I was going to prove them wrong.
* * *
Charlie Jones looked every bit like you’d imagine a Southern redneck warden to look like, straight down to his cowboy boots with spurs and a face that was white and fleshy and soft. He had a tough job—keeping a handle on things at the most violent prison in the country. Every day, he was responsible for his staff and an inmate population that would riot if given the chance. I knew this going into my conversation with him.
“I hear you’re a talker, Hinton. And I hear that the guys listen to you. I still don’t know why you didn’t want to talk on camera when Geraldo was here.”
Geraldo Rivera had spent a night on death row, brought in cameras, and pretended to be one of us. Worn whites and slept overnight in a cell, but it was all a joke. A pretend game where he was able to leave the next day. He didn’t and couldn’t know what it was like to be locked in a cage when you were innocent. He was playing a game that he knew nothing about, and he only did it for his own ego. We saw the show. He made sure he had his shirt off, but you could see when they handed him his tray of food they had another tray over it to keep out the dirt and the dust and rat hairs and the cockroach pieces. We didn’t get our food served to us with a cover on it—and that small difference said it all.
“Well, I would have if you had sent me to New York to film the show. Why, I could have flown on an airplane for the first time and had some of those little peanuts I hear are so good. I was ready to be on the show if it meant I could have some of those peanuts.”
He laughed. “Now what’s this I hear about a club of some kind?’
“I want to start a book club. I was thinking we could meet once a month in the library. But we need to be able to read something other than the Bible. Not everyone cares for the Bible like we do. You know what I mean?”
“Yeah, and it’s a damn shame,” he said.
“So my best friend, Lester, said he would mail a few books here, and we could read them and then have ourselves a discussion.”
The warden looked down, and I could see he was considering my proposal.
“Look,” I said. “These guys need something to focus on besides what the guards are doing and not doing for them. Besides the heat. Besides the fact that our food tastes like dirt. You know? It’s a way to keep the peace. A book club will help things stay more peaceful.”
He nodded.
“You can’t have guys spending twenty-three hours a day thinking about death. It makes them crazy. And when people go crazy, who knows what they’ll do.” It may have been a bit much, but it was the truth. I wanted him to believe that if we had books on the row, it would keep the inmates quiet. But really I knew that it would set them free. If the guys had books, they could travel the world. They would get smarter and freer. There was a reason back in the slave days the plantation owners didn’t want their slaves to learn to read. Charlie Jones probably had family who once owned my family, but I wasn’t going to bring that up. I wasn’t going to show him anything but how a book club would keep the peace.
“Let me think on it, Hinton. You make a good point, but let me talk to my officers. They’re the ones who are there. I don’t want any trouble from death row. You understand what I’m saying? I let you have some extra time out on the yard, and that’s been all right. But if I have any trouble from the row, we’ll just keep you guys in for the full twenty-four, you understand? Take away them visits if anything gets to be a problem. I got a lot of guys in here who need to be managed.”
“Yes, sir,” I said. “I appreciate you taking the time to consider it. I do think it will help your men have an easier time doing their jobs, sir. Thank you for considering my proposal.”
I think the manners puzzled Charlie Jones. He wasn’t used to it. I watched him cock his head at me more than once. Like he couldn’t quite figure out if I was joking or serious.
“They listen to you, Hinton. You keep things peaceful on the row, and I’ll see what I can do. I can’t have a bunch of you in the library at once. I don’t have the staff for that. Four guys, maybe six. I’ll think about it.”
“Thank you.”
“And we don’t have a budget to be buying books. You’d have to have them mailed to us, and we’d inspect them first. No more than two books at a time. I can’t see what it would hurt to let some other books on the row.”
“That’s a good idea, sir.”
“Anything else, Hinton? I think we understand each other here. Anything else going on I need to know about?” And here it was: just like that, he wanted me to be an informer, but I wasn’t playing that game.
“Well, about Geraldo, sir. Some of the guys noticed he got a tray turned upside down on top of his food tray to keep the dirt out. You know, as a lid on his food. And some of the guys thought this was a great idea. Was that your idea when Geraldo was here?” I paused then, and he nodded and smiled. “It was a great idea. I think it would go a long way if we could use that great idea for all of us, get lids on our food to keep the dust out. You know how dusty it is in here.”
“All right, then, I don’t see why not. I’ll let the kitchen know.”
“Thank you, sir.”
I smiled all the way back to my cell. And when the captain of the guard let me know that book club was approved for six guys, I told Lester on visiting day.
“Can you send in a couple of books to the prison? Send them to the attention of the warden.”
“What you up to now?” asked Lester.
“I’m starting a book club.”
“A what?”
“You know, a book club. We’re going to read books and then meet once a month as a club to talk about it.”
Lester’s new wife, Sylvia, had come with him to visit. Her nickname was Sia.
“What you laughing at, Sia?” I asked. “You never heard of a book club before?”
“I’ve heard of it, but I think it’s funny that you guys are going to sit around having a book club. What books are you going to read?”
“I’m not sure. What do you think?”
Lester kind of shrugged. He wasn’t a big reader, but Sia looked serious all of a sudden.
“I know,” she said. “You guys need to read James Baldwin, Harper Lee, Maya Angelou. I just read I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings; you guys need to read that one. And To Kill a Mockingbird, and Go Tell It on the Mountain.”
Sia was getting excited about the idea. “Okay,” I said, “you send us the books. I’ll pay you guys back when I get out of here, I promise. Just send me two books, care of Charlie Jones. We’ll have to read and pass them around to share. You send them in whatever order you think we should read them first. Maybe we could talk about them when you visit, and you could help me think of how to talk about them in book club. How about that?”
Sia nodded. “Let’s start with James Baldwin.”
“James Baldwin it is. He’s going to take these guys right out of death row!”
“What do you mean?” Lester looked at me, puzzled.
“Not everyone has my imagination. All day, every day, guys are drowning in fear and death. Imagine knowing the day you’re going to die. How could you think about anything else? These guys have to find a way to think about life.”
At that moment, there was yelling across the yard. Guards rushed over to another visiting table. I saw Henry jump up and then get pulled back by a guard. Sirens went off, and that meant we had to lie facedown on the ground.
“Don’t worry. It’s okay,” I said to Lester and Sia, who looked scared. I was glad my mom hadn’t felt well enough to make the drive. This would have scared her. I turned my head and looked over to Henry. He had been having a visit too, but I could see his dad was on the ground and the guards were around him. I wondered what had happened. I met Henry’s eyes, and I could tell he was scared.
“Visit’s over! All inmates return to cells.”
I could hear ambulance sirens in the distance. I wondered if someone had stabbed Henry’s father. I tur
ned back to wave goodbye to Lester and Sia, but they were being taken out and didn’t see me. Henry lined up behind me for count.
“What happened?”
“My dad was going off about his trial that’s coming up, and then he just fell over. I think it’s his heart. He turned completely white, almost blue.”
I could hear Henry’s voice shake. His father was an asshole—a racist, murdering asshole—but he was still his dad.
“I’m sorry, man. I really am. I hope he’s okay.”
“You know they declared a mistrial, because of his heart, before.”
“Yeah,” I said. The trial of Bennie Hays had been in the papers, and everyone knew about it, even though Henry never talked about it.
“I’m sorry, Henry. I really am.”
“Thanks, Ray. Thanks for everything.”
Henry hung his head and didn’t talk anymore. The next day, Saturday, his father died. The guard came to give Henry the news. I said a prayer then for Bennie Hays. I prayed that in death he would know more than he did in life. Someone had taught Bennie Hays to hate, and Bennie Hays had taught his son Henry to hate. And now Henry was learning that hate didn’t get him anywhere.
In Alabama, when someone dies, you bring food to the family. All day long, friends and neighbors show up bringing casseroles, pies, or some homemade grits. It’s the way you show love and support. By the end of the first day of grieving, the family’s fridge and table and counters are covered with food. Food is love and life and comfort and one small way to show others you are there wanting to nourish and nurture them in their grief.
As soon as the guard left Henry’s cell, I passed some coffee out of my cell to Henry. The guys next to me reached out and took it from me and passed it down to the guy next to him. Up and down the row, all day long, men who might just as soon kill each other as look at each other on the streets passed their precious food items to Henry’s cell—candy bars and soup and coffee and small pieces of chocolate and even fruit. Anyone who had something of value ordered from commissary or left over from a meal passed it one to the other until it reached Henry. Nobody took it for himself. Nobody interrupted the chain of comfort as it wound its way up and down and around the row until it reached Henry.
We all knew grief.
We all knew sorrow.
We all knew what it was like to be alone.
And we all were beginning to learn that you can make a family out of anyone.
Even the guards, perhaps caught up in their own humanity or because Henry’s dad had collapsed under their watch, helped pass the food to Henry.
In a twisted way, they were also a part of this big, strange family on death row. They were the ones charged with our care every day—obligated to help us when we were sick yet also the ones who walked us to our deaths, strapped us into the chair, and then turned their backs as the warden flipped the switch to end our lives.
In the end, we were all just trying to find our way.
15
GO TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN
This burden was heavier than the heaviest mountain and he carried it in his heart.
—JAMES BALDWIN, GO TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN
The books were a big deal. Nobody had books on death row. They had never been allowed, and it was like someone had brought in contraband. Only six guys were allowed to join me in book club, but every guy on the row was now allowed to have two books besides the Bible in his cell. Some didn’t care, but others made calls out to family and friends to let them know they could send in a book or two. It had to be a brand-new book and be sent directly from a bookstore to the prison. It was like a whole new world opened up, and guys started talking about what books they liked. Some guys didn’t know how to read, others were real slow, almost childlike, and had never been to school beyond a few grades. Those guys didn’t know why they were on death row, and I wondered about a world that would just as soon execute a guy as treat him in a hospital or admit he wasn’t mentally capable of knowing right from wrong.
The very first book club meeting consisted of Jesse Morrison, Victor Kennedy, Larry Heath, Brian Baldwin, Ed Horsley, Henry, and myself. We were allowed to meet in the law library, but we each had to sit at a different table. We couldn’t get up. In order to talk to everyone at once, you had to kind of swivel around in your seat so no one felt left out. If someone wanted to read something out of the book, we had to toss the book to each other and hope that the guy caught it or it landed in reach of someone because we weren’t allowed to lift our butts up off the seats. The guards seemed nervous when they walked us to the library. We weren’t planning a riot or an escape; we were five black guys and two white guys talking about a James Baldwin book. Perfectly normal. Nothing to see here.
When the books arrived, one of the guards had brought them to my cell and handed them to me. Two brand-new copies of James Baldwin’s Go Tell It on the Mountain. I had read it in high school, but I read it again so I could pass it on to the next guy. All seven of us took about a week to read the book, so with two copies being passed, we were ready for book club in a month. That became the routine for each book. Some other guys had asked their families to send them the same book, so in our section of the row—with fourteen guys upstairs and fourteen guys downstairs—almost everybody seemed to be talking about the book.
Some people hated it because it talked so much about God, and others loved it for the same reason. A couple liked it because there were some sex scenes. For that month, it seemed like the row was transformed to another place. We were in New York City, in Harlem. Our parents had a complicated and sordid past, and no relationship was as it seemed to be on the surface. We were in church, waiting to be saved or feeling the glory of Jesus as it racked our body in convulsions. We were victims of violence. We were caught up in a strange family dynamic where we didn’t know who our daddy was or why he hated us. We were John, the main character, turning fourteen and trying to figure out the world and make sense of what he was feeling. We were ourselves, but we were different, and the book occupied our days and our nights in a new way. We weren’t discussing legal questions, playing pretend lawyers and trying to understand a system that didn’t make sense half the time. We weren’t the scum of the earth, the lowest of the low, the forgotten and abandoned men who were sitting in a dark corner of hell waiting for their turn to walk to the electric chair. We were transported, and just as I could travel the world and have tea with the Queen of England, I watched these men be transported in their minds for a small chunk of time. It was a vacation from the row—and everyone was a part of book club, even before the seven of us had our first official meeting.
When we finally did have our meeting, we sat at our respective tables and felt an awkwardness that wasn’t there when we were yelling to each other through the bars of our cell. Larry and Henry, being the only white guys, looked especially uncomfortable. The guards had locked us into the library, so we were in there by ourselves. There could be no violating the rules, no getting in any fights, no foolishness whatsoever. It was strange after so many years to have a change in our routine. Every day, except for when they took you to shower, things happened at the same exact time. So when there was suddenly something new, especially for the guys like Baldwin and Heath and Horsley, who had been there over a decade, it was strange and they seemed on edge.
“So, what do you think?” I asked everyone.
“How do we do this exactly? What’s the format?” Jesse Morrison was used to Project Hope, so he knew how to organize a group.
Everyone looked at me. “Let’s just talk about whatever we read that we want to talk about. Whether we liked the book or not. What we liked about it, what we didn’t. What left an impression. How does that sound?” I looked around at everyone, and they nodded. Henry looked serious. “You know what I liked?” I asked. “I liked this sentence: ‘For the rebirth of the soul was perpetual; only rebirth every hour could stay the hand of Satan.’”
“What you like about it?” asked Larry.
>
“I like that it’s about hope,” I said. “It’s like your soul can be reborn. No matter what you’ve done, you can be new again. It’s a hopeful sentence.”
“Yeah, but Satan is right there, pushing you every hour on the hour,” said Victor. Victor was a quiet guy. He was sentenced to die for raping and killing an old woman. “When I drink, Satan takes over; that much I know.”
We were quiet. Everyone knew he had been drunk the night he and Grayson had done what they did. Grayson was on the row too, but I never saw the two guys even acknowledge they knew each other. Baldwin and Horsley were both on the row for a crime they were accused of committing together. Horsley had told them he did it alone, Baldwin hadn’t done it, but it didn’t matter. Baldwin had been shocked with a cattle prod until he confessed. The jury had been all white. He and Horsley had both been tortured. Horsley tried to tell anyone who would listen that Baldwin wasn’t there, but it didn’t seem to matter. They were both sentenced to die. Just two more black men off the streets of Alabama.
Heath spoke like a preacher, so I expected him to have something to say about the church folk in Baldwin’s book. He was strangely quiet, though.
“Everybody talking about being saved in this book,” said Henry. “I’ve never been to a church where people falling on the ground getting saved.”
I laughed. “Well, you never been to a black church, Henry. When we get out of here, I’m going to take you to a church where you will see the Holy Spirit come down and take over a person’s body so much that it looks like that person is going to fly right up and out the window of that church!” I started laughing. “You are not going to believe how people carry on in a black church. The only problem is it’s going to last all day and into the night, so you’d best be prepared to eat before you go and be ready to sit there until the Spirit moves you. You are going to be singing and praising the Lord like you’ve never praised the Lord before!”
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