Larry works at the watch store most days after school. He’s failing school but doesn’t worry about it. Susan’s the only one who knows – she screens the calls from the school – and she says nothing to their father. She smacks him on the head, though, and tries to tell him to smarten up, work hard, get a diploma at least. Fucking idiot, she screams. But she is now pregnant with her second child (from two different men) and a high school dropout herself, and so she doesn’t have time to take care of Larry and his life and his future. It’s surprising, really, that their father lets Susan live at home at nineteen with two kids and no job. Larry knows that it’s because their father is usually so shit-faced when he comes home that he doesn’t even know who lives there. Baby crap everywhere, toys all around, smelly diapers in the trash cans, Susan with some guy on the couch. Different guys each week. Larry avoids the house as much as possible. Their father pays the bills occasionally, sometimes just throws the money at Susan when she hollers for it, but other than that he leaves them alone. At work every day, Larry and his father toil in silence. His father’s hands shake now, so Larry does the small stuff. He uses the magnifying equipment and the small tweezers, and he resets watches and puts new batteries in and winds springs and fiddles with the tiny screws. His father handles the customers when he’s not completely soused, and he looks after the grandfather clocks, which are less finicky but which startle him sometimes with their loud bongs. Sometimes he jokes about changing the sign to Gallo and Son’s Precision Repair, but then he gets angry and changes his mind and tells Larry to leave him alone and stop touching him and clean the house or the store or whatever flashes into his mind at the time.
It’s a fragile affair. Larry balances between it all. He puts on his armour. Begins wearing his pants low, like a gangster. He begins to get tattoos – because Dwight has them – but gets them where his father or Susan won’t see – his upper arm, his back, his calf. Larry wears jewellery, mostly stuff he steals, like huge chains, thick gold ropes. He wears a baseball hat backwards and he spits as much as he can, when he can, when he thinks it’ll make him look good. He has stopped using words like untowards, stopped reading and caring about anything. His running shoes are always untied, and the tongues slap while he walks. The walk of a man with pants falling – shuffle, step. Dwight tells him that all the real men are wearing their pants this way, but it’s not until Larry is in jail, later, that he understands why. No belts in jail. Nothing to hold up the saggy pants. They are imitating the fallen.
In prison, he is given an orange jumpsuit.
On death row, he is given a white one with the letters DR on the back. No more baggy pants.
“That’s another thing,” Dwight tells him. “Why the fuck do you go by Larry? It’s such a stupid name.”
“And Dwight is better?”
“Lawrence?” Dwight laughs. “How about Lawrence?”
Larry’s mother used “Lawrence.” The sound of that name makes Larry shudder.
Dwight smacks Larry on the head. “Well, at least you can shorten your name. I can’t. Fucking what else can I do? D? Dwighty? There’s no short for Dwight.”
“I guess I could go by another name. I never thought about it.”
“Yeah, well, sometimes you need to know things, bro. You need to know why you do things. Don’t just do things because that’s the way you do them. Do things because you know why you’re doing them. Take me, for example. I do things for a reason.”
Larry looks up at Dwight. “Like what reason?”
“I steal to make money to buy drugs to sell to make more money to buy drugs to take.” Dwight laughs. “Fucking idiot. It’s a circle. Goes ’round and ’round.” He swirls his finger in the air. “Snake swallowing its tail.” Dwight points to a tattoo of a snake on his wrist. The snake’s tail is in its mouth.
“Yeah, I guess.”
“It’s common sense, man.”
Larry doesn’t know if that’s what it is – common sense – but he’s comfortable with Dwight after all these years. It’s the two of them, three years now, and Dwight hasn’t fucked him around once yet. He gets his portion of the proceeds. Always. Dwight may tell him he’s stupid all the time, smack him on the head a lot, but Larry knows Dwight trusts him. And Dwight needs him. Even now that Larry is getting bigger and filling out and getting wider and having more and more trouble getting into the small windows. Dwight still needs him because he’s always high and Larry is sober and they work well together. Larry wakes him up in the morning when he’s slept too late and he tells Dwight when to run.
That’s why Dwight gets the gun.
“More options,” Dwight says. “More ways of getting into things.” “And hopefully getting out of things. Alive,” Larry says. And Dwight smacks him on his head and laughs. “Fucking idiot, Larry. You’re a fucking idiot.”
They didn’t mean for it to happen the way it did. The gun went off prematurely. Dwight said he knew how to use it. Larry didn’t know how to use it. He only knew how to hold it and that was from watching the screen and movies, not from ever handling a gun.
They are in the 24-Hour Variety on White Avenue. Just a few streets over from Gallo’s Precision Repair. It is midnight. The Open All Night sign flashes in the store window, which is steamed over from the cold rain on the hot pavement. The guy behind the counter is watching his screen. He’s got a little screen fixed to the wall, up high, and he leans back on his stool to watch it. He’s a big guy, muscular. Larry swallows hard when he sees him. Tattoos on his arm, cryptic symbols, crosses, a mermaid, numbers, fancy italic script.
Dwight enters the store first and shops around. This has been planned out, talked about, discussed, now put into action. He moves up and down the aisles as if searching for something. He has a backpack slung over his shoulder and his hood up. He avoids the surveillance camera. The guy behind the desk gives him a once-over and then goes back to watching the screen. Dwight clears his throat several times when Larry enters the store. Larry goes straight up to the counter.
“Player’s,” he says.
“You’re too young to buy them,” the guy behind the counter says, without even looking at Larry. “Fuck off.”
Larry says, “Player’s, please,” and the guy looks at him, stands, looks down on him, and says, “Get the fuck out of my store.”
“Hey,” Dwight says. “That’s not nice. Be nice to the little guy.”
“Are you buying something or are you just loitering?”
“Big word from a big guy,” Dwight says. “I’m here to rob you.”
The guy laughs. Larry blushes bright red. He stands back and lets Dwight in at the counter beside him. Dwight reaches into his back pocket and pulls out the gun. He points it at the guy. “Bang, bang,” he says.
“Fuck,” the guy says. He backs up. He looks at Dwight and then at Larry. “You in on this?”
“I just wanted cigarettes,” Larry says. His voice cracks with excitement. “If you’d just given me the cigarettes. I asked nicely. I said please.”
Dwight laughs. “Get the cash,” he says, pushing Larry towards the back of the counter.
The guy reaches down slowly, as if they won’t notice, and goes for the alarm button. Dwight shakes the gun in his face. “No fucking way. No way. Get your hands up where I can see them.”
The guy lifts his hands up and Larry comes around the counter and then all chaos breaks out. The guy’s arm – his big, beefy, tattooed arm – comes down on Larry’s nose, and Larry’s brain goes black. Just for a minute. Like when Jack gave him concussions. Everything turns off. Larry shakes his head to clear his vision and then a gunshot rings out and Dwight is shouting and the guy is slumping down behind the counter. There is blood everywhere. On Larry, on the floor, on the guy, on the counter, on the gun. Even on the ceiling.
“I didn’t mean to shoot,” Dwight screams. “I didn’t mean to shoot. The gun just went off. It went off by itself. I didn’t shoot. I didn’t pull the trigger. I didn’t –”
“
Shut up,” Larry shouts. “Shut up, shut up, shut up!” Larry’s nose aches, his head swims. He grabs the gun from Dwight and pokes at the guy on the floor behind the counter. He is still. But breathing. Larry swears he can see his breath.
Larry looks straight at the surveillance camera in the corner of the store. “Deal with that, Dwight. I’ll get the cash.”
And Dwight takes the stool, drags it through the blood and over to the camera, climbs up on it and starts bashing the camera with his gloved hands, with a hammer he has in his backpack, with anything he can. He bashes until it’s in pieces on the floor.
“These things sometimes go straight into the security place,” Dwight says. “Sometimes they feed straight there.”
“That one doesn’t,” Larry says. He is standing over the guy and pulling all the money from the cash register. Larry’s vision is clearer and his nose has stopped aching. Some of the money gets blood on it, but there is nothing Larry can do about it. The guy has stopped breathing. “We have one of those at my dad’s store. It’s just a recorder. Check the back for the recording.”
“Oh fuck,” Dwight says. “Do you think he’s dead? Is he dead?”
“No,” Larry lies. “He’s just injured. Don’t worry.”
The money goes into the backpack. Even though Larry doesn’t smoke, he grabs a pack of Player’s cigarettes. They take one last look at the guy on the floor, the pool of blood thickening under his body. He is face down, which is good, because Larry knows that he would dream about this guy for the rest of his life if he saw his face. His unseeing eyes.
They find the recording in the back and then clear the store, rush out into the night, into the rain, which is pouring down, rush out into the street and away.
Later, Larry counts his money. His bloody half. Dwight is shaking hard. Freaking out. “We fucking killed a man, I know it,” Dwight says. He is leaning over the sink in his apartment, trying to wash the blood off his portion of the bills.
“He’s just hurt,” Larry says over and over, until they see the news and watch it over and over on the screen – Murdered 24-Hour Variety Man. Two kids. Ex-wife. Ex-convict. Just released after ten years for drug crimes. Was making good. Got a job. Worked late shift. Murdered. Shot twice in the stomach (“Twice?” Dwight says. “I only shot once. Did you hear more than one shot? I only shot once”), bled out. No suspects.
Eventually the cops think it’s drug-related. Think it has nothing to do with robbing the store but more to do with the employee’s history. Dwight and Larry breathe a sigh of relief. They laugh about it later. Their first big score. Made $1,034.25. Split in half that’s $517.12 each. Enough to buy something big.
But Dwight’s hands still shake. Larry has to hold the gun the next time because Dwight’s hands shake so much.
And the next time.
And the next.
“We killed a man,” he says.
Soon the gun is more Larry’s than Dwight’s. Soon it has become part of Larry. It fits in his hand like the gloves he wears to hold it. He flashes it around easily and confidently. He doesn’t need to shoot it, just show it. There. My gun. They go into the heart of the city and into the suburbs. They rob convenience stores and inconvenient ones. They wear masks and hoods. Sometimes Larry has to shoot to warn, but this is rare. The gun becomes merely an extension of his hand to wave around and cause fear, to get the money. Dwight uses the money to buy drugs, which he then both takes and sells. Lately he’s taking more than selling. Larry saves his money for now. He puts it in a coffee tin under a loose floorboard in the attic. And then another coffee tin, and another and another. When Larry is seventeen, he will move out of the house with his coffee tins and his gun. He will move away from Susan and his father – although he will still work often at Gallo’s – a kind of cover for his extracurricular activities. A way to make sure his father is still alive.
2:01 a.m.
There is a knock on the door. Corrections Officer 6 enters carrying a tray. On the tray are two coffees, black. Two cookies.
“Thought you’d like a snack.” He smirks.
“Fuck,” the Prisoner says. “A cookie and coffee? What about milk and cookies? It’s like kindergarten.”
“If you don’t want it . . .” The CO starts to leave.
“Stop.”
“You can have both the cookies,” the Chaplain says to the Prisoner as he takes the coffee cup from the CO. “I’m not hungry.”
Surprisingly, the Prisoner wolfs both cookies down. As if he’s starving. He barely chews them. Crumbs all over the bed. Then he slurps at the coffee loudly. “Hot,” he says.
The Chaplain is standing again. Stretching his back out. He looks at the clock. 2:03 a.m. Less than ten hours left. He quickly does the math in his head. Six hundred minutes. Thirty-six thousand seconds. That’s all there is.
CO6 leaves them with the disposable coffee cups. The Chaplain supposes the Prisoner can’t injure himself with them. And then he wonders if eating the cup would do anything – besides cause upset stomach. But if you had an upset stomach before execution, would they delay the execution? The Chaplain isn’t sure how all of this works. He asks the Prisoner.
“They had some guy earlier, a medical guy . . . examiner . . . come in and look at me. See if I was fit to be executed. Kind of funny. He poked and prodded.” The Prisoner pauses. “Fit to be killed.” Then he pretends to bite the disposable cup.
The Chaplain has so many questions now. Questions he didn’t think of asking before. When his mentor got sick and the Warden told him to do this, the Chaplain thought it was about listening, not thinking, but now he knows it’s about thinking while you listen. He’s hearing the Prisoner’s story, and the more he hears, the more questions he has. Yes, he read the files. Yes, he knows what the Prisoner has done. Except for that first murder – the 24-Hour Variety employee. That wasn’t in any of the files. Because they weren’t caught. There is no record of that. In fact, it could be a lie. Besides, the Prisoner didn’t pull the trigger; it was this Dwight who had the gun. But still. It makes the Chaplain feel slightly off-balance that a new crime is coming to light now, with only hours left, as if the Prisoner has saved it for the end. His new confession.
And that makes the Chaplain wonder about all the things the Prisoner has done that he hasn’t been charged with. Does this mean that the Prisoner is guiltier than the Chaplain knows? That he deserves execution even more than the government thinks? Or could he be lying about things? But why would someone lie just before their execution? You would think that this is the perfect time to finally tell the whole truth and nothing but.
The Chaplain comes back again and again to the way in which the Prisoner is telling his story. It seems emotionless. Sure, the Prisoner tries to crack a joke here or there, he tears up slightly when talking about his mother, but in general, he isn’t showing much emotion. It’s a tale told verbatim, a tale that could very well have been written down, read aloud. Even the way the Prisoner lies on the cot, his feet up, his hands behind his head, as if he has all the time in the world and is getting really comfy. He likes his audience. He likes an audience. The Chaplain has the impression he would love it if the lights suddenly dimmed and out there, behind the door, was a crowd. Cheering. Listening. Booing. This is all a theatre for the Prisoner. His life is a stage play. The Chaplain is the fan. He hasn’t yet digested his life, taken it in, and this worries the Chaplain. If he is to die soon and feels no remorse, or, if not remorse, something – if he feels nothing – just talks and talks – if that is happening, is this right? What would Miranda think about this? Can a man go to his death never fully understanding what it is he has done?
The Chaplain guesses that this happens all the time.
Heart attacks, aneurysms, car accidents. People die without contemplating their lives all the time.
He sighs.
The Prisoner stops slurping his coffee, he is finished, and begins picking apart his cup. Picks around the rim and puts the pieces into the cup and the
cup gets smaller and smaller as he does this. Like a snake eating its tail. Like Dwight’s tattoo.
“Wait a minute,” the Chaplain says. “Dwight? The Dwight who is in here?”
“Yeah, Dwight Mercer, that’s the guy.”
“I talked to him a little while ago. Dwight Mercer.”
“Yeah. Dwight came in about a year ago.”
“But.” The Chaplain doesn’t know what to say. Dwight wasn’t in the files on the murder case that put the Prisoner on death row. He had no idea they were connected.
“He got caught selling drugs. We haven’t been hanging together in years. First time I saw him in,” the Prisoner pauses, thinks, “eleven years, I’d say, was in prison here about six months ago. They keep us separate – the regulars and death row – but I saw Dwight when I walked past a window one day. He was in the yard, being Dwight. Being the same asshole he always was.” The Prisoner laughs. “He was taking bets on something, I swear. Fucking gambler. Always betting on everything. He’d even have you betting, Chaplain. In a second.”
“I doubt that.” The Chaplain smiles. Although he used to play a monthly game of poker in university with Tracy and another couple, the Chaplain never bet high, got out before he lost anything. He’s always been too careful to be a gambler. Tracy would tease him mercilessly, preferring to bet their rent money and take a chance. The Chaplain thinks now that this should have been a sign. Maybe if he’d been more interesting, if he’d taken more chances, Tracy wouldn’t have left him.
“He didn’t see me. But I saw him. Jesus, he got fat. I heard he was in for drugs. Selling.”
“Yes, he is. I spoke to him about two weeks ago.” The Chaplain watches the Prisoner for emotion. This man, Dwight Mercer, this man who took the Prisoner as a young child and shaped him into a criminal – you would think that this would warrant some sort of emotion? And it suddenly does.
The Prisoner and the Chaplain Page 6