The Prisoner and the Chaplain

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The Prisoner and the Chaplain Page 4

by Michelle Berry


  “You just got your period,” his father wails. “How can you be pregnant? How is this possible?”

  “I got my period when I was twelve,” Susan says, pouting. “You don’t know anything.”

  The baby comes early, only to live with them in the squalor. Susan, now fifteen, a high school dropout, smoking on the living room couch, folding laundry occasionally, the baby rolled up beside her, crying. Larry can’t stand the smell in the room. Smoke mixed with laundry detergent mixed with stale food on the unwashed plates in the kitchen sink mixed with baby shit. There are always flies buzzing around.

  “He’s your nephew,” Susan says. “You can change his diaper.”

  “Fuck off.”

  “I can’t do everything around here.”

  “You did enough already,” Larry says, pointing at the baby. “You didn’t have to have him. You could have got rid of him.”

  She smacks him. Larry’s face stings.

  He smacks her back.

  All out war.

  Susan is bruised and bleeding. Larry has a black eye and his groin aches.

  Their father comes home. Stumbling. Off-balance.

  “Clean the fucking house,” he shouts. “Stop that kid from crying.”

  “No one helped me, no one told me anything,” Susan shouts.

  And yet. And yet. There are still some good days. Even after Blake leaves. Even after Susan’s first baby. Even though Larry has no friends. Even though they call him “Larry Fairy.” There are days he plays soccer in the old field beside the school and the kids cheer him on and he thinks, just for a minute, that he belongs. There are the girls who like him. Rebecca and Stephanie and Darla. They hang out by the soccer field, their hands on their hips, and they watch him with wide eyes and glossy lips. They smell like peppermint and watermelon and coconut. They wear blue eyeshadow and their eyelashes are so big with mascara that it’s like spiders crawling out. Little legs coming out of their eyes. Larry can’t stop looking. He fumbles with the soccer ball. Trips on it. Misses the kick. They laugh.

  After school, he meets Rebecca behind the shade structure and they kiss. She sprays her mouth with Binaca breath mist ahead of the kiss and so, when Larry locks her lips upon his, he gets an immediate rush of medicinal air and his head feels light.

  When Darla comes to his house and sees Susan and the baby and her mess everywhere she breaks up with him. She won’t hold his hand anymore and she whispers about him at school and points.

  Stephanie, on the other hand, wants him more now. She seems to like the baby. She coos at the baby and he smiles at her and reaches out to grab her finger. Stephanie’s hair is long and lank, greasy, but she wears the most eyeshadow and her breasts, if that’s what the bumps would be called, are the largest. It isn’t until she finally meets Larry’s father that she dumps him.

  “He’s freaky,” Stephanie says. “He keeps staring at me.”

  This is his childhood. Up to ten, eleven years old. A mixture of light and dark – mostly dark – a subtle grey. Things changed slowly, but also rapidly, when his mother left them. Some days good. Mostly bad. His mother and Jack have been gone for three years by the time Larry turns ten. He often forgets what they looked like, what they were like. He lies. He cheats. He steals. Girlfriends come and go. Things he knows he would never have done if his mother had stayed. But he isn’t now who he becomes later. So when he tells the Chaplain about this time, Larry’s eyes are clear. Nothing is too complicated. It makes sense to him, those years. It doesn’t, for a minute, tell him who he is or how he got here. But it gives Larry the idea that, if something had happened differently at the very beginning, he might not be where he is right now.

  1:01 a.m.

  “Eleven hours left,” the Prisoner says.

  1:01 a.m. on the digital clock on the wall of the room. The Chaplain stares at it. He has been watching the time count down for almost an hour, ever since they got in this room, the whole time the Prisoner has been talking. Each time the number changes he gets a chill. Feeling death in the room, creeping closer. Feeling the souls of all who have waited here before. The Chaplain isn’t sure exactly how many executions have taken place in this prison. But he is sure that whatever the number, it’s too many.

  While the Prisoner talked, the Chaplain tried to focus. And he did. Most of the time. But occasionally his thoughts rushed through to his own childhood, to his parents – both now dead. To his relationship with Miranda, his sister. A tough little girl, a fighter. Someone who always stuck up for him. An idealistic childhood, he thinks now. Too perfect, almost. But as the Prisoner talked, he remembered that hidden under their happiness was a grain of sadness. As if grief were present before it was even necessary. Even before their mother died when they were teens, there was that lingering sadness. Even before the Chaplain was bullied in school. There was a vein of sadness some days, when he came into the house after school, that seemed to permeate everything – the walls, the floors, the furniture. But his mother or sister or father would smile brightly when they saw him, and that sadness would dissipate but hover. Like dust in the sun. He thinks that maybe there was something in that sadness that caused him to do what he did later to Tracy. Holding in his anger, his pain, something cracked then. There was something hidden from him in his childhood that felt breakable – a childhood that seemed perfect but maybe wasn’t. Perhaps that caused him to snap later? To do what he did to the woman he loved?

  The Prisoner rolls from lying on the cot into sitting up. He places his feet on the floor and stands quickly. The Chaplain stands too. An instinct – don’t be vulnerable. Then the Chaplain stretches. His bones creak. His legs, his hips, his back. All of him is aching. The Chaplain doesn’t think he moved once in the hour. He tried to listen carefully, only thinking about himself when the Prisoner paused or broke off mid-speech to think. Not once did he ask a question. He nodded his head occasionally, but even his fingers stayed still, his leg didn’t jiggle, he didn’t adjust himself on the chair or clear his throat.

  Now, of course, he feels like his bones have fused together.

  How can he think about his human comforts, though? He is slightly in awe of the fact that his body is still telling him things when his mind is trying to stay in the moment. He wants pure focus, but he aches and needs to move now.

  “You get used to it,” the Prisoner says.

  “What?”

  “Sitting in one place in a small room for hours at a time. I used to meditate.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah.” The Prisoner laughs. “Before I was sent to Death Row we had someone come in and teach us yoga and all of us would do it just to see her ass in those pants, but then at the end of each lesson she would make us lie on the mats and she would put quiet music on and then she would talk and we would relax. This was years ago but I still remember that feeling.”

  “What did she talk about?”

  “She would take us through our bodies, from the tips of our toes up to the top of our heads. She would make us aware of each part – ‘feel your calves, be aware of your knees’ – and move up the body. It was like she was massaging us. You could feel every part right when she said its name. Most of the guys,” the Prisoner laughs, “jacked off when she got to the groin, but she had her eyes closed so I don’t think she knew.”

  “Oh.”

  “So, if you’re ever stuck in a position, if you can just imagine those parts, think about what is hurting and focus on it, you’ll work through the pain. Believe me.”

  “I’ll try it.” The Chaplain starts to sit down. To listen more. But the Prisoner is up and walking around the room now. The COs peer in the window – they are always at the window but the Chaplain has forgotten them, and now they peer in at the two men in the small room. Suddenly he is aware of the size of the room, how small it is. He can smell the Prisoner’s body odour, he can smell his own odours – the garlic in the sauce he had on his spaghetti last night in his small apartment by himself, the smell of his deodorant,
the slight odour of his slip-on dress shoes, leather and sweat. Being aware of the smells makes him extremely hungry and a little nauseous. He wonders again what the Prisoner ordered for his last meal, and he wonders what time he asked for it. The two cups of coffee are roiling in his stomach.

  The Warden said that this prisoner was violent, but the Chaplain feels no anger coming off him. Yet. Not since they bumped into each other in the hall earlier. And he knows the feeling of anger. The smell of anger. He can sense it immediately from the other prisoners when he speaks with them. He can feel it build in himself sometimes too. In fact, the Chaplain feels he’s a bit of an expert when it comes to anger these days. But there is nothing here. Maybe as the time creeps by, the Prisoner will become frantic and angry and mean?

  He is intelligent sounding. He speaks well. He didn’t have the usual upbringing. The Chaplain has counseled enough prisoners to know that, in general, they all have the same backstory. Physical and sexual abuse, drug addiction, alcoholism, extreme poverty, usually teenage mothers, no fathers. This prisoner had a mother up until he was seven. He lived in a nice house. His father had a business. Yes, the father was an alcoholic and there was obvious neglect and emotional abuse, but it’s not the same story he hears every day. The Prisoner never starved. He had clean clothes and boots and coats. He had his own bedroom. He went to school. He may not have had many friends, but he wasn’t a loner in the true sense of the word. The Prisoner’s file – read quickly before meeting him – mentions some anger issues at school, early on, but nothing he was called out for. He spent no more time at the principal’s office in elementary school than anyone else. A scrap here or there, a scuffle. He once had a girl’s purse in his backpack, so there was some theft in the early days. The concussions are a factor, sure, but there is nothing tangible from the beginning that shouts, “Death Row.” Nothing that calls out his eventual future, or, rather, the end of his future. The Prisoner has no more future and, in the beginning, at least, there is nothing that indicates that this was the way his life would turn out.

  But was there any indication that the Chaplain would eventually beat his girlfriend almost to death?

  “Do you want to pray?” the Prisoner asks.

  “Sorry?” the Chaplain says.

  “For me? Or for yourself? For the fact that your back aches?” The Prisoner says this with a smile on his face. He is standing close to the door, looking out at the five corrections officers. One officer has his face close to the window, and it looks for a minute as if he and the Prisoner are kissing.

  “Do you want to pray?” the Chaplain says. “Do you want me to pray for you?”

  “Nah.” The Prisoner knocks on the window at the COs. He waves.

  “What do you want?” CO4 unlocks the door and pops his head and upper body into the room.

  “Just wanted to say hi,” the Prisoner says.

  The CO scowls. Looks at the Chaplain. “You okay, Father?”

  “I’m not a priest. I’m just a chaplain. And, yes, I’m okay. I’m fine.”

  “Let me know if you want a break.”

  “I could use a break,” the Prisoner says.

  The Chaplain laughs. The Prisoner smiles over at him.

  The CO glares at the Prisoner and the Chaplain.

  So far, everything the Prisoner has said is what the Chaplain has already read in the files. Nothing new. But it’s still fascinating, hearing it come out of his mouth. It’s almost as if the Prisoner is reading his own files out loud. It seems rehearsed and planned. Nothing like the gushes of emotion that came from the Chaplain when it was recommended he see a psychologist and confess to how he felt and thought and why he did the things he did when he had no idea, really, why he did anything. But what about the Prisoner’s feelings? Where are they as he talks? What is the Prisoner doing here, his last twelve hours, repeating the story of his life? Why is this necessary? The Chaplain thinks that if he only had twelve hours left, he certainly wouldn’t be talking about his sister’s kids or his uneventful childhood. The Chaplain would, instead, be atoning for his crimes. He would be apologizing or at least asking for forgiveness from God. Wouldn’t he? Isn’t that what he would be doing? Isn’t that what he essentially did after Tracy, even without the death penalty hanging over him?

  He’s not sure, of course, seeing as he was not in this exact position himself. Facing death. Instead, he was facing only charges, perhaps some jail time, some community service. Maybe if he were facing death he would start with stories of his youth. It’s a way to relive memories, he supposes. Say them aloud and you see them in your mind again. Three kids fighting over sandwiches, a mother with long blonde hair, the smell of a father’s gin-soaked breath.

  The Chaplain thinks of the bullying he got in elementary school. The way his sister used to fight anyone who said anything mean to him, how she was always there to protect him. She’s there for her own kids now in the same way. Just last Sunday, at their regular family dinner, Miranda turned on her son, Damian, and smacked him hard across his head.

  “What’d you do that for?” Damian howled.

  “You’re bullying your sister,” Miranda said. “I want you to know what it’s like to be picked on by someone older than you, by someone twice your size.”

  Her husband, Richard, laughed in that way Richard has – he crosses his arms and holds his chest as he chuckles, almost as if he thinks the laughter will pop him open, a trait that endeared him to the Chaplain when he married Miranda fifteen years ago. “Smack you right back, he will,” Richard said. “You watch out, Miranda. I’m going to have to step in and stop the fight.”

  The Chaplain knows that Miranda’s sense of right and wrong has always been black and white, and that is what he loves most about her. If you bully my brother, Miranda thinks, then I will bully you. Everything has always been this way for her. No alternatives. An eye for an eye.

  Miranda is angry at her brother. She is angry that her brother is counseling a man who so deserves his fate. The death penalty makes sense to Miranda. For years she followed this case through appeal after appeal, the hard evidence, the soft evidence, the final admission of guilt. Everyone followed the Prisoner’s story. It was compelling news. Terrifying. Gut-wrenching. The Prisoner was the man little children thought was hiding in their closets, behind their doors, under their beds. Why, Miranda thinks, does this man deserve sympathy and an open ear?

  “Why would you ever want to listen to what he says?” she said at dinner. “I can’t get over it. Why does he get a chaplain in the last hours? What about his victims? They don’t get a chaplain now, do they?”

  In a sense, Miranda is right. The Chaplain knows this. But he reminds himself that this prisoner is as human as his victims. He deserves a kind ear at the end. Surely, he does. The Chaplain doesn’t have to forgive or to understand the Prisoner’s deeds, but he can listen and he can hear.

  Miranda would have executed this prisoner years ago when he committed the crime and no amount of arguing with her can change her opinion on that.

  “It was a completely obvious case,” Miranda said, rolling her wine glass in her hand. “He did it. He even confessed to it. They had so much proof.” Miranda watched the trial on the screen religiously. She followed all the news and discussed it at work. She knows more than her brother knows about the case now.

  “Shouldn’t that be something, then?” the Chaplain had said. “He confessed to it. He obviously feels remorse.”

  “All murderers probably feel remorse,” Miranda countered. “But I bet that won’t make their victims come back.”

  “Do they all confess? I don’t know. Are they all remorseful? I don’t know.”

  “Makes no difference, Jim. Listen to yourself.”

  “But, Miranda, the death penalty has never brought anyone back, nor has it deterred anyone from committing a crime.”

  “I’m sure it has lifted the weight off the victims’ families’ shoulders. I’m sure it has dulled their aches.”

  “Ki
lling another human makes them feel better? Seriously, Miranda. Think about that.”

  Richard chuckled nervously. Filled up the wine. Poured himself a cup of coffee. Stayed out of it. As he always does. Off on the road tomorrow, he was probably thinking about work. The Chaplain can never figure out what Richard is thinking, but he knows that Richard is more often than not preparing mentally for those long hauls of driving a truck alone, for those stretched distances of silence on the bitterly boring road. For leaving his kids and wife for another week.

  “Besides,” Miranda said. “You didn’t say this guy was remorseful. You just said that he confessed. You can confess to something that you’d still do again in an instant. I confess that I just smacked Damian on the head and it made me sad for a minute, but if he bullies his sister again, I’ll just as soon smack him again.”

  “Mom,” Damian hollered. “You can’t hit me. That’s illegal. Right, Uncle Jim?”

  The Chaplain smiles. “You’re right.”

  “Yeah, well. Behave.”

  “If it made you sad, you shouldn’t have done it,” Damian said.

  “Yeah,” his sister said. “Why’d you hit Damian, Mom? You said never to hit.”

  “Oh, for God’s sake,” Miranda said. “I didn’t hit him, I smacked him. There’s a difference.”

  The Chaplain held up his hand. “Falsely accused?” he said.

  “Don’t start with that,” Miranda said, raising her finger.

  “Can I smack him too, Mom?” Daisy raised her hand and hovered near Damian.

  “You two! Up to bed. Now. Both of you.”

  “I’ll take them up,” Richard said. “Books? Bath? What’ll it be?”

  “Book,” said Damian.

  “Bath,” said Daisy.

  They kissed their uncle and went up with their father to the second floor. The Chaplain filled his wine again and looked at his sister. They stared at each other, listening to the commotion from above – the bath water filling, Damian shouting something down the hall, Daisy thumping in her room, Richard’s chuckle.

 

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