Chamber

by John Grisham

  Sam lit a cigarette and watched the smoke float upward toward the raindrops. Weird things happen with our absurd judicial system. Courts rule this way one day and the other way the next. The same judges reach different conclusions on familiar issues. A court will ignore a wild motion or appeal for years, then one day embrace it and grant relief. Judges die and they're replaced by judges who think differently. Presidents come and go and they appoint their pals to the bench. The Supreme Court drifts one way, then another.

  At times, death would be welcome. And if given the choice of death on one hand, or life on death row on the other, Sam would quickly take the gas. But there was always hope, always the slight glimmering promise that something somewhere in the vast maze of the judicial jungle would strike a chord with someone, and his case would be reversed. Every resident of the Row dreamed of the miracle reversal from heaven. And their dreams sustained them from one miserable day to the next.

  Sam had recently read that there were almost twenty-five hundred inmates sentenced to die in America, and last year, 1989, only sixteen were executed. Mississippi had executed only four since 1977, the year Gary Gilmore insisted on a firing squad in Utah. There was safety in those numbers. They fortified his resolve to file even more appeals.

  He smoked through the bars as the storm passed and the rain stopped. He took his breakfast as the sun rose, and at seven o'clock he turned on the television for the morning news. He had just bitten into a piece of cold toast when suddenly his face appeared on the screen behind a Memphis morning anchorperson. She eagerly reported the thrilling top story of the day, the bizarre case of Sam Cayhay and his new lawyer. Seems his new lawyer' was his long-lost grandson, one Adam Hall, a young lawyer from the mammoth Chicago firm of Kravitz & Bane, the outfit who'd represented Sam for the past seven years or so. The photo of Sam was at least ten years old, the same one they used every time his name was mentioned on TV or in print. The photo of Adam was a bit stranger. He obviously had not posed for it. Someone had snapped it outdoors while he wasn't looking. She explained with wild eyes that the Memphis Press was reporting this morning that Adam Hall had confirmed that he was in fact the grandson of Sam Cayhall. She gave a fleeting sketch of Sam's crime, and twice gave the date of his pending execution. More on the story later, she promised, perhaps maybe as soon as the `Noon Report'. Then she was off on the morning summary of last night's murders.

  Sam threw the toast on the floor next to the bookshelves and stared at it. An insect found it almost immediately and crawled over and around it a half dozen times before deciding it wasn't worth eating. His lawyer had already talked to the press. What do they teach these people in law school? Do they give instruction on media control?

  "Sam, you there?" It was Gullitt.

  "Yeah. I'm here."

  "Just saw you on channel four."

  "Yeah. I saw it."

  "You pissed?"

  "I'm okay."

  "Take a deep breath, Sam. It's okay."

  Among men sentenced to die in the gas chamber, the expression `Take a deep breath' was used often and considered nothing more than an effort at humor. They said it to each other all the time, usually when one was angry. But when used by the guards it was far from funny. It was a constitutional violation. It had been mentioned in more than one lawsuit as an example of the cruel treatment dispensed on death row.

  Sam agreed with the insect and ignored the rest of his breakfast. He sipped coffee and stared at the floor.

  At nine-thirty, Sergeant Packer was on the tier looking for Sam. It was time for his hour of fresh air. The rains were far away and the sun was blistering the Delta. Packer had two guards with him and a pair of leg irons. Sam pointed at the chains, and asked, "What are they for?"

  "They're for security, Sam."

  "I'm just going out to play, aren't I?"

  "No, Sam. We're taking you to the law library. Your lawyer wants to meet you there so y'all can talk amongst the law books. Now turn around."

  Sam stuck both hands through the opening of his door. Packer cuffed them loosely, then the door opened and Sam stepped into the hall. The guards dropped to their knees and were securing the leg irons when Sam asked, Packer, "What about my hour out?"

  "What about it?"

  "When do I get it?"

  "Later."

  "You said that yesterday and I didn't get my rec time. You lied to me yesterday. Now you're lying to me again. I'll sue you for this."

  "Lawsuits take a long time, Sam. They take years."

  "I want to talk to the warden."

  "And I'm sure he wants to talk to you too, Sam. Now, do you want to see your lawyer or not?"

  "I have a right to my lawyer and I have a right to my rec time."

  "Get off his ass, Packer!" Hank Henshaw shouted from less than six feet away.

  "You lie, Packer! You lie!" J. B. Gullitt added from the other side.

  "Down, boys," Packer said coolly. "We'll take care of old Sam, here."

  "Yeah, you'd gas him today if you could," Henshaw yelled.

  The leg irons were in place, and Sam shuffled into his cell to get a file. He clutched it to his chest and waddled down the tier with Packer at his side and the guards following.

  "Give 'em hell, Sam," Henshaw yelled as they walked away.

  There were other shouts of support for Sam and catcalls at Packer as they left the tier. They were cleared through a set of doors and Tier A was behind them.

  "The warden says you get two hours out this afternoon, and two hours a day till it's over," Packer said as they moved slowly through a short hallway.

  "Till what's over?"

  "This thang."

  "What thang?"

  Packer and most of the guards referred to an execution as a thang.

  "You know what I mean," Packer said.

  "Tell the warden he's a real sweetheart. And ask him if I get two hours if this thang doesn't go off, okay? And while you're at it, tell him I think he's a lying son of a bitch."

  "He already knows."

  They stopped at a wall of bars and waited for the door to open. They passed through it and stopped again by two guards at the front door. Packer made quick notes on a clipboard, and they walked outside where a white van was waiting. The guards took Sam by the arms and lifted him and his chains into the side door. Packer sat in the front with the driver.

  "Does this thing have air conditioning?" Sam snapped at the driver, whose window was down.

  "Yep," the driver said as they backed away from the front of MSU.

  "Then turn the damned thing on, okay."

  "Knock it off, Sam," Packer said without conviction.

  "It's bad enough to sweat all day in a cage with no air conditioning, but it's pretty stupid to sit here and suffocate. Turn the damned thing on. I've got my rights."

  "Take a deep breath, Sam," Packer drawled and winked at the driver.

  "That'll cost you, Packer. You'll wish--you hadn't said that."

  The driver hit a switch and the air started blowing. The van was cleared through the double gates and slowly made its way down the dirt road away from the Row.

  Though he was handcuffed and shackled, this brief journey on the outside was refreshing. Sam stopped the bitching and immediately ignored the others in the van. The rains had left puddles in the grassy ditches beside the road, and they had washed the cotton plants, now more than knee-high. The stalks and leaves were dark green. Sam remembered picking cotton as a boy, then quickly dismissed the thought. He had trained his mind to forget the past, and on those rare occasions when a childhood memory flashed before him, he quickly snuffed it out.

  The van crept along, and he was thankful for this. He stared at two inmates sitting under a tree watching a buddy lift weights in the sun.

  There was a fence around them, but how nice, he thought, to be outside walking and talking, exercising and lounging, never giving a thought to the gas chamber, never worrying about the last appeal.

  The law library was known as th
e Twig because it was too small to be considered a full branch. The main prison law library was deeper into the farm, at another camp. The Twig was used exclusively by death row inmates. It was stuck to the rear of an administration building, with only one door and no windows. Sam had been there many times during the past nine years. It was a small room with a decent collection of current law books and up-to-date reporting services. A battered conference table sat in the center with shelves of books lining the four walls. Every now and then a trustee would volunteer to serve as the librarian, but good help was hard to find and the books were seldom where they were supposed to be. This irritated Sam immensely because he admired neatness and he despised the Africans, and he was certain that most if not all of the librarians were black, though he did not know this for a fact.

  The two guards unshackled Sam at the door.

  "You got two hours," Packer said.

  "I got as long as I want," Sam said, rubbing his wrists as if the handcuffs had broken them.

  "Sure, Sam. But when I come after you in two hours, I'll bet we load your gimpy little ass into the van."

  Packer opened the door as the guards took their positions beside it. Sam entered the library and slammed the door behind him. He laid his file on the table and stared at his lawyer.

  Adam stood at the far end of the conference table, holding a book and waiting for his client. He'd heard voices outside, and he watched Sam enter the room without guards or handcuffs. He stood there in his red jumpsuit, much smaller now without the thick metal screen between them.

  They studied each other for a moment across the table, grandson and grandfather, lawyer and client, stranger and stranger. It was an awkward interval in which they sized each other up and neither knew what to do with the other.

  "Hello, Sam," Adam said, walking toward him.

  "Mornin'. Saw us on TV a few hours ago."

  "Yeah. Have you seen the paper?"

  "Not yet. It comes later."

  Adam slid the morning paper across the table and Sam stopped it. He held it with both hands, eased into a chair, and raised the paper to within six inches of his nose. He read it carefully and studied the pictures of himself and Adam.

  Todd Marks had evidently spent most of the evening digging and making frantic phone calls. He had verified that one Alan Cayhall had been born in Clanton, in Ford County, in 1964, and the father's name listed on the birth certificate was one Edward S. Cayhall. He checked the

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  birth certificate for Edward S. Cayhall and found that his father was Samuel Lucas Cayhall, the same man now on death row. He reported that Adam Hall had confirmed that his father's name had been changed in California, and that his grandfather was Sam Cayhall. He was careful not to attribute direct quotes to Adam, but he nonetheless violated their agreement. There was little doubt the two had talked.

  Quoting unnamed sources, the story explained how Eddie and his family left Clanton in 1967 after Sam's arrest, and fled to California where Eddie later killed himself. The trail ended there because Marks obviously ran out of time late in the day and could confirm nothing from California. The unnamed source or sources didn't mention Sam's daughter living in Memphis, so Lee was spared. The story ran out of steam with a series of no-comments from Baker Cooley, Garner Goodman, Phillip Naifeh, Lucas Mann, and a lawyer with the Attorney General's office in Jackson. Marks finished strong, though, with a sensational recap of the Kramer bombing.

  The story was on the front page of the Press, above the main headline. The ancient picture of Sam was to the right, and next to it was a strange photo of Adam from the waist up. Lee had brought the paper to him hours earlier as he sat on the terrace and watched the early morning river traffic. They drank coffee and juice, and read and reread the story. After much analysis, Adam had decided that Todd Marks had placed a photographer across the street from the Peabody Hotel, and when Adam left their little meeting yesterday and stepped onto the sidewalk, he got his picture taken. The suit and tie were definitely worn yesterday.

  "Did you talk to this clown?" Sam growled as he placed the paper on the table. Adam sat across from him.

  "We met."

  "Why?"

  "Because he called our office in Memphis, said he'd heard some rumors, and I wanted him to get it straight. It's no big deal."

  "Our pictures on the front page is no big deal?"

  "You've been there before."

  "And you?"

  "I didn't exactly pose. It was. an ambush, you see. But I think I look rather dashing."

  "Did you confirm these facts for him?"

  "I did. We agreed it would be background, and he could not quote me on anything. Nor was he supposed to use me as a source. He violated our agreement, and ripped his ass with me. He also planted a photographer, so I've spoken for the first and last time to the Memphis Press."

  Sam looked at the paper for a moment. He was relaxed, and his words were as slow as ever. He managed a trace of a smile. "And you confirmed that you are my grandson?"

  "Yes. Can't really deny it, can I?"

  "Do you want to deny it?"

  "Read the paper, Sam. If I wanted to deny it, would it be on the front page?"

  This satisfied Sam, and the smile grew a bit.

  He bit his lip and stared at Adam. Then he methodically removed a fresh pack of cigarettes, and Adam glanced around for a window.

  After the first one was properly lit, Sam said, "Stay away from the press. They're ruthless and they're stupid. They lie and they make careless mistakes."

  "But I'm a lawyer, Sam. It's inbred."

  "I know. It's hard, but try to control yourself. I don't want it to happen again."

  Adam reached into his briefcase, smiled, and pulled out some papers. "I have a wonderful idea how to save your life." He rubbed his hands together then removed a pen from his pocket. It was time for work.

  "I'm listening."

  "Well, as you might guess, I've been doing a lot of research."

  "That's what you're paid to do."

  "Yes. And I've come up with a marvelous little theory, a new claim which I intend to file on Monday. The theory is simple. Mississippi is one of only five states still using the gas chamber, right?"

  "That's right."

  "And the Mississippi Legislature in 1984 passed a law giving a condemned man the choice of dying by lethal injection or in the gas chamber. But the new law applies only to those convicted after July 1, 1984. Doesn't apply to you."

  "That's correct. I think about half the guys on the Row will get their choice. It's years away, though."

  "One of the reasons the legislature approved lethal injection was to make the killings more humane. I've studied the legislative history behind the law and there was a lot of discussion of problems the state's had with gas chamber executions. The theory is simple: make the executions quick and painless, and there will be fewer constitutional claims that they are cruel. Lethal injections raise fewer legal problems, thus the killings are easier to carry out. Our theory, then, is that since the state has adopted lethal injection, it has in effect said that the gas chamber is obsolete. And why is it obsolete? Because it's a cruel way to kill people."

  Sam puffed on this for a minute and nodded slowly. "Keep going," he said.

  "We attack the gas chamber as a method of execution."

  "Do you limit it to Mississippi?"

  "Probably. I know there were problems with Teddy Doyle Meeks and Maynard Tole."

  Sam snorted and blew smoke across the table. "Problems? You could say that."

  "How much do you know?"

  "Come on. They died within fifty yards of me. We sit in our cells all day long and think about death. Everyone on the Row knows what happened to those boys."

  "Tell me about them."

  Sam leaned forward on his elbows and stared absently at the newspaper in front of him. "Meeks was the first execution in Mississippi in ten years, and they didn't know what they were doing. It was 1982. I'd been here for almost tw
o years, and until then we were living in a dream world. We never thought about the gas chamber and cyanide pellets and last meals. We were sentenced to die, but, hell, they weren't killing anyone, so why worry? But Meeks woke us up. They killed him, so they could certainly kill the rest of us."

  "What happened to him?" Adam had read a dozen stories about the botched execution of Teddy Doyle Meeks, but he wanted to hear it from Sam.

  "Everything went wrong. Have you seen the chamber?"

  "Not yet."

  "There's a little room off to the side where the executioner mixes his solution. The sulfuric acid is in a canister which he takes from his little laboratory to a tube running into the bottom of the chamber. With Meeks, the executioner was drunk."

  "Come on, Sam."

  "I didn't see him, okay. But everyone knows he was drunk. State law designates an official state executioner, and the warden and his gang didn't think about it until just a few hours before the execution. Keep in mind, no one thought Meeks would die. We were all waiting on a last minute stay, because he'd been through it twice already. But there was no stay, and they scrambled around at the last minute trying to locate the official state executioner. They found him, drunk. He was a plumber, I think. Anyway, his first batch of brew didn't work. He placed the canister into the tube, pulled a lever, and everyone waited for Meeks to take a deep breath and die. Meeks held his breath as long as he could, then inhaled. Nothing happened. They waited. Meeks waited. The witnesses waited. Everybody slowly turned to the executioner, who was also waiting and cussing. He went back to his little room, and fixed up another mix of sulfuric acid. Then he had to retrieve the old canister from the chute, and that took ten minutes. The warden and Lucas Mann and the rest of the goons were standing around waiting and fidgeting and cussing this drunk plumber, who finally plugged in the new canister and pulled the lever. This time the sulfuric acid landed where it was supposed to - in a bowl under the chair where Meeks was strapped. The executioner pulled the second lever dropping the cyanide pellets, which were also under the chair, hovering above the sulfuric acid. The pellets dropped, and sure enough, the gas drifted upward to where old Meeks was holding his breath again. You can see the vapors, you know. When he finally sucked in a nose full of it, he started shaking and jerking, and this went on quite a while. For some reason, there's a metal pole that runs from the top of the chamber to the bottom, and it's directly behind the chair. Just about the time Meeks got still and everybody thought he was dead, his head started banging back and forth, striking this pole, just beating it like hell. His eyes were rolled back, his lips were wide open, he was foaming at the mouth, and there he was beating the back of his head in on this pole. It was sick."