Читать книгу Execution Eve - William Buchanan - Страница 12

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Raymond S. “Willie” Baxter lay clutching his blue woolen blanket close beneath his chin, gazing up through the barred window high in the rear wall of his cell. For twelve months that tiny window had provided Willie’s only view of the outside world. Through it he had watched the seasons change, had gazed at the stars long into the night, and—his greatest pleasure—had listened to the songbirds that nested in the towering black gum tree in the prison yard. Willie liked birds.

This February morning the sky was leaden. A mantle of low-hanging clouds had induced a chill in the usually mild pre-spring Kentucky weather. Worse, it had blotted out the sun. That annoyed Willie, for he and the sun had conspired in a pastime that delighted him. On better days the golden rays filtering through the bars cast a latticework of shadows that inched their way across the barren cement floor and slowly climbed the opposite wall. Willie watched the shadows intently, trying to guess the time of day as they made their slow progression. Despite months of trying, he’d never mastered it—not the way Tom had. Tom could predict the hour within two minutes of the actual time registered on the face of the large Seth Thomas clock mounted above the green-and-tan door directly across the corridor from Willie’s cell.

Sun or not, Willie had slept late this morning. The muted hubbub of sounds rising from the main prison yard just below his window told him that the day was well underway. Captain Rankin had let him sleep late. Captain Rankin did that often, for Willie never ate breakfast anyway. But there’d be coffee, rich and freshly brewed by Captain Rankin in his office, with plenty of sugar and canned milk to stir in it. Death house inmates were the only convicts allowed unlimited amounts of sugar and milk for their coffee. Even on the outside, Willie had heard, few people in these wartime days of 1943 could obtain unlimited amounts of sugar and milk—even if they could find coffee. Willie smiled at the thought. Captain Rankin was good to him.

Willie kicked back the cover, stood, and stretched long and hard beside his bed. A small man, he stood only five-and-a-half feet tall and weighed 115 pounds. He was twenty-eight. Beneath a thick shock of sandy hair, which on most days he brushed straight back without a part, his pock-marked face, deeply sunken cheeks, prominent off-center nose, and melancholy brown eyes gave him the look of an emaciated weasel. His ever-sallow complexion, accentuated by months of incarceration, extended over his entire body. On the inside of his arms, at the bend of his elbows, an unsightly patch of long-healed scar tissue bore mute testimony to a life of drug addiction.

Standing there nude, as he always slept, Willie was nonetheless comfortable. The death house, intolerable during the scorching summer months, was pleasantly steam-heated during colder weather. He stepped to the opposite corner of his cell and urinated into a lidless steel commode fixed to the wall. When he finished, he pushed the handle and watched the amber waste swirl and disappear down the drain. Flush toilets, too, were luxuries for condemned men only. Convicts in the general line had only wooden slop pails, which they carried out each morning to be emptied at the prison sewage plant, rinsed with Lysol, then hung on wooden pegs to dry for use the following night. Seldom did an inmate get the same pail twice.

Willie grabbed his khaki trousers and lightweight denim shirt from the foot of his bed and slipped them on. His inmate identification number was stenciled in bold white numerals across the shirt pocket and again in even larger numbers across the back. He sat on the edge of the bed and picked up a pair of thin white cotton socks that lay wadded in a ball on the floor. He pulled on the socks, then stepped into a pair of frayed corduroy house slippers. He hadn’t been outside the confines of the death house since his arrival a year before. Every third day he was escorted by two guards to Captain Rankin’s office at the head of the corridor for a shave from a convict barber. Every third week he received a hair trim, every Monday a bath. During all those months he hadn’t worn shoes, underwear, or a belt. The absence of a belt was a death house rule. The foregoing of shoes and underwear was Willie’s choice. The wear on his slippers was the result of a daily one-mile walk, five hundred trips wall-to-wall, back and forth across the length of his cell.

After dressing, Willie pulled a pack of Chesterfield cigarettes from his shirt pocket and shoved one in his mouth. He had seldom smoked ready-mades before coming to prison. They were too expensive. On the outside he smoked Bull Durham, five cents a bag, including twenty sheets of roll-your-own paper. Here it was different. Churches and other charitable groups vied for the privilege of providing permissible items to condemned men, and cigarettes, purchased from the tightly controlled prison canteen, were high on the list. Cigarettes purchased from sources outside the prison were not allowed.

Willie patted his pockets and located a match folder. It was empty. Shit.

He went to the front of his cell and pushed his face against the bars. “Archie”—his voice had the timbre of a clarinet with a bad reed—“gotta match?”

No reply.

“Archie?”

This time a clear baritone voice answered from the end cell down the corridor to Willie’s right. “He’s not there, Willie.”

“Hey, Tom!” Willie said. “What’s with Archie?”

“They moved him to Block Three early this morning,” Thomas Penney replied. “Gray, too. There’s no one left down here but you, me, and Bob.”

“How come?” Willie asked.

“Think about it, Willie.”

There was no response.

“We’re the stars of the show tonight, Willie,” Tom explained. “This place will be crawling with reporters all day, and Big Jess doesn’t want two more cons down here confusing things.”

Willie pondered this. Slow of wit, he found it difficult at times to follow Tom’s oblique way of explaining things. After a moment he grasped Toms meaning. “Hey . . . Governor Johnson’s not gonna let that happen, huh, Tom? Not all three of us on the same night. One of them reporters that was down here yesterday . . . that guy from Paducah . . . he told me it’d never go down like that.”

“That guy from Paducah’s not the governor, Willie.” Tom’s voice was caring, like that of a concerned parent explaining things to a confused child. Talking to Willie was like that sometimes. “Yes, Johnson will let it happen. Tonight. Prepare yourself for that, Willie.”

Just then, another voice thundered from the opposite end of the death house. “Penney, you miserable asshole, clam up! Willie, you hear me?”

“Yeah . . . I hear you, Bob.”

“Don’t listen to that crazy son of a bitch, Willie. He’s been aching for months to get his ass fried, but that don’t mean your number’s up. Mine sure as hell ain’t. It won’t happen. You listen to me, Willie. It won’t happen.”

“Morning, Bob.” Tom spoke up so his voice would carry through the corridor. “Didn’t know you were speaking to me these days.”

“I’ll be speaking to you plenty before this day’s out, you no-good bastard,” Robert Anderson replied. “So will my lawyers. This rap’s not going down like you set it up. You can bet your ass on that.”

Tom looked at the clock across the hall. It was 9:00 A.M. “You’ve got fifteen hours left, Bob. I advise you to use it to make peace with God.”

“You can stow that shit, too.”

In his office across the corridor from the cells, Death House Supervisor John Rankin shook his head as he listened to yet another acrimonious exchange between Anderson and Penney. Rankin was a huskily built man with thick gray hair and Brillo-pad eyebrows that no barber dared touch. Although his pay scale reflected the rank of a captain of the guards, the only supervisory duty he had over other prison officials was on the evening of an execution, when a guard detail was assigned to death house duty. His usual dress for his job was everyday civilian clothes, but on this day he was immaculately attired in the dark blue uniform denoting his rank. From the beginning of his employment at the penitentiary as assistant death house supervisor twenty-three years before, his only wards had been condemned men. Two years later, when he was promoted to fill the position of the retiring death house supervisor, he began the full-uniform ritual on the final day of a condemned man’s life. He considered it an act of common decency. His compassion for his charges had earned him sincere respect from all inmates at the institution.

Captain Rankin rose from his desk, took three heavy white china mugs from the cupboard, and filled them with hot coffee from a pot on his office stove. He stirred two heaping teaspoons of sugar and a couple of ounces of canned milk into one cup. The other two he left black. He put the cups on a tray and stepped across the corridor to Bob Anderson’s cell.

“This isn’t a day for that sort of talk, Bob,” he admonished. He handed one of the black coffees through the bars.

Thirty-eight-year-old Bob Anderson looked anything but what he was—a convicted killer. Of average height, stockily built with a double chin and distinct paunch, he had not, as had his two associates, lost weight during incarceration. His round, almost cherubic face usually shone with good humor. It was only when talking to or discussing Tom Penney that his dark eyes flashed with anger.

He took the coffee. “Thanks, Captain Rankin. No offense meant to you or anyone else except that bastard at the end of the hall.”

Captain Rankin let it pass and stepped to Willie’s cell. He handed the sugared and creamed coffee through the bars. “Here’s your morning milkshake, son.”

Willie smiled at the longstanding joke between him and Captain Rankin. He took the cup. It was the only thing he ever took for breakfast. Pearl didn’t like that about him, he remembered. She always tried to get him to eat a bowl of cereal, or at least a piece of toast, with his coffee. The thought made him sad. He didn’t want to think about Pearl anymore. He tried to banish her from his mind by concentrating again on the limited view beyond the window.

At the last cell Captain Rankin handed the remaining black coffee through the bars. “Looks like you’re catching up on your correspondence, Tom.”

“Yes sir.” Tom rose from his desk and took the coffee. “Thank you, Captain.”

Captain Rankin stepped to the center of the corridor, where he could be seen by all three men. How much easier it would be, he thought, if they were kept in adjoining cells. But the separation was the warden’s orders, and Captain Rankin didn’t question orders.

He cleared his throat. “Tom . . . Willie . . . Bob”—he looked at each man as he spoke their names—“there’s going to be a lot of people showing up here today. Lawyers, reporters, preachers. They’ll surely want to talk to you. Warden Buchanan says that’s your decision. As you know, he usually invites reporters to come with him when he makes the final reading of the warrants. If you want to talk to them afterward, fine. If you don’t, that’s fine, too. The warden has instructed me to respect your decision in the matter.”

He moved closer to the green-and-tan door.

“Now, since you’ve been here you’ve seen eight men go through this door. You know the routine. And you know I’ll be here for you. If there’s anything you want, anything I can do, just ask.”

Bob Anderson called out, “How about a one-way ticket to Louisville, Captain?”

Rankin chuckled at the death house humor. “Out of my jurisdiction, Bob. I’m afraid the only person who can do that for you now is Governor Johnson.”

“Not true,” Bob retorted. “There’s someone else can do it. You listening, Penney? Tell the captain how you railroaded me. You and your Holy-Joe act about being so concerned for your soul. You may have everybody else around here conned, but you ain’t fooling me one bit. My life’s on your soul, Penney, and we both know why. And you’re going to burn in hell for it unless you come clean in time for Johnson to act. Tell him that, Captain. Talk some sense into his thick skull.”

Captain Rankin shook his head and went to his office. He switched on the radio connected to two speakers mounted on the wall across from the cells. A rich baritone voice was singing: “Heaven . . . I’m in Heaven . . .”

“Hey, Penney,” Bob called. “Hear that? That’s the Old Groaner himself. He helped put your ass in this hell-hole, remember? Well, soon as I get sprung I’m going to make a special trip to Hollywood just to shake his hand for that.”

Tom ignored the diatribe. Seated at his desk, where he had been since dawn, he leaned back in his chair and listened to the mellow voice of Bing Crosby croon the words to “Cheek to Cheek.” It was one of Penney’s favorite songs.

The song ended and the announcer introduced another record. Tom Penney turned back to his work. On his desk was a writing tablet, a Watterman fountain pen, a package of Chesterfield cigarettes, and a box of Whitman chocolates, unopened. A shelf above the desk held a dozen well-thumbed books, among them The Long Way Home by Robert Benson, The Following of Christ by Thomas à Kempis, The Spiritual Life by Edgar Brightman, The Song of Bernadette by Franz Werfel, and the Catholic Bible. Beneath the shelf, stuck to the wall with tape, was a list of names scrawled in Toms handwriting: Father George, Father Brian, Sister Robert Ann, Sister Mary Laurentia, Mother. The first name had been lined through. One letter lay folded on the bed.

He thought of a name not on the list. He sat back and looked toward the cell window and conjured up her image.

Pam. Blithe spirit with the bewitching smile.

He wondered where she was. Had she followed her dream to California? He wished he knew, wished he could write to her and explain the dreadful things she must have read about him by now.

After a moment he turned back to the desk and picked up the pen and started a letter to Father Brian. Before he finished the salutation he laid the pen down. He leaned forward with his elbows on the desk and gripped his head with both hands. He hadn’t gone to bed until well after midnight and had tossed fitfully until sunup. It had been that way now for seventeen months, ever since that night of horror in Lexington. For a long while afterward he had avoided sleeping at night, thinking that by napping during the day he could avoid the dream. It was futile, for the dream came not with darkness but with sleep. So he had turned to alcohol. Thereafter, his sleep became drunken stupors. Then, following his capture, the booze ended and once again sleep became terror. This morning, as he had every morning since incarceration, he awakened at dawn with an excruciating headache. Well, he thought, this will be the last. The ultimate cure to all his bodily ills loomed just on the other side of that green-and-tan door across the hallway, just hours ahead. No more headaches. Indeed, no more sunrises.

His thoughts turned to Bob Anderson, and the throbbing in his head intensified. He got up and stepped over to his bed. He was taller than his companions, standing an even six feet without shoes, with the sinewy build of one who had worked long at physical labor. His ruggedly handsome Nordic features were marred only by a jagged scar extending down his left cheek from below his chestnut hair to his chin. He was thirty-four.

He reached beneath his pillow and retrieved a wooden rosary. The beads were shiny from constant fingering. He grasped the rood tightly in his hands and returned to his desk and looked again at the list of names taped to the wall. Four names remained. Four letters. But it was another letter that obsessed his thoughts at this moment. A fifth and final letter he must write, to a person whose name was not taped there with the rest.

The last and most important letter of his life.