“Don’t you let anything happen to my car in colored town.” Miriam didn’t bother turning around.
Even though Samuel’s family was white, Ginny decided not to waste her breath.
* * *
The hot breeze that felt so good against her face midmorning was suffocating by noon. Ginny used the air-conditioning only intermittently, fearing the car might overheat. She kept to the speed limit, although she wanted nothing more than to floor it and get to Jonesville and out of the car.
Mercifully, it wasn’t hard to find Samuel’s grandmother’s place in a town of 1,600 people. Ginny had to ask for directions only once before she found the faded blue clapboard house at the end of a dirt driveway.
Her dress clung uncomfortably to her back and thighs. The swamp-like Louisiana humidity made that an everyday occurrence. Dot’s admonishments about her wardrobe came rushing back to her. Ginny was embarrassed she hadn’t thought to wear stockings or a proper hat for a visit, but regret was pointless now. It was more important that she not arouse Roscoe’s suspicion by wearing Sunday clothes on a workday.
The sight of a Cadillac on a normally deserted road signaled her arrival before she could even knock. A young black teenager with a crying toddler on her hip appeared at the screen door. She wore a skimpy yellow halter and shorts, but still looked miserably hot.
“I’m sorry. I might have the wrong house,” Ginny said. “I’m looking for Mrs. LeBoux.”
“Grammy? Someone’s here to see you,” she shouted, then disappeared.
Ginny took a seat on one of the three rocking chairs on the porch and waited until the screen door screeched again. There stood a frail-looking woman who’d lost half her height to old age. Her pale face was covered with a web of deep lines that grew deeper when she scowled. Although her hair had gone mostly gray, Ginny could tell she’d had sandy blond hair as a young woman. Samuel’s hair.
“It’s actually hotter in the damn house. We’ll have to talk out here,” she said.
“Mrs. LeBoux?” Ginny extended her hand and the old woman shook it.
“That’s me. But the real riddle is, Who is you?” She sat in the adjacent rocking chair and pointed to the Cadillac as if the car could give some clue to Ginny’s reason for showing up at her doorstep.
“My name is Ginny Polk. I’m from the prison.”
“Mighty fancy car for prison folk.”
“Oh, it’s not mine, ma’am. I borrowed my mama’s car because I was afraid mine wouldn’t make a trip this far out,” Ginny said.
“Jonesville isn’t a place people visit on purpose. Most of us are here because we always been here.”
“Yes, but I’m here to talk about your grandson.”
“Samuel will be dead this time next week,” she said.
“That’s why—”
“We won’t be going to the execution if that’s what you’re here about.” The woman’s lips disappeared into a hard line.
Frustrated by the interruptions, Ginny blurted out her mission in one breath. “Yes, ma’am, but I’m a cook at the prison. I wanted to fix something special for Samuel’s last meal, but he said he doesn’t want anything. I was hoping you might tell me what foods he used to like.”
The old woman appeared to be chewing on Ginny’s words. Soon her soft laugh grew into a hoarse cackle that held more rancor than humor. “Why the hell you care what a man eats the day he dies?”
“It’s what I do—”
“Oh, it’s ‘what you do,’” she mimicked. “You go all soft on the young inmates? Have pity on them?”
“It’s not like that.” Ginny looked away from Mrs. LeBoux and toward the car. She tried to put herself in the woman’s shoes. How’d she feel if a complete stranger appeared at the door wanting to talk recipes when one of her loved ones was about to die? Ginny thought to tell her about the other death row inmates and the dishes they’d asked for, but couldn’t see how that’d persuade the old woman to listen.
“You here about Samuel?” The young black girl joined them on the porch, but she’d left the child inside. “I’m his girlfriend, Eileen.”
Ginny stood and offered a hand, but the girl backed away, sticking her hands in her shorts’ pockets. She may have been Samuel’s age, but looked closer to fifteen or sixteen.
“Yes, I work in the kitchen at the prison. It’s customary to grant a prisoner one last meal of his choosing. I thought I’d ask his family for advice on what he might like.”
“He won’t tell you himself?”
Ginny shook her head and sat back down.
“Ain’t that just like him, Grammy?” Eileen sat down on the third rocker and reached for the older woman’s hand.
“Mrs. LeBoux?” Ginny asked.
“Call me Aida.”
“Ma’am, I don’t really know why the last suppers are so important to me. Maybe it’s a sign of respect. You know . . . acknowledging the person’s a human being no matter what crimes he may have committed.”
Aida held tightly to Eileen’s hand. She’d clearly taken the black girl in as family. That was a risk in the South and especially a small town like Jonesville. But Eileen’s son was a remembrance of Samuel and something they’d always share. Ginny found the sight comforting. That kind of compassion was rare.
“I can’t really think of him being there. The heartache is too much,” Aida said.
“Have you seen him lately?” Ginny asked.
“No, his sisters are afraid of the place, and I just can’t bear it,” she said. “Eileen thought about visiting. You know, to tell him about the child.”
“I thought it’d break his heart. Make it worse.” Eileen held a hand to her chin to stop its trembling. “But maybe we made a mistake.”
“Samuel was a good boy,” Aida said. “Really became the man of the family when his folks died. Those sisters of his, though, they’re wild and sometimes mean-spirited. Not Samuel.”
Ginny’s conversations with inmate families often took this turn. They wanted her to know there was goodness in their son’s or husband’s or grandchild’s heart. It’s as if they wanted to make them more human even though she never saw them as monsters. Not even those who committed the most heinous acts. When Ginny cooked for them, she tried to honor that little piece their families always recalled.
“He never hit me once,” Eileen said. “Nope, not once. My other boyfriends did, but not Samuel. He was kind to me. Made me feel good about myself. He wasn’t ashamed I was black.”
Ginny let Aida and Eileen share their memories for several minutes before bringing the conversation back to why she’d come.
“Samuel ate everything I put in front of him,” Aida said. “I don’t recall him liking one thing more than another. He had an appetite, though. He always wanted seconds or thirds.”
It was easy to picture Aida over a hot stove, preparing suppers for her grandchildren. What were those meals like? Did those aromas bind their memories to Aida and the home she made for them? Ginny thought back to her own mother’s kitchen and the absence of feeling in that space. Miriam’s cooking rarely brought comfort and sometimes not even sustenance.
Some of Ginny’s fondest memories were of her daddy enjoying a good dessert, his mouth open in a wide grin as he devoured cakes and pies and cobblers. Miriam would chastise him that his sweet tooth was as long as summer and that they’d go poor buying so much butter and sugar.
A year after her daddy’s murder, Ginny decided she’d learn to make a different dessert each week to honor him. She developed a knack in the kitchen and rarely had to throw out a recipe gone wrong. Miriam’s hips grew wider with each month until she forbade Ginny from baking altogether. She told her she might as well learn to cook suppers instead. Ginny’s confidence soared with each successful stew or roast or meatloaf. Instinctively, she knew when she could alter a recipe to make it her own and when she needed to follow it faithfully. Miriam rarely complimented her. That was all right with Ginny. She had been cooking for her daddy all along. She
pictured him at the table, digging into her meals as if they were the best thing he’d ever eaten.
“Your pork neck stew,” Eileen said, interrupting Ginny’s thoughts.
“What about it?” Aida asked.
“It was his favorite.”
“And how do you know that, child?”
Ginny sat forward in the rocker.
“One day after football practice, I asked Samuel to come to my house,” Eileen said. “I remember he said nothing could keep him from his grammy’s pork neck stew. I asked, ‘Not even this body?’ He said, ‘Not even you, sweetheart.’”
“Could I have a copy of the recipe?” Ginny asked.
“Recipe? There ain’t no recipe.” Aida’s smile returned.
“Well, could you tell me a little about it? I’d like to try to duplicate it.” She was close to getting what she wanted. Although Ginny’s heart beat faster, she found her breathing was much easier. She wouldn’t let down Samuel after all.
The woman’s laugh was genuine this time. “Just ’cause I tell you what to put in a pot, don’t mean it’ll taste the same as something I’ve been making since I was twelve years old.”
“Then show her, Grammy. Please?” Eileen knelt by Aida’s rocker, almost in supplication. “Let’s do it for Samuel.”
Ginny couldn’t believe her ears and almost knelt at Aida’s knee as well. “Would you really consider teaching me? I’d be honored. And I’m happy to pay for the fixings.”
Eileen didn’t wait for Aida to answer. She got up and pointed at the Cadillac. “I know where to get the pork necks. You drive.”
* * *
Eileen and Ginny followed Aida around the hot kitchen as she prepped the ingredients. Her movements were swift and decisive, but her gait was slow as she shifted from one foot to the other. Ginny scribbled down what she saw and would’ve written more except she was worried about missing a step. First, Aida seasoned the pork necks before browning them in lard. The sizzling pork fat danced from the pot onto the skin of Ginny’s arm. Aida swatted her away when she added onion, celery, and water, but Ginny hovered close enough to guess the quantities of each. Salt and pepper were added in quick dashes. When she asked how much, Aida just shook her head. The old woman then covered dry lima beans with boiling water and left them soaking before suggesting they all sit on the front porch to cool off.
Eileen brought out checkers, so they played several games. The aroma of stewed meat drifted out, teasing Ginny’s already growling stomach. When it was time to add the soaked beans to the pig necks, she trailed Aida back into the kitchen, not caring if she was being a nuisance.
They returned to the porch with hard salami and saltines to snack on. The women finally asked questions Ginny figured they’d have already asked by then.
“You stay and watch ’em die, when you could just make the food and be done with it?” Eileen asked.
Miriam asked the same question every time Ginny attended an execution. Even though she’d been responsible for making her daughter witness the first one at age eight, she now seemed horrified Ginny would subject herself to such gruesome proceedings as an adult.
“I think of it as bearing witness to the end of a man’s life,” Ginny said. “I’m not family or law enforcement. I’m just a fellow human being.”
Some years ago, she started taking down the inmates’ last words and adding them to the official records. Roscoe felt better knowing there was a valid reason for her presence in the chamber. He didn’t have to explain over and over why Ginny insisted on staying.
“You saw seventeen men go to the electric chair?” Eileen’s eyes were large and wet.
“Eighteen if you count the man who murdered my daddy.”
“When your daddy die?” Eileen asked.
“Many years ago. I was eight.”
“And they let a little girl see something like that?” she asked.
Ginny nodded.
“I’d have nightmares if I had to watch such a thing.” Aida shuddered.
It was too difficult for Ginny to explain the nature of her nightmares. Rarely were they about the act of killing. Instead, she was haunted by the families who watched their loved ones die. Their fear and anger usually surpassed that of the death row inmate’s emotions, and it was a horrible thing to witness. Yet, she could always tell from their eyes the exact moment they let go of the terror they felt leading up to the execution. After their husbands or fathers or brothers slumped lifeless in the electric chair, loved ones could get on with the process of grieving and leave Greenmount behind for good. Or, that was Ginny’s hope.
Aida and Eileen went silent. Most folks did when they learned a child had been allowed to view an execution. Or, they’d start in on Miriam being an unfit parent to insist on such a thing. In those instances, Ginny grew tired of coming up with excuses and let them judge her mama all they wanted.
The morning of her daddy’s execution, ignorance kept Ginny from resisting much. The day took on the flavor of an Easter morning. They ate a hearty breakfast of eggs and ham steak before putting on their best Sunday dresses and shoes. Miriam swept her hair up in a tight chignon and affixed her church veil with a pearl-tipped hat pin even though they weren’t headed to mass. Ginny’s uncles arrived that morning with much fanfare, whooping and hollering and honking the horn as they pulled up. Ginny and her mother treated the occasion with the solemnity of Easter, while the men treated it with the raucousness of Independence Day.
Once they’d arrived at the building where the execution would take place, a crowd of people blocked the view of the door. As soon as they recognized Miriam, they parted as if she and Ginny were celebrities. The guards and some wives grabbed for her hand while others screamed out, “Justice for Joe!”
All these years later, Ginny wondered if taking one life for another meant justice had been served.
“So, Samuel will be number nineteen?” Eileen asked.
“Pardon me?”
“The nineteenth person you’ll see die.” Eileen began to cry softly, so Aida pulled her to her breast. They hugged each other across the arms of their rocking chairs.
“I don’t mean to upset you,” Ginny said.
“No worries, child,” Aida said. “She has a lot of crying to do and it won’t stop after next week.”
“You think God forgives us when we die?” Eileen wiped her wet cheeks, but new tears just took the place of those she’d cleared. “I don’t want Samuel to go to hell.”
Ginny didn’t have an answer. But Roscoe believed in God, and he believed enough in forgiveness to minister to men on death row who wanted to make peace before the end.
“The warden thinks so. He often sits with the inmates and reads Scripture,” she said, divulging a piece of Roscoe’s private life she probably shouldn’t have. “He said many of the men are truly repentant.”
There was another reason Ginny stayed to view the men die, but she could never find the right words to explain it, even to Roscoe. When she was a child, her grandma Nan had said a person’s soul drifted up from his body at the moment of death and some folks could see it. When Ginny watched her father’s murderer die, she prayed to see a wisp of smoke, a flash of white light, anything to prove there was a merciful God. Perhaps it was a foolish notion, but at every execution since then, her eyes sought out such signs.
“I have to believe Samuel’s sorry for what he done and that he’s going to a better place,” Aida said. “I have to believe it.”
“Will you be picking up the body?” Ginny asked. The prison gave families the option of retrieving their loved ones for private burial or having them interned at the prison.
Eileen winced at the word body, causing Ginny to regret her question instantly.
“No,” Aida said. “He’ll be buried at the prison. There will be a little service here at the Baptist church. Don’t need no casket and don’t need no grave to visit every day. We’ll keep Samuel in our hearts.”
Aida’s hand lingered over her chest, and Ei
leen mimicked the gesture almost subconsciously.
From time to time, Ginny wondered if her daddy’s death would have been easier to handle if she just believed he was in Heaven, as Miriam insisted. Ginny resented having to visit his grave at the Boucherville cemetery as if they were calling on a relative for Sunday tea. Still, if he wasn’t in the grave and wasn’t in Heaven, she had nowhere to place him in her mind. As a child struggling with the finality of death, she soon formed her own beliefs. One being it was more important to do something worthwhile when she was still alive than to mourn those who were already gone.
Samuel’s younger sisters were due back any minute from their summer jobs at the feed store. Aida begged Ginny to stay and eat dinner with them, but she was already woefully late in getting back to Miriam’s. Before leaving, Ginny did, however, take a few bites of the delicious stew and made notes on the final blended flavors: earthy, oniony, a tad on the salty side. Aida hadn’t bothered to skim off any excess fat, so the tender lima beans were oily on the tongue—perfect if one had cornbread to soak it up.
“You do a good job for my boy,” Aida instructed. Her voice cracked slightly, but she didn’t cry. Most older folks Ginny had met were hardened by life and thought tears pointless. At her daddy’s funeral, her own grandmother had pinched Miriam’s elbow and told her to hold it in.
“I’ll do my best.” Ginny hugged Aida first, then Eileen.
She had already started the car when Eileen jumped off the porch and ran toward her waving something.
“Please, Ginny. Give this to Samuel when you see him.” She thrust a creased photo through the window. “Tell him he has a son. Thaddeus. Named after my granddaddy. Tell him we won’t ever forget him.”
Ginny nodded, too choked up to speak. As she turned out of the driveway, her eyes avoided the rearview mirror and the two women she’d spent an afternoon with. She wondered just how many years of this work she had in her.
* * *
The sun had set by the time Ginny got back to Boucherville. She’d forgotten to add gasoline to the tank. Her mind had been preoccupied: where to purchase the pig necks, whether she had time for a dry run of the recipe before Samuel’s execution just three days away, when to give him the photo of his son. Miriam was the least of her worries. She’d just have to leave her mama some money and put up with whatever chastising awaited.
The Last Suppers Page 4