by John Grisham
“I can’t feel a thang.”
“You wanna stop for a soda or something?”
“No. Let’s hurry along.”
“I’d like a beer,” Butch said, and, as if this was expected, Leon immediately shook his head in the negative and Inez shot forth with an emphatic “No.”
“There’ll be no drinking,” she said, and the issue was laid to rest. When Ernie abandoned the family years earlier, he’d taken nothing but his shotgun, a few clothes, and all the liquor from his private supply. He’d been a violent drunk, and his boys still carried the scars, emotional and physical. Leon, the oldest, had felt more of the brutality than his younger brothers, and as a small boy equated alcohol with the horrors of an abusive father. He had never taken a drink, though with time had found his own vices. Butch, on the other hand, had drunk heavily since his early teens, though he’d never been tempted to sneak alcohol into his mother’s home. Raymond, the youngest, had chosen to follow the example of Butch rather than of Leon.
To shift away from such an unpleasant topic, Leon asked his mother about the latest news from a friend down the road, an old spinster who’d been dying of cancer for years. Inez, as always, perked up when discussing the ailments and treatments of her neighbors, and herself as well. The air conditioner finally broke through, and the thick humidity inside the van began to subside. When he stopped sweating, Butch reached for his pocket, fished out a cigarette, lit it, then cracked the window. The temperature rose immediately. Soon all three were smoking, and the windows went lower and lower until the air was again thick with heat and nicotine.
When they finished, Inez said to Leon, “Raymond called two hours ago.” This was no surprise. Raymond had been making calls, collect, for days now, and not only to his mother. Leon’s phone was ringing so often that his (third) wife refused to answer it. Others around town were also declining to accept charges.
“What’d he say?” Leon asked, but only because he had to reply. He knew exactly what Raymond had said, maybe not verbatim, but certainly in general.
“Said thangs are lookin’ real good, said he’d probably have to fire the team of lawyers he has now so he can hire another team of lawyers. You know Raymond. He’s tellin’ the lawyers what to do and they’re just fallin’ all over themselves.”
Without turning his head, Butch cut his eyes at Leon, and Leon returned the glance. Nothing was said because words were not necessary.
“Said his new team comes from a firm in Chicago with a thousand lawyers. Can you imagine? A thousand lawyers workin’ for Raymond. And he’s tellin’ ’em what to do.”
Another glance between driver and right-side passenger. Inez had cataracts, and her peripheral vision had declined. If she had seen the looks being passed between her two oldest, she would not have been pleased.
“Said they’ve just discovered some new evidence that shoulda been produced at trial but wasn’t because the cops and the prosecutors covered it up, and with this new evidence Raymond feels real good about gettin’ a new trial back here in Clanton, though he’s not sure he wants it here, so he might move it somewhere else. He’s thinkin’ about somewhere in the Delta because the Delta juries have more blacks and he says that blacks are more sympathetic in cases like this. What do you thank about that, Leon?”
“There are definitely more blacks in the Delta,” Leon said. Butch grunted and mumbled, but his words were not clear.
“Said he don’t trust anyone in Ford County, especially the law and the judges. God knows they’ve never given us a break.”
Leon and Butch nodded in silent agreement. Both had been chewed up by the law in Ford County, Butch much more so than Leon. And though they had pled guilty to their crimes in negotiated deals, they had always believed they were persecuted simply because they were Graneys.
“Don’t know if I can stand another trial, though,” she said, and her words trailed off.
Leon wanted to say that Raymond’s chances of getting a new trial were worse than slim, and that he’d been making noise about a new trial for over a decade. Butch wanted to say pretty much the same thing, but he would’ve added that he was sick of Raymond’s jailhouse bullshit about lawyers and trials and new evidence and that it was past time for the boy to stop blaming everybody else and take his medicine like a man.
But neither said a word.
“Said the both of you ain’t sent him his stipends for last month,” she said. “That true?”
Five miles passed before another word was spoken.
“Ya’ll hear me up there?” Inez said. “Raymond says ya’ll ain’t mailed in his stipends for the month of June, and now it’s already July. Ya’ll forget about it?”
Leon went first, and unloaded. “Forget about it? How can we forget about it? That’s all he talks about. I get a letter every day, sometimes two, not that I read ’em all, but every letter mentions the stipend. ‘Thanks for the money, bro.’ ‘Don’t forget the money, Leon, I’m counting on you, big brother.’ ‘Gotta have the money to pay the lawyers, you know how much those bloodsuckers can charge.’ ‘Ain’t seen the stipend this month, bro.’”
“What the hell is a stipend?” Butch shot from the right side, his voice suddenly edgy.
“A regular or fixed payment, according to Webster’s,” Leon said.
“It’s just money, right?”
“Right.”
“So why can’t he just say something like, ‘Send me the damned money’? Or, ‘Where’s the damned money?’ Why does he have to use the fancy words?”
“We’ve had this conversation a thousand times,” Inez said.
“Well, you sent him a dictionary,” Leon said to Butch.
“That was ten years ago, at least. And he begged me for it.”
“Well, he’s still got it, still wearing it out looking for words we ain’t seen before.”
"I often wonder if his lawyers can keep up with his vocabulary,” Butch mused.
“Ya’ll’re tryin’ to change the subject up there,” Inez said. “Why didn’t you send him his stipends last month?”
“I thought I did,” Butch said without conviction.
“I don’t believe that,” she said.
“The check’s in the mail,” Leon said.
“I don’t believe that either. We all agreed to send him $100 each, every month, twelve months a year. It’s the least we can do. I know it’s hard, especially on me, livin’ on Social Security and all. But you boys have jobs, and the least you can do is squeeze out $100 each for your little brother so he can buy decent food and pay his lawyers.”
“Do we have to go through this again?” Leon asked.
“I hear it every day,” Butch said. “If I don’t hear from Raymond, on the phone or through the mail, then I hear it from Momma.”
“Is that a complaint?” she asked. “Got a problem with your livin’ arrangements? Stayin’ in my house for free, and yet you want to complain?”
“Come on,” Leon said.
“Who’ll take care of you?” Butch offered in his defense.
“Knock it off, you two. This gets so old.”
All three took a deep breath, then began reaching for the cigarettes. After a long, quiet smoke, they settled in for another round. Inez got things started with a pleasant “Me, I never miss a month. And, if you’ll recall, I never missed a month when the both of you was locked up at Parchman.”
Leon grunted, slapped the wheel, and said angrily, “Momma, that was twenty-five years ago. Why bring it up now? I ain’t had so much as a speedin’ ticket since I got paroled.” Butch, whose life in crime had been much more colorful than Leon’s, and who was still on parole, said nothing.
“I never missed a month,” she said.
“Come on.”
“And sometimes it was $200 a month ’cause I had two of you there at one time, as I recall. Guess I was lucky I never had all three behind bars. Couldn’t’ve paid my light bill.”
“I thought those lawyers worked for free,” Butch s
aid in an effort to deflect attention from himself and hopefully direct it toward a target outside the family.
“They do,” Leon said. “It’s called pro bono work, and all lawyers are supposed to do some of it. As far as I know, these big firms who come in on cases like this don’t expect to get paid.”
“Then what’s Raymond doin’ with $300 a month if he ain’t payin’ his lawyers?”
“We’ve had this conversation,” Inez said.
“I’m sure he spends a fortune on pens, paper, envelopes, and postage,” Leon said. “He claims he writes ten letters a day. Hell, that’s over $100 a month right there.”
“Plus he’s written eight novels,” Butch added quickly. “Or is it nine, Momma? I can’t remember.”
“Nine.”
“Nine novels, several volumes of poetry, bunch of short stories, hundreds of songs. Just think of all the paper he goes through,” Butch said.
“Are you pokin’ fun at Raymond?” she asked.
“Never.”
“He sold a short story once,” she said.
“Of course he did. What was the magazine? Hot Rodder? Paid him forty bucks for a story about a man who stole a thousand hubcaps. They say you write what you know.”
“How many stories have you sold?” she asked.
“None, because I haven’t written any, and the reason I haven’t written any is because I realize that I don’t have the talent to write. If my little brother would also realize that he has no artistic talents whatsoever, then he could save some money and hundreds of people would not be subjected to his nonsense.”
“That’s very cruel.”
“No, Momma, it’s very honest. And if you’d been honest with him a long time ago, then maybe he would’ve stopped writing. But no. You read his books and his poetry and his short stories and told him the stuff was great. So he wrote more, with longer words, longer sentences, longer paragraphs, and got to the point to where now we can hardly understand a damned thang he writes.”
“So it’s all my fault?”
“Not 100 percent, no.”
“He writes for therapy.”
“I’ve been there. I don’t see how writin’ helps any.”
“He says it helps.”
“Are these books handwritten or typed up?” Leon asked, interrupting.
“Typed,” Butch said.
“Who types ’em?”
“He has to pay some guy over in the law library,” Inez said. “A dollar a page, and one of the books was over eight hundred pages. I read it, though, ever’ word.”
“Did you understand ever’ word?” Butch asked.
“Most of ’em. A dictionary helps. Lord, I don’t know where that boy finds those words.”
“And Raymond sent these books up to New York to get published, right?” Leon asked, pressing on.
“Yes, and they sent ’em right back,” she said. “I guess they couldn’t understand all his words either.”
“You’d think those people in New York would understand what he’s sayin’,” Leon said.
“No one understands what he’s sayin’,” Butch said. “That’s the problem with Raymond the novelist, and Raymond the poet, and Raymond the political prisoner, and Raymond the songwriter, and Raymond the lawyer. No person in his right mind could possibly have any idea what Raymond says when he starts writin’.”
“So, if I understand this correctly,” Leon said, “a large portion of Raymond’s overhead has been spent to finance his literary career. Paper, postage, typing, copying, shipping to New York and back. That right, Momma?”
“I guess.”
“And it’s doubtful if his stipends have actually gone to pay his lawyers,” Leon said.
“Very doubtful,” Butch said. “And don’t forget his music career. He spends money on guitar strings and sheet music. Plus, they now allow the prisoners to rent tapes. That’s how Raymond became a blues singer. He listened to B. B. King and Muddy Waters, and, according to Raymond, he now entertains his colleagues on death row with late-night sessions of the blues.”
“Oh, I know. He’s told me about it in his letters.”
“He always had a good voice,” Inez said.
“I never heard ’im sang,” Leon said.
“Me neither,” Butch added.
They were on the bypass around Oxford, two hours away from Parchman. The upholstery van seemed to run best at sixty miles an hour; anything faster and the front tires shook a bit. There was no hurry. West of Oxford the hills began to flatten; the Delta was not far away. Inez recognized a little white country church off to the right, next to a cemetery, and it occurred to her that the church had not changed in all the many years she had made this journey to the state penitentiary. She asked herself how many other women in Ford County had made as many of these trips, but she knew the answer. Leon had started the tradition many years earlier with a thirty-month incarceration, and back then the rules allowed her to visit on the first Sunday of each month. Sometimes Butch drove her and sometimes she paid a neighbor’s son, but she never missed a visitation and she always took peanut butter fudge and extra toothpaste. Six months after Leon was paroled, he was driving her so she could visit Butch. Then it was Butch and Raymond, but in different units with different rules.
Then Raymond killed the deputy, and they locked him down on death row, which had its own rules.
With practice, most unpleasant tasks become bearable, and Inez Graney had learned to look forward to the visits. Her sons had been condemned by the rest of the county, but their mother would never abandon them. She was there when they were born, and she was there when they were beaten. She had suffered through their court appearances and parole hearings, and she had told anyone who would listen that they were good boys who’d been abused by the man she’d chosen to marry. All of it was her fault. If she’d married a decent man, her children might have had normal lives.
“Reckon that woman’ll be there?” Leon asked.
“Lord, Lord,” Inez groaned.
“Why would she miss the show?” Butch said. “I’m sure she’ll be around somewhere.”
“Lord, Lord.”
That woman was Tallulah, a fruitcake who’d entered their lives a few years earlier and managed to make a bad situation much worse. Through one of the abolitionist groups, she’d made contact with Raymond, who responded in typical fashion with a lengthy letter filled with claims of innocence and maltreatment and the usual drivel about his budding literary and music careers. He sent her some poems, love sonnets, and she became obsessed with him. They met in the visitation room at death row and, through a thick metal screen window, fell in love. Raymond sang a few blues tunes, and Tallulah was swept away. There was talk of a marriage, but those plans were put on hold until Tallulah’s then-current husband was executed by the State of Georgia. After a brief period of mourning, she traveled to Parchman for a bizarre ceremony that was recognized by no identifiable state law or religious doctrine. Anyway, Raymond was in love, and, thus inspired, his prodigious letter writing reached new heights. The family was forewarned that Tallulah was anxious to visit Ford County and see her new in-laws. She indeed arrived, but when they refused to acknowledge her, she instead paid a visit to the Ford County Times, where she shared her rambling thoughts, her insights into the plight of poor Raymond Graney, and her promises that new evidence would clear him in the death of the deputy. She also announced that she was pregnant with Raymond’s child, a result of several conjugal visits now available to death row inmates.
Tallulah made the front page, photo and all, but the reporter had been wise enough to check with Parchman. Conjugal visits were not allowed for the inmates, especially those on death row. And there was no official record of a marriage. Undaunted, Tallulah continued to wave Raymond’s flag, and even went so far as to haul several of his bulky manuscripts to New York, where they were again rejected by publishers with little vision. With time she faded away, though Inez, Leon, and Butch lived with the horror that another Gr
aney might soon be born, somewhere. In spite of the rules regarding conjugal visits, they knew Raymond. He could find a way.
After two years, Raymond informed the family that he and Tallulah would be seeking a divorce and, to properly obtain one, he needed $500. This touched off another nasty episode of bickering and name-calling, and the money was raised only after he threatened suicide, and not for the first time. Not long after the checks had been mailed, Raymond wrote with the great news that he and Tallulah had reconciled. He did not offer to return the money to Inez, Butch, and Leon, though all three suggested that he do so. Raymond declined on the grounds that his new team of lawyers needed the money to hire experts and investigators.
What irked Leon and Butch was their brother’s sense of entitlement, as though they, the family, owed him the money because of his persecution. In the early days of his imprisonment, both Leon and Butch had reminded Raymond that he had not sent them the first penny when they were behind bars and he was not. This had led to another nasty episode that Inez had been forced to mediate.
She sat bent and unmoving in her wheelchair, with a large canvas bag in her lap. As the thoughts of Tallulah began to fade, she opened the bag and withdrew a letter from Raymond, his latest. She opened the envelope, plain and white with his swirling cursive writing all over the front, and unfolded two sheets of yellow tablet paper.
Dearest Mother:
It is becoming increasingly obvious and apparent that the cumbersome and unwieldy yes even lethargic machinations of our inequitable and dishonorable yes even corrupt judicial system have inevitably and irrevocably trained their loathsome and despicable eyes upon me.
Inez took a breath, then read the sentence again. Most of the words looked familiar. After years of reading with a letter in one hand and a dictionary in the other, she was amazed at how much her vocabulary had expanded.
Butch glanced back, saw the letter, shook his head, but said nothing.
However, the State of Mississippi will once again be thwarted and stymied and left in thorough and consummate degradation in its resolution to extract blood from Raymond T. Graney. For I have procured and retained the services of a young lawyer with astonishing skills, an extraordinary advocate judiciously chosen by me from the innumerable legions of barristers quite literally throwing themselves at my feet.