by Darrel Bird
Part 4
A week later a guard came to Steve's cell and told him he had a visitor. The guard shackled him by putting ankle cuffs and chains on his feet, and a chain around his waist. Another length of chain was hooked to that one in the back, dropped down between his thighs, and up to handcuffs, which held his hands below his waist. Steve could do no more than shuffle along.
The prisoners at Huntsville often recited a little poem:
Doing the old shuffle at the Huntsville prison,
You won't escape and that's a given.
The guard led him through the halls of the prison to the visiting room. As he walked down the corridor with the guard, Steve wondered how in the world anyone could have arranged this, since it was not visiting day. He had never had a visitor here anyway. He knew no one in Huntsville.
When they got to the visitor center, the guard pointed to an old man sitting by himself at a table and motioned Steve forward. The old man was staring down through his spectacles at an old worn and tattered Bible. He looked up as Steve shuffled over. The chair scraped loudly in the empty room as Steve pulled it away from the table and sat down. The guard unlocked the cuffs on his hands. Steve's hands were free, but he wasn't going anywhere.
He heard the doors behind him slide shut with a clang. The three guards who were usually in the visitor room were absent, and the guard who had brought Steve out walked up onto the guard podium, took a paperback book out of his pocket, and sat down and began to read.
The old man looked over his spectacles at Steve, reached out his hand to him, and said, "I am Pastor Glen Turner. A friend called me and told me about you, and asked me to come." Steve shook the pastor's hand. Any visitor is better than no visitor, he thought.
"How are you faring?" the pastor asked.
Steve looked into the kind eyes of the man and saw no threat. He couldn't imagine a motive for the man to waste an entire day going through the trouble of coming here. Just a do-gooder, trying to change me, Steve thought, as he looked away.
"Steve," the pastor said, "I'm going to be straight up and above board with you. Your death may be imminent. I have read the trial transcripts, and it doesn't look good. Maybe if it had been California, but not much chance for a reprieve in Texas.
"I would like for you to consider what the Bible says today."
Here we go again, Steve thought, but said nothing.
The pastor turned his black, dog-eared Bible around so Steve could read it, and pointed to a scripture he had highlighted in pink. It read:
Acts 16:30 And brought them out, and said, Sirs, what must I do to be saved?
Acts 16:31 And they said, Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved, and thy house.
Acts 16:32 And they spake unto him the word of the Lord, and to all that were in his house.
Steve read the scripture and shook his head, not comprehending.
Pastor Turner explained, "This is what I am going to do for you today, Steve, if you will hear me out: expound to you the salvation message.
"No matter what you have done, whether you are innocent of these charges against you or not, makes no difference. We have all failed and come short of the glory of God. We have all sinned, me, you, your parents, all. Jesus came into the world to save sinners just like you and me.
"Now I want to show you another scripture." He fumbled through the pages, and again flipped it around for Steve to see. It read:
John 11:25 Jesus said unto her, I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live:
John 11:26 And whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die. Believest thou this?
The pastor looked at Steve and continued, "Jesus is talking about the after-life, and he promises that if you will believe on him, that you will have life."
"Steve, do you believe this Bible is true?"
"My dad and mom believe it," Steve answered.
"Well? your dad and mom believe it because Jesus changed their lives, and he changed their hearts. Do you believe that he will change your heart, too, Steve? Son, I haven't got time to come down here and play head games."
Steve looked into those green eyes, and he knew the man was not into games. For Steve, the time for head games was over, too. In fact, his time for just about anything was almost over.
"Sir, I'll be honest with you. I don't know whether I believe it or not. Can I think about it?"
"Sure thing," the pastor nodded. "Look son, I can only pray for you. You have to come to God on your own. If you decide you do believe it, all you have to do is ask Jesus to save you. That's it; it is not complicated.
"Now I have to go. I am going to give you this Bible, if you will take it. It has served me and comforted me many years." The pastor extended the hand holding the Bible across the table.
"I can't take your own Bible, Sir," Steve said. "I have one anyway."
The old pastor fastened his gaze on Steve.
"Son, like you, my time is almost gone. I am sick and there is no cure. I would really like it if you would take this Bible with you wherever you go."
Steve reached slowly across the table and took the old Bible. "Thank you, Sir," he said, as the old man got feebly out of his chair. He shook Steve's hand and walked slowly toward the door.
Steve stood and looked after the pastor. The guard gave him a minute while he watched the old man through the door. With a clang, the door slid shut behind Pastor Turner, and he was gone.
Steve motioned to the guard that he was ready to go back to his cell, and the guard escorted him back through the maze that was Huntsville prison.
In his cell, he sat down at his table and began to look at the old Bible. In the front was the inscription, "To Glen, my beloved darling. Janet." Steve supposed Janet was the pastor's wife. He turned the page and found another inscription: "Rest in peace, my beloved Janet. Feb. 2nd, 2001." Another inscription below that, near the bottom of the page, said, "Lord, how I love thee. Glen."
Tears came to Steve's eyes as he slowly turned the pages of the old Bible. It was so marked up with underlines that, on some of the pages, there was hardly a word that was not marked. He could see the years of use and study committed to the old book. There was a bookmark, and he turned to that page. It was John 11:25, one of the passages the pastor had shown him. Steve turned the old Bible over and over in his hands. He considered the old man, how he had spent years believing what was in that book.
A few nights later, Steve was reading the Bible, when he felt as if he was being pulled down to kneel beside his prison bunk.
"Lord, I have spent my life going against what my mom and dad have stood for. If you are real, please change me; please help me. I don't know how I will re-act when it comes my time to die. But I am willing to believe on what is written in this book that the old pastor set so much store by.
"It says if I will believe in you that I can be saved. Please forgive me and save me."
A great load seemed to roll off his shoulders as he prayed that prayer.
During the mounting anxiety of the next few weeks, Steve sat and read the old dog-eared book.
On Thursday, a guard and the prison chaplain came to his cell. The guard asked Steve what he would like to eat, and he ordered a steak dinner. The prison chaplain sat with Steve, talking softly to him. The cellblock was quiet for the first time since he had been there.
As ten o'clock loomed closer and closer, Steve could feel the panic beginning to build, but he shoved it down. His nerves were like wires that had been drawn too tight and were about to break. The extreme stress tired him to the bone.
The cell walls, the bunk, his belongings, everything began to look strange and eerie to him. The guard, the chaplain, and even his own body began to take on an otherworldly appearance, as if time was both speeding up and slowing down at the same time.
He saw a tiny spider crawling across the top of the cell wall, and it hit him, "Tha
t spider will outlive me."
Finally, in the speeding and slowing of time, they came and opened his cell, and the long walk began. Steve stopped beside one of the cells and held the old Bible through the bars. A pair of shaking hands took it. The hands touched his for a warm, fleeting instant as time stood still.
They reached a hallway that was brightly lit. People gathered in a room ahead of them. A woman and two men in suits sat in the padded chairs. They whispered about something, and then one of them laughed softly at some funny event in the course of their continuing lives. It was as if a man was not about to die in the next room.
Adjacent to that was a brightly lit, glass-enclosed room. A gurney in the center of the room was covered with a snow-white sheet. Steve's legs tried to buckle under him as he was led into the death room, but the chaplain and the guard held him up. They helped him onto the gurney, and the guards strapped him down with thick brown leather straps. For just a moment, his vision was rarefied as he stared at the cut of the new leather, thick leather, binding leather. The warden read Steve's sentence aloud in a droning voice, and then he closed the bound document when he was finished.
Steve felt the sharp prick of the needles as one was shoved into each arm.
"I am so weary, so weary of this life, so tired?"
Part 5
Steve Gentry strolled through a golden field of grain to the top of the hill. The wind blew through his hair, cool and soothing. Shadows of dark and light played over the knee-high wheat, and the wind gave it the appearance of ocean waves. The old tree stood at the top of the knoll, as it had for hundreds of years. The voices of the leaves rose and fell in the breeze.
His golden retriever bounded up to him through the wheat for a pat on the head, and Steve reached down and hugged him. Satisfied that Steve loved him, the dog bounded off again, following some scent on the wind.
He looked back at the white house shining in the sun and saw his mother appear on the back porch with a basket of just-washed laundry. She waved to him as she walked through the yard to the clothesline that stood next to the tire swing. She was wearing a flowered dress; the breeze kissed her long hair, blowing a wisp across her face.
This time he heard her as she called, "Stevie, come home, son. Supper is ready." He waved back and smiled at his mom. He felt very light as he turned and walked back down the hill toward home.
He could smell the odor of fresh bread. "?strange that I can smell her bread this far?"
Epilogue
The Old Black Book
The old outlaw heard them coming down the hall and walked feebly to the bars to see who was next.
It was a young man in a yellow jumpsuit.
As the young man drew even with his cell, he proffered the old black book he was carrying through the bars to him. With shaking hand the old man reached out for the book. When he took hold of it, something like electricity shot through his body, and the weight of the book pulled him to the floor of the cell. He was overcome by weeping, as he held the old book and opened it up at the bookmark. He read:
John 11:25 Jesus said unto her, I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live:
John 11:26 And whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die. Believest thou this?
The End