Confessions of an Innocent Man

by David R. Dow

  I said, Well I am. I’m absolutely, positively sure I did not kill my wife.

  I paused. I turned and pointed at the picture of the killer I had hung on the wall beside the TV. I looked at Stream and said, And I am absolutely, positively sure of something else too. If you and Jane here had had your way, I’d be dead, and neither you nor anyone else would know I’m innocent.

  Moss said, That’s true, Mr. Zhettah. I see your point, I really do, but we have a system where a jury makes decisions based on the evidence before it.

  I said, It must be easy to trust twelve strangers as long as it’s not you they’re misjudging. Maybe that makes me an authoritarian in your moral universe, but I’d rather be a dictator trying to do the right thing than someone who follows a mob to the pyre.

  I dropped my plate into the plastic garbage bag. I said, I’ll see y’all later.

  Stream said, Thanks for the eggs.

  I left quickly so they wouldn’t see me seethe.

  * * *

  • • •

  In my own mind, I had won the debate, but I wondered whether the reason was because they hadn’t asked me the hard questions: If this is about teaching us something, exactly what lesson is it you’re expecting us to learn? And if it’s not about learning, then why are we here? I was worrying I was the Sophist.

  During my years on death row, I talked about my family to Olvido only twice: the day we met, and the day she came to tell me we had lost our state appeal. She said, And here’s the bad news. It wasn’t that we had lost. It was that state court had been our best hope. I said, I heard federal judges are more fair. She said, It has nothing to do with fairness. In Olvido’s opinion, our best shot had been state court, because in federal court, the judges do not care whether you’re innocent. I said, What?

  She told me how, in the 1990s, the Supreme Court ruled the US Constitution does not prohibit a state from putting an innocent person to death, so long as the trial resulting in the conviction and sentence was fair. I said, If an innocent person is sent to death row, isn’t that inherently unfair? She said, You would think.

  I told her about the last time I saw my father. I’d gone home for Christmas vacation during my freshman year. I spent a lot of time studying because our exams were in January. One morning my nose was buried in the complete Socratic dialogues when my father, who did not even know what philosophy was, asked what I was reading. I told him there were all these really smart people who spent their time thinking about what it means for the government to treat people fairly. My mamá walked into the room and he was beaming. He said, Quizás mi hijo va a ser un profesor. My grades were not nearly good enough for me to have been a professor even if I had wanted to, but I was not going to say anything to dampen his pride. My mamá, though, was the more practical of the two and had no such qualms. She said, Qué loco. You think he can earn a living discussing whether the glass is half-empty or half-full? Papá laughed and kissed her head. He put my neck in the crook of his arm and tugged me close to him. He smelled like motor oil and leather and freshly mowed grass. He said, En mi vida, el vaso siempre está medio lleno. And it was true. For him, the glass always was half-full.

  He did not know it at the time, but the federal police and the army were on their way. Thirty-six hours later, he lay dead, but he lay there smiling. I said to Olvido, You know why? She nodded. She knew. He had served his purpose. He had loved and provided for his wife. He had sent his son to America. I said to Olvido, He wouldn’t have believed me if I’d told him in America it doesn’t make any difference whether you’re innocent or guilty. When I asked you and the others not to go to Mexico and try to find my relatives, I was worried they would be ashamed. Now I realize I would have been. Then she told me something surprising. I asked her why state court was any better. And she said, Because, believe it or not, Texas has its own rule that says you can’t execute someone who’s innocent.

  I called her the afternoon of my heated exchange with Stream and Moss and said, I have a quick question. Does Texas still have the rule you can’t execute someone innocent?

  She said, Same rule. Why are you thinking about this now?

  I said, I don’t know. I haven’t been able to sleep. Maybe I have PTSD. I’m trying to figure out why I’m alive.

  She said, You’re alive because you got lucky we found a federal judge with balls.

  I said, And because I had a pretty awesome legal team.

  I pictured her smiling. She said, Well, that too.

  Our conversation put an end to my self-doubt, at least for the moment. I made a pitcher of fresh lemonade, poured a tall glass with crushed ice and muddled mint, and carried it down to the creek. A cloud of dragonflies hovered over the surface, and I watched a bass arc through the air and gobble down three. I knew I was right. Maybe that was enough.

  I wondered whether I should let them go.

  If the point of my scheme had really been deterrence, as I’d said to Stream, hadn’t I already met that goal? And if I hadn’t, would I ever? But if I did let them go, what would that mean for me?

  Stream had been right when he called me a fuckup. I had fucked up. But not in the way he thought. I plotted the opening and the middle, and, if I say so myself, I did that pretty well. But I neglected to fully imagine the end. Their crime didn’t warrant death, but I had no intention of going back to jail. My mistake had been to not recognize that those were the only two endgames, and neither endgame worked for me. Sure, if I did go back to prison for kidnapping state officials, I’d be a celebrity with the other inmates, but I didn’t foresee the corrections staff making my life easy. I remembered their gratuitous cruelty and the pleasure they took the first time I was gassed. I recalled the taste of chemicals, the jagged edge of a broken tooth, tear-filled and sulfurous burning eyes. Moss and Stream had it easy by comparison. They drank Scotch and wine and from time to time enjoyed a home-cooked meal. They had books and TV. And most important of all, I had allowed them to keep their dignity. But when I envisioned my trial, I knew none of my kindnesses would matter.

  I finished my lemonade and decided. If I had to choose between being either a hypocrite or a prisoner, I’d take the former every time.

  The next morning I went down to check on the MRE supply and take out the garbage bag. Moss said, Today is my twenty-fifth wedding anniversary.

  I held the garbage bag open so she could deposit her trash. I said, I was married only fourteen months.

  She said, What would you have thought if she had just disappeared? What would she have thought if you had?

  I said, Are you and John going to play good cop, bad cop with me from now on?

  She glanced at him, then said, I’m wondering why you seem indifferent to how cruel you are being to my husband, who never did anything to harm you.

  I said, I’m not indifferent, but I can’t think of any way to punish you appropriately that won’t also injure him, can you?

  She said, Perhaps not, but I did not injure you intentionally.

  I said, When you ruled against me, my lawyer said our best chance for victory was behind us, because unlike the federal courts, Texas has a rule saying you can’t execute someone who’s innocent.

  She said, Mr. Zhettah, I am sorry for what happened to you. I wish I could take it back.

  I said, People like you say everyone finds Jesus on death row. I noticed you haven’t answered my question.

  I held up the garbage bag outside Stream’s cage and said, Trash? Without getting out of his chair he said, You didn’t ask a question.

  Hadn’t I? I was trying to act nonchalant, except something Moss said had started the humming back up, but I wasn’t sure what it was, or why.

  We’d been seeing each other about three months when Tieresse said, Why haven’t you ever asked me about my marriage? Aren’t you curious? I said, You’ve never asked me about girlfriends. She said, One day soon I might just do
that, but it’s a silly comparison. I’m assuming you did not take a vow to be together with one of your girlfriends ’til death do you part. She smirked when she said the last part. I said, Okay, then. Tell me about it. She said, If you insist, amor. And she smirked again.

  She’d been in Germany negotiating a deal to import frames and trusses manufactured from softwood lumber, like pine. He was a C+ student who would have been destined for middle management except his father left him a lumber company. He was recently divorced. He delegated just about all his duties to others so he could be out the door every day by five and on his barstool hitting on women by five fifteen. Tieresse said, He was charming in a roguish kind of way, and I was vulnerable as a child. I’d had sex with three people in my entire life, two of whom were women. She saw him when she traveled overseas, every three or four weeks, and when he traveled to the US or Canada, just as often. The second time they slept together, she got pregnant. She said, I thought about getting an abortion and never even telling him. I don’t know why I didn’t. When she broke the news, he opened a bottle of champagne and said he’d been intending to propose marriage anyway. She demurred, concerned about the logistics, and unsure about his motives. He said he would do whatever she required. She said to me, His charm was blinding.

  Two months into their marriage, he hit her. She said, I suppose if he had immediately fallen to his knees and wept, I would have accepted his apology. But he demanded I apologize to him. I asked her for what. Tieresse said, He told me my commitment to business over his welfare was insulting. I reminded her about the man who had disappeared the day after he leered at my mother in the market. Tieresse said, I remember that story well. I sometimes feel my own desire for vengeance is primitive. I admire your father. I detected the same loyalty in you the day we met. I said, I’m not as strong as he was. Tieresse said, You might surprise yourself, just as I did. She left him two months before Reinhardt was born. She said, Any questions? I said, Yes. Did your father know? She said, Some marriages are loveless. The people who have them, people like my father, think nothing of it that others have them as well.

  That was my mistake. I’d just assumed Moss had been in a marriage of convenience, that she needed it for her career, and that her preacher husband needed it for his, and to tamp down the rumors he was a serial philanderer. When I saw them walk together into a restaurant, they never held hands or even touched. I never saw them do anything remotely romantic, and so I assumed, because I did not see it, it must not ever have happened. I made assumptions about her capacity for love based on her insensitive rulings. I made assumptions about his based on my stereotype of a megachurch preacher. Now I was wondering whether I had been wrong, and not just by a little bit. I’d assumed she would not worry that the story of her disappearance might wound him. Maybe she was playing me. Perhaps I’d been right all along and now she was just pretending. But what if she wasn’t? She seemed genuinely in agony, and I felt a need to fix it.

  I said to Moss, I really do feel bad about your husband. But some problems can’t be mended. I’m sorry about that.

  * * *

  • • •

  At a bar called the Cask in Lincoln, Nebraska, a young woman sat down next to me and asked whether I intended to buy her a drink. I’d noticed her earlier, sitting at a round table with six or seven other girls. I nodded toward the table and said, You made a bet with your friends? She said, Nope. We’re calling it an evening, even though it’s early. I said, Tell you what, I’m flattered by the attention, and I will buy you a drink, but then I’m going to have to say good night, because I teach at St. Gregory, and they’ll kick me out if I buy you more than one, as much as I’d like to. She said, No shit? You’re really at St. Gregory. I said, Looks can be deceiving. She ordered a vodka collins and told me she was finishing her master’s degree in social work, specializing in helping victims of child trafficking. It reassured me to know there were people like her in the world. I listened intently and told her so. Then I paid the tab, kissed her on the cheek, and said good night.

  Not counting waitstaff, she was the first person who had spoken to me at a restaurant or bar outside the diner since I settled in Kansas. I wondered whether she was an investigator or was recording our conversation. But that would have been impossible. Even I didn’t know I’d be drinking there until I walked in the door. I couldn’t remember if I’d ever seen her before. Once you begin to see the hand of God, you see it everywhere. It’s also known as paranoia.

  When I got back to Kansas the next day, I took a legal pad downstairs and handed it to Moss. I said, I’m going to read what you write, but if you would like to say something to your husband to make him feel better, I will deliver it for you. I’ll be back for it in a few days. When I closed the door, Moss sat down in her chair, with the pad on her lap and pen in her hand. She said something to Stream I couldn’t hear. I also couldn’t make out his reply, but I could see he was agitated. He punched holes in the air with his index finger and leaned forward from the waist. I peered through the peephole for a few minutes more until their conversation appeared to come to an end, then I headed upstairs. Two floors up my left knee locked and I had a coughing attack. I had to stop to catch my breath. That night my throat felt raw and sore. Before I went to sleep, I put a lozenge under my tongue and ordered a rowing machine online. A month later, I still hadn’t taken it out of the box.

  When I came for Moss’s letter, Stream asked whether I could also deliver a message to his son. I told him I was already taking a big enough risk with Jane’s husband.

  He said, Every night for the past ten years I’ve dreamt of our reconciliation.

  He told me his son blamed him for the bitter divorce that left his former wife working two jobs to pay the rent. They hadn’t spoken since the day he moved out. The son was now a large-animal veterinarian in Kentucky, catering to wealthy horse owners who traveled around the country competing in dressage.

  I said, I read somewhere about a Catholic who committed suicide. The priest assured the man’s family he would still go to heaven because the victim might have changed his mind and prayed for absolution between the time he pulled the trigger and the moment the bullet entered his brain.

  Stream said, I’m not following.

  I said, The human capacity for self-delusion has no bounds. You’ve had a decade to fix things with your son.

  Stream looked down at his bare feet and said, You’re right about that.

  I said, Write the letter. I’ll see what I can do.

  * * *

  • • •

  Mamá started reading me the classics before I could walk. The local one-room library did not have Dr. Seuss, but it had Hemingway, Yeats, and Jane Austen. She read me Pride and Prejudice when I was four and For Whom the Bell Tolls when I was six. She read me the poem by Donne the year after that and The Second Coming every night before bed. Whenever I picture her, she is at the table reading, drugstore glasses perched on her nose, but the only book I ever saw her read cover to cover more than once was a slim volume of Talmudic sayings she said had been a gift from her grandfather and was inscribed by a famous man whose signature I could not comprehend. I found it in the kitchen when I returned to Kansas after prison. I could not remember how it got there.

  I put the book and the letters from Stream and Moss into my flight bag and took off to the south. The tiny unattended airport in Livingston is directly across the road from death row. I crossed the two-lane highway and walked toward the prison’s front door. I felt guards in the watchtower staring down at me over their rifle sights, but when I looked up, nobody was there.

  Inside, I walked through a metal detector and took off my shoes. The guards who searched me and looked at the bottoms of my feet had no idea who I was. A female CO took my driver’s license and gave me a plastic ID, which I hung around my neck. It said, Visitor. I walked through an electronic door, another door, a locking gate, two more electronic doors, and I was t
here, standing on what inmates call the free world side of the glass.

  I was back at death row, visiting for the very first time.

  On the other side, you hear guards chattering and the clinking of irons. Most days, you hear noise from the pods. It smells of urine and bleach. The phones are sticky and have flecks of mold on the mouthpieces. On this side, it’s like a hospital waiting room: cold, sterile, and whisper-filled. Ms. Johnson was not on duty. The guard watching the visitors was new.

  Sargent and I had been corresponding since my release. A few weeks earlier I told him I was finally ready to visit. He wrote back a letter with three words. About damn time. He signed it with a smiley face.

  I heard him laughing when he was still a good distance away. When he squatted so the guards could remove his cuffs, I could read his lips. He was saying, Goddamn, Inocente, you look great. I did not recognize two of the guards on the transport team, but Lilac was there too. Her face lit up when she saw me, and she discreetly waved. Sargent stood and rubbed his wrists, then he leaned forward and kissed the glass.

  He said, This might be the first time in my life I don’t know what to say. You look great.

  I said, You do too.

  He said, Tell me something I don’t already know, Inocente.

  We caught up, like the old friends we were. He told me about how the guys I knew were doing. I asked him what he was reading. He told me he still had not heard back from his daughter Charice. He asked about Reinhardt and where I was living. I told him about my trips—about all of them except for the ones to Austin. At last I held up the book of rabbinic stories.

  I said, Being that you read more than any guy I’ve ever known, I brought this for you. I already got permission to leave it.

  I told Sargent the book was called Pirkei Avot. He said, You gonna translate? I told him it was a collection of ethical vignettes from the Talmud called Ethics of the Fathers. He said, Shit, Inocente. I thought you was a, what’s the word, a wayward Hebrew. I said, This was the only book I ever saw my mamá read more than once. I found it in my kitchen. I didn’t know I still had it. It turns out there are little nuggets of wisdom lying around everywhere. Sargent grinned. He recognized the bastardization. Years earlier, what he had actually said to me was There be some smart motherfuckers in every church, you feel me? You just got to ignore the supernatural hocus-pocus and focus on the wise shit they say. Tell you the truth, ’cept for God and them miracles, ain’t really nothin’ wrong with religion. Now, sitting across from him, I said, A smart dude I know taught me that, once upon a time. He said, I don’t think that’s precisely how the smart dude phrased it. He wiped his hand across his mouth and added, I’m touched, Inocente. I mean it.