The Volunteer

by Barbara Taylor Sissel

  She can’t even be angry at him for having misled her or take satisfaction from knowing her hunch, that he had some agenda, was right.

  “I should have been honest with you from the first day. I’m sorry I wasn’t.”

  Sophia stands up.

  “If you want me to find someone else to finish painting your house, I can do that.”

  “Oh, I don’t think that will be necessary.”

  “Please don’t let what I did influence your relationship with Grace. She has no idea what I had in mind.”

  “Cort, I only said I wouldn’t be involved legally. I’m here for you, otherwise. Here for Grace and your family.”

  He answers that it’s more than he deserves and his voice is so graveled with relief and simple gratitude that Sophia’s own throat knots. She puts her fingertips there, but even as she does this, regret is coming on hard.

  o0o

  “Does Jarrett know about Thomas’s accident?” Sophia has come back downstairs to sit with Grace, while Larry and Carolyn are busy collecting Larry’s gear.

  “The officer I spoke to said he’d been told, but you never know with those people. Honestly, I hope he doesn’t know. It will only make him feel more helpless than he already does. Although, I guess you must have reached the human limit for helplessness if you’ve asked to die.” Grace’s shrug is eloquent evidence of her resignation. She fiddles with her teaspoon.

  Sophia waits.

  “There are women who write to men on death row, mostly ridiculous stuff. They think they’re in love. Jarrett’s had letters from some of them, but I never thought he wrote back.”

  “You found out differently?”

  “A few days ago, he wrote to me about a woman who’s been writing to him, who doesn’t sign her name, just her initial. L. She says she’s his mother, his birth mother.”

  “Is that possible?”

  “I don’t know.” Grace pauses. “Usually they want to marry the inmates not mother them.”

  “Does she have proof?”

  “The birth dates match. She said when he was born she was homeless and afraid. She left him on the steps of a church.”

  “In Houston?”

  “No, south of there. Brownsville. Jarrett’s adoptive parents did live in that area once.” Grace wipes her face. “The woman lives in England now. She’s been sending him books of philosophy.”

  “How did she find him?”

  “I don’t know. I think the only reason Jarrett told me about her is because he’s afraid she’s crazy enough to contact me.”

  “He doesn’t believe her.”

  “He doesn’t act as if he does, but suppose it’s true? She couldn’t possibly think she could make up for what she did, could she? She didn’t even bother to stay around long enough to see if he was found.”

  “I suppose she might have felt circumstances were—” Sophia hesitates. “She must have felt she had no other choice, that she couldn’t take adequate—”

  “Evidently she was in prison too. Jarrett thinks, or at least before she claimed she was his mom, he thought she had some special understanding of him, because she knew what it was like to be incarcerated.”

  “What did she do? Do you know?”

  “She shot her boyfriend, who was abusive to her. She got two years for manslaughter and while she served her sentence, she became pen pals with a man in England. She lives there with him now.”

  “Huh. Well, it’s quite a story.”

  The silence they share carries the murmur of Carolyn’s voice, the sound of Larry’s laughter. And the clock, always the clock, ticking away the time on the mantel in the living room.

  “Arlene told me that when she first brought Jarrett home all he did was ask for his mama in this shaky little voice that would break your heart.” Grace presses her fingertips to her eyes.

  “Yes, it would.”

  “I don’t think Jarrett has ever felt loved or safe in his life and now—now he’s going to—” Her voice breaks now into sobs that are harder because she fights them.

  Sophia kneels beside her, holding her. “Let it go,” she urges softly. “Let it come out, I’m right here.” Once she catches sight of Carolyn and Larry hovering, anxious-faced, in the doorway and when she gives her head a tiny shake, they retreat.

  After a while her knees begin to ache, but she doesn’t move. She would hold time, the very earth still on its axis, if she could, to keep the ground from shifting under Grace again. Finally, when her weeping subsides, Sophia straightens; she finds a tissue and sets it in Grace’s hand. She rinses a fresh dish cloth in cold water and brings that to Grace too.

  “Thomas wasn’t driving,” Grace declares when she has recovered her composure. “I don’t care what the police or Luke’s parents say. You don’t believe he’d lie about such a thing, do you?”

  “Do you know why he wanted to see his dad?” Sophia asks instead of offering reassurance she can’t feel good about.

  “I don’t care. I’m worried sick about Luke. If he doesn’t— But he will; he’ll wake up and tell his parents the truth. They just can’t believe it now.” Her voice turns bitter. “They probably think Thomas made Luke drink, too, and made him take the car. Because after all look at Thomas’s dad. Like father, like son, right?”

  Sophia thinks how she has imagined the ugly sound of those very words coming from her mother’s mouth in relation to Carolyn. She covers Grace’s bunched hands with her own.

  Chapter 23

  Tuesday, October 12, 1999: 5 days remain

  “Didn’t Jesus say money is the root of all evil?”

  “The love of money, Jarrett, and it was Paul who said it, that the love of money is the root of all evil.” The padre bends forward on his elbow keeping the receiver to his ear.

  “The love of money.” Jarrett repeats the words. Was that where it had started for him? What he remembers is envy. He remembers anger. Hunger. Lust. Wanting, always wanting. To be rich, to have so much money, he never had to think about it again. He had imagined owning a beach, an entire island. He had dreamed of the day when he would never answer to anyone.

  “Can you see how the accurate wording shifts the responsibility?” the padre asks. “It isn’t money that’s to blame for the greed in the world. It isn’t money, or even the things it can buy, that craves ownership, or that becomes afflicted with obsession, but the human mind and heart. That’s where Paul was directing us to look, within ourselves.”

  “What I saw growing up was that how good you were didn’t matter. Ethics, morals, didn’t matter. That isn’t how business is done. If you can play the game, that’s what counts. The Louis Tilleys, the Rafe Salazars of the world, they knew how to play the game.”

  “But they’re—”

  “Dead. Yeah.” Jarrett groans.

  “What is it?” Martin questions gently.

  “All this talking, Padre. What good is it?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Religion, it’s just—talk.” Jarrett tacks on the word. His mouth is dry. Sense is clouded by fear; he’s weak with anxiety, a need he can’t name. “They’ll be moving me soon to The Walls. I’m down to it and I guess—I guess— I wonder what’s next. I want to know. I thought it didn’t matter—” He breaks off. It sounds as lame as he knew it would.

  But Martin, who has a soft round face, the sort of face that shows every emotion, looks elated. He looks as if he’s wondering whether he’s going to lead a lost lamb to Jesus after all.

  Seeing this, Jarrett is quick to apologize, to say he didn’t mean to give the impression that he’d changed his mind about what the Padre was selling. “It’s nothing personal.”

  “So you’ve said, but as your spiritual advisor all I want is to see you find peace and since you’re so determined to die, eternal rest. I don’t necessarily need to acquire your soul for the Baptist church. I think I’ve told you that.”

  “If only it were that simple.”

  “But it is. If you’d allow the
love of Christ to grow in your heart.”

  “Say I went along and got on my knees, what good would it do? The two men I murdered would still be just as dead. They would still find bits of flesh and bone stuck to the goddamn walls.”

  Martin’s jaw clenches visibly, but he dismisses Jarrett’s second apology. “It’s why I’m here,” he says, “to listen, to offer support, if I can.”

  “I appreciate it, too, Padre. You’re the only one left I can talk to honestly. You just receive what I say and never give up.”

  “Not as long as you’re breathing.”

  “And when I’m not?”

  “I want to believe that God is merciful no matter what.”

  A silence hangs, one of the awkward pauses that seem inevitable in prison visits.

  Jarrett scoots his fingertips along the countertop’s edge. “I try and sit out there, you know? I try to see what you see. Not a cold-blooded killer, right? Not some heartless animal. If you saw me that way, you wouldn’t waste your time. You’d know not even your God could grant—” He shuts his mouth, his eyes. It’s too much to say, too big and dark.

  “What I see,” Martin says, filling the gap, “is a man, a very human being, who is struggling to find his way. But you won’t find it tormenting yourself over what’s past.”

  “You heard about Thomas, my son?”

  “That he was in an accident, yes, I was relieved when—”

  “He took off, did you know? He was trying to get here. To see me. I don’t know why. I just wish it had happened, that I could have talked to him. Just once more.”

  “Do Grace or Cort know what Thomas might have had in mind?”

  “They said he was drunk, not making much sense.” Jarrett pinches the bridge of his nose. “I feel so useless, so damn responsible. If he was driving and Luke dies, they’ll try him for manslaughter. They’ll go hard on him because of me.”

  “But I heard his friend’s out of the coma, that he’s going to be all right.”

  “What? Are you kidding?”

  “No one told you?”

  Jarrett snorts. “Hell, no. You’re sure?”

  “I am.”

  “Thank God.”

  The padre looks away.

  “What? So, he was the driver? Oh, my God. Has he been arrested?”

  “Not that I’ve heard.”

  “Jesus Christ! What in the hell was that kid thinking? Why would he pull such a stupid goddamn—?” Jarrett stops mid-rant.

  Why’d you steal, Dad? Why’d you kill? Thomas’s voice, his eleven-year-old child’s voice beats a path through Jarrett’s brain. He’d asked Jarrett over and over. And on the day Jarrett was sentenced to die, Thomas had screamed. Screamed and screamed: Don’t take my dad away. Please don’t take him.... Jarrett lays aside the receiver; he bows his head into his hands.

  Thomas has never called him Dad since, because he hasn’t been a dad. Blame, he’s been to blame.

  Jarrett can hear the padre telling him to breathe, to focus on what’s good. “The boys are alive, safe.” The padre goes on offering a river of speech that’s meant to placate. He says something about the DA’s office. That if Thomas gets arrested, he’ll go there; he’ll put in a word.

  And that’s when it hits Jarrett like a brick between his shoulder blades, that he’ll never know what happens to Thomas. He’ll never know the men Thomas or Brian will become. Or what sort of woman Megan will be. He’ll be dead by then, by his own wish. The realization scoops the air from his lungs.

  Martin’s look is wondering, worried.

  Jarrett picks up the receiver. “My family—”

  “You don’t want to leave them.”

  “I have to, for their sake, but I can’t lie to you of all people and say I’m not scared, scared shitless to go through with it.”

  “Then don’t. You have avenues—”

  “But isn’t it what your God mandates? An eye for an eye?”

  “You know my views on the death penalty. A man is never outside the Kingdom of Heaven or beyond our Lord’s plan for redemption, if only he—”

  “Forget it. I’m being a jerk.” Jarrett points to his head and says he’s losing it. He thinks of Terry Ray whom he’s heard talking to the cracks in the walls; he’s named them after women, created entire fantasies around them. Jarrett has felt it too: the serrated edge of madness grating lightly across his mind. He’s heard its voice muttering from the recesses of his brain. He’s fought it for six years now, for as long as he can.

  “Would you rather I’d go?” Martin asks.

  “No, no.” It’s the last thing Jarrett wants and when Martin asks about L, Jarrett seizes on the subject.

  “You won’t believe it,” he says. “She seems to think she’s my mother, my birth mother. She’s coming here from England.”

  The padre’s eyes widen.

  “Coming in time to see me die. How’s that for irony?”

  “Do you believe her?”

  Jarrett shrugs. It’s a hard question. He’s found something in her letters and in the books she’s sent him, a doorway to somewhere that felt— Safe is the word that appears in his mind. He has trusted her. Now she’s given him this bullshit, that she’s the one who birthed him and then abandoned him as if he was nothing to her, an inconvenience, yesterday’s trash. She’s explained the circumstances, that she was homeless at the time of his birth and frightened. She believed giving him up meant he would have a better life.

  After reading that, he had written back to her. One line: Is this a joke? She replied that it wasn’t, that she had gone back and forth throughout the months of their correspondence wondering whether to tell him, whether it was right, but that she had decided she couldn’t live with herself if she did not.

  He had written back to her: I won’t be living at all.

  “Is she aware you don’t want anyone present?” the padre asks now.

  “She says she’s coming anyway. She seems to think if she can convince me she’s my mother, I’ll make an exception.”

  “But you won’t.” Martin alone knows the reason: that Jarrett is afraid of weeping, afraid that when they lay him down on the gurney in the death chamber his tears will flow as readily as the chemicals that will ultimately stop his heart. He can’t keep the men who will execute him from seeing his weakness, but he can deny other witnesses access.

  “She’s crazy,” Jarrett says, “just another nutcase looking for a front row seat. Let her stand outside and light her candle like all the rest of the fruitcakes.”

  The padre says he’s going to pray for her.

  A man in a gray uniform passes behind Jarrett and gives a five minute warning.

  Martin says, “I heard you spoke to the government agents about the codex.”

  “A few days ago. Why?”

  “You won’t tell them where it is even to save your life?”

  “I couldn’t if I wanted to, Padre. I don’t know where it is. In any case Bush has met with that group from Madrid. He told them the cause of justice had to take precedence over the recovery of an antiquity, especially one of uncertain authenticity like the 2037.”

  “But you’ve seen it. Is it the real thing do you think?”

  “I don’t know much about that stuff. It all looked old to me.”

  “A show I watched on television said the information the 2037 contains is extremely detailed, that when the endtime comes—”

  “Don’t tell me you believe in that?”

  “The Maya did.”

  “Okay, but what if what they wrote was misinterpreted? What if what they were talking about wasn’t a cataclysm, but an evolutionary shift of some kind?”

  “What sort of shift?”

  “I don’t know. I ran across the idea in one of the books L sent. It said something about the ability of consciousness to expand. It’s a scientific fact that we have more brain capacity than we use. What if we start using it? The world would be different, wouldn’t it?”

  “Different how?” />
  “I don’t know, Padre. You’re the one who speaks of a kingdom.”

  Martin doesn’t respond.

  Jarrett holds his gaze. “Are you worried?”

  “Suppose I am?”

  “It surprises me, that’s all.”

  “Why? I’m a man just like you. I have times of doubt.”

  “But you also have faith.”

  “Faith is a practice. Men need faith. God, or Truth, if you prefer, doesn’t need faith, or even belief, both of which are uncertain in men at the best of times.” Martin puts his head to one side. “I’m sorry if this causes you distress.”

  “No more than usual.”

  The guard comes back and when Jarrett flattens his palm on the Plexiglas, Martin does the same.

  Chapter 24

  Tuesday, October 12, 1999 - 5 days remain

  Sophia makes a small breakfast for Carolyn, one scrambled egg and one slice of wheat toast with the crusts cut off and she tries not to hover, not to say that old trite thing about eating for two, but then Carolyn says it, “I’m eating for two now,” and they both laugh.

  The phone rings as Sophia is filling the kettle to make a second cup of tea. Carolyn checks the caller ID. “It’s Trent Hunter again.”

  “Don’t answer it.” Sophia shuts off the tap hard enough that the pipe knocks. “Why won’t that man leave me alone?”

  “Maybe if you talked to him.”

  “That would only encourage him.”

  “Do you know what he wants?”

  “Nothing good.” Sophia sets the kettle on the stove and lights the burner.

  Carolyn’s stare is intent. “You said we should talk, but so far, we haven’t. Should we do that now? Could it be that what you have to tell me is what he’s calling about?”

  Sophia settles a tea bag in her cup.

  “Mom? You’re kind of scaring me.”

  “No, no, it’s nothing like that.”

  The kettle whistles shrilly. The phone rings again.

  “Don’t,” Sophia warns, switching off the fire.

  “It’s Phil.”

  Carolyn holds out the cordless and Sophia grabs it as if it is her lifeline, telling Carolyn, “I should take this. It’s—it’s about a—a case. You know.”