The Last Suppers

by Mandy Mikulencak

  Tim backed away so quickly his chair scraped against the wall behind him.

  “I’d never do such a thing!”

  “Oh, I know,” she assured him. “We’re just talking hypothetically here. Because I know you’ll agree to help me.”

  Ginny stood and walked out of the office, hoping Tim would follow. He did.

  * * *

  The Waiting Room wasn’t a single room, but a long, narrow, wooden building with twenty-two cells. Each five-by-seven-foot cell contained an iron cot with a one-inch pad, a small stool and desk, a metal washbasin with rank water, and a metal bucket for a toilet. The structure was attached to the cinderblock execution building at one end, forming an L. The paint on the white clapboards had chipped away, leaving gray rotting wood exposed to the sun and humidity. No one seemed inclined to spruce up a place that held the likes of murderers and rapists.

  “I can’t let you in the cellblock.” Tim shuffled two steps behind Ginny as she walked across the compound. “It wouldn’t be right. No lady should see that.”

  Tim held the door to the execution building open for her. Each time she entered the dank death house, she became an eight-year-old again, overwhelmed by the bloodlust the prison guards exhibited at the execution of her daddy’s murderer, deafened by the shrieking of Silas Barnes’s soon-to-be widow, and jealous his young son was allowed to sit outside on the dusty ground.

  She’d passed the boy on her way in to see his father executed. He had a lazy eye that pointed in toward his nose. His stare had given her the shivers, as did his slight smile that told her he had no idea why he was there.

  Even though the room had been hosed down after the last execution and the windows had stayed open for much of several months after that, her brain called up every vile scent that permeated the room the day she watched Silas die: the body odor of too many people crammed in one room in July, burned hair and blistered skin, feces and urine from a man as his body gave up life. At the time, she was sure that’s what hell smelled like.

  “You all right, Ginny?”

  John, the lead guard, stood right inside the door, arms crossed. His slight smile said he knew she was up to no good.

  Ginny dipped her head. “I’m fine. How are you this morning?”

  “Got yourself a new escort, I see. The warden busy or something?”

  “Something like that.” She pinched the back of Tim’s elbow to remind him to keep his mouth shut.

  “You sure you want to be doing something the warden might disagree with?” John asked.

  Her stare said to mind his own business. John wasn’t the type to cause unneeded conflict, so she didn’t worry too much.

  “She’s here to see LeBoux,” Tim said. “I told her she can’t go in the cellblock.”

  “Ginny knows that, boy. I’ll bring Sam to the corner room.”

  The corner room served as a buffer between the two buildings, a space for the death row inmate to wait that was separate from the cellblock and from the room that held Gruesome Gertie, the state’s lone electric chair. A cruel purgatory. It was also the room where the inmate could eat a last meal, if he chose to have one. In her time at the prison, they all asked for one and she complied.

  Tim followed Ginny into the room. An old metal kitchen table with two ladder-back chairs anchored the center of the twelve-by-twelve-foot space. A bare lightbulb hung above the table. Tim dragged one of the chairs over so he could reach the two transom windows. The heat was stifling and she appreciated he thought to open them.

  Ginny sat down and placed her hands on the metal tabletop, which stayed cool despite the heat. Her fingernails were either bitten to the nub or cracked and peeling from too much time in dishwater. She couldn’t remember the last time she painted them, even though she’d purchased a bottle of Vixen Red at the pharmacy in Boucherville last month. Ginny felt so foolish after, she shoved the unused polish to the back of a dresser drawer.

  Retrieving Samuel caused a ruckus, which gave Tim a fair amount of anxiety. He paced the room, one hand on his holster. Inmates’ voices could be heard through the door. Some shouted lewd things for Samuel to do to the “crazy cook lady.” Others just called out their favorite foods and begged him to tell her. John shouted for everyone to calm down and the mutterings trailed off.

  “How can you stand hearing those shameful things?” Tim asked.

  “I don’t take it personally.”

  The remarks riled Ginny when she was younger, but now they seemed wholly unconnected to her, just the rantings of madmen. Anger seemed a normal consequence of living one’s last days like an animal.

  The door finally opened and John led a handcuffed Samuel toward the table. Tim stepped forward and shoved him into the chair.

  “Sit!” Tim’s hands shook visibly. He’d perspired through his uniform and his face had become slick with sweat. Ginny prayed Samuel made no sudden moves or Tim might come completely unhinged and kill him on the spot. Roscoe was right to keep Tim doing office work until he gained some sense and experience.

  John moved between Tim and Samuel. “Boy, no need to get hot and bothered. You go on back to the admin building. I’ll bring Ginny around a little later.”

  “If something happens to her, it’ll be my fault,” he said.

  “Ain’t nothing going to happen. Sam’s a good kid.” John withdrew a pack of chewing tobacco from his pants’ pocket and leaned against the wall. “And it ain’t like this is Ginny’s first time meeting with an inmate. Go on. You look like you need some air.”

  Still frantic, Tim looked at her for assurance. She nodded and he practically flew from the room.

  “Sorry about that, Samuel. My name’s—”

  “I know who you are. Every dead man knows ’bout you.” The nineteen-year-old lowered his head. His dirty blond hair fell like a veil over his eyes. “I told the warden I didn’t want to talk to you.”

  “Yes, but—”

  “Yes, nothing,” he said. “I want to be left alone.”

  Samuel sat at a table where seventeen men sat before. Ginny could recall each and every dish she’d prepared and carried across the prison grounds on a covered tray. The meals were never piping hot because it took so much time to walk from the warden’s residence, where the last suppers were prepared.

  She never stayed to watch them eat. Never dared to hope they enjoyed the meals. When a man was hours from dying, how could he enjoy anything? Dot reminded her of that constantly. Panic attacks sometimes gripped her when she thought she might be force-feeding them memories they’d sooner forget. Yet, something deep in her gut told her it was the gesture that meant something to them, not the act of eating. The cruelty and darkness in that place sometimes overwhelmed her. Dot and Roscoe were the light Ginny needed to keep on working there. Maybe Ginny’s meals were the light those men needed to make it through the final hours before death claimed them.

  “You’re due a last meal of your choosing,” she said. “It’s supposed to be something we already have on hand in the kitchen, but I can get other ingredients on my own.”

  “Are you hard of hearing? I don’t want nothing.” He used his cuffed hands to swipe at the sweat on his brow. The sharp metal had already reddened his wrists.

  Last year, Samuel had been convicted of killing a pharmacist in Baton Rouge. He’d broken into a pharmacy after hours to steal morphine. The pharmacist had gone back to fill a special order and happened upon Samuel. The damn fool should’ve run. Instead, he shot the pharmacist and busted through the back door, where the pharmacist’s wife waited in the still-running car. Panicked, Samuel shot her in the head and dragged her body from the car before driving off in it himself. She lived.

  “Your people still live in Catahoula Parish?” Ginny asked.

  “What do you know about my people?”

  She knew just about everything there was to know about every man on death row in Louisiana. Many of the details she could scavenge from the prison files and court records in Roscoe’s office or from loca
l newspaper accounts. Ginny had researched Samuel’s family some time ago, when he first resisted the idea of a last meal. If Samuel wasn’t going to talk, she’d damn sure find someone who would.

  “I know enough. Like you have twin sisters who are sixteen years old. And you were raised mostly by your grandmother,” she said.

  The hardness around Samuel’s eye softened. “Yeah, the girls are still living with Grammy in Jonesville.”

  “Are they coming to the execution?”

  “Why you ask something so stupid? ’Course they’re not. Little girls ought not to see something so horrible. Neither should my grammy.”

  Samuel exhibited the good sense her mama had lacked twenty-one years ago when she dragged Ginny into the execution room even as she pleaded to just wait outside. Her mother’s ludicrous excuse was that she’d suffocate in a hot car.

  “Will you have anyone there?” Ginny envisioned the small area partitioned for family and wondered if the bench would be bare when Samuel died next week.

  “I want to go back to my cell,” he said to John, whom she’d almost forgotten was in the same room.

  The ringing in her ears drowned out Samuel’s continued rejections. Calm down, Ginny. He’ll come around, she told herself. The panic usually dissipated with deep breaths. In and out. In and out. She damn well knew that last suppers weren’t going to change anything: They wouldn’t make bad men good, they wouldn’t make up for any brutality exacted by the guards, they wouldn’t ease the suffocating fear of meeting death. The closest thing she could liken it to was bringing a casserole to a family after a funeral. For her, food did what words could not. It said, “I’m sorry for the loss. I’m sorry I can’t do more to help.”

  “Please, Samuel.” She reached for his hand and he jerked away. “If you change your mind, tell one of the guards to come get me. Do you hear?”

  John lifted Samuel by the elbow and led him back into the barracks. Ginny didn’t wait for John to escort her back to the admin building. She took off at a trot. Dust from the road puffed up around her ankles with every step, turning her black shoes a dingy gray-brown. The midday sun had baked the road until you could smell the actual dirt. The stench from the Waiting Room was stronger, though, and would linger on her skin and in her nostrils until she could find a stronger or more pleasant scent to take its place. Ginny understood why Roscoe scrubbed his skin raw at the end of each day.

  Chapter 3

  Ginny was almost certain Tim hadn’t told Roscoe about her meeting with Samuel. When she entered Roscoe’s office the next morning, he appeared distracted by work, but otherwise uninterested in her.

  “I’m thinking of visiting Mama today, then maybe going into Baton Rouge to do some shopping.” She searched his face, wondering if he was biding time before chastising her.

  Roscoe continued flipping through some paperwork on his desk, not looking up. “Dot can handle things in the kitchen alone?”

  “Of course she can. But having free rein can give her a big head,” she joked.

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Well, I’ll be heading out then.” She waited tentatively, still not believing her good luck.

  “Borrow Miriam’s Cadillac if you’re driving as far as Baton Rouge,” he called after her. “Don’t need you breaking down.”

  She had already decided to borrow her mama’s car. Three years ago, Ginny had purchased a used Chevy Styleline based on the color alone—a soft powdery blue called Twilight. It was a beautiful thing on the outside. She should’ve had someone check under the hood before laying out $700 for it. Three times in the last year alone, Roscoe had to send a deputy warden to pick her up from Boucherville because the car wouldn’t start.

  While it was only thirty miles from her mama’s house to Baton Rouge, it was ninety miles to Jonesville, which was Ginny’s real destination. She didn’t know how Roscoe would react to her visiting Samuel LeBoux’s family, but she didn’t want to find out by having to call him because the Chevy was broken down on the side of Highway 84.

  Ginny got in the front seat and positioned a small pillow beneath her rear so she had a better view out of the window. At times she felt foolish for doing so, but hated the idea of other drivers thinking she was an underage girl driving a car. As she turned onto Highway 66 to Boucherville, a hot breeze lapped at her face. It’d be a good day. She could feel it. Having a purpose gave the day some order.

  She hadn’t bothered to phone Miriam she was coming. The door was open, so Ginny let herself into the house and made her way to the kitchen. Her mama, concentrating on a crossword puzzle, shrieked when Ginny spoke.

  “Jesus Lord in Heaven! You scared me to death!”

  “Fling that pencil any harder and you could put out someone’s eye.” Ginny kissed her on the cheek. Her mama smelled of talcum powder and drugstore perfume, and wore a full face of makeup. “I called out when I opened the screen door. You must’ve been concentrating on a word.”

  “What the hell are you doing here?” Miriam asked.

  “Do I have to have a reason to stop by?”

  “I guess I’ll make a second pot of coffee, although I’ve probably had enough. It would’ve been brewed already if you thought to call first.” She was annoyed and clearly suspicious of the unannounced visit.

  Ginny hadn’t planned to stay, but it seemed rude to just ask to borrow her mama’s car, considering she hadn’t made a proper visit in some weeks and only called when she had the energy to endure Miriam’s naggy comments without biting back. The least she could do was wait for the coffee to brew and drink a cup.

  Ginny retrieved two clean coffee cups from the cupboard and sat down.

  “So tell me why you’re really here,” Miriam demanded.

  “I need to borrow your car, if that’s okay. I’ll fill her up before I get back.”

  “Where you headed?” she asked.

  Ginny’s hesitation was answer enough.

  “Not again.” Miriam closed her eyes, visibly dismayed over Ginny’s visits with inmates’ families. “Where this time?”

  “Jonesville.”

  Ginny offered no other information while her mama retrieved stale sweet rolls for them to dunk in their coffee. Peculiar as it sounded, they both preferred day-old pastries to freshly baked ones. It gave Ginny a sense of home the physical house couldn’t. She still considered her parents’ housing at the prison as home, even though she only spent the first eight years of her life there.

  During those years, she still had her daddy. When they were together, Ginny could almost block out the harsher realities of the fenced world they occupied. They’d douse the dusty front yard with water from the hose, churning the dirt into a delicious muck perfect for making mud pies. Sometimes, her daddy would lift her onto his shoulders and they’d walk through the long rows of corn after the inmates had stopped work for the day. Ginny would pretend to be a scarecrow protecting acres of crops from the menacing blackbirds. He was the one to kiss her good night. He was the one who cared when she cried and worried when she didn’t laugh enough.

  After his murder, Ginny felt the best part of herself had been cut away. Miriam must have felt the same because she really didn’t feel up to parenting anymore. Theirs was not a shared loss. A house without her daddy would never be home. It didn’t matter where Ginny lived after their years at the prison.

  She soaked her pecan roll in the coffee and stuck half of it in her mouth, chewing openly, but Miriam didn’t laugh.

  “That won’t work on me,” she said. “You’re not a girl any-more.”

  “No, I’m not. But you’re a morose old bird,” Ginny said.

  “What do I have to be happy about? My own daughter rarely visits me. And she’s living in sin with a man old enough to be her father, working at a godforsaken prison, no less.”

  Their conversations were the same each time they saw each other. Her mama rarely bothered to mix up the order of her grievances.

  “It’s a shame I’m the sole reason for your unhappine
ss.” Ginny picked at pieces of pecan floating in her cup. “Maybe you should try living in sin.”

  “Virginia! That is exactly what I mean. No respect for me at all.” She got up from the table and pretended to attend to dishes in the sink.

  Ginny looked at her mother’s wide hips and movie-star curves. No one would have guessed they were related. Miriam had more height, weight, and roundness to her. She didn’t pass down her shiny blond hair to her daughter either. This upset Ginny considerably as a child because she idolized Veronica Lake and wanted to look just like her. Instead, Ginny got stuck with her daddy’s wiry dark brown hair, which required wrestling into a single braid or ponytail each day.

  Another daughter might have gotten up and hugged her mother from behind, maybe even nuzzled against her neck. A good daughter might have lied and said she applied for a respectable job in Baton Rouge after all, or considered moving home and attending church regularly. But Ginny wasn’t that kind of daughter.

  Most days, Ginny could barely abide with their strained truce to remain civil. She couldn’t remember the last time she told Miriam she loved her. Surely it was in the days right after the funeral when Ginny needed her mama the most. Miriam’s usual hardness had only intensified. She had no time for Ginny’s foolish pleas for hugs or comforting. And she wouldn’t tolerate any talk of the murder, or the murderer’s execution. Sometimes, the eight-year-old Ginny would find Miriam staring at her, accusation in her eyes, as if Ginny had pulled the trigger herself. It didn’t take long for Ginny to withhold her affection even though that was a risky undertaking. After all, Miriam was the only family left to take care of her.

  As an adult, Ginny allowed the visits to her mama to grow less frequent until she was about to cut her out of her life for good. It was Dot and Roscoe who encouraged her to make an effort; they said that’s what you did with kin. She dreaded disappointing them more than she dreaded the visits with her mama.

  “I’ll leave my keys on the foyer table. Just in case you need to drive somewhere today,” Ginny said, wishing she had another option than borrowing Miriam’s car.