off whatever had happened the night before. Linny had gone early, a little after six, said she'd be back before the middle of the day, would bring food, make us a meal.

  I couldn't have cared less whether I saw her again. Her enthusiasm had begun to grate on me.

  I sat in the kitchen for a little while. The house was silent. I smoked, drank some coffee, closed my eyes and remembered times I had sat there before. Times when things had been simpler, less complicated, times when things had seemed to make some kind of sense.

  Reality challenged me. I felt an injustice had been perpetrated, and though I cared for Nathan Verney perhaps more than for any other person alive, I was concerned that he hadn't considered the effect his burgeoning relationship with Linny Goldbourne might have had upon me.

  I wanted to feel nothing about it. I wanted it to be of no consequence at all. I wanted to be strong and independent and uninfluenced by anything anyone said or did. But I was not. I knew that. Perhaps that was the real source of my irritation.

  Nathan came down a little later. I said nothing. If Linny Goldbourne felt the same way about Nathan that she had evidently once felt about me, then she would be gone in a month, perhaps less.

  I hoped that would be the case.

  He asked me if I was bothered by her.

  'Bothered?' I asked, feigning surprise at his question.

  'Yeah,' he said. 'You know, bothered that she's obviously into me.'

  I smiled and shook my head.

  'You're welcome to her, Nathan,' I replied, and in my tone was the intended intimation that I knew something about her that he didn't. Something that he perhaps wouldn't like. The purpose of what I said went over his head completely. He merely grunted in acknowledgement and poured himself some coffee. He possessed thicker skin than I, and cared little for what people thought.

  'She's coming back,' I commented a little later. 'Gonna make us some Christmas dinner.'

  'Shit, hell yes, it's Christmas Eve,' he replied. 'I'd completely forgotten.'

  'So you didn't get me a gift?'

  He smiled. 'Sure, I spent about the same amount of money on you as you did on me, you asshole.'

  We laughed, just for a minute we laughed, and for that minute it seemed that we were ten years younger, ten years more naive, and whatever had transpired through that decade was now gone and forgotten.

  And then the moment itself passed, and I realized that the things we had shared were now just memories and could not be recreated. What was gone was gone, and despite whatever I might have wished Nathan had no desire to see them return.

  We were no longer kids. I think I missed that more than anything else.

  Linny came in a whirlwind of noise and laughter. She stumbled through the front door carrying two or three grocery bags, and across the hall rolled fruit, cans of beer, bread and cheese and vegetables.

  We went out to help her, and as she called for Nathan from the front drive I realized that she was advertising his presence.

  Nathan went without thinking, an automatic response, and even as they returned, even as I warned them to be less public, the only reaction I got was a casual lack of concern.

  'Hell, Danny, take it easy,' Linny told me.

  She reached out and touched my face, and for a second she looked at me: looked at me just as she had when we'd gone down to Port Royal Sound, when we'd sat out on some pier eating lobster and watching boats on the Savannah River.

  And then nothing. Holding her attention was like trying to hold a ring of smoke.

  She breezed past me, again calling for Nathan, and I stood in the hallway and watched as they unloaded bags and started preparing food.

  I was not hungry. I went upstairs and lay on my bed. I could hear the indistinct murmur of their voices downstairs. I imagined what they were saying.

  Want you.

  Want you too.

  Fuck me here, right now, right here on the kitchen floor.

  But Danny -

  To hell with Danny -

  Christ, Linny, he's my friend.

  And I'm not?

  Sure you are.

  So fuck me, Nathan, fuck me… fuck me… fuck me….

  I turned over and closed my eyes.

  I thought of Caroline Lanafeuille, and for the first time in… well, more than four years, I really missed her.

  Really.

  They called me down when food was ready and I went.

  I ate with them, I drank red wine, I sat and listened and smoked cigarettes, and for all the hours we spent together I couldn't have said more than a dozen words.

  I didn't want to be there. It was my house and I didn't want to be there.

  'Where did you want to be?' Father John asked.

  I smiled, shrugged my shoulders. 'Somewhere else… anywhere else, I s'pose. Two's company, three's a crowd.'

  'Did you resent her being there?'

  'No, I didn't resent her. She had every right to choose where she wanted to be. I just felt it would have been better for the both of them to be elsewhere.'

  'Did you wish Nathan gone?'

  'Wish him gone? No, I didn't wish him gone. I wished he would come back.
'

  Father John frowned. 'What d'you mean?'

  'So much had changed in those eighteen months. I don't know why I thought it wouldn't, but it had. I think I expected everything to be back the way it was before we left. The thing with Linny wasn't the only thing. We had changed, both of us, changed in ways that I didn't even realize then. What I wanted was for everything to be how it was before, that's what I meant.'

  Father John nodded. 'And what happened then, after the dinner?'

  'I went out, took a walk.'

  'And that's when you met them?'

  I nodded. 'That's when I met them.'

  'Two of them?'

  I nodded again. 'Two of them.'

  'And they didn't say who they were?'

  I shook my head. 'They didn't need to.' 'You knew who they were?' Father John asked. 'I didn't know who they were, but I knew where they'd come from.' 'Linny's father.' 'Right. Linny's father.' 'They said that?'

  'No, they didn't say that, but they were the kind of people that Linny's father would use.' 'Would use?' Father John asked. 'For any kind of action like that.' Father John paused, and then he leaned forward across the table towards me. 'You know that he's dead now.' I looked up. 'Who?' 'Linny's father, Richard Goldbourne.' I shook my head. 'No, I didn't know he was dead.' Father John nodded. 'Yes, died about six months ago.' 'And Linny?'

  'She's okay, okay as can be expected as far as I know.' 'You know her?'

  Father John shook his head and looked away. 'I don't know her, no.' He looked back at me.

  I opened my mouth to ask him how he knew of her at all but he interrupted me with his next question. 'So what happened when they approached you?' 'They warned me… well, they warned me on behalf of Nathan.' 'And you told this to the police?' I frowned. 'I thought you'd read the trial records.' 'I did.'

  'So you know the answer to these questions.' Father John smiled. 'Humor me, Danny… tell me again.' 'Why?' I asked.

  Father John shook his head. 'I don't know, I just feel I need to understand everything that happened.'

  'And this serves some purpose?'

  'Gives us both something to do,' he said, which surprised me.

  'You really want me go through all of this again?' He nodded. 'Yes,' he replied. 'All of it again.'

  * * *

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Today is October 11th. A month from now and I will be in the Death Watch cell. A month from now and it will be three or four hours until I die. I thought of this when I woke, and I cried. I cried for the first time in almost twelve years.

  Before now I don't think I was capable of crying, but all this talk of Nathan, all this talk of the things that brought me here have served to bring me to the surface. That's the only way I can describe it. I have surfaced.

  Sometimes I hate Father John Rousseau. Hate his questions. Hate his weatherworn Bible. Hate the sound of his voice as he asks me to go over these things time and again. Hate the plain walls of God's Lounge where I seem to have spent more waking hours than anywhere else. He says he means well, but until now I had somehow managed to keep reality at bay. Who's to say it would not have happened whether he had come or not? Who's to say that this surfacing would not have begun regardless of anyone asking me anything? All I know is that with his arrival came the first real thoughts, the first real emotions about everything that had taken place.

  The years I have lived here at Sumter seem to have merged one into the other. I cannot even recall the names of the people I have spoken to through the bars of my cell, in the Visiting Room, in the Interview Section when civil rights lawyers and youthful law graduates have questioned me again and again. Seemed to me at one point everyone had something to gain from my death. It would prove to the blacks that there was no prejudice in the Court systems. It would prove to the whites that no matter your color you couldn't kill a man and expect any kind of leniency. It would prove the relentless and committed attention to the letter of the law of the District Attorney's Office. What it would prove to me I didn't know.

  Perhaps I would find out in a month.

  They came to take some blood after lunch.

  Took half a pint through a needle the size of a pencil lead which they put into the vein at the top of my leg. Hurt like fuck. Didn't say a thing. Didn't even move.

  Fuck 'em, I thought. Fuck 'em all.

  Clarence Timmons came down to talk with me. He told me about the Death Watch cell. Told me I'd be moved there on November 4th, a week before the date. Told me there was twenty-four-hour surveillance. They didn't want you offing yourself before the party started.

  He told me there'd be an open line to the Governor and the District Attorney's Office from the moment I moved to Death Watch until 12.01 p.m. on November 11th. He told me they'd ask me what I wanted to eat for my last meal.

  'Baked ham sandwich,' I told him.

  'You've thought about it?' he asked, and seemed surprised.

  I shook my head. 'Don't have to think about it… know what I want, that's all.'

  He said Fine, just fine, but if I should change my mind I should tell him or the Duty Officer because I could pretty much have anything I wanted.

  I told him I wouldn't change my mind.

  He let it go.

  Then he told me about the Procedure Room. That's what he called it: The Procedure Room.

  'When they take you to the Procedure Room they'll ask you if you want a sedative,' Mr. Timmons said, and his voice was hushed, like he was telling a bedtime story to a little kid.

  'They move you into the Procedure Room an hour before the Procedure is due to begin, and they'll put you on a glucose drip and put in a line in case you need to use the restroom. You see, once you're in the Procedure Room you can't come out again -'

  'Unless the Governor or the D.A. decides to call,' I said.

  Clarence Timmons smiled understandingly. 'Unless the Governor or the D.A. calls,' he repeated, and in his voice was the certainty that such a thing would never occur.

  'And once you're cooked you can come out, right?' I asked.

  Clarence looked embarrassed.

  'Otherwise it would get too crowded for the next guy… and the smell -'

  Clarence Timmons raised his hand.

  I had made him feel bad.

  Fuck him, I thought. Fuck them all.

  'I'll be going now,' Clarence Timmons said. 'You let the Duty Officer know if there's anything you need, okay?'

  I nodded, didn't say anything. Didn't have anything to say.

  I lay down when he'd gone, lay down and put my pillow over my head. I closed my eyes and thought of Eve Chantry's place, how it had looked that late Christmas Eve afternoon, the russet leaves, the wind gathering them in handfuls and scattering them along the path…

  And the broken window.

  I stood there on the path. Even as I looked I could imagine myself in the lower half of the house. I thought my way through it, up the stairs, and then looked out through the broken window. The broken window was in Eve's bedroom, the bedroom where she'd lain and told me of the candle- moth.

  I could almost smell the place, that fresh scent of lavender and cinnamon, and the way the sun cut through those upper floor windows and created such space within.

  The reasons I would have bought that house if I'd had the money. But I hadn't. Seemed no-one else had either. Or no- one else wanted it.

  The place was falling apart, damp had set in along the edge of the porch and around the verandah. The mesh in the screen door was torn like someone had hurled a stone through it. The paint was peeling from the outer walls, like leaves, like the tongues of cheeky kids pulling faces at the strange guy standing on the path staring at them. The strange guy who used to come down here and see the crazy old witch a hundred years ago.

  Place had been empty since she'd died back in the beginning of '67. Nearly three years.