“No. We’ve talked a lot lately, and he’s told me many stories. But not that one.”
“Thank you, sir, for bein’ so nice to Raymond,” Inez said.
“I’ll be with him until the end.”
“So, they’re really gonna do it?” she asked.
“It’ll take a miracle to stop things now.”
“Lord, help us,” she said.
“Let’s pray,” Father Leland said. He closed his eyes, folded his hands together, and began: “Dear Heavenly Father, please look down upon us at this hour and let your Holy Spirit enter this place and give us peace. Give strength and wisdom to the lawyers and judges who are laboring diligently at this moment. Give courage to Raymond as he makes his preparations.” Father Leland paused for a second and barely opened his left eye. All three Graneys were staring at him as if he had two heads. Rattled, he closed his eye and wrapped things up quickly with: “And, Father, grant grace and forgiveness to the officials and the people of Mississippi, for they know not what they’re doing. Amen.”
He said good-bye, and they waited a few minutes before Raymond returned. He had his guitar, and as soon as he settled into the sofa he strummed a few chords. He closed his eyes and began to hum, then he sang:
I got time to see you baby
I got time to come on by
I got time to stay forever
‘Cause I got no time to die.
“It’s an old tune by Mudcat Malone,” he explained. “One of my favorites.”
I got time to see you smilin’
I got time to see you cry
I got time to hold you, baby
‘Cause I got no time to die.
The song was unlike any they’d heard before. Butch had once picked the banjo in a bluegrass band, but had given up music many years earlier. He had no voice whatsoever, a family trait shared by his younger brother. Raymond crooned in a guttural lurch, an affected attempt to sound like a black blues singer, apparently one in severe distress.
I got time to be yo’ daddy
I got time to be yo’ guy
I got time to be yo’ lover
‘Cause I got no time to die.
When the words stopped, he kept strumming and did a passable job of playing a tune. Butch, though, couldn’t help but think that after eleven years of practice in his cell, his guitar playing was rudimentary.
“That’s so nice,” Inez said.
“Thanks, Momma. Here’s one from Little Bennie Burke, probably the greatest of all. He’s from Indianola, you know?” They did not know. Like most white hill folks, they knew nothing about the blues and cared even less.
Raymond’s face contorted again. He hit the strings harder.
I packed my bags on Monday
Tuesday said so long
Wednesday saw my baby
Thursday she was gone
Got paid this Friday mornin’
Mad said I’s all right
Told him he could shove it
I’m walkin’ out tonight.
Leon glanced at his watch. It was almost eleven p.m., just over an hour to go. He wasn’t sure he could listen to the blues for another hour, but he resigned himself. The singing unnerved Butch as well, but he managed to sit with his eyes closed, as if soothed by the words and music.
I’m tired of pickin’ cotton
I’m tired of shootin’ dice
I’m tired of gettin’ hassled
I’m tired of tryin’ to be nice
I’m tired of workin’ for nothin’
I’m tired of havin’ to fight
Everything’s behind me now
I’m walkin’ out tonight.
Raymond forgot the words but continued with his humming. When he finally stopped, he sat with his eyes closed for a minute or so, as if the music had transported him to another world, to a much more pleasant place.
“What time is it, bro?” he asked Leon.
“Eleven straight up.”
“I gotta go check with the lawyers. They’re expectin’ a ruling right about now.”
He placed his guitar in a corner, then knocked on the door and stepped through it. The guards handcuffed him and led him away. Within minutes a crew from the kitchen arrived with armed escort. Hurriedly, they unfolded a square card table and covered it with a rather large amount of food. The smells were immediately thick in the room, and Leon and Butch were weak with hunger. They had not eaten since noon. Inez was too distraught to think about food, though she did examine the spread. Fried catfish, French fried potatoes, hushpuppies, cole slaw, all in the center of the table. To the right was a mammoth cheeseburger, with another order of fries and one of onion rings. To the left was a medium-sized pizza with pepperoni and hot, bubbling cheese. Directly in front of the catfish was a huge slice of what appeared to be lemon pie, and next to it was a dessert plate covered with chocolate cake. A bowl of vanilla ice cream was wedged along the edge of the table.
As the three Graneys gawked at the food, one of the guards said, “For the last meal, he gets anything he wants.”
“Lord, Lord,” Inez said, and began crying again.
When they were alone, Butch and Leon tried to ignore the food, which they could almost touch, but the aromas were overwhelming. Catfish battered and fried in corn oil. Fried onion rings. Pepperoni. The air in the small room was thick with the competing yet delicious smells.
The feast could easily accommodate four people.
At 11:15, Raymond made a noisy entry. He was griping at the guards and complaining incoherently about his lawyers. When he saw the food, he forgot about his problems and his family and took the only seat at the table. Using primarily his fingers, he crammed in a few loads of fries and onion rings and began talking. “Fifth Circuit just turned us down, the idiots. Our habeas petition was beautiful, wrote it myself. We’re on the way to Washington, to the Supreme Court. Got a whole law firm up there ready to attack. Thangs look good.” He managed to deftly shove food into his mouth, and chew it, while talking. Inez stared at her feet and wiped tears. Butch and Leon appeared to listen patiently while studying the tiled floor.
“Y’all seen Tallulah?” Raymond asked, still chomping after a gulp of iced tea.
“No,” Leon said.
“Bitch. She just wants the book rights to my life story. That’s all. But it ain’t gonna happen. I’m leavin’ all literary rights with the three of y’all. What about that?”
“Nice,” said Leon.
“Great,” said Butch.
The final chapter of his life was now close at hand. Raymond had already written his autobiography—two hundred pages—and it had been rejected by every publisher in America.
He chomped away, wreaking havoc with the catfish, burger, and pizza in no particular order. His fork and fingers moved around the table, often headed in different directions, poking, stabbing, grabbing, and shoveling food into his mouth as fast as he could swallow it. A starving hog at a trough would have made less noise. Inez had never spent much time with table manners, and her boys had learned all the bad habits. Eleven years on death row had taken Raymond to new depths of crude behavior.
Leon’s third wife, though, had been properly raised. He snapped ten minutes into the last meal. “Do you have to smack like that?” he barked.
“Damn, son, you’re makin’ more noise than a horse eatin’ corn,” Butch piled on instantly.
Raymond froze, glared at both of his brothers, and for a few long tense seconds the situation could’ve gone either way. It could’ve erupted into a classic Graney brawl with lots of cursing and personal insults. Over the years, there had been several ugly spats in the visitors’ room at death row, all painful, all memorable. But Raymond, to his credit, took a softer approach.
“It’s my last meal,” he said. “And my own family’s bitchin’ at me.”
“I’m not,” Inez said.
“Thank you, Momma.”
Leon held his hands wide in surrender and said, “I’m sorry. We’re all a lit
tle tense.”
“Tense?” Raymond said. “You think you’re tense?”
“I’m sorry, Ray.”
“Me too,” Butch said, but only because it was expected.
“You want a hushpuppy?” Ray said, offering one to Butch.
A few minutes earlier the last meal had been an irresistible feast. Now, though, after Raymond’s frenzied assault, the table was in ruins. In spite of this, Butch was craving some fries and a hushpuppy, but he declined. There was something eerily wrong with nibbling off the edges of a man’s last meal. “No, thanks,” he said.
After catching his breath, Raymond plowed ahead, albeit at a slower and quieter pace. He finished off the lemon pie and chocolate cake, with ice cream, belched, and laughed about it, then said, “Ain’t my last meal, I can promise you that.”
There was a knock on the door, and a guard stepped in and said, “Mr. Tanner would like to see you.”
“Send him in,” Raymond said. “My chief lawyer,” he announced proudly to his family.
Mr. Tanner was a slight, balding young man in a faded navy jacket, old khakis, and even older tennis shoes. He wore no tie.
He carried a thick stack of papers. His face was gaunt and pale and he looked as if he needed a long rest. Raymond quickly introduced him to his family, but Mr. Tanner showed no interest in meeting new people at that moment.
“The Supreme Court just turned us down,” he announced gravely to Raymond.
Raymond swallowed hard and the room was silent.
“What about the governor?” Leon asked. “And all those lawyers down there talkin’ to him?”
Tanner shot a blank look at Raymond, who said, “I fired them.”
“What about all those lawyers in Washington?” Butch asked.
“I fired them too.”
“What about that big firm from Chicago?” Leon asked.
“I fired them too.”
Tanner looked back and forth among the Graneys.
“Seems like a bad time to be firin’ your lawyers,” Leon said.
“What lawyers?” Tanner asked. “I’m the only lawyer working on this case.”
“You’re fired too,” Raymond said, and violently slapped his glass of tea off the card table, sending ice and liquid splashing against a wall. “Go ahead and kill me!” he screamed. “I don’t care anymore.”
No one breathed for a few seconds, then the door opened suddenly and the warden was back, with his entourage. “It’s time, Raymond,” he said, somewhat impatiently. “The appeals are over and the governor’s gone to bed.”
There was a long, heavy pause as the finality sank in. Inez was crying. Leon was staring blankly at the wall where the tea and ice were sliding to the floor. Butch was looking forlornly at the last two hushpuppies. Tanner appeared ready to faint.
Raymond cleared his throat and said, “I’d like to see that Catholic guy. We need to pray.”
“I’ll get him,” the warden said. “You can have one last moment with your family, then it’s time to go.”
The warden left with his assistants. Tanner quickly followed them.
Raymond’s shoulders slumped and his face was pale. All defiance and bravado vanished. He walked slowly to his mother, fell to his knees in front of her, and put his head in her lap. She rubbed it, wiped her eyes, and kept saying, “Lord, Lord.”
“I’m so sorry, Momma,” Raymond mumbled. “I’m so sorry.”
They cried together for a moment while Leon and Butch stood silently by. Father Leland entered the room, and Raymond slowly stood. His eyes were wet and red and his voice was soft and weak. “I guess it’s over,” he said to the priest, who nodded sadly and patted his shoulder.
“I’ll be with you in the isolation room, Raymond,” he said. “We’ll have a final prayer, if you wish.”
“Probably not a bad idea.”
The door opened again and the warden was back. He addressed the Graneys and Father Leland. “Please listen to me,” he said. “This is my fourth execution, and I’ve learned a few things. One is that it is a bad idea for the mother to witness the execution. I strongly suggest, Mrs. Graney, that you remain here, in this room, for the next hour or so, until it’s over. We have a nurse who will sit with you, and she has a sedative that I recommend. Please.” He looked at Leon and Butch and pleaded with his eyes. Both got the message.
“I’ll be there til the end,” Inez said, then wailed so loudly that even the warden had a flash of goose bumps.
Butch stepped next to her and stroked her shoulder.
“You need to stay here, Momma,” Leon said. Inez wailed again.
“She’ll stay,” Leon said to the warden. “Just get her that pill.”
Raymond hugged both of his brothers, and for the first time ever he said that he loved them, an act that was difficult even at that awful moment. He kissed his mother on the cheek and said good-bye.
“Be a man,” Butch said with clenched teeth and wet eyes, and they embraced for the final time.
They led him away, and the nurse entered the room. She handed Inez a pill and a cup of water, and within minutes she was slumped in her wheelchair. The nurse sat beside her, and said, “I’m very sorry,” to Butch and Leon.
At 12:15 the door opened and a guard said, “Come with me.” The brothers were led from the room, into the hallway that was packed with guards and officials and many other curious onlookers lucky enough to gain access, and then back through the front entrance. Outside, the air was heavy and the heat had not broken. They quickly lit cigarettes as they walked along a narrow sidewalk next to the west wing of maximum security unit, past the open windows covered with thick black bars, and as they moved casually to the death room, they could hear the other condemned men banging their cell doors, yelling in protest, all making whatever noise they could in a last-minute farewell to one of their own.
Butch and Leon smoked furiously and wanted to yell something of their own, something in support of the inmates. But neither said a word. They turned a corner and saw a small, flat redbrick building with guards and others milling around its door. There was an ambulance beside it. Their escort led them through a side door to a cramped witness room, and upon entering, they saw faces they expected, but had no interest in seeing. Sheriff Walls was there because the law required it. The prosecutor was there, by choice. Charlene, Coy’s long-suffering widow, sat next to the sheriff. She was joined by two hefty young gals who were no doubt her daughters. The victims’ side of the witness room was separated by a wall of plexiglass that allowed them to glare at the condemned man’s family but prevented them from speaking, or cursing. Butch and Leon sat in plastic chairs. Strangers shuffled in behind them, and when everyone was in place, the door was closed. The witness room was packed and hot.
They stared at nothing. The windows before them were shielded by black curtains so that they could not see the sinister preparations underway on the other side. There were sounds, indistinguishable movements. Suddenly, the curtains were yanked open and they were looking at the death room, twelve feet by fifteen, with a freshly painted concrete floor. In the center of it was the gas chamber, an octagon-shaped silver cylinder with windows of its own to allow proper witnessing and verification of death.
And, there was Raymond, strapped to a chair inside the gas chamber, his head secured with some hideous brace that forced him to look ahead and prevented him from seeing the witnesses. At that moment he seemed to be looking up as the warden spoke to him. The prison attorney was present, as were some guards and of course the executioner and his assistant. All went about their tasks, whatever they were supposed to be doing, with grim determined looks, as if they were bothered by this ritual. In fact, all were volunteers, except for the warden and the attorney.
A small speaker hung from a nail in the witness room and conveyed the final sounds.
The attorney stepped close to the chamber door and said, “Raymond, by law I’m required to read your death warrant.” He lifted a sheet of paper and continued:
“Pursuant to a verdict of guilty and a sentence of death returned against you in the Circuit Court of Ford County, you are hereby sentenced to death by lethal gas in the gas chamber of the Mississippi State Penitentiary at Parchman. May God have mercy on your soul.” He stepped away and lifted a telephone from its receiver on the wall. He listened, then said, “No stays.”
The warden said, “Any reason why this execution should not go forward?”
“No,” said the attorney.
“Any last words, Raymond?”
Raymond’s voice was barely audible, but in the perfect stillness of the witness room he was heard: “I am sorry for what I did. I ask the forgiveness of the family of Coy Childers. I have been forgiven by my Lord. Let’s get this over with.”
The guards left the death room, leaving the warden and the attorney, who shuffled backward as far from Raymond as possible. The executioner stepped forward and closed the narrow chamber door. His assistant checked the seals around it. When the chamber was ready, they glanced around the death room—a quick inspection. No problems. The executioner disappeared into a small closet, the chemical room, where he controlled his valves.
Long seconds passed. The witnesses gawked in horror and fascination and held their breaths. Raymond held his, too, but not for long.
The executioner placed a plastic container of sulphuric acid into a tube that ran from the chemical room to a bowl in the bottom of the chamber, just under the chair that Raymond now occupied. He pulled a lever to release the canister. A clicking sound occurred, and most of those watching flinched. Raymond flinched too. His fingers clutched the arms of the chair. His spine stiffened. Seconds passed, then the sulphuric acid mixed with a collection of cyanide pellets already in the bowl, and the lethal steam began rising. When Raymond finally exhaled, when he could no longer hold his breath, he sucked in as much poison as possible to speed things along. His entire body reacted instantly with jolts and gyrations. His shoulders jumped back. His chin and forehead fought mightily against the leather head brace. His hands, arms, and legs shook violently as the steam rose and grew thicker.
His body reacted and fought for a minute or so, then the cyanide took control. The convulsions slowed. His head became still. His fingers loosened their death grip on the arms of the chair. The air continued to thicken as Raymond’s breathing slowed, then stopped. Some final twitching, a jolt in his chest muscles, a vibration in his hands, and finally it was over.
Delta Blues Page 34