Living Proof

by Peter J Thompson

  Ramon could have been the poster boy for the anti-death-penalty crowd. He’d truly rehabilitated himself while in prison. He’d been a punk with a long record of juvenile offenses—breaking and entering, vandalism, and car theft. But no history of violence. After turning eighteen, he seemed to change his ways, staying out of trouble for nearly three years. Then everything quickly unraveled. He was picked up for a bar fight, charged with assault, and released on bail. A month later, a prominent businessman was murdered. They charged Ramon with the crime and he’d been imprisoned ever since. But he’d become a model prisoner. He’d gotten his GED and took correspondence courses for college. He’d even helped to tutor some of the other inmates in reading.

  And then there was the other thing. He said he didn’t do it. Not that that was unusual, the jail was full of self-proclaimed innocent men. But his claim was believable. The evidence was circumstantial and the prosecution’s case was full of holes. It was a better than even shot that he really was innocent. Not that she could change things now. Guilty or not, he was just days away from his death.

  The secretary entered the room and announced that the warden was ready to see them. They’d asked permission to meet and photograph Ramon in his cell, a break from the usual procedure. The warden agreed to the interview but said no to the pictures. Then he lectured them about morality and the responsibilities of the news media. He set the ground rules for the interview, then called a guard in to escort her up to the segregation unit to meet with Ramon Willis in his cell.

  The walk through the unit was frightening. The noise was unbearably loud. TVs blared and Lena’s entrance caused a noisy outbreak among the inmates. She felt like she was walking through a gauntlet as the prisoners yelled out or whistled at her. Lena walked as straight and tall as she could, letting the calls fall down on her like rain.

  When she first saw Ramon, he was turned away, reading a book while sitting on his cot, seemingly unaware of all the chaos.

  “Wake up, Willis, you got a visitor.” The guard banged on the bars with his truncheon.

  Ramon put his book down, turned toward them, and looked directly at her. He was bigger than Lena had imagined him to be. Strong and darkly handsome. And the eyes, the blue eyes that were so out of place on his bronzed face. It was peculiar, just one look and she felt that she’d made some kind of connection with him. This hadn’t happened before and she wasn’t expecting it. If she’d seen him on the outside dressed in a business suit, she’d have found him attractive. Now it seemed so sad.

  “Hello, Ramon. I’m Lena Dryer with the Austin Star. I’d like to ask you some questions.” She knew she’d be haunted by those eyes for a long time.

  3

  The following days passed quickly. On Friday, the court denied the stay and ordered that the execution proceed as scheduled. Lena’s story was a front-page feature in the Austin Star’s Sunday edition. It caused quite a minor stir, but nothing developed to help Ramon.

  On Tuesday, execution day, Ramon awoke long before the TVs or the rest of the cellblock came to life. He used the quiet time to write a will of sorts, leaving his books, radio, and a few other pieces of property he had to other inmates. There were a few personal items that he had a hard time deciding what to do with. He didn’t have any close family. His mother was dead. There were a few cousins, but none that had kept in contact with him. He’d planned to leave his effects to his father, even though they hadn’t been in contact for close to fourteen years. But he’d died a month before. Now there was no one, so it didn’t really matter.

  The guards came by just after seven and led him to the shower. He stayed in an extra-long time. The hot water felt good and the steam flushed out his pores and helped him to relax, at least for a few moments. When he was finished, he put on a new pair of white coveralls.

  Then it was time for him to be moved to the death chamber at the Walls unit in downtown Huntsville. They bound him with chains on his hands and feet. The chains were connected so as to hobble him and make it hard to move with any speed. Surrounded by guards, he was led down to a waiting van at the back of the building. As he walked through the doors, he felt the unfiltered rays of the sun for the first time in years. He blinked and squinted at the light. He gulped in the air as if he was drowning and thought of what it would be like to really be free. From behind, a guard shoved him towards the van. Ramon stiffened in resistance, but then moved slowly inside. On the ride over, he craned his neck to see the passing scenery, his last glimpses of the real world.

  Once they checked him into the Walls, he was taken to a holding cell down the hall from the execution chamber. The guards checked in on him every fifteen minutes and wrote down what he was doing in their small notebooks. He was allowed to make phone calls to anyone that he wanted, only there was no one he really wanted to talk to.

  Over the course of the morning, Ramon’s anxiety level went up another notch. He tried to read, but couldn’t concentrate. He passed the time by watching the TV in his new cell. Around noon, a news show caught his interest. Among the stories, it had a brief feature on his case and the fact that his execution was scheduled for that night. It was strange watching his life being discussed on TV by strangers who knew nothing about him.

  One part of the show was a surprise, though. They showed videotape of a visiting politician, Randall Morgan, the senior senator from Wisconsin, addressing a union convention in Houston. Although he hadn’t declared, it was widely assumed he was positioning himself for a run for the presidency. He was seen as a White Knight by the liberal forces, a strong protector of the environment, a proponent of personal liberties, and a foe of the death penalty. He made the news that afternoon by deviating from his prepared remarks to mention Ramon’s case and the series in the Austin Star, which called into doubt the justice of his sentence.

  “I’m calling for the governor of this state to step forward and do the right thing,” he said. He asked that the governor stop the execution and personally look into the facts of the case.

  Upon seeing the tape, Ramon had a moment of true hope. Here was a champion, someone with real power who was bringing his case up to the light of day. Someone who would step up to bat on his behalf and swing for the fences. Maybe this would do it, maybe the governor would step in. Maybe he would get another chance. The feeling didn’t last long, though. Even if there had been a chance, it was too late now. He turned off the TV after that.

  Barry Resnick came by in the afternoon and they talked for over an hour, mostly small talk. Barry avoided even mentioning what was going to happen that night. He hugged Ramon as he left the cell and told him he was sorry it had to end like this.

  At four fifteen, they brought Ramon his last meal: tamales, fresh tortillas with refried beans, a garden salad, and a thick T-bone steak. The food looked good, but Ramon had no appetite and only swallowed a mouthful or two.

  The prison chaplain, a Catholic priest, stopped by around seven-thirty and stayed for the rest of the evening. Ramon was raised in a religious household where his mother went to mass nearly every day. Ramon stopped going to church when he moved in with his father at the age of twelve. His father said that it was nothing but superstitious nonsense and had forbidden him to go. Ramon continued to pray for a time, but after a while, he stopped doing that too. Over the last few years, as his situation became more desperate, he’d renewed his interest in religion and had read extensively on it. He now considered himself a spiritual person, though he no longer considered himself a Catholic. Still, he was comforted by the priest’s presence and confessed his sins for the first time in years.

  The captain of the guards and two others came for him just before seven. The priest performed the last rites before leaving. The guards fastened the chains and prepared Ramon to be moved down to the execution chamber.

  As Ramon made the long walk down the corridor, he felt like he was moving in slow motion. It was a sudden change that left him feeling detached, like he was watching himself in a movie, not a real person
. The footfalls in the hallway blended together in long echoes. The sound of the blood surging in his head were like waves crashing against rocks on a beach. It seemed so loud, almost deafening. After a moment, he realized he was actually grinning. He wasn’t afraid now. It seemed like this was happening to someone else and he was standing above, watching.

  After all the times he’d thought of this moment—the nightmares, the dark primal fears that had always been there, lurking in the back of his mind for all these years—the time that he dreaded most was now here. And it didn’t seem so bad. He wasn’t nervous, he wasn’t anxious. He was calm and cool. He wanted to live, or at least he had up until now, but the life he’d been living in prison wasn’t the life he wanted.

  It seemed to take hours to walk the twenty yards to the death chamber. The room was a small rectangular-shaped space with three powder blue walls opening out to a huge window in the front.

  The interior of the room was stark and empty except for a hospital gurney in the center of the floor and a metal cart next to it. A series of cords and tubes snaked out from a hole near the floor in the far wall and terminated at rest on the cart. The guards directed Ramon onto the bed and laid him down. His chains were removed and leather straps were pulled out and, in seconds, fastened tight around his legs, thighs, chest, and arms, attaching him securely to the gurney. Another set of straps bound his wrists to the side of the bed.

  He could hardly move. His feeling of wellbeing abruptly left him. With a rush, he was back in real time, his forehead beaded with sweat and his stomach churning. Suddenly, it was all too real. He was afraid he’d lose control of his bowels.

  Two technicians came into the room; one checked the straps while the other took hold of his right arm and tapped on the flesh of his forearm, looking for veins. He found one that he liked.

  “This will just hurt for a second,” he said as he pulled an IV needle off of the cart and stuck it into the vein.

  Ramon winced. He tried to look out the window, but the technicians were obstructing his view. One technician connected the needle to a tube on the cart and taped it in place. The tube had a shunt near the top to allow drugs to be injected directly into the vein.

  The technician took a hypodermic needle off of the cart and shot its contents into the shunt. “This should help you relax,” he said.

  The other technician opened Ramon’s shirt and placed a cold metal monitor on his chest near the heart, and taped it in place. Next, he attached sensors to both wrists. When the men were done, they adjusted the gurney so that there was a slight tilt facing towards the window. They exited the room, closing the door firmly behind them.

  Ramon looked out at the viewing area. Sitting on the other side of the glass in auditorium seats were the warden, Barry Resnick, Lena Dryer the reporter from the Star, the chaplain, and four people he didn’t know. Many of the people were looking away from him, avoiding eye contact. Even Barry. Only Lena looked straight at him. Her eyes locked in on his, as if she was trying to tell him she wished she could help.

  The warden stood up and flipped a switch near his seat. Ramon heard a brief crackle of static and realized the room was equipped for sound. He turned his attention to the warden, who had picked up a sheet of paper and had begun to read.

  “Ramon Umberto Willis, you have been convicted of capital murder by the Superior Court of the State of Texas…”

  Ramon couldn’t concentrate. His breathing was heavy and labored. The straps on his chest constrained him. The needle in his arm an irritant, not painful but uncomfortable. Suddenly, he just wanted to get the whole thing over with.

  The warden finished the reading of the death decree. “Do you have any final words before we carry out your sentence?”Ramon stared out at them. He felt much calmer now, almost dreamy. He knew that the shot the technician gave him was working.

  “This is the wrong thing,” Ramon said. “You know this is wrong what you are doing to me.”

  The warden waited a moment to be sure he was finished. Then he spoke again. “May God have mercy on your soul.” He flipped the speaker switch off, sat back down, and removed his glasses.

  In the room behind the execution chamber, the lethal injection had been prepared. Now they depressed the plungers and began the process. To achieve death, precise quantities of three chemical compounds were injected directly into the veins. The first compound caused a general paralysis and shutdown of bodily functions. The second substance collapsed the diaphragm and lungs, and the third compound induced cardiac arrest, stopping the heart, which caused the death.

  Ramon heard a gentle hum and felt the cold liquid entering his veins. His muscles tensed, he wondered how long it would take. His eyes began to blur. He felt dizzy, sleepy. He tried to keep his eyes open but couldn’t. He closed his eyes—just for a moment. Then his mind turned off. Nothing more registered.

  To Lena, watching from the next room, it appeared as if Ramon had simply drifted off to sleep. He didn’t appear to be in pain. At least he didn’t seem to suffer. She breathed in deeply, almost gasping for breath. She couldn’t wait to get out of the stuffy room and get home to take a long hot shower. She needed to wash off the dirt. Just being there made her feel unclean. She hoped it wouldn’t last much longer.

  At twelve-twenty-six, Dr. Conrad Meeks went into the execution chamber. He put his stethoscope to Ramon’s chest, listened for a full sixty seconds, then glanced at the time on his watch. He looked out at the spectators as he spoke. “The official time of death is 12:26 a.m.”

  Lena felt tired. But she still had to write her story and file it by 1:30 so it would make the deadline for the morning’s paper. Most of the story was already written. She just had to finish it and email it off from her hotel room. The warden said a few final words, then they all began to disburse. Lena took an extra few minutes to get quotes from Barry and the chaplain before she too escaped into the hot Texas night.

  Dr. Meeks waited until after the crowd had gone. When enough time had passed, he and one of the technicians wheeled the gurney, with Ramon’s body on it, out of the execution chamber and down a short hallway to a room at the back of the building. The technician took a green canvas body bag from a shelf and together they wrestled the inert body into it.

  “We should put them in this beforehand. It wouldn’t be so hard then,” wheezed the technician when they’d finally accomplished the task.

  Dr. Meeks didn’t reply. He zipped the bag shut nearly to the top, pulled out a cigarette, and lit up. After taking two long drags, he looked at his watch. It was now one fifteen. “We better get moving. We’ve got a ways to ride.”

  The technician opened the back door and propped it open. They pushed the gurney out the door and onto a loading dock. A nondescript gray Dodge cargo van was in position waiting for them. The technician opened the van’s rear door. The interior set-up was similar to an ambulance. Most of the length of the van on one side was taken up by a shelf wide enough for someone to lie on. Next to it was a space, then another bench, which opened out for storage.

  They pulled the gurney up close to the van and used a straight piece of board to slide the body from the dock onto the shelf in the van, where they strapped it into place with bungee cords. Dr. Meeks grabbed his medical bag and hopped into the vehicle. The technician shut the van door, walked around to the front, started the engine, and slowly pulled away from the dock.

  The streets were empty at this time of night. They drove through the prison gate, rode through town, and onto Route 190, heading west. In the back, Dr. Meeks lit up another cigarette and settled back for the ride. It went pretty smoothly tonight, he thought. Another scumbag bites the dust courtesy of the great State of Texas. He looked out the back window. Just a few minutes outside of Huntsville and the lights of the city had already faded away. You could see stars out here. The only other lights were the headlights from an oncoming truck, and after it passed, the darkness closed in on them completely. Meeks finished his cigarette and ground the butt out under
neath his heel. He stretched out on the bench and tried to make himself comfortable. They had a long way to go. He might as well try to rest. It didn’t take more than a few minutes before he fell fast asleep.

  He awoke with a start when the van dipped and he nearly slid off his bench. Without even looking outside, he knew they were in the Hill country of central Texas. He rubbed his eyes, yawned, and sat up. While lighting a new cigarette, he looked at his watch. Four seventeen. They’d been on the road for nearly three hours and they weren’t even halfway there. Still, now seemed as good a time as any.

  He reached down under the bench and pulled out his black doctor’s bag. He snapped it open and withdrew a small leather case. Unzipping the case, he examined the four stainless steel scalpels it contained. Each one had a different angle to the blade. He chose one with a slight curve at its tip.

  He leaned over the body, down below the waistline. Keeping his cigarette between his lips, he steadied himself. Taking into account the rolling of the van, he grasped a handful of the canvas with his left hand and pulled it taut. In his right hand, he gripped the scalpel. Carefully, as if he was cutting into a real live human, he made an incision into the bag, cutting away six inches of the material covering the thigh. Satisfied with that cut, he made another incision from the opposite angle. This cut made an X in the bag, exposing the corpse’s leg to the open air.

  Dr. Meeks leaned back and contentedly drew a long puff on his Marlboro. As he exhaled, he leaned forward once again. Holding the cigarette between his thumb and forefinger, he brought it down to the area in the bag opened by his cut and pushed the red-hot ember through the sheer fabric of the corpse’s pants into the muscle of his leg. There was a brief sizzle as the cigarette was extinguished in the flesh.

  Dr. Meeks smiled as Ramon’s leg twitched.