by Don Noble
Francine said that the new wing had been finished just a few weeks ago. The men would arrive soon, and from this kitchen they would be fed. In the meantime, the warden had arranged for her to work here. According to Francine, the warden thought the space would be ideal. Out of the way. Clean.
Rachel had dressed for a warm autumn evening. She was not prepared for the cold confines of the prison kitchen. It seemed the temperature was set for a space full of toiling and heat, so the cold air, unchecked, was too much. The place wasn't walk-in cold, but damn near, with air washing over her feet in waves, snaking around her ankles, and running along the floor. She placed her purse on the counter and removed a black apron, Rachel's Luncheonette: 35 Years in the Baking in silver lettering. The silver blouse beneath her black suit matched the silver in her hair. This was how she dressed for the events she catered. Yet she had taken pause when readying for this occasion. There was no proper dress for preparing a last meal.
She'd made the three-hour drive alone. Told her family she was driving to Atmore for the weekend. Her daughter and son-in-law were busy running the kitchen, had been for years. A few days a week, she would walk the dining room and the lunch counter, speaking to the first-timers who had her cookbooks, had seen her on television here and there, and she greeted her regulars as well, trying to dole out the same welcome to any and all. She could come and go, be there without being there—her face on the menus, and the sides of buses, and the coffee bags and cookie tins they sold in the gift shop. So when she told her family she had a small job in Escambia County, a repast for an old acquaintance, she'd saved herself the strain of a lie she may have to remember later. The truth itself was troublesome enough.
The prison kitchen was empty except for the ingredients. Francine had requested them a week before. Shortening, sugar, molasses, salt, baking soda, and flour had been lined up in a perfect row, labels turned outward. Someone had seen fit. Perhaps an eye for detail, but certainly a nod toward normalcy in a place where there was little.
On a nearby table sat an antique mixer. In the kitchen of a prison, the comforts of home seemed strangely out of place. She flipped the power switch on the mixer, and the familiar hum rang out.
She remembered having a similar one years before. Its heavy body and thick insulation produced a hum unlike the rattling of the new ones that cost more than they should.
Chrome, as beautiful as it could be, was hard to keep clean. Working folk had no time to worry about fingerprints and smudges. The matte metal about the kitchen reflected indistinguishable masses of light and dark, but in the chrome she could see herself.
She examined her reflection in the mixer's oblong body, getting closer to it until the moisture of her sigh obscured her image. With one of the neatly folded dish towels, she wiped the chrome clean.
"It was my mother's."
She had barely grown comfortable in the silence when his voice rang out.
"I'm sorry. I didn't mean to frighten you, Mrs. Walker. I'm Lionel Peters. The warden here. I'm sorry I haven't had a chance to meet you previously."
He walked over to greet her but waited for Rachel to extend her hand first. An old-fashioned stance that she hoped would fade; indeed, Lionel Peters looked a few years her junior. Set in his ways, she was sure. But he carried himself a little older than he was, and his clothes didn't help. His suit surely had the right cut and hang before the years settled into it. He was conscious of his posture, but the slouch in his jacket remained.
"Did Francine offer you anything when you came in? Excuse me if she didn't. We can forget our manners working in here. Can I get you anything, coffee or something?"
"She offered, but I didn't need anything."
"Well, everything you asked for is right there on the counter. Your perishables are in the refrigerator over there. The ovens are behind you. Officer Earle will be right outside. Holler if you need anything. He can escort you to the facilities if you need to use them. I apologize we didn't build a ladies' room on this end. You sure I can't get you anything, coffee or something?"
She shook her head.
"What else?" the warden said while flipping through a deck of papers on the clipboard he tapped against the counter. "I feel like I'm forgetting something. Oh yes, the list. I want to make sure we got everything. Shortening, eggs, sugar, cocoa, flour . . ."
"There is one thing. I realized much too late that I left something off the list: my vanilla syrup. We make our own to sell in the gift shop, so I'm just so used to having it around and not buying it. Coming down here's out of the ordinary, to say the least, so clarity has been a little challenging."
She knew they had rules about bringing things in, but she prayed they could look the other way. The warden was killing a man, and he had made a show of this little bit of kindness, so certainly he could see fit to say yes. She took from her bag a bottle and set it down gingerly, almost like a beg-your-pardon for it being there against the rules.
The bottle rested between them, and the warden walked a bit closer and turned it so the label faced outward like the rest of the ingredients. He smiled a bit then, looking from the label to her, the pattern in the design the same as the embroidery on the apron she carried. Good branding. Her smile in the photograph was clockwork, perfected after years of showing her teeth because she had to, and then because her enterprise made it worthwhile.
"I understand. I got no qualms with it, considering."
He was decent enough, but Rachel could tell the warden wanted no part of this. The letter in two places said he would understand if she said no. She could just send a recipe, and they'd honor his wishes. But if she'd said no, she would still know Thomas Elijah Raymond's execution date, and she would probably look at the clock well aware of the hour. She would have wandered there in her mind even if she had said no to making this drive.
"We pick a fine time to pay attention, don't we," she said. Rachel was looking away, but the edge to her voice was unmistakable.
The warden said nothing.
She paused before she spoke again. "Nobody looking after him for years, and he's got all kinds of eyes on him now. More this evening, I suspect. Spectators."
"Witnesses. The family of the victim." He pressed the clipboard flat against his waist, a stance that seemed automatic. "He doesn't deny what he did."
"I'm thinking about what we're about to do. Me and you both. Trying to wake up and go about my business tomorrow and thinking back on this here."
A hand on the counter then, like candor needed a different sort of balance before the words came freely. "You'll probably feel worse about this tomorrow than you do today. I always do."
"Why do it then?" she said.
And there they were on the other side of the nicety. She saw in the warden a decent man, but maybe that was part of the problem. What decent folks were willing to go along with. He was quiet for a minute, and he breathed in and out with too much intention. He glanced away in a room with no windows, and he seemed too accustomed to conjuring some good memory, a little daylight stored away for days such as this one. The ease in his face said as much.
"My wife reminded me this morning that we ate at your place awhile back. We were on our way to see some of her people in Tuskegee. Enjoyed it immensely—just a good meal on a good afternoon. I didn't mention it to Raymond, because it's rude to reminisce on things. Get casual with the outside world. Do you remember him?"
She shook her head. "So many kids over the years, it's impossible to say."
"Well, in any case, you're appreciated."
"Please tell your wife I said thank you. To you as well. Like you said, it doesn't sit easy, so—well, thank you."
It was quiet for a while again, except for the lights and the freezers, and the sound of Lionel's wedding band against the countertop, a little sonar to bring him back to whatever was next on his clipboard.
"You sure I can't get you some coffee or something?"
"No thank you. You've done just fine with the mixer."
The boy couldn't have been more than six or so, because she remembered him sitting at the table with what looked like his grandparents, coloring the children's menu with the Crayolas she passed out in sardine cans. His family was on the way to Huntsville, the space center they said, and he had lined up the salt and pepper shakers, the Louisiana Hot, and the Heinz bottle as rocket ships taking off from the tabletop. To get dessert, he had to promise to finish the green beans, alone on the plate where the chicken had been, the wing and drumstick reduced to gristle and bone. He chewed with purpose but not enjoyment, like he was practicing handwriting with his jaws. But the booth they chose was across from the cake display, so he did a bit of window-shopping while he finished the last of the beans. Rachel was on the other side of the glass loading the shelf of red velvets. She remembered him studying his options. He didn't like the green beans one bit, but he'd kept his word and intended to make the most of it.
He asked for the molasses cake, while his grandparents had red velvet and buttermilk pie. They thanked Rachel as they left, and then she looked away and didn't see the boy fall to the ground. A child on the floor raised no alarm at first. Kids were prone to go from dillydallying straight to sprinting and stumbling. And the tantrums. But something was wrong because when Rachel finally noticed the boy on the floor, his eyes were widening as he struggled to breathe.
In the commotion, his people thought he was choking, but there didn't seem to be any obstruction in his throat. He held his mouth open wide, still searching for air. Rachel got to the boy first, the allergy syrup from the first aid kit in hand. He coughed up the first dose, but she gave him more while his grandmother rocked him, his grandfather fanning with a napkin. By then the boy was breathing easier, and the gentle wheeze faded a bit.
After taking several deep, full breaths, the boy cried some and peered around. He hadn't lost consciousness, but his eyes looked beyond them, apparently seeing nothing. Then he finally recognized them—Rachel, his grandparents—and it seemed he had to lock eyes on everyone gathered around him to fully return to the world. And then it was over, the scare behind them.
Rachel was always careful about nuts and other common allergies. But the boy's reaction to molasses was a rare occurrence. People like to sue over such things, but these folks sent her a letter of thanks. She would find out later that the grandparents were guardians, new to his care, and they hadn't known about his condition. She wondered then about his parents, what tragedy or rift had brought him to the care of his elders.
It was a blessing to discover his condition in caring company. Beneath the cursive of the grown-up handwriting, the boy had signed his name: JoJo.
In what she read about him during his trial, she discovered that his grandparents had died. He had made his money as a day laborer, and Thomas had killed a man who refused to pay him. He had gone through the victim's pockets for the money he was owed. Murder in the commission of a robbery.
There would be no clemency. As part of the death decree, the state of Alabama would use three chemicals for his lethal injection. After the first drug, he would lose consciousness. The second would shut down his muscles. The third would stop his heart.
What Rachel carried in her bottle would do the same, answering the young man's request for a final and private mercy. All he asked for was the cake like the one that showed him what his body could not take, what in the right dose might knock him unconscious or even kill him. Molasses had stopped his breathing once, but he'd been a boy then. She knew it wouldn't be enough for a man, so she had turned to her garden.
She had years ago planted a small plot of cassava in her greenhouse and used it for her baking. The lined skin of the cassava felt as rugged as cypress knees, but the flesh, handled carefully, was a wonder to be fried or roasted or used in her baking. She took the time to learn how to prepare it safely. Cassava carried its poison in the coarse skin and the leaves, the parts exposed to the world. And perhaps that was how it should be, a shield to survive in a certain kind of world—to thrive even. To carry out JoJo's request, Rachel had saved what was meant to be discarded, the cyanide in the pot liquor, thickened with the starch of the root.
During his trial, Thomas Elijah Raymond had been shuttled back and forth from the new county jail to the new courthouse. Depending on the road they took, he may have passed the hillside where Russell County did their lynching, out on a hill they named Golgotha. The name had confused Rachel when she heard those stories as a child. The killers had tried to sanctify their work, but it was nothing more than blasphemy. She knew that hilltop from the Easter hymns, New Testament scriptures, and the Sunday school books. Three crosses. The Bad Thief cursed it all, and the Good Thief asked for grace and mercy.
Thomas had asked her for the same, and she'd brought his grace and his mercy, and it floated there in the thick sweetness of her bottle, a dose large enough to claim his body. He would die that evening, but she wouldn't let them make a carnival of him. The spectators would have nothing to witness, because he could do his dying, make his peace, in private.
She turned the dial on the oven to 350 degrees. The perishables, she retrieved from the refrigerator. The other ingredients, she opened, poured, and measured. The pans, greased and floured, lay waiting for the batter. When the time came, she turned on the mixer and listened to its baritone hum as it folded the necessary elements, one into the other.
HER JOB
by Tom Franklin
Clarke County
Three months to the day—it was past time, she told herself—she drove to her son's house to pack his things, get the place ready to sell. She hadn't been back since cleaning up the mess in the bathroom, where he'd done it and given her five hours of hard work, so much bleach it burned her eyes and, perhaps permanently, irritated her throat. She'd avoided going inside the house since and left it locked, driving out here once or twice a week to make sure no one was vandalizing it, paying a black boy to cut the grass and collect the mail.
Now she stood at the door, finding the key among other keys and fitting it in.
Inside it smelled. She'd emptied the garbage before leaving three months ago so it wasn't that; the fridge was empty too, and the deep freeze. She walked by the cellar door and stopped. That's where it was coming from, something sour, a dead rat maybe. She'd never been down there, in all these years, just in the living room where they'd sit, her chattering and him grunting when he had to.
The cellar door was padlocked. Her last time here the slow-lidded deputy hadn't even bothered to go down there he was so ready to get out. She'd tried the keys then and none had fit and none fit now either. It was why she'd brought a crowbar.
She went to the recliner where she'd left it by her purse and was sweating by the time she pried the hinge off.
The door swung in and she stepped back, the stench so awful she covered her mouth and nose. She was suddenly frightened, thinking how secluded this house was, the nearest neighbor a quarter-mile away. Her son used to say that was the one thing he liked about Clarke County being so isolated. He said he could be himself and not give a bleep what anybody else thought. She hadn't wasted much time worrying about what he meant by being himself. Who else could he be? The truth was she had no idea why he'd done what he did in the bathroom. He'd always been a private boy, guarded, gone at seventeen, she never learned where. And he'd been back, here, in this house, a year before she even found out. Gone for a whole year and then back for another whole year, with no word! Worse, she'd heard about his return from Lamar Jones, of all people. How delighted Lamar had been to tell her, how everyone knew about the son before the mother, their dirty laundry flapping for the world. She'd come over that day all those years ago and knocked and then pounded, and her son had pretended not to be home. She'd known he was, though.
She'd felt him.
She felt him here too, now, as she descended the stairs, tracing her fingers along a rail silky with spiderweb and dust, the crowbar heavy in her other hand.
At the bottom it was cooler, the smell worse, the concrete floor so cold she could feel it through her shoes. She stood among vague shadows, a washing machine maybe, or a giant sink, and swept her hand in the air until she touched a string.
When she pulled it and the light flickered on, everything became clear, everything, and she knew that she'd always known.
The crowbar clanged by her feet.
It had been him, her son, him all along. That missing girl, from Thomasville, from such a good family . . .
That poor girl, her poor, poor mother . . .
She backed up the stairs pulling at her fingers and at the top began to scream.
But nobody heard, not out here, this far out, not in Clarke County, and soon her voice was gone and her throat sore and she went into the bathroom, panting, thinking she might vomit.
But she didn't. Instead she remembered her last visit, a few days before he did what he did, and she wondered now if the girl had been in the cellar then, if she'd heard them talking, above, through the ceiling, did the girl wonder at the mother's high, empty chitchat? That's your problem, her son would say. Who cares what she thinks? Sitting in that recliner of his, he would've reminded her of, say, the time that lady at the church said he stole from the collection money and she, his mother, believed the lady over her own son. He would remind her how, later, another boy confessed. One thing nobody told you about being a mother is that they grow up and remember all your mistakes.
But did he remember the croup, the screaming, how she had to sit up all night with him? Did he remember getting expelled from Bible school for biting? From elementary school for exposing himself to a girl? Did he remember all the snotty teachers, nosy neighbors, and ex-husbands? Did he remember ignoring the one who tore herself open to give him the very breath he seemed to resent?