The Prisoner and the Chaplain Read online

“Wish I could have said goodbye,” the Prisoner says. Quietly. He turns from the Chaplain then. Turns towards the wall. But his voice gives nothing away. “It’s fucking small in here, isn’t it? I’ve got to –” he points towards the toilet.

  “Sure, yes.” The Chaplain knocks on the door. A CO comes in. He tells the CO that the Prisoner needs privacy. The CO takes the two coffee cups, one torn in half, and motions for the Chaplain to exit the room. Five COs stare through the window in the door at the Prisoner as he relieves himself.

  In the outside room, there is air. The Chaplain didn’t realize how stifling it was inside the cell, but out here the walls are white, not green, and the lights are brighter, and there is a small window to the outside – although it’s pitch black and the Chaplain can’t see anything but the night. The air feels cooler in here and cleaner. There are no real smells (although one CO is wearing heavy cologne). The Chaplain sniffs.

  “How’s it going in there?”

  “As good as one could expect,” the Chaplain says.

  “No trouble?”

  “No. No trouble.”

  The Chaplain glances towards the execution room door. It is open and even though the lights aren’t on, the Chaplain can make out the shape of a chair with straps, heavy curtains on one wall. He is suddenly assaulted by a vision of the seagull with the arrow through it flying past him. As if it’s right in front of him. He holds the back of a chair for support, wobbles a bit on his legs, and the COs take note of this and lower him into the seat.

  “Thank you. I’m just tired, I guess.”

  “It’s hard shit in there,” CO7 says. “Take it easy.”

  The Chaplain swears he can hear the gull crying as it flies past. The arrow straight through the body, top to bottom, almost comical, cartoonish. Why the top to the bottom, too? Wouldn’t the arrow be through the chest if shot from below? Or was the bird standing on the shore, feeding, perhaps, and someone snuck up behind it? The Chaplain shakes his head. The toilet flushes from within the cell. The Chaplain stands.

  “Take it easy, man,” a CO says. “You can stay out here for a bit if you want.”

  “No. There isn’t time,” the Chaplain says. He points towards the execution chamber. “There is no time.”

  “Calm down,” CO7 says, in a voice that reminds the Chaplain of his mother or his sister. A voice of reason and strength.

  He enters the small cell, which they open for him grudgingly. The Prisoner looks ashamed and the Chaplain realizes it’s because of the smell. His stomach is obviously upset. The coffee and cookies didn’t help matters. The Chaplain pretends he smells nothing and takes his seat again. The Prisoner paces. Moving the air around.

  “So, what did Dwight say?”

  “When?”

  “When you saw him. Did you tell him you were coming here?”

  “No. I found out after I saw Dwight that I would be with you. And I had no idea you two knew each other. I didn’t make the connection, even though I’ve read your file. I should have made a connection. How many people are named Dwight? I’m sorry.”

  The Prisoner sits on the bed again. He yawns. Stretches. “No problem. It doesn’t matter now. Nothing matters now.”

  “This leads me to ask,” the Chaplain says, clearing his throat. “Is anyone coming at noon? Any of your family? Susan? Your father?”

  “My father is long gone.” The Prisoner stands again. Although he is yawning, he is becoming more and more agitated and fidgety. He cracks his fingers. Stretches again. Yawns. Dogs yawn, the Chaplain thinks, when they are nervous or agitated or excited.

  “What about Susan? Your nieces and nephews?”

  The Prisoner laughs. He sits again on the cot. “I haven’t spoken to her for a long time. I don’t know her kids very well.”

  “What about,” the Chaplain ventures, “Jack? Your mother?”

  “My mother is dead and Jack is dead to me,” the Prisoner says, loudly now. Angrily. “Jack is dead to me.”

  “But maybe he should be here, maybe he would –”

  “Shut up,” the Prisoner says. “Just shut the fuck up about them. They are all dead to me. I don’t have any family. And I’m fine with that. Why do you think you’re here? If I wanted anyone, I would have asked for them, not you.”

  The COs knock on the door. “Everyone okay in there?”

  “Yeah, yeah, whatever.” The Prisoner lies back down on the bed. His hands are shaking. The Chaplain feels alive, electric. The anger swirls in the air. For a minute, he knows he saw the real man. The real Prisoner. Just a flash of him. That intense anger. He’s crazy, Miranda would say. But the Chaplain feels that this fearsome part of the Prisoner shows more about real human emotion than it shows about sanity or insanity. He lets his true colours show only in anger. He is only himself when he’s angry. The Chaplain himself let his inner feelings come out in anger, feelings he didn’t even know he had. Feelings Tracy had no idea about either. This Prisoner has been angry at the world since his mother left (and the Chaplain? Since the minute Tracy betrayed him and told him about David). Since his mother took Jack and left (since Tracy left with David). All the world is the same, the Chaplain thinks. No matter how you cover it – with religion or a prison jumpsuit.

  The Chaplain wishes he had had more time with the Prisoner before this day. He wishes he could have researched the Prisoner’s life better – a quick skim in the last several days wasn’t enough – perhaps he could have found Jack, at least found out what happened to his mother. Brought Jack here. For what? To watch his brother murdered? Strapped to a chair. Bolts of electricity coursing through him? No, maybe not.

  Wouldn’t his mentor have looked into all of this anyway? He was with the Prisoner for a long time, years. Surely he would have asked the right questions, helped in some way. Wouldn’t he? If there was a family member the Prisoner wanted to see, his mentor would have arranged it.

  The Chaplain’s mind goes back, suddenly, to the crime scene photos in the Prisoner’s file. The gruesome photos. The blood. The hands outstretched. Pleading to be saved. It’s impossible for him to imagine the man in front of him creating those bloody messes and doing it without a grain of remorse. With no regret. No guilt. Here he is, ten years later, after his appeals – after all legal avenues have been followed – with no remorse. No tears. No begging for forgiveness. Instead, he wants to recite his story, line by line. Waste his time, his final moments, rehashing his past. Instead, his only emotion comes out when he thinks of Dwight, another criminal, the man who started him down this slippery slope. The Chaplain doesn’t understand.

  There isn’t much he understood until religion. The incident with Tracy made him feel as if he was merely a shell of a man walking around, as if there wasn’t anything worthwhile underneath his skin. He hated himself. He wished, sometimes, that Tracy hadn’t dropped the charges. He wanted to be punished. The judge making him go into therapy didn’t seem enough at the time. Religion, his faith, what he was learning about in school, grounded him. Made him feel real again. But religion isn’t helping either the Chaplain or the Prisoner here. The Prisoner doesn’t seem open to prayer or contemplation, at least not yet. And why would he be when the end result, in his mind, will be the same.

  The Chaplain wishes that he had been religious, that he had believed, on the night Tracy came to tell him about David.

  “I’ve fallen in love with him, Jim,” Tracy says. Straight out of a made-for-screen movie, or a romance novel. What is Jim to do? “We have so much in common,” she says.

  In common? What? Children’s literature? Her grades?

  It’s not you, it’s me, he wants to shout. He wants to finish her lines for her.

  “Three years?” is all he can say. “We’ve had three years together and now –”

  “I’m so sorry, Jim. I’m sorry.”

  They are standing in the living room of the little flat they have rented for two years, the flat they are happy in. Goldfish in a bowl by the screen. A duvet spread across the futon
couch in case Tracy is cold while reading. A coffee table they found in the garbage one night coming home from classes. Kidney-shaped.

  He thought they were happy. Weren’t they happy?

  He looks out the window. It is late. Dark. Winter. There are tracks down the road from the cars that have recently passed in the new-fallen snow. He can see it still coming down. Thick, wet flakes. “What do we do now?” he says. Because what else can he say? What’s the next step?

  Tracy cries. There are tears. And maybe because of the tears, he snaps. His therapist tells him later that if Tracy had stayed strong, had not cried, he might not have done it. But she did cry. And he did do it. She showed weakness. And he snapped. Although that isn’t an excuse. There is no excuse.

  First the fishbowl. Shattered on the floor, fish flapping up and down, struggling in the air, frantically flipping under furniture. Tracy crying and shouting. What was she shouting?

  The Chaplain now wonders if it’s because, after the fishbowl, he turned his head slightly and looked out that front window again, past all the trappings of his life with Tracy, past the idea of their future together, past their past, past the shining snow, and saw the reflection of her crying there, sobbing. He looked out into the dark snow and there he was. David. Standing under the street light, waiting for Tracy. He then took note of her coat – still on. Her boots – tracking snow on the floor. Her hat, still placed upon her head at a jaunty angle. Her mittens, clapping together nervously. A light bulb flicked on over his head. She was leaving immediately. Right now. This instant. Out of his life. No turning back. No debate. No discussion. Three years was nothing to her. She was leaving. With David. There was going to be no wheedling and begging and crying. She had left the Chaplain no release. She had made up her mind already. For good.

  First it was the fishbowl. Cracked. Empty. Fish flapping, dying.

  Then it was Tracy. Her face. Her head.

  Her face.

  “You know,” the Prisoner says, “I’m glad I don’t have anyone coming. Who’d want to come to something like this? I hear your skin burns. I hear they put a hood over your head.” Here he stops. The Prisoner stops talking straight after he says “head,” as if he has choked on his words. The Chaplain imagines it, the hood. The Prisoner is imagining it, the hood. Over his head. Blacked out. A hot, suffocating hood. But not before you look out and see those you know, you maybe love, those who hate you, looking in at you behind the glass. You are strapped to the chair, electrodes on your temples, your arms, your legs. Attached to wires everywhere.

  “I would have chosen lethal injection if I could have,” the Prisoner says. “Not the chair.”

  The Chaplain swallows.

  The Prisoner says, contemplatively, “But lethal injection isn’t so reliable anymore, and so now it’s back to the chair. Even if it’s the most inhumane . . .” He clears his throat. “Remember those cartoons you’d watch as a kid? You watched cartoons, right?” The Prisoner looks over at the Chaplain. “Like a normal kid?”

  The Chaplain nods. “Yes.” He tries to smile. “I was a normal kid.”

  “Remember when they would get electrocuted?” the Prisoner laughs, hoarsely. “Their arms and legs would go straight out. Their hair would stand up.” Silence. And then. “I thought it was funny at the time, didn’t you?”

  “I did,” the Chaplain says. “Once upon a time.”

  They settle into the quiet again. The Chaplain looks at the clock. 2:32 a.m. This hour has gone even faster, if that’s possible. The brief walk into the hall to give the Prisoner privacy made the time race. He was out of here, then back in here. Something the Prisoner will do only once. He will go out, he will go next door to that dark, shady room with the curtains closing off the viewing room, and he will never come back into this room once he leaves.

  “When that guy got shot at the 24-Hour Variety,” the Prisoner says. “I thought about those cartoons. Weird. I actually thought about the way their arms and hair and legs went straight out in such a funny way. It was like I knew what was eventually going to happen to me. Like I knew I’d get the death penalty. Like I’d seen the future.”

  “But you didn’t shoot him. Dwight did.”

  “Yeah, I guess,” the Prisoner says. He looks away. Shadily. Avoiding eyes. Is his story true? “But it was like I could see the future.” He stares straight ahead. “Dwight did do it. But it doesn’t really matter, you know. The guy died. That’s what matters.”

  When the Chaplain remembers himself taking that first wild swing at Tracy, when he felt the connect and saw her cheek sag as if the bone had disappeared, he remembers he thought nothing. There wasn’t an image in his head. Just white or black or nothingness. Pure emotion. No thought involved. It wasn’t until the second swing, the second connect, until David was standing in the living room, shouting, his wet bootprints mixing with Tracy’s puddles, with her blood, on the hardwood floor, the fish barely flopping anymore, mouths opening and closing, puckering, gasping for air, Tracy doing the same – it wasn’t until that moment that he saw anything, in fact. Because before that he was on autopilot. He was robotic. He swung and hit. Swung again and hit again. Twice. Hard. Tracy hit the floor with the back of her head.

  And then there were sirens. And police pulling David off of him.

  Could have killed her, they said. One more punch would have killed her.

  A broken cheekbone. Shattered. Reconstructive surgery needed. A broken nose. Concussion. He was charged with assault, but then Tracy dropped the charges. She didn’t want him to have a permanent record – even after he rearranged her face. This was the Chaplain before he found God. What irony. Hypocrisy. The shame he felt still wells up inside of him. Constantly. His ability to cause harm, to be so intensely angry, to be so self-involved that he didn’t know what he was doing – it’s something he can’t ever get over. One more hit and she might have died. One more hit. Even Miranda, his bully-fighter sister, looked at him differently in those months and years after. Even she was ashamed of him. It took years for her to forgive him for his actions. Years for her to see that it wasn’t what happened with Tracy that made him become a chaplain, that made him become a man of God. It was his guilt, the guilt that surrounds him all the time, coats him still, his need to be forgiven. As if covering himself with God is his protection, a layer of goodness disconnecting his evil actions from what could be his true self. It’s his penance.

  Perhaps if he had been charged? If his life had been changed drastically, a stint in jail, a permanent record? Perhaps then he would feel better?

  Does the Prisoner feel better having been caught and punished?

  “Tick-tock, tick-tock,” the Prisoner mumbles. “I kind of wish it wasn’t a digital clock so we could hear it.”

  “Is time going quickly for you or slowly right now?” the Chaplain asks.

  “Neither.”

  “It’s going too quickly for me,” the Chaplain confesses. “Every time I look up, it seems a number changes.”

  “I guess I’m such good company. You don’t want the day to be over.” The Prisoner looks over at him. The Chaplain is leaning forward on his chair, his elbows on his thighs, his hands clasped together. He is exhausted, mentally drained, physically in pain. His back aches. He can’t get comfortable. But all he can really think about is the time and how it’s counting down so quickly. It certainly makes him aware of his own life because, if you think about it, everyone’s clock is ticking down. Everyone is slowly heading towards death and the end. Not just the Prisoner. Tick-tock, tick-tock is right. The Chaplain sighs.

  “So,” the Chaplain says. “If no one is coming and you don’t want anyone there, what do you want me to do?”

  The Prisoner shrugs.

  “I’d like to be in there with you, if you’re okay with that.” Why did the Chaplain say that? What was he thinking? He merely said what came into his head. Quickly. He didn’t think.

  “No,” the Prisoner says. “Seriously, it’d fuck you up. No one should watc
h someone get electrocuted. I mean, I don’t mind that the assholes who put me here are watching – fucking suits, they deserve to have nightmares – but you don’t even know me. You shouldn’t have to watch.”

  “Thank you,” the Chaplain says, strongly now, “for your concern. But I’d like to be there beside you. I’d like you to be able to look at someone who cares.”

  “Hood, remember?”

  “Oh, yes. Well, at least you’ll feel me there. Right? That will be something?” The Chaplain clears his throat. It feels tight. Wait until Miranda hears he’s done this. She will kill him.

  “Well, if you want,” the Prisoner says. “Each to his own. Whatever makes you tick.”

  The Chaplain shrugs. “I think it will be good for you.”

  “You think I’ll really care at that point?” the Prisoner says. “I think it’ll be good for you, though. See your job through to the end and all. Make sure your soul feels good about doing all you can to help. Forgive yourself. All that shit.”

  “If you don’t want me there –”

  The Prisoner looks at the Chaplain. “You can stay. Hold my hand.” He laughs. “Make us both feel better.”

  Hold his hand. The Chaplain imagines a bolt of electricity passing between them. He imagines the Prisoner’s life ebbing out through his own hand, coursing through the Chaplain’s body. A macabre Frankenstein image comes into his mind – the Prisoner’s brain in his brain, the Prisoner’s soul melded with his. Again, cartoons.

  “I’ll be there for you,” the Chaplain says, and the Prisoner laughs.

  Davis Street

  “I’ll be there for you, man,” Dwight says. “I’ll be right behind you.”

  Larry is seventeen years old today and is robbing a bank. Or trying to. Dwight can’t figure out exactly how they should do it. Should they go in together or separately? It seems as if all the drugs Dwight is selling and doing are finally affecting his brain. He’s upped what he takes since the 24-Hour Variety. His shaking hands – which haven’t gone away. His rolling eyes. The fact that he never remembers what they’ve been talking about. Dwight’s too old, in Larry’s opinion, to be doing hard drugs. Everyone over twenty seems old. He’s pissing Larry off.