The Prisoner and the Chaplain Page 14

  Outside is Mona.

  Mona.

  He doesn’t know this yet, he hasn’t met her, but here stands Mona. The first time he sees her. Mother of Bennie and Frankie. Ex-wife of Darren Purcell.

  Mona.

  She is drenched. Her long hair, black, runs down her back in rivulets. She has brown eyes lined with black. She has dark skin and teeth so white they take Larry by surprise. She stands there with her arms crossed in front of her. Glaring at him. Suspicious.

  “Hello,” she says. “I’m Mona. I own the Storage Mart.”

  “Oh.” Larry steps back into his room so she can come in out of the rain. She does. She looks around. When he rented the place, a young guy gave him the key. He has never seen anyone else in the front office.

  “Are you using this for an office?”

  Larry nods.

  “That’s an interesting idea. Do you sell coffee?”

  “Sorry?”

  Mona points to all the coffee cans, lids on, lined up in the corner. A small pyramid of coffee cans. All the same brand.

  “Yes. No. Well, maybe.”

  She looks suspiciously at him. “I have to ask,” Mona says, “are you selling drugs?”

  “What?”

  She points to the coffee cans, the desk, the lamp, the laptop. “What are you doing in here? No one has an office at the Storage Mart.”

  “I’m not sure that’s any of your business,” Larry says. “Your contract didn’t say I had to tell you what I do.” “But our contract is for renting the space as storage, not for living in it.”

  “I’m not living in it.”

  “It looks to me as if you are.”

  “I’m working in it. Not living. I have an apartment. Look, there’s no bed here, let alone a toilet. How could I live in here?”

  Mona takes this in. Thinks about it. Looks at Larry. Larry already thinks he’s falling in love with her, slightly – he feels warm and her eyes are beautiful. It’s like they glow from the inside out. Dark brown but specked with gold. She blushes and turns away.

  “Okay. Okay. That’s okay. You can have your office here.”

  “Thanks, I guess,” Larry says, and he smiles.

  She looks at him again, at his tattoos and his baggy jeans and his baseball hat on backwards. At the chains around his neck. She is wearing dress pants and high-heeled shoes. She is wearing a blazer. Straight out of some ad for office workers. Polyester-looking. Larry smiles again.

  “My kids,” she says. “Boys. Twins. They play around here sometimes on the weekends. I’d appreciate if you kept your door shut? If you’re up to no good. They are young and impressionable.”

  “Up to no good? You have no faith in me.” Larry laughs. “Sure, I’ll keep the door shut, but you’ll have to turn on the air conditioning soon or I’ll boil in here.”

  “It goes on when it’s hot,” she says. “Not before.”

  “I could cut out a window?”

  “No windows!”

  Larry laughs and says, “I’ll keep the door shut when I hear your kids around, when I’m up to no good.”

  “Thank you.” Mona turns to leave. “What did you say your name was?”

  “Larry. Larry Gallo.”

  “Thank you, Larry.”

  “Thank you, Mona, owner of Storage Mart.” Larry watches her walk back out into the rain and disappear down the aisle of storage units towards the main office. Her legs are long. Her hips sway. Her hair moves gracefully back and forth.

  Mona. She owns the place. She has kids. Must be married. Not that that ever made anyone less interesting to Larry. He sits back down on his chair and opens up his laptop. He closes it again. What’s on the screen isn’t half as interesting as Mona.

  The kids come around the very next day. The sun is out now. Larry opens the door to his office only halfway. He is lazy and ducks under, heading over to the strip mall to pick up a coffee and use the washroom, when they are suddenly standing there. Identical twins. Dark skin like their mother and black hair. Devilish grins on their faces.

  “Fuck,” Larry says. “Sorry, you scared me.”

  They laugh delightedly. They are about eight years old and they are riding scooters. Larry backs into his office again, closes his door almost to the ground, but he can still hear them whip up and down the aisles. He sees their shadows flick across the ground where the sun is coming in. They are laughing and calling to each other.

  Larry can’t get any work done. How can he when they are zooming around out there, when he knows their mother is in the office? How can he when he hears her call out, “Lunch! Bennie! Frankie!” Her voice is strong, her accent exotic.

  The boys scooter to her. Larry peeks out of his door, rolls it half open and ducks under. They are gathered around her on the steps leading up to the office. She is handing them something – sandwiches? – and they take these from her and scooter off one-handed. Larry waves. Mona looks at him, shakes her head, and then turns and goes into her office. She reminds him of his mother – that look, the way she shook her head, the sandwiches, the two boys on scooters.

  This is the beginning of something, Larry thinks. But he doesn’t know what yet. He feels full up when he sees her, satiated, content, drowsy. As if she has put a spell on him. Larry knows she isn’t showing any interest in him right now, but he can also feel a spark when she looks at him. Like static. She pretends he’s not intriguing, he thinks, but she’s interested.

  Larry wants to know only one thing about her right now: Where is Mona’s husband?

  7:01 a.m.

  This is it. The beginning of something. Certainly. The end of something too. The Chaplain is standing up straight, alert, staring down at the Prisoner as he lies on the cot, talking. The Prisoner’s eyes are closed.

  “Them,” he says.

  “Yes, them.” The eyes now open.

  “We are there, then. We are at your crime.”

  “I guess we are.” The Prisoner stands and stretches. He avoids the Chaplain’s eyes.

  “Why you are here. This is it.” The Chaplain says this quietly as he backs away from the Prisoner.

  The Prisoner sits down on the side of the cot, leans forward and puts his head in his hands. The silence stretches between them.

  The Chaplain asks, “How is your stomach feeling?”

  “Believe it or not, I’m fucking hungry again.” The Prisoner laughs. “I’m empty, man.”

  “Maybe we can get you more cookies?”

  “No, probably shouldn’t. I don’t want to puke again. It’s getting close.” The Prisoner shivers. He looks up at the clock. His eyes are red-rimmed. “Past halfway there.”

  “Yes.” More than halfway there. Halfway dead. Halfway electrocuted. Almost there. The Chaplain’s hands are shaking. He feels as if he is watching a horror movie and someone is going to jump out at him from behind a closed door. He is on edge. Tense. And extremely tired. Numb. Which is strange, being numb and tense at the same time.

  “Do you know what happens to you when you get electrocuted?” the Prisoner asks in a small voice.

  The Chaplain sits down, holds his shaking hands together, squeezes them tight. “Tell me.”

  The Prisoner clears his throat. Stands. Moves around the room as he talks. “I did a lot of research about this when I got the laptop. I don’t know why. Maybe I knew this would happen? I don’t know. And then I looked into it more in the prison library when I first got here. I had to know how it would happen. Exactly. Like the real details, you know.” He pauses in mid-stride. Looks down at his feet, at his hands by his side. Clears his throat again. About to give a speech. “There is a lot of information on electrocution on the computer.” He sighs. “Too much information.”

  Silence. Then: “They’ll shave me first. They’ll come in here about an hour before and they’ll shave me all over – chest, legs, arms, wherever they put the electrodes. Then they’ll walk me to the chair and strap me to it with belts.” The Prisoner continues to talk as the Chaplain goes throu
gh the list in his head, the facts he read online before he came here, the stomach-churning facts. Because he, too, did his research ahead of time: a metal electrode attached to the scalp and forehead over a sponge wet with saline. Not too wet, though, and not too dry – don’t want any short-circuits or resistance. Then another electrode, wet with conductive jelly (called Electro-Creme, to be exact. The Chaplain marvels at this – the fact that someone invents a cream that serves this purpose), attached to his shaved leg. They will then place the hood over his head. And the Warden will signal the Executioner, who will pull a handle that connects the power supply. Lights will dim. A jolt of between five hundred and two thousand volts will travel through the Prisoner for about thirty seconds. The body (not the Prisoner anymore but the body, because he will, most likely, be dead) will arch and fill with current and then relax when the current is turned off. A doctor must wait for the body to cool down to see if the heart is still beating. If it is, another jolt, and again, until dead.

  The Prisoner will grip the chair and there will be violent thrashing of limbs, perhaps causing dislocation or fractures (it often does). His tissues will swell. There will be defecation, no matter what the Prisoner thinks. Steam or smoke will rise, and there will be the smell of burning.

  “I memorized something,” the Prisoner says. The Chaplain snaps out of it. Pays careful attention to the Prisoner.

  “What was that?”

  “Some judge had this description of what happens when you are electrocuted in the chair and I memorized it. Thought that if I said it over and over again to myself, I might be able to handle it. You know. Like when you chant or something and how that chant, what you are actually saying, starts to mean nothing. You know? The yoga woman did that. Those ‘oms’ or what the fuck, over and over, until you just tuned them out. You didn’t even hear them after a while.”

  “Tell me it. Tell me what you memorized.”

  “The guy, the judge, said,” – and here, the Prisoner, now sitting, leans back and looks up at the ceiling, raises his eyes to the top of the cell but sees beyond it, as if he’s reading the words up there, as if he’s praying to something. The Chaplain looks up, then looks down, focuses on the Prisoner – “‘The prisoner’s eyeballs sometimes pop out and rest on his cheeks. The prisoner often defecates, urinates, and vomits blood and drool. The body turns bright red as its temperature rises, and the prisoner’s flesh swells and his skin stretches to the point of breaking. Sometimes the prisoner catches fire . . .’” Here he stops. Pauses. Breathes deeply. “‘Witnesses hear a loud and sustained sound like bacon frying, and the sickly sweet smell of burning flesh permeates the chamber.’” He stops talking but stares still at the ceiling. His breath evens out slowly.

  The Chaplain, leaning forward, collapses back in his chair. He lets out a groan. He can’t help himself. His body is shaking. He remembers more facts: the body is hot enough to cause blisters if touched. They must let the body cool before they do an autopsy. There are third-degree burns wherever the electrodes meet the skin. And the one thing that has stuck hard in his mind: The brain appears cooked in most cases.

  “God,” he says. “My God.” His face is wet. He realizes he is crying.

  “It doesn’t work,” the Prisoner says, lying back down, closing his eyes. “No matter how many times I say it, I still feel it, you know? I keep thinking, these are just words. I’m just saying words. And if I say them over and over –” He stops. There is nothing more to say.

  “Yes.” What can I do? The Chaplain feels panicked. What can I do to save this man? What can I say? It’s above and beyond anything he could imagine. Five hours to go and this is what will be happening, this is what they will do – people, ordinary people like the Chaplain, doing their jobs, will cook this man’s brain. Because they can. Because it will solve something, the Chaplain is not sure what. It will make the victims’ families feel better? It will make common people feel safer? He doesn’t know what it will do. The Warden says they can’t afford to keep prisoners who are so obviously guilty fed and bathed and clothed and housed. He confessed, after all. Get rid of them, the Warden says. Save the government some money.

  What if the Chaplain had killed Tracy? What if, after that second punch, he had punched her again? What if her head had snapped backwards and she had fallen against the mantle of the fireplace. What if her head had split open? The Chaplain knows more than anyone how easily things you don’t intend to happen can happen. The Prisoner, though. Three bodies. Intention or no intention, he confessed.

  The Chaplain meant to hit Tracy, didn’t he? He moved his arm back, balled his fist, meant for fist to connect to face. He wanted to hurt her. After all, he hit twice. He saw David standing in the snow, out under the streetlight, and Tracy was so calm and quiet, and she was saying all those things that you are supposed to say – “It’s not you, Jim, it’s me” – and the fish were flopping and he reeled back and smashed his hand into her face once, twice, and it felt good. For a minute. Until the blood. Until the screaming. Until David came into the room.

  In therapy – anger management – the Chaplain learned that everyone has this same kind of bubbling anger under the surface, that you need to learn how to control it and that most people can control it. People like the Chaplain, however, need to work on controlling it.

  “But I never hurt anyone before,” he had said.

  “It’s under there,” the therapist had told him. “Always. It will always be there.”

  As if he had unleashed a kraken into the world. Let loose a monster. Once out, it must be contained. Always. Like alcoholism or drug addiction – the demons must stay down. He never believed in the kind of therapy he had, and after his boring stint in it, he believes even less in its healing power. But he did take this away from the therapist – that everyone has this anger in them. He believes this. Even the eighty-three-year-old woman in the nursing home, pushing her walker. Even the small child in the bath with her sister. Inside of us all is anger and hate and violence. Mixed with our love and kindness. The Prisoner has it in spades. But does that make him any less human? Does that make him deserve his punishment? Or does that make him more human, closer to the reality of being human? A man of emotions that easily rise to the surface.

  If only the Chaplain could see the changing sky right now. His need to leave the cell is fierce. The Prisoner lies on the bed, still, eyes closed. Is he sleeping? Does he have time to sleep? No time, no time. No. Time. The Chaplain feels like shouting, or running, or hitting something. His fist against a brick wall, his head against his hand. Anything. He wants to feel – the air, pain – he wants to feel alive.

  The information the Chaplain read about electrocution was distant when he didn’t know the Prisoner. Now it is tangible. He can feel it, picture it, live it. The agony of it.

  Miranda would say, “But he deserves to die.”

  “We are all going to die, but does anyone deserve to die? By the hand of another?”

  “He does. Because he took lives. Brutally. Savagely. He deserves to suffer first. And then die.”

  His sister, Miranda. What would she think if she were here in this room. If she spent seven hours with this man? Like strangers sitting side-by-side in an airplane as it crashes, the Chaplain feels the need to take the Prisoner’s hand and hold on for dear life.

  Tinted Windows

  He couldn’t tell them apart at first. Bennie and Frankie. They looked so alike to Larry. Black hair, brown eyes, dark skin, white teeth like their mother’s, devilish grins. And they were always grinning – wide mouths, open all the time. Talking, laughing, grinning, shouting. Back and forth on their scooters, purposefully in front of Larry’s office. Why not? No one else was using their storage unit as an office. He was a curiosity to these kids. The man in the storage room, with his laptop and his rug and his glass desk. And his coffee cans. The man with tattoos who occasionally swore when he forgot there were kids around.

  Larry comes into the storage unit one day and his cans hav
e moved. He notices immediately. The top layer has shifted.

  He stands there and stares at the cans, willing himself to believe that he might have forgotten that he moved them. But, no, he remembers perfectly how they were lined up the night before. He had just robbed another convenience store the next town over and had come back to the storage unit and placed a wad of money in a new can. Larry had lined everything up nicely, carefully, like a surgeon, paying special attention to spacing. And now they are off-centre, off-balance. He is sure of it.

  The kids race past on the scooters, hollering.

  Who has keys to his room? No one. According to the contract he signed at the front desk on the first day, no one can enter his storage unit without his permission and no one has extra keys.

  “We cut it open, physically smash it in, if we need to get in,” the young guy behind the counter said. “This is your space. It has nothing to do with us.”

  Larry believed him at the time, but now he wonders. He goes outside and looks at the door. It doesn’t look like it has been forced in any way. There is nothing that indicates a crowbar or screwdriver. Larry has broken into enough houses to know what it looks like if someone picks a lock. There would be scratches on the lock. Nothing there. He looks closely. The boys shoot past on the scooters, singing now. Larry scratches his head. Stands tall and looks out towards the office. It’s a bright day, sunny. It’s well past noon, Larry slept in. A Saturday. He can see the young guy at the front desk, his feet up, watching the screen. He doesn’t see Mona.

  Larry goes back into his room and looks around carefully. Takes note of everything. He wouldn’t have a clue if money were missing. He never counts it. It doesn’t matter to him. What matters to him is that someone was in his space. Someone stepped on his floor, touched his desk, wiped their hands over his laptop. Someone moved his coffee cans. And that someone will figure it out, what he’s up to. Cans filled with money can have no explanation other than crime. Larry has never been caught. Because he is careful and smart. Because he doesn’t let anyone in. He doesn’t let anyone close. He doesn’t let anyone know.