by Lisa Samson
“I guess they’re scared.”
“Probably. We’re the lowest of the low. By anyone’s standards. Even our own, if we’d admit that. And still, you put your pen to that paper and reached out.”
“We’re two of a kind, Eli. I figured that out before I went to Rwanda. And while I wasn’t in love with you then, I think I might have been able to go that way had we been given the opportunity. I sure did enjoy being around you those couple of weeks. I felt like we connected. I guess you could say I reached out because I loved you. Or the memory of you. I don’t know.”
“Whatever you mean, you reached out because your heart told you to. When we give through love, that’s what will sustain us. It’s what makes our lives good. Truly good.”
“Because love doesn’t seek for itself.”
He nodded. “I wish I’d have learned that a long time ago.”
“Eli, don’t take this the wrong way. But I love you. I mean, these last few months, writing and all, you’ve become more than a friend. You’ve been a lifeline.”
“You’ve been a lifeline to me too.” He pressed her hand between both of his. “I have an important question to ask you.”
“Well, if you’re asking my hand in marriage, it’s no way!”
He laughed. “No. I wouldn’t ask that of anyone! Can you be here the twenty-ninth? I don’t want to die alone.”
His words punched her in the heart. “Yes,” she whispered. “I’ll be here.”
“Thank you.”
His face hardened, then crumbled. And Eli cried like the innocent baby he once was, so many years ago.
—How does this happen?
She knew the story. But that didn’t explain much. This was Eli in front of her. How did this happen?
• 24 •
May sat atop Natural Bridge in the afternoon sunshine, her legs dangling over the side. She loved the view of the treetops, the hills and valleys spread out before her eyes like a gathering of flowers not yet turned brilliant. The copy of the Rwanda article rested on her lap, and she figured it was finally time to read it.
It had to be good, though, to see the experience written down cogently, almost clinically, by someone else.
She began, amazed at how easily her eyes sipped up the words.
Adding the story of Carl Wilkins, an Adventist missionary who refused to leave, to her story settled her soul. Did he know about May the way she knew about him? Most likely he did now. What a brave man.
The sun beat down upon her neck as she read how Carl watched his wife and children ride away in the convoy sent to transport them to Burundi. How he hid in his house for three weeks with the two Tutsi domestic workers who’d been with the family for several years. How he saw the body of his neighbor draped over the fence of her yard.
May had seen many such sights. She thought of dragging all those bodies from houses, gardens, one lying over the hood of his car.
And then Carl emerged, procuring a permit to travel the city roads. He kept an entire orphanage alive, saving all those children, as well as the director, Damis Gisimba, a Hutu who wouldn’t align himself with Hutu power, who said because he’d stressed unity between Tutsi and Hutu with his children, he couldn’t turn back.
May felt a heat spread beneath her scalp.
—Oh, God. I just didn’t know. I didn’t know how you were showing up.
Six Tutsi neighbors of the orphanage stayed alive in the storage closet and the lavatory. For three months! Carl kept them fed and brought water each day.
And miracles happened again and again, because someone was around. Someone was there.
Her accounts weren’t at all heroic, she realized, not with shame but with a sense of relief. She survived. Yes, she was loyal to her friends, but she could do nothing to save them.
You suffered with them, May-May. Claudius’s voice uttered the words. And isn’t that what Jesus did for us?
—Oh, but he did more than suffer. He rescued us too.
One step at a time, May-May.
She felt a tap on her shoulder and turned. “Glen!”
“May! How are you doing today?” He reached into his pocket and wiped the sweat from his face and neck with a red bandana. He was just way too cute dressed in running gear. But he was no Eli, really. Of course, there were other ways he was no Eli either.
He took a sip from his water bottle. “You’re looking really nice these days, May. And you’re up here on Natural Bridge? What’s up?”
“Life’s too short?”
“Does that mean I won’t have to chop wood for you anymore?”
“Pretty much.”
“Really?” He grinned. “So you’re really going to make it?”
“I really am.”
“Yes!”
—What?
“Wait. You were all taking bets, weren’t you?”
He clipped his bottle back onto his belt. “Somebody tried. But I nipped that one right in the bud.”
“Thanks.”
“Hey. A mail carrier feels a certain loyalty to the people on his route.” He breathed in. “And I’m glad I didn’t bet against you! See you later, May.”
And he set back to his jog none the wiser to the place he’d held in her healing.
She continued through the article, wondering now, all these years later, how she had made it. There was only one reason.
May climbed to her feet and walked around to Lover’s Leap, where she sat against an outcropping of rock and watched the sun go down. She let the love of God wash over her, cleansing away every drop of blood, every scar, every fear and failing. At least for today.
She decided she’d let Jesus do the same thing tomorrow if she needed him to. And the next day. And the next after that. Until she awakened one morning to find that it was gone for good.
The sun set and the chill dropped in. She was alone.
May walked back to the bridge, stood in the middle, and looked up at the stars. She held up the magazine, a pulpy offering, toward the sky, and with a grateful sigh, hurled it onto a breeze that caught it in its arms and carried it away, beyond where she could see.
May visited Eli every chance she could over the next couple of weeks. They fit years of conversation into six total hours, and he wrote to her of his fears as well as moments of peace and breakthrough. So now that the time had come for him to die, May realized a part of her would go right along with him. And that was all well and good. Truly. It was part of being human. The pieces we lose to others, God might replace with something better and more useful to the next person who comes along the path.
Eli joined her in the visitation room. He took her hand as they sat. “Well, I got some bad news. Or maybe it’s good news. In any case, it’s what I figured, but I wasn’t sure.”
She squeezed his fingers.
“You won’t be able to witness the execution, May. Only my family, Roy and Faye’s family, spiritual advisors, prison personnel, and the media can be there.”
“Oh, wow.”
“I know. I don’t want my mother to come, and nobody else will. So”—he exhaled heavily—“I guess I’m on my own.”
“Father John will come.”
“Yeah. I guess he’ll have to do.”
“I’ll tell him you said so!”
Despite the conversation, he laughed. May loved that about Eli.
• 25 •
Father John crossed his arms and leaned back in the pew a bit. “I knew you weren’t quite like everybody else, May, but this takes the cake.”
She plucked at her sundress. “I know. But it’s the only solution I can think of.”
“Well, there are worse reasons to want to marry a person. What’s today’s date again?”
“May 20.”
“Nine days. We can do it, I think.”
“I’ll get the marriage license. And get Eli going on what he needs to do at his end. As long as we can get this done by the twenty-seventh, I think we’ll be okay. But I’ll make sure.”
After calling the warden and the prison chaplain, May set a date in her mind, started up the truck, and headed over to the prison to ask Eli Campbell if he would be so pleased as to marry her.
He shuffled into the room. With each day that came and went, yet another string that held Eli to this world snapped in two. If it kept up, by the time the execution arrived, there would be little left.
“This is a surprise, May.”
“I’ve got a proposition for you. Have a seat.”
She’d dressed up for the occasion. She’d bought a flowing, brown gauze skirt and an ivory shirt with an empire waist. The copper embroidery around the scooped neck shimmered in the light.
“You look nice. What’s the occasion?” He sat.
“Well, I figure I’d better look nice if I’m going to ask you to marry me.”
Several seconds stretched between them.
She slid her fingers along his. “I know. I know it’s strange. But I’ve got it all worked out.” She pushed the paper sitting on the table between them toward him. “All you have to do is sign the license. Father John, if you don’t mind it being an Episcopal wedding, will preside.”
“Wait a minute. I don’t even know what you’re doing here, May. Okay, I mean, I know what you’re doing. What I don’t know is why.”
May hunched down on her knees beside him. Not marriage-proposal posture, but one of imploring. She took both of his hands and held them against her heart. “I’m not going to let you die alone, Eli. So I’m asking you to marry me so I can be in that room when the time comes.”
He closed his eyes.
He cleared his throat.
He bowed his head.
“So what do you say?”
Eyes still closed. “I think you’re crazy, May, but this gesture means more to me than you know.”
“It’s not a gesture, Eli.”
Something holy imbued the moment, as if they were suddenly wrapped in air and light. She laid her head on his lap, closing her eyes as his hand found its way atop her head.
And she loved him.
Father John donned his robes for the occasion, and May wore a white sundress she found at Rose Brothers. Her scars glimmered on her arms.
Of course, the bouquet was the prettiest thing in the room. Callie made it, zinging with excitement. Sassy baked the cake, slices of which only Eli, Father John, and May would enjoy. It sat over on the table near the corner window of the rec room, one layer, white icing, with real daisies—from Borne’s Last Chance, of course—ringing the sides.
Eli wore gray pants and a white shirt, and was freshly shaved. Though the marriage was definitely offbeat, he made a handsome groom.
—So why am I doing this?
Because Jesus had taught her how to love again through this man, and she loved Eli for that. She wanted to honor him, be with him through sickness and health, and till death parted them in four days. As Father John told her, “Those are the best reasons for marriage I’ve heard in a long time. The length of your union is irrelevant.”
Their heads jerked toward the door as it was unlocked and opened. Pastor Marlow bustled through.
“Darius!” said Father John. “I was thinking you wouldn’t make it. Glad to see you!”
“Thank you, John.”
“What?” asked May.
“He’s your pastor. I thought he’d like to be here.”
May nodded. That Father John. Father Hedgehog turned Fox. “Come on over, Pastor Marlow.”
“When John told me what you were doing, I found it hard to believe,” Marlow said.
“It’s true.” May took Eli’s arm again.
“But I think it’s wonderful, May. You’re really something.”
Father John opened his prayer book. “Shall we proceed?”
They all nodded, then he stopped. “Wait! I forgot.” He opened his briefcase, pulled out the red martyr’s stole, and hung it around his neck.
May’s hand flew to her mouth as she gulped back a sob. “Thank you,” she mouthed.
He dipped his head, then looked up.
Did Father Isaac see? She hoped so.
So there they stood, pledging themselves to one another, arms linked, hands joined, united in Love.
She couldn’t help it; she felt as if a light glowed from her heart and out through her eyes. If that was corny, well so be it. She’d eat it right off the cob. Eli folded her to him after they were pronounced husband and wife, after he kissed her softly on the lips when Father John said, “You may kiss the bride.”
“Thank you,” he whispered, his breath skimming across her cheek.
She pulled her head away from his chest and cupped his cheek and jaw with her hand.
So many of the people she loved in her life were taken away from her by death. But she chose to give herself to him knowing he would be gone soon. She realized just then, that’s the way it always is. We live, we die, and to love in those circumstances, all we can do is take a chance. But no matter how long we get to love, every second of that is a blessing.
He hugged her to himself again, and in the antiseptic visitation room, the noontime sunlight heating up the glossy tiles and the plastic furniture, they clung to life, their own, and each other’s.
• 26 •
Eli emerged from the deathwatch chamber into a small room where May waited. Here he would have his last meal and visit with those he loved. The guards had put him in last night.
“Welcome to Motel 6,” he said with a shaky laugh.
“This makes the visitation room look like Buckingham Palace.”
They sat at a small table. It seemed they were always sitting at tables.
“Father John will be here soon,” she said. “But I’m here all day, if you’d like.”
He’d already said goodbye to Callie and Sassy a few hours before. “It was the worst moment of my life,” he told May. He placed his hand on her forearm, then absentmindedly traced her scars with the tip of his index finger.
“How are you feeling?”
“Nauseated. Nervous. How about you?”
“The same. I don’t want you to die.”
“I know.”
She watched his hand move along her arm, and she touched the tendons along its back, webbed like a duck’s foot, as they moved beneath his skin.
This time tomorrow no life would remain in his body.
“So,” she asked, “would you appeal now if you had the chance? Now that it’s so close?”
His hand stopped, and he curled his fingers around her arm and gave it a light squeeze. “Do you mind if I don’t answer?”
She moved around to his side of the table, squeezed in tightly beside him on the attached bench, and laid her head on his shoulder. There they stayed, neither of them finding anything worth saying that would improve the silence.
Father John visited awhile and prayed with them, then left them alone. May had cried the entire time, listening to the words of this man so in tune with the suffering of the people he came in contact with.
Eli forewent his last meal, instead asking for a Coke that he sipped to help tame his upset stomach. “It’s good that Roger and Faye’s family will have closure. That’s what keeps me from going crazy right now.”
“Forgiveness is the only way they’ll truly put this behind them. But I can’t pretend to know what they feel like, and I sure know it wouldn’t be easy.”
“No.” He sighed. “It’s best this way.”
May doubted that. Perhaps Eli was just providing an already grieving family with just one more thing to be disillusioned about. They thought his death would heal, but it wouldn’t. Then what?
—It must be so horrible.
“You all have five minutes.” The red-haired guard poked his head into the room.
May wondered what it felt like to utter such ordinary words in such extraordinary circumstances.
“Wow,” Eli whispered.
He drew a breath deeply into his lungs, and May wondered how many more breaths h
e had left. Most think it would be impossible to count the breaths they have left, but now Eli couldn’t say that. Five hundred? A thousand?
She glanced at the clock over the door. Eleven thirty p.m.
In a little over half an hour, Eli would be dead.
She put her arms around him, and they stood body to body, their lengths supporting each other. There was nothing to say other than I love you. And Thank you.
And they said these phrases. Over and over again.
She tried to soak in the details of every inch of his face, each hair, each fleck of color in his irises. This man who saved her life, who picked it up from the dirt, brushed it off, and gave it back to her again.
And of all the pictures she’d taken in her lifetime, there was one that would always be missing.
—I must remember. I must remember. I must remember him.
There were so many people she remembered now. Claudius, her mother, the villagers who had died. She would be faithful to that.
The guard returned. “It’s time.”
One final kiss, their lips pressed in a tenderness she’d never known, and he was led back into the deathwatch room to get dressed.
It was goodbye.
Eli told her he would walk to the chamber instead of having to be strapped to a gurney. “They know I’m not going to try anything.”
Heaviness descended and filled in around them as he walked away and the cell door clicked shut.
“Ma’am. Let’s get you to the observation room,” the guard said.
“How old are you?” she asked.
“Twenty-four.”
“Lordymercy,” she muttered, and accompanied him down the hallway.
He ushered her into a white room furnished with the usual plastic chairs, a large plateglass window the far wall’s centerpiece. The curtains on the other side were closed.
Others were already gathered. She didn’t know who they were. Roy and Faye’s family? A couple of reporters sat in the back row. Big news, this execution. Who in his right mind refuses to appeal?
Outside the prison protestors were gathered, holding a vigil for Eli and against the death penalty, candles in hand, singing “Dona Nobis Pacem” or something. And they were praying.
Father John hurried in and led her to a seat. “As his wife you should sit up front.”