“I’m okay, though.”
“Good. You ready to do this?”
“As ready as I’ll ever be.”
He accompanies me to the desk, where I hand over my ID. The officer checks that my name is on the approved visitor list and hands me a blue slip with all the details of my visit, as well as a plastic badge to wear around my neck. It’s red, with the word VISITOR and initials DR—for death row—on it. Crane leads me to a waiting area where visitors can find vending machines, restrooms, and benches. Attached to the wall are what appear to be post office boxes—Crane explains that these are safes where law enforcement officers can store and lock up their weapons. The most bizarre thing in the room is a sign by the door to the rest of the prison that reads “NO HOSTAGES BEYOND THIS POINT.” That makes no sense to me, but I don’t ask what it means.
I opt to visit the ladies room before proceeding. My hands shake as I wash them. I feel like crying. This is going to be very difficult.
Back outside, I see that an escort has arrived to take us deeper into the unit. We have to go through several doors—buzzed open by officers—and then we are outside in a yard. A sidewalk is enclosed and bordered by a cyclone wire fence on either side, topped with barbed wire. The path leads to one of the main buildings, maybe fifty yards long. As we walk along this open air corridor, Crane points to the “pod” at our left. “That’s death row,” he says. Featureless and gray, all the buildings look the same to me. Big, awful block boxes.
I lose count of how many barred doors we’re buzzed through. Passes are checked and double-checked, and finally we are in the visitation room for death row. It’s a dreary, plain place. Along one wall are cubicles that are essentially phone booths. Each cubicle has a chair in front of it, a counter, and bullet-proof plexiglass separating the visitor from the inmate. And a phone.
Crane suggests buying a Snickers out of a vending machine for Eddie, so I do. “Wouldn’t he want something more substantial?” I ask.
“It’s always a waste of money. He never eats it.”
The guard takes the candy bar out of the slot and informs us that the prisoner is being brought from his cell to the visitation cubicle on his side. He tells me to wait at the numbered cubicle that was assigned to me.
“I’ll give you some privacy and sit over here,” Crane says and takes a seat at a table on the other side of the room. I sit in front of the glass window and wait. By now, the butterflies are drilling holes in the sides of my stomach; they want to make sure all the acid and bile spreads through my body so that I am thoroughly queasy. My nerves scream with anxiety. I suddenly want to bolt from the room and never look back. But I don’t.
After a few eternal minutes, I notice movement on the other side. And there is Eddie, sitting in front of me.
26
He is almost unrecognizable.
Eddie’s scalp is still shaved bald, and there’s an inverted cross tattooed on his forehead. The goatee has become a full beard that hasn’t been trimmed in some time. He is extremely gaunt; he probably weighs thirty or forty pounds less than he did when I last saw him. Worst of all, his eyes reveal a wild contempt that reminds me of a fierce animal in a zoo. The way a tiger or a lion looks at you from behind the bars in its cage.
This is not the boy across the street I knew and loved. The powerful charisma he once possessed is long gone.
“Hello, Eddie.” He stares at me as if he doesn’t know who I am. “It’s me. Shelby.” His eyes continue to bore holes through me. His silence is unnerving. “I … I came a long way to see you. Aren’t you going to say hello?”
He starts to laugh. It begins quietly, but it grows until he is practically belly-laughing on the other side of the glass. I don’t know what to do.
“Eddie. Do you want me to leave?”
With unnatural abruptness, he ceases the laughter and then says, “Shelby, Shelby, Shelby, Shelby, Shelby, Shelby. Shelby Truman, Shelby Truman, Shelby Truman, Shelby Truman.”
“Eddie, are you all right?”
Back to the silence. Then he picks up the Snickers I’d bought him, tears off the wrapper, and starts eating it. Chewing. Not saying a word.
“Eddie? I know that’s a stupid question. I’m sorry. But … have they treated you well? Are you all right?”
“I’m fine.” It’s the first thing he says that sounds normal. “I’m just fine. Thank you for coming. And thanks for the candy bar.”
I breathe a sigh of relief. Perhaps our conversation will be coherent after all.
“You’re welcome. Mr. Crane—your lawyer—he says you wanted to see me. That you made a special request for me to come and visit. You have something you want to tell me.”
He continues chewing. I watch him eat the entire Snickers before he answers my question.
“Tell you? No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, I can’t tell you, I could never tell you, how could I tell you? I mean, you know, I couldn’t, because, well, you know—I mean, that’s just the way it is, the way it is, the way it’s always been, the way it’ll always be.”
Maybe I am wrong about the conversation. I want to run. I can’t take the torment. But I remember that Crane had said Eddie often rambles and babbles, speaking nonsense, and then suddenly he’s lucid. I force myself to remain and see how it plays out.
“I don’t know what you’re trying to say, Eddie,” I say, and he starts to laugh again. “Eddie. Please. I know … I know you’re ill. I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry you have to go through this.”
The laughing stops abruptly again. “Don’t be sorry. I’m the one who should be sorry. Am I sorry? For some things. Yes, I’m sorry for many things. Sorry, sorry, sorry. But not for all. Not for him. Or for him.”
“Are you talking about your father?”
“Him, him, him, him.”
“Or Mr. Alpine?”
He shakes his head violently. “Evil, evil, evil. It was all so evil, evil, evil.”
“Yes, I know. Be careful what you say, Eddie. Although I suppose it doesn’t matter now.”
“Evil, evil, evil, evil. The evil came to our street. Our street! It got inside me. Inside me, inside me. Then I was inside you, inside you. Are you evil, too? Are you, Shelby? Are you?”
“I don’t think so, Eddie. And I don’t think you’re evil either.”
“Oh, oh, oh, yes I am. Don’t kid yourself, don’t kid yourself. Evil, evil, evil, evil. It came to our street and got inside me. Got inside me. Me. Me. Me.”
“Eddie …”
“Hey!” His eyes grow wide with excitement.
“What?”
“Remember our game?”
I have to think again. “What game?”
“Our game, our game, our game! Davy Jones’s Locker, Davy Jones’s Locker, Davy Jones’s Locker!”
At first I don’t make the connection. Even though I’d gone over that period of our lives over the past twenty-four hours, I don’t understand what he means. “What?” I say.
“The hiding place! The hiding place, hiding place. Davy Jones’s Locker!”
Ah, right. “Of course, Eddie. I remember. In the bomb shelter.”
“The shelter, the shelter, my sanctuary, my church, my sanctuary, The Temple, my private self, my evil.”
“What about Davy Jones’s Locker, Eddie?”
“It all started there, don’t you see? It all started there. The evil is inside the hiding place. The evil came up through the ground and got inside me through Davy Jones’s Locker!”
The poor man. He is so far gone. I feel tears welling in my eyes. Not wanting him to see me cry, I turn away, grab a tissue from my pocket, and wipe my face.
Eddie keeps on babbling nonsensical phrases and words about evil and the hiding place and other things I know nothing about. He speaks some words in a language that sounds like Vietnamese. He laughs. And then he jabbers on, blathering about the devil. Satan visiting our street in Limite and getting inside his body.
I can’t take it anymore. “Eddie, stop. Please. I
need to go. Please.”
“All the answers, all the answers, all the answers are there. Davy Jones’s Locker. It all started there. The evil, evil, evil, evil, evil. Didn’t you get the letter?”
“Letter? What letter?”
“The police didn’t find it first?”
“What are you talking about, Eddie?”
“Davy Jones’s Locker! Davy Jones’s Locker!”
He’s not making any sense. I stand, and he suddenly shuts up. Our eyes meet each other, and I see there are tears in his as well. “Don’t go,” he whispers.
“Eddie, this is so hard. I can’t talk to you. We can’t have a real conversation.” Nevertheless, I continue to hold the phone to my ear. I hear him breathe rapidly. He is quite agitated. It scares me.
Crane calls to me. “Shelby? Everything all right?”
I turn and answer, “We’ll be finished in a minute.” Back to Eddie. “I came to see you, Eddie, what was it you wanted to tell me? Was it anything at all?” I sit again.
Then it strikes me. The expression on his face. Aside from the scalp with no hair, he once again reminds me of that doomed soul going to hell in the old painting, the tormented man in Michelangelo’s Last Judgment. Eddie is that creature. Silence.
“Well, if that’s it, then I’d better go. Eddie, I’m sorry this happened to you. I love you. Try to remember that.”
Eddie slaps the palm of his hand on the window and holds it there flat. I slowly reach up and place my own hand on my side of the glass. We stay like that for nearly a minute, and then he unexpectedly rises and disappears from view. I call into the phone, “Eddie? Eddie?” I think I hear shuffling and knocking on the other side. Is that it? Did he leave? Could he terminate the visit, just like that?
I hang up the phone and sit there for a few seconds. The guard appears, looks at me, and shrugs. I nod in acknowledgment. I stand, my legs weak, and walk back to Mr. Crane.
“I take it that didn’t go very well?”
I shake my head. “I didn’t understand anything he said to me. Oh, Mr. Crane, he is so very sick. How can they execute him? He has no concept of reality!”
He stands and gives me a hug, and I start to cry in heaving sobs. Crane pats me on the back, saying, “I know, I know.”
We separate. “Don’t they give him his meds?”
“They do. But he might not actually swallow the pills. Sometimes he does, sometimes he doesn’t. Like I told you, he can be very coherent. Just the other day, we had a very reasonable conversation.”
“Is … is it an act? I mean, he seems much more mentally ill than just having anxiety and depression.”
“No one knows but him, Shelby.”
I turn to look at the cubicle, just in case Eddie had decided to resume the visit. No one is there.
“I have no idea what it was he wanted to tell me.”
“I’m sorry you came all this way.”
I shake my head. “I’m not sorry.”
“Okay.”
“But let’s get out of here now.”
And that is it. We retrace our path through the many secured doors and hallways and checkpoints. I retrieve my ID, and Mr. Crane and I walk outside to the parking lot together. The bright sunlight is an immensely welcome sensation.
“Are you going to be all right?” he asks.
“Yeah. I have to fly to Limite now, of all places.”
“You’re getting a park named after you, right?”
“I’m not sure I’m up to it now.”
“You’ll feel better on Friday.”
“The dedication is at six o’clock—exactly when Eddie will be getting the lethal injection.”
“Try not to think about that.”
“How can I not?” I look pointedly at Crane and ask, “What’s it like?”
“What?”
“Being put to death? I mean, you’ve witnessed executions before, haven’t you?”
“Yes.”
“What’s it like? Do they feel pain? Are they usually scared? Do they scream and cry for their mothers? What?”
“I’ve seen all sorts of responses. The inmate is given a chance to say something into a microphone so that the witnesses can hear him. Sometimes they confess their crimes and ask for forgiveness, sometimes they simply say goodbye to their loved ones, other times they don’t say anything at all. The drug used is pentobarbital. It acts pretty quickly. They go to sleep first and don’t feel a thing. Sometimes, in a Caucasian man, their skin turns color, maybe a little pink, sometimes even purple.”
I’m sure the disgust registers in my face. “Really?”
“It takes about ten minutes, and then a doctor checks all the vital signs. Then he makes the announcement that so-and-so died at whatever the exact time is.”
“It’s so cold and calculated.”
Crane holds out his hands. “It is what it is. I suppose there’s still a chance the governor will come through, but I wouldn’t hold my breath.”
“No. I’ve resigned myself to what’s going to happen.” We reach my car, and I unlock it. “You’ll be at the execution?”
“Uh huh.”
“I think the NCADP will be out on the road protesting.”
“They always are.”
“They wanted me to join them, but … well, you know.”
“I understand.”
“Thank you, Mr. Crane.”
“Robert, please.”
“Thank you, Robert, for everything you’ve done.”
“You’re welcome.” We shake hands, and I get into the car.
The nearly two-hour drive to George W. Bush Intercontinental Airport is a blur. Part of it is spent crying. For the other part, closer to the city, I have to concentrate hard to combat my fatigue and not cause an accident. It’s a small miracle that I make it on no sleep.
Once I am on the plane and in my seat, I immediately nod out. My dreams are vivid and fitful—about Chicory Lane.
27
Limite is flat, hot, and barren. The odor of petroleum permeates the air. It’s just as it always was; nothing has changed. West Texas will forever be the desert, populated by pumpjacks and oil derricks, football stadiums, and churches. As I grew older, my connection with my hometown became more tenuous. The last time I was here, I buried my father in the cemetery next to my mother and attended Eddie’s trial—not pleasant memories. Now, here I am again, staying in a Holiday Inn on the outskirts of town on a Wednesday night and wondering what the hell I’m going to do before the park dedication on Friday evening. Originally, I had planned to arrive on Thursday, but the side trip to Livingston changed that.
At least I brought my laptop, and I hope to do some work. There is no one to see—no friends from high school—and no favorite restaurants to visit. Perhaps the hotel room is the best environment in which to begin the next Patricia novel. I still haven’t found the premise for this one; I haven’t a clue what I’m going to do. But something will pop up; it always does. The only trouble is that I’m emotionally drained and exhausted. The nap on the plane gave me enough of an energy boost to rent a car and drive it safely from the airport to the hotel. I take comfort in knowing that I will sleep well tonight. So this evening, all I want to do is have some dinner—truthfully, I could go for more Tex-Mex; I can’t get enough when I’m in my home state—watch a little television, read my Sandra Brown until my eyelids become heavy, and then hit the sack.
And I sleep very well until dawn, when something wakes me up earlier than I wanted. I’m not sure if it was a dream, but I bolt upright and gasp for breath. My heart is pounding. Am I having a heart attack? I don’t think so, there’s no pain. Just anxiety. There is an overwhelming feeling that I’ve missed something. Eddie had been trying to tell me something. Crane had originally said that Eddie had wanted to talk to me, and I assumed it was about something specific. But since my visit to the prison, I assumed he had requested my presence for no other reason than to, perhaps, see my face; after all, all he did was speak gibberish. I w
ent away disappointed, upset, and confused.
The morning light streams through the window. I glance at the digital clock on the night stand next to the bed. 6:35. It’s a bit earlier than I prefer to get up, but I do so and go to the bathroom. When I’m done, I cross the room to the window and peer outside. The glow of the new day nestles over the hotel parking lot and the highway alongside.
I have to speak with Jim Baxter. If he’s still alive. How old was he at Eddie’s trial, seventy-eight? My God, he’ll be eighty-seven or thereabouts if he’s still with us. Chances are he isn’t around. Damn. I grab my cell phone, which was charging overnight, and switch it on. Somewhere back in my office at home, I have his business card. Billy won’t be there, so I have to find Baxter’s number the old-fashioned way. I dial directory assistance.
There are several James Baxters in Limite. Double damn.
I decide to shower, dress, and get some breakfast, just to let a little time go by. Then I’ll call Billy and ask him to head over to my house pronto and find the former detective’s card.
Around eight o’clock, I figure it’s late enough that Billy won’t kill me for phoning. He answers sleepily. I apologize profusely and make my request.
“All right, but you better remember me generously when it comes to Christmas bonuses,” he says.
“When have I ever given you a Christmas bonus?”
“Exactly my point.”
“Okay, I’ll be sure to tell Santa. Could you get over there as quick as you can, please?”
“All right. Geez. How was your visit to the prison yesterday?”
“Oh, Lord. Very creepy and disturbing. I’ll have to tell you about it later, all right?” By nine thirty, I have Jim Baxter’s phone number in hand, and I make the call. The former lawman answers.
“Jim Baxter.”
“Mr. Baxter, this is Shelby Truman, the writer.”
“Ms. Truman. How are you?”
“Fine, and you?”
“Still kicking, if you can believe that.”
“Let me guess, you’re eighty-seven?”
“Good guess.”
“My, my. And your health? Everything okay?”
The Secrets on Chicory Lane Page 20