“Those men had family, too, Dot. Wives and mothers and children and friends who also had to go on with their lives. But I’m too tired to argue with you. Will you just please help me?”
“I’m not arguing,” Dot said. “I’m concerned. Can’t I be concerned?”
Ginny held several pieces in her outstretched hands.
Dot huffed, grabbed them from her, and started arranging the pieces on the floor. With a keen eye, she could see patterns Ginny failed to see. Within an hour, full pages had been reassembled. Ginny ate saltines and drank cups of coffee while her friend worked magic.
“You have any glue?” Dot asked.
Ginny stood carefully, aware her legs were still wobbly and unsure, and retrieved the rubber cement from the desk drawer.
“You have lots of blank pages left in the scrapbook. Just glue all these cut-up pieces onto new sheets,” Dot ordered. She pointed at an open spot on the floor where Ginny could work alongside her. “I don’t know the exact order, but I expect you do.”
She assembled the pages reverently, almost in penance for the damage she’d done with the scissors in a fit she couldn’t even recall. Faces and names and recipes came together again. Oscar Facianne: clabber cake. Donald Beauchamp: hot pepper shrimp with grits. Orville Dowdy: dry toast with a soft boiled egg.
Dot had laid a few pieces of paper to one side on the floor, then seemed to change her mind. She folded and stuffed them in the pocket of her robe instead. “I’m not going let you put Samuel’s page back together. No sense in reliving any of it. Not like it’d be complete anyways.”
Ginny’s stomach clenched as Dot took the ruined photo of Samuel’s son from the nightstand and put it in her pocket as well. She was right, though. What happened to Samuel shouldn’t be remembered.
Dot held her lower back while she eased up from the floor. Sitting cross-legged for three hours had both of them cramped up and stiff.
“If Roscoe knew about this, he’d think you were a madwoman.”
“He doesn’t have to know,” Ginny said.
“Secrets have a way of eating at a relationship,” she warned.
“You already said he was beside himself. I don’t want to hurt him anymore.”
“So, you heard me when I said that.”
Ginny nodded. “And that Mama was stomping on your last nerves. No one needed to tell me. I could’ve guessed she’d wear out her welcome.”
Dot laughed soft and low. “Roscoe’s face ballooned up like a ripe berry the last time she visited. I was certain he was having a heart attack. He told her she wasn’t welcome back until you asked for her.”
It was Ginny’s turn to laugh. “That’s unlikely.”
Dot sat on the bed while Ginny leaned up against the wall. A damp breeze entered the window screen above her, causing a chill to run the length of her spine. It was almost 4 a.m. She longed to drift back to sleep, although she was fearful about what else she might do and then not remember.
“I also heard you say that you needed me,” Ginny said.
“Well, that kitchen is a big place to take care of,” Dot said. “And you left me all on my own.”
“I think you meant something else.”
Dot fidgeted with her housecoat. “If you’re trying to egg me into saying I love you, then I will. Ginny Polk, I love you like a daughter. And I’m mad as hell that you worried me to death these past weeks.”
“I love you, too.”
Caretaker was a role that fit as naturally as Dot’s own skin. Because of Miriam’s deficiencies in the parenting department, Ginny gladly accepted a mother hen in a prison yard of roosters. She’d always known she meant something special to Dot. Her daughter-in-law’s inability to love or accept Dot created a chasm of pain Ginny hoped to fill in some way.
From time to time, Ginny used to think she’d been too hard on her mama. After all, Miriam had had a rough life, which could make anyone hard. But Dot hadn’t had an easy life. When her husband was injured at the sawmill, Dot eked out a living cleaning houses, doing laundry, and washing dishes at the elementary school in Boucherville. After her husband passed, Dot raised a fine son all on her own and thought him to be her finest achievement. While Dot exhibited a sharp tongue, she never complained about her circumstances and she never belittled anyone. Ginny had been vigilant, always trying to assess when Miriam might go on a tirade or exhibit the meanness that marked so many of their interactions. Ginny never feared that around Dot. She felt accepted for who she was. It seemed natural that Dot saying she loved her meant almost as much as Roscoe’s earlier declaration.
“I don’t think you should be making any more of those meals,” Dot said. “Roscoe don’t think you should either.”
They’d likely had a few conversations about her and she couldn’t blame them. They didn’t have anyone else they could talk to, and neither trusted Miriam enough to have a conversation about Ginny’s well-being. ’Course, it probably seemed easier to blame the incident on the last suppers instead of some damaged part of her.
“Silas Barnes never got a last meal,” Ginny said, rubbing bits of glue from her fingers.
“What are you talking about?”
“The man who killed my daddy. He didn’t get a last supper.”
Dot closed her eyes, visibly exasperated by the turn in conversation. “You weren’t but an itty-bitty gal. There’s no way you could know such a thing.”
But Ginny did know. Silas’s wife had brought fried chicken with her in the hopes the prison would allow him to have a last meal with her. At the time, Ginny hadn’t known the warden denied the man that last bit of comfort from his kin. But she had noticed the covered basket sitting on the bench next to Mrs. Barnes throughout the execution. The smell of deep-fried chicken, once Ginny’s favorite, turned her stomach as she’d tried to distinguish it from the horrible smells of death. After the execution, as the widow sat there weeping, one of the guards spit in her face. She’d thrown the basket at the wall, missing Miriam by a hair.
“It was a big scene. When I asked Mama about it afterward, she said a guard killer didn’t deserve a last meal of his choosing and that Mrs. Barnes and her goddamned fried chicken could go to hell with her husband.”
After everything her mama had forced Ginny to witness, she’d cried more for Mrs. Barnes than she had for her own daddy. When she couldn’t stem the flow of tears, Miriam shook her until her teeth rattled. Her mama said she’d never been more ashamed of her daughter than in that instant.
“Why are you remembering Silas now?” Dot asked.
“When Samuel threw the pork stew on the floor, it reminded me so much of the basket of food Mrs. Barnes had thrown at the guard,” Ginny said, recalling the anguish in both their faces. She felt their utter despair in her nightmares, the ones that haunted her both day and night.
“Lord in Heaven,” Dot mumbled. “It’s too much. It’s all too much.”
Ginny didn’t ask her if she meant the story, or the last suppers, or the scrapbook of all the men who’d been put to death during her time at the prison. But she agreed with Dot. It did feel like too much.
“You coming back to work today?” Dot asked.
“I expect it’s time. Especially since you need me so much.”
Chapter 9
Ginny’s blue chambray dress hung about her like a flour sack. She’d lost ten pounds over the past month, but her puny frame didn’t have five to spare. At least her apron cinched it in, giving the appearance her clothes fit. Dot vowed to make it her personal mission to ply Ginny with the fattiest, most sugar-laden foods imaginable until she reached 100 pounds again.
Her strength had atrophied as well, making the workday even more exhausting than normal. Dot took up the slack, joyful her friend and boss was back in the kitchen at all. She chattered almost nonstop, telling stories about how she whipped the inmate kitchen helpers into shape and they were doing a better job because of her stern guidance.
Of course, Jess and Peabody took it in stride. Gin
ny winked at them to let them know they’d been doing a good job all along. Their grins welcomed her back to an old and comforting routine.
“You have any trouble getting the supplies you needed while I was gone?” Ginny asked Dot.
While she was gone. Seemed a safer way to describe what happened. Miriam had vacillated between using the words breakdown and spell. Ginny wondered if her mama knew she’d been overheard in the hallway outside Ginny’s room. Miriam had told Roscoe she always knew her daughter was off in the head and it was only a matter of time before Ginny totally lost it. That had to have been the day Roscoe told her she wasn’t welcome at the prison anymore. Or, at least Ginny liked to think it was.
“Roscoe made sure I had everything I needed,” Dot said. “He even got a couple of ladies from town to come in and do some baking.”
“He’s a good man.”
“That he is. So, why not give him what he wants?” Dot asked.
“And that would be?”
Dot dropped the baking sheet on the counter. “Quit this job. Marry him.”
Ginny threw her arms up. “How’s that supposed to solve anything? And he hasn’t exactly asked me to marry him.”
Had Roscoe and Dot had a conversation about this very subject? If they had, it wasn’t one she’d overheard while cocooned in her bed. Even after he told Ginny he loved her, marriage hadn’t entered her mind because it would mean leaving the kitchen.
“One thing your mama and I agree on is this job isn’t good for you,” Dot said.
The guard at the kitchen door seemed overly interested in their conversation, so Ginny pulled Dot closer. “Forcing me to leave this job is the worst thing you could do for my sanity. I need this place. And I hate that you agree with Mama about anything.”
Dot put both hands on Ginny’s shoulders, getting flour and shortening on her dress. “It’s a sad state of affairs if you feel you need this place.”
“Then why do you stay?”
Tenderness filled Dot’s wet eyes. “I’ve told you many times. To watch after you, child.”
“Well, I guess you won’t be leaving anytime soon, because I’m not.” Ginny turned back to the cutting board and the bag of onions waiting to be chopped. “And let’s not mention Roscoe and marriage in the same sentence again. There’re ears everywhere, and I don’t want him getting the idea I planted rumors.”
Dot dropped the conversation and instead chastised Jess and Peabody for their slowness in peeling potatoes. Their peeling skills weren’t the problem. Dot was agitated, but probably thought she couldn’t press it anymore. She and Roscoe had deemed Ginny fragile, if not truly crazy, as Miriam insisted. She’d likely get a free pass for the near future.
* * *
Breakfast and lunch passed without Roscoe stopping by the kitchen. He wasn’t expected to, but Ginny assumed he’d heard from the guards that she was back at work. People might think of women as experts at gossip, but they hadn’t seen how fast news could travel in this prison.
Dot insisted Ginny take off around two. She’d handle supper on her own. The walk to the women’s barracks didn’t bother Ginny. Her aching back appreciated the opportunity to stretch. The muggy Louisiana air slicked her skin with sweat, but it was better than being cooped up inside. She passed a few guards on the path. Most wouldn’t meet her eye, as if her breaking from the world had been a shameful thing. There was no point in trying to convince anyone she had no choice in the matter, because even Roscoe, Dot, and her mama thought she had. Their pleas for her to get better always felt like a judgment that Ginny wasn’t trying hard enough. Maybe she hadn’t.
Only Dot and Ginny resided in the barracks anymore. Two other women had worked as part-time housekeepers at the admin buildings but quit when they were concerned they’d be enlisted to work full time in the kitchen. Or, maybe they grew tired of the vigil at the madwoman’s bedside. No matter. She and Dot now had the bathroom to themselves.
The door to her room was ajar. She pushed it open slowly and found Roscoe seated near the window, blowing cigarette smoke through the screen.
“Thought you’d quit again,” she said.
“Couldn’t think of a good enough reason not to start up.”
He wouldn’t look at her, so she walked over and sat on his lap. He buried his face into her neck. His skin felt feverish.
“I’m better,” Ginny said.
He nodded, but didn’t speak. The heaving of his shoulders told her he couldn’t have come to the kitchen to see her. Only here, in private, could he release the emotions holding him hostage. She stroked his hair, wrapping her fingers around the longish pieces at his neck. He needed a haircut and a shave. Both their lives had been on hold during these past weeks.
She couldn’t remember putting the scrapbook away, but was relieved it was out of sight. Roscoe didn’t need one more thing to convince him she was tainted with her daddy’s madness.
“Last night, I woke up from a bad dream and called out for Dot,” she said, concocting a story for her recovery that had nothing to do with scissors and dead men. “She brought in some coffee and crackers. We sat for hours. Then she asked if I was ready to go back to work and I said I was.”
“You probably should have rested today. I could have sat with you.” He ran his hand across his face and then through his hair. Tears had made his eyes a deep cobalt blue. She could have lost herself in them for hours.
“Work kept my mind occupied,” Ginny said. “Until I could see you.”
She bent down so her lips brushed against his wet, stubbled cheek. He smelled of sweat and sun. He aroused a passion she’d not felt in a long time. His kisses, tentative at first, became more urgent. She swung her leg around, straddling him and the chair. He pushed her skirt up and pushed aside her panties as she groped for his belt, then his zipper. Her hips moved in sync with his breath and she forgot how exhausted she’d been earlier.
* * *
Later, when they were on the bed, Ginny draped her arm across his chest. It looked like a child’s arm, thin and without defined muscles. For Roscoe’s sake, she’d make an effort to eat more and gain back her strength—to prove she was really better, at least in physical health.
“Thank you for the times you sat with me.” She ran a finger through the hair on his chest, tracing a heart like a teenager might. “I knew you were there even if I didn’t speak it.”
“I wish I was the one to bring you back. Not Dot.” His arms drew her closer so her head nestled at the base of his neck.
“Dot didn’t bring me back. I don’t know what did. I just came back.” That was the truth. Ginny didn’t know why she’d pulled out the scrapbook and destroyed it. Those acts came from a primal place that frightened her. And she dared not look at it closely.
“You need to get back to work?” she asked.
“Nah, something I got to show you. Let’s get dressed.”
* * *
They walked back to Roscoe’s truck at the admin building. Where they were going was still a mystery to her, but he thought it best she not walk the whole way. The truck wound its way past the Waiting Room and death row cells, and up the hill toward the warden’s residence. Ginny thought they’d stop there, but he kept going, circling back past the barracks where the unmarried guards slept and then to the row of seven houses set aside for guards with families. All but two had been vacant in recent years as more families opted to live in Boucherville.
Their white clapboards had been baked in the Louisiana sun for decades, leaving very little of the original paint. The sad grayness blended into the dusty landscape so that the lot of them looked like a ghost town in a black-and-white movie. Except for one. The house she’d grown up in.
It had been freshly whitewashed and seemed a brand-new addition instead. A splash of color drew her eyes to the porch. Two lemon-yellow metal chairs were flanked by pots of geraniums and spider ferns.
“What’s this, Roscoe?”
He squeezed her hand. “You’ll see.”
They parked in front of the life-size dollhouse. It looked nothing like the house she’d lived in with her parents. Her skin tingled with a child’s excitement on Christmas morning.
“Can I go inside?” she asked.
“You better. It’s yours.” He waved his hand toward the porch.
Hers? Ginny didn’t wait for an explanation, but instead bounded up the steps. The door was unlocked; its squawky hinge remedied since she last visited the house on the day of her interview for the cook’s job.
She braced herself, thinking the sitting room would unleash a flood of memories, but it looked completely unlike it had twenty-one years ago. The walls had been stripped of the wallpaper and the bare boards painted a creamy yellow. All the trim had been freshened with white paint.
“Hope you like the furnishings.” Roscoe stood behind her. She hadn’t heard him enter.
“Where did you . . .”
“Secondhand shops. A few things from the warden’s residence,” he said. “Do you like it?”
She sat down, unable to process it all. “But why?”
“Your mama’s right. This prison is a godforsaken place. Some days, I just can’t bear you’re a part of its ugliness. I think that’s why things happened the way they did with Samuel.”
“Oh, Roscoe . . .”
“Let me finish. I figured you’d be too stubborn to quit your job no matter how much I begged. So, I wanted you to have someplace special you could go that didn’t seem a part of the prison,” he said.
Some men were good with fancy words, telling you how much they loved you and such. Words didn’t come easy to Roscoe, so he’d made this house a declaration of his devotion. She’d never be loved by someone as much as she was by Roscoe in this very moment, and the realization made her sad as well as happy.
Nothing Ginny could utter—no words of gratitude—would ever measure up to what this gesture deserved. So, she hugged him, wrapping her arms tighter and tighter around his shoulders until she couldn’t squeeze any harder.
The Last Suppers Page 11