This Land

by Dan Barry

  Now 45, Mr. Liang works overtime at a nearby Kellogg’s cereal plant and manages several properties he owns, including this house, which he wants to be—just so.

  “There are other people living a lot harder, tougher, than what I went through,” he says.

  A HISTORY OF ACCEPTANCE

  Mr. Digrugilliers applies his checklist to the kitchen, where the counter is crowded with mismatched dinnerware, new appliances and clutches of flatware bound with rubber bands. Draped over the oven handle is a dish towel printed with a calendar for 1968, another tumultuous year.

  Then to the bedrooms upstairs. The children’s twin beds, bought at discount from the Lancaster Mattress Company, are covered with the black G of the Georgia Bulldogs, the winged wheel of the Detroit Red Wings and other invitations to sleep in cocoons of American culture.

  Armed with a list of what he needs, he and a colleague, Orion Hernandez, climb into a beat-up van reeking of McDonald’s. They head to Walmart, where Mr. Digrugilliers recognizes a thin man—a Nepalese refugee who resettled here two years ago—leaving as he is walking in.

  “Hey, how are you?” Mr. Digrugilliers calls out. “Hello,” the man calls back.

  Such encounters happen often in Lancaster, whose rich history of acceptance is rooted, in part, in the influence of the Mennonites, Amish and other faiths. A glimpse of the local worldview came in January when a supportive rally of more than 200 people drowned out a much smaller anti-immigrant protest outside the Church World Service office here.

  Sheila Mastropietro, the group’s longtime supervisor in Lancaster, took heart in the moment. It reflected a communal understanding of both the global refugee crisis and the rigorous screening process that refugees undergo before coming to the United States.

  Still, given a president-elect who seems averse to the country’s modest commitment to refugee relocation, Ms. Mastropietro says, “We don’t know what to expect.”

  Last fiscal year, the Lancaster office of the Church World Service helped to resettle 407 of the 85,000 refugees admitted to this country; this fiscal year, its target is 550 of a hoped-for 110,000.

  “We are acting as if the numbers are going to be the same—until we hear something different,” she says.

  Decades of resettlement work have transformed the Lancaster area into a medley of cultures so rich that Amer Alfayadh, 34, a senior case manager, struggles to name them all: “Syrians, Iraqis, Somalis, Congolese, Ukrainians, Belorussians, people from Kazakhstan. Then, of course, Lebanese, Palestinians. Bhutanese, Nepalese, Burmese, Sri Lankans…”

  Mr. Alfayadh himself arrived from Iraq in 2010. Though trained as an engineer, he worked at a Lowe’s—customer service, paint, lawn and garden—and as a substitute teacher before being hired to help other refugees. He is accustomed now to urgent late-night calls from fresh arrivals unfamiliar with, say, locks on doors.

  New clients are often at their breaking point, uncertain what to make of this exotic land called Pennsylvania. Knowing how difficult it can be for anyone in crisis to see ahead—to jobs, school, a future—Mr. Alfayadh says he tries to impart a simple message:

  “O.K. Tomorrow will be better.”

  At Walmart, Mr. Digrugilliers and Mr. Hernandez commandeer two shopping carts each and begin racing through the cavernous store like contestants on the old “Supermarket Sweep” game show, grabbing specific items, down to umbrellas and sanitary pads.

  His purchases complete, Mr. Digrugilliers mounts his cart and wheels it into the dusk like a skateboard, exuberant with hope that some refugee family’s journey will be just as smooth.

  It is not. The Church World Service soon receives word that this particular family’s resettlement has been delayed—a not-uncommon development that could be caused by something as simple as a spike in an asylum-seeker’s blood pressure at the airport.

  But there is no shortage of tempest-tossed refugees. Mr. Alfayadh’s supervisor, Valentina Ross, remembers that another Syrian family is arriving in a few days: a father, a mother, three daughters and a boy. They will need a home.

  HOLIDAY SPIRIT ABOUNDS

  Today is the day. A holiday spirit has taken hold in downtown Lancaster, with a colossal Christmas tree glittering in Penn Square and ancient brick houses swathed in festive lights.

  A mile away, a Church World Service caseworker named Gaby Garver, a focused college graduate of 22, is collecting provisions for the new family at a food pantry. Signing some paperwork, she says, “And no meat products for the family, please.”

  As Ms. Garver prepares to leave with milk, vegetables and other items, a pantry volunteer asks: “Since you didn’t take any meat, would you like some extra rice?”

  Yes, please.

  More food is needed. Ms. Garver guides her 1999 Pontiac through the cold rain to the Save-A-Lot supermarket, where many goods sit in cut-open cardboard cases. She leaves 10 minutes later with bread, fruit, beans, sugar, tea and a receipt for $26.58, to be deducted from the family’s grant money.

  Hunched against the weather, the slight young woman makes two trips carrying the food into the drab gray house. After stocking the refrigerator and cabinet, she conducts a last-minute inspection. The fridge is cold. The tap has hot water. The burners on the gas stove ignite.

  Everything upstairs is fine as well, with even more homey touches added. New pajamas and towels. New clothes hangers. New picture frames, showing stock photos of cheerful families, on the shelves. And on one twin bed, a child’s soccer ball, still in its box.

  HUGS AND HANDSHAKES

  The rain has stopped, a slice of moon risen. Ms. Garver is driving now to the home of a Syrian family that arrived seven months ago. The mother has cooked a hot meal for the refugee family that is about to land any minute in New York, a good three-hour drive away.

  Inside, where five young children zip and waddle about, the prepared meal sits in expectation on the dining room table: a large aluminum tray bountiful with chicken and rice and a huge bowl of salad.

  The oldest child, Mohamad, 14, helps Ms. Garver carry the food out to her vehicle, and she thanks him. He responds with the formality given to a new language being tried on for size.

  “You’re welcome,” the boy says, and smiles.

  Returning to the gray house, Ms. Garver fumbles in the dark to open the door while holding the tray of still-hot food. When she returns with the salad bowl, she stoops to collect a clump of junk mail, including a come-on addressed to “Our Neighbor.”

  Later tonight, Ms. Garver and Mr. Alfayadh will drive a Ford van to Lancaster Airport, where they will meet two representatives from the local Islamic Center. Soon after, another van will arrive from Kennedy International Airport.

  Hugs and handshakes will be exchanged in the December air. Luggage will be collected. And six Syrian refugees will be driven the 20 minutes to a warm home perfumed by warm food, in a city made radiant by the multicolored lights of the season.

  PART THREE

  Misdeeds

  Here you have your morning papers, all about the crimes

  A Rough Script of Life, if Ever There Was One

  CHADRON, NEB.—SEPTEMBER 2, 2007

  Item from the blotter of the Chadron Police Department: Caller from the 900 block of Morehead Street reported that someone had taken three garden gnomes from her location sometime during the night. She described them as plastic, “with chubby cheeks and red hats.”

  When you reach Chadron you’re glad for it, because this Nebraska town is a long way from anywhere. Drive north on Main Street, past the Police Department, and you hit prairie; drive south, past the state college, and you hit prairie. In between, 5,600 people embrace, avoid and endure one another in a compact place that began more than a century ago as a remote railroad town.

  Here, as anywhere, the specifics of most encounters between residents evaporate with the moment, leaving only those precious, fleeting bits, snatched from the ether and pinned by some dispatcher sitting at a desk behind the Police Department’s service wi
ndow. A call comes in, the dispatcher types and another brief paragraph is added to the continuing Chadron epic.

  Caller from the 200 block of Morehead Street advised a man was in front of their shop yelling and yodeling. Subject was told to stop yodeling until Oktoberfest.

  It is in this regard that Chadron is blessed. For here, life’s gradual unfolding is measured and honored by Police Beat, a longstanding feature in The Chadron Record, the weekly newspaper. It records those small, true moments lost in the shadows of the large—moments that may not rise to the Olympian heights of newsworthiness, yet still say something about who we are and how we create this thing called community.

  Caller from the 400 block of Third Street advised that a subject has been calling her and her employees, singing Elvis songs to them.

  Police Beat repeats, almost verbatim, some of the calls that the town’s police dispatchers receive and then dutifully log, often in a literary style that synthesizes the detached jargon of the police with the conversational language of the people.

  Caller from the 200 block of Morehead Street advised that a known subject was raising Cain again.

  Every day, except on those days when they don’t feel like it, the dispatchers fax copies of their calls log to the ink-perfumed office of The Record, just around the corner. There, a young reporter named Heather Crofutt selects the most interesting items, edits out the names and specific addresses and types them up for Police Beat. Although she is essentially transcribing the reports, she says, “People think I make it up.”

  Officer on the 1000 block of West Highway 20 found a known male subject in the creek between Taco John’s and Bauerkemper’s. Subject was covered in water stating he was protecting his family. Officers gave subject ride home.

  George Ledbetter

  George Ledbetter, the editor, says Police Beat rivals the obituaries in popularity, so much so that it has become an integral part of local culture. Not long ago, for example, the loud practice sessions of four Chadron State College musicians earned them a mention in the log. They instantly knew what to call their fledgling band: Police Beat.

  Mr. Ledbetter struggles to name his favorite item; there are so many. But taken as a whole, he says, the feature is “such a reflection of human life.”

  Over the years, Chadron police officials have had a tolerate-hate relationship with Police Beat. One top-ranking officer complains that the feature seems to minimize the difficulty of police work. She says that while there are plenty of calls about animal encounters (Caller on the 900 block of Parry Drive advised a squirrel has climbed down her chimney and is now in the fireplace looking at her through the glass door, chirping at her), there are plenty of calls about far more serious matters: child abuse, domestic violence, you name it.

  But Police Beat often reflects how heavily some of us rely on law enforcement for just about everything (Caller from the 800 block of Pine Street advised that she had just left someone’s home and she forgot her jacket, and requested an officer to get her coat), and demonstrates how deft the police can be at defusing potentially volatile matters:

  Caller from the 100 block of North Morehead Street requested to speak to animal control because caller felt that someone was coming into his yard and cutting the hair on his dogs. Dispatch advised caller to set up video surveillance on his house. Caller said he planned on it.

  What emerges, then, is a kind of weekly prose poem to the human condition, where annoyance about barking dogs is validated, where nighttime fears born of isolation are reflected, where concern about others is memorialized.

  Caller stated that there is a 9-year-old boy out mowing the yard and feels that it is endangering the child in doing so when the mother is perfectly capable of doing it herself.

  In short, Police Beat is a rough script to the tragicomedy that is everyday life. And if the details preserved in the ever-expanding Chadron epic do not always find us at our best, there are moments, recorded for posterity, when we seek redemption, we make amends. We try.

  Two weeks after the theft of those three chubby-cheeked, red-hatted garden ornaments, a brief item in Police Beat reported a break in the case. Two girls refusing to identify themselves had “brought in some gnomes.”

  Death in the Chair, Step by Remorseless Step

  NASHVILLE, TENN.—SEPTEMBER 16, 2007

  The window blinds to the execution chamber are raised shortly after 1 in the morning, in accordance with the Procedures for Electrocution in the State of Tennessee. And the condemned man is revealed.

  He looks almost like a young child buckled into a car seat, with his closed eyes and freshly shaved head, with the way the black restraints of the electric chair crisscross at his torso. He yawns a wide-mouthed yawn, as though just stirring from an interrupted dream, and opens his eyes.

  He is moments from dying.

  The cause of death will be cardiac arrest. Every step toward that end will follow those written state procedures, which strive to lend a kind of clinical dignity to the electrocution of a human being, yet read like instructions for jump-starting a car engine. Remember: “A fire extinguisher is located in the building and is near the electric chair as a precaution.”

  Behold Daryl Holton. He is 45. Ten years ago he shot his four young children in his uncle’s auto-repair garage, two at a time, through the heart. He used their very innocence to kill them, telling them not to peek, Daddy has a surprise. After he was done he turned himself in, saying he wanted to report a “homicide times four.”

  In seeking the execution of this Army veteran, now blinking in the cold, bright room, the state argued that Mr. Holton committed premeditated murder, times four, to punish his ex-wife for obtaining an order of protection and for moving away. He killed his children, so he must be killed.

  In defending the life of this man—now pursing his lips, about all that he can move—his advocates argued that he believed his children were better off dead than living in a profoundly troubled home; that he actually felt relief after pulling a tarpaulin over those four small bodies. He killed his children, so he must be mentally ill.

  All the while, Mr. Holton adhered to a peculiar code of conduct that vexed all sides. Those fighting for his life often did so against his will. Those seeking his remorse were unrewarded.

  Just days ago he said the crimes for which he was convicted warranted the death penalty, but he pointedly removed himself from that equation. Perhaps to suggest the killings were justified; perhaps to keep things theoretical. No matter. Now, at 1:09 a.m. on Wednesday, Sept. 12, 2007, at the Riverbend Maximum Security Institution, it is about to happen.

  The warden, Ricky J. Bell, stands before him, supervising the first electrocution in Tennessee since 1960. Prison officials had hoped that Mr. Holton would choose to die by lethal injection, and had been gently reminding him of this option. But he maintained that since electrocution was the only form of capital punishment at the time of his crimes, then electrocution it should be.

  Before the raising of those window blinds, Mr. Holton had started to hyperventilate, and Mr. Bell had sought to calm him by slightly loosening the straps. But now it is 1:10, the blinds are up, the clock is running. In accordance with procedures, the warden asks if the condemned has something to say.

  The inmate’s response is so slurred by his hyperventilating that he is asked to repeat what he has been planning to say for a long time. He says again, “Two words: I do.”

  This could be a joke of some kind, a cosmic conundrum, or maybe Mr. Holton’s acceptance into whatever awaits him after life. It could be the use of his marital vow as a parting shot at his ex-wife, or perhaps a twisted re-affirmation of his belief in the sanctity of marriage and family.

  The warden asks, “That it?” The inmate nods.

  Two corrections officers step forward to place a sponge soaked in salted water on Mr. Holton’s bald scalp to enhance conductivity. Next comes the headpiece, which the procedures describe as a “leather cranial cap lined with copper mesh inside.” Finally, a
power cable, not unlike the cable to your television, is attached to the headpiece.

  The copper mesh pressing the wet sponge sends salty water streaming down the inmate’s ashen face, soaking his white cotton shirt to the pale skin beneath. When officers try to blot him dry with white towels, Mr. Holton says not to worry about it, “ain’t gonna matter anyway.”

  After the white towels comes a black shroud to be attached to the headpiece. It is intended in part to protect the dignity of the inmate, now strapped, soaked and about to die before witnesses. His final expression, then, will be his own.

  Time.

  With the push of a button on a console labeled Electric Chair Control, 1,750 volts bolt through Mr. Holton’s body, jerking it up and dropping it like a sack of earth. The black shroud offers the slightest flutter, and witnesses cannot tell whether they have just heard a machine’s whoosh or a man’s sigh.

  Fifteen seconds later, another bolt, and Mr. Holton’s body rises even higher, slumps even lower. His reddened hands remain gripped to the arms of the chair, whose oaken pieces are said to have once belonged to the old electric chair, and before that, to the gallows.

  It is 1:17. Procedures require a five-minute pause at this point. A prison official off to the side watches a digital clock on the wall while chewing something, perhaps gum, perhaps to calm his nerves. Two minutes, three, four, the only things moving in the room are his eyes and his jaw, five. The window blinds drop, and a physician begins a private examination.