Take Me There (29 page)

If you are lucky, you will never watch a man die by lethal injection, but you might be curious all the same. I know I was. So I asked my lawyer to tell me what happened in the death house down in Huntsville. He informed me there was a radio broadcast put on a few years back called “Witness to an Execution.” You can listen to it on the Internet if you care to. I can’t because I don’t have a computer, so I had to read the transcript. You don’t actually hear a man die, but you’ll hear the voices of people who have watched it happen, some of them fifty or more times.

According to the transcript, a man’s last day on death row goes something like this:

On the afternoon the man is to be executed, they put him in a white prison van that takes him from the Polunsky Unit in Livingston to the Walls Unit in Huntsville, where he spends what time he has left with the prison chaplain.

Around two o’clock the prisoner is allowed to make a phone call.

At four thirty he is served his last meal. He can order absolutely anything he wants, but he’ll only be served what is available from the prison cafeteria. Contrary to what most people think, nobody is running down to the local Steak and Ale to buy him a sirloin.

As for me, when it comes my time to go I’m going to ask for ham steak, mashed potatoes, snap peas, and red-eye gravy.

At six o’clock the governor calls to give the final go-ahead and so does the attorney general. Shortly thereafter the man is led to a small room with a metal gurney that fills up nearly all the space inside. In about thirty seconds the tie-down team has him bound to the table with six different leather straps.

At 6:05 the medical team comes into the room and inserts needles into both of the prisoner’s arms. Then they hook up the IVs through which the poison will be administered by tubes coming from a wall behind the gurney where an anonymous executioner sits waiting.

Around 6:10 the witnesses are escorted into two small rooms. One room is for the victim’s family and friends, and the other room is for the family of the man about to be executed.

At that point a microphone is lowered from the ceiling, and the warden asks the condemned man if he has any final words.

When the prisoner is done talking the warden gives a signal to the executioner, who begins to administer sodium pentothal, an anesthesia like they use in operating rooms. Next he’s given chromium bromide to collapse his lungs, and then a third drug is administered to stop his heart.

By 6:20 it’s all over.

Those who have witnessed executions say there is no sound worse than the weeping of a mother watching her son being put to death.

They’re wrong. There is one sound that is worse.

There is silence.

THE HEART OF TEXAS, 2

In the heart of Texas there’s a man,

a murderer condemned to die.

They put him in a prison van,

and take him for this one last ride.

He spends the afternoon in prayer

until they bring his final bread.

Then take him to a back room where

they strap his legs, his arms, his head

down in the heart of Texas.

E
VERY CLOCK IS A BOMB, TICKING AWAY AT THE MINUTES
of our lives, counting off the seconds one by one before we die.

All I can do all day long is to sit in the trailer, watching the second hand on the cuckoo clock going
tick
,
tick
,
tick
.

At birth a heart is given a certain number of beats. The clock is counting them off one by one and will not allow a man any more than his allotted share.

Today is the day my father’s clock is to run out.

Jess brings me breakfast, then lunch. Both sit untouched on the table in front of me. The breakfast ham is a rotting pig. The meat loaf is a rotting cow. We are all rotting, making our way from womb to tomb, to the rhythm of the great clock counting downward to the grave.

When the clock strikes three and the bird comes out yet again to squawk at me in three shrill chirps, I rip it out by its spring. Then I tear its little wooden house off the wall and crush it under my boot.

“Are you coming?” says a voice, and I look up to see
my grandmother standing in the doorway, wearing her black Sunday dress.

“Where are you going?”

“Huntsville.”

“To the Walls?”

“Yep.”

“After all these years, you’re goin’ now?”

“I saw your daddy into this world. So I guess I’ll see him out.” She presses her lips together to keep from crying. “You coming with me or not?”

“I can’t,” I say, shuddering at the thought of watching the prison guards strap my father down to the metal table.

Levida nods. “I thought not.”

“Will you call me when it’s over?” I manage to ask.

“Of course,” she tells me.

I walk down to the farmhouse. Sit on the sofa. Look at the clock hanging on the kitchen wall and resume my watching. Jess sits next to me, without a word, and folds my hand into hers. Holds it tighter when I start to cry.

This is what love is. Not the moments on the beach, or under the stars or the trees, or in the moonlight. Love is sitting together in the quiet, waiting for death to come. Knowing you’re not alone.

At five o’clock, one hour before my father is scheduled to die, I hear a knock on the door. Jess and I both jump off the couch.

“Who do you think it is?” she whispers.

“I don’t know,” I say, but I can only imagine the cops have finally caught up with me. “You answer it.”

She nods, then slowly opens the door, and I hear a voice say, “I’m
T.J. Seagraves, from up the hill. My mother wanted me to bring you this.”

“T.J.?” I say, opening the door a little wider, as I see him handing Jess a basket full of food.

“My mother says she knows you all are going through a rough time. She wanted you to have this.”

“Thank you.” I take the basket and set it in on the coffee table. My stomach is a knot and right now I feel like I’ll never eat again, but I appreciate the gesture.

“I think she knows that if things had worked out different, it coulda been my father up there in Huntsville. You’ve been lucky, growing up away from all this,” he tells me.

“Yeah, real lucky,” I say. Even so, I realize it couldn’t have been easy for T.J. growing up in Quincy. “Tell your mother thanks for the food, and thanks for that night when she took me in.”

“I still remember it,” T.J. says with a shudder.

“You do?”

“We heard a gunshot coming from the direction of your trailer. It woke us up. We knew something terrible was happening. My dad grabbed his shotgun and started out the door. I remember my mother trying to stop him. He told her, ‘I gotta go. The Dozer’s in trouble.’”

“He came to our trailer that night?”

“No. He started to, but then your daddy showed up. Said Jack was dead. I’ll never forget the looks on the faces of you and your mama, like you were in shock.”

“What do you mean, me and my mama?”

“When your daddy brought the two of you up to our house.”

“That’s not possible. My mother had left. She was staying with her brother down in La Puerta.”

“I guess she came back. Piss-poor timing.”

“No. That’s not possible. She …” A picture comes into my brain. A picture of my mother driving a black Cadillac. “She came back to get me,” I say, and the image I have not allowed to surface plays across the screen of my memory as I see that night from so long ago.

I am six years old and I am standing at the window in a bedroom inside my grandmother’s farmhouse. I am supposed to be asleep, but I’m not. I’m standing at the window crying for my mother.

My grandfather is dead. My father is gone all the time, and when he is home he is afraid. My grandmother has stolen me away from my mother, but now that she has me here, all she does is sit alone in the dark, drinking.

All I want is my mother. She is the only one who can protect me.

And then like a miracle she is there, coming for me, driving a black Cadillac past the house and up to the trailer.

I run as fast as I can, following the car up the dirt road. By the time I get up to the trailer she is already inside. I hear her calling my name. “Dylan, where are you?”

“Here I am, Mama.”

I run into her arms. She holds me tight and I know I am safe.

And then come the headlights and the dark man who comes storming into the house, yelling my father’s name.

“Hide!” Mom says, and we both go into the pantry.

I can hear the front door slam shut and we think he is gone, but then it opens a few minutes later and we hear footsteps. They’re moving toward us.

“Don’t let him get me, Mama. Don’t let him get me.”

“I won’t let anybody hurt you, baby,” she whispers, and I see a strength in her eyes I’ve never seen before.

And then I remember the .22. I dig through the peanut sack until I find it, and it feels good and solid in my hand. It feels safe. But I know it will feel even safer in my mother’s hand. I press it into her palm.

“Where did you get this?” she asks. I point to the burlap sack.

We see the doorknob in the pantry start to turn. My mother holds the weapon up in front of her, hands trembling.

The door swings up. I see a man’s hand. It’s holding a gun. My mother closes her eyes. Shoots. Blood comes out of the man’s mouth, splattering the blue curtains. He staggers backward and falls on the living room floor.

We step out of the pantry. It’s dark except for the moonlight streaming in through the living room window.

My mother looks at the man and cries out, “Jack! Oh my God! Jack!”

The bird comes out of the clock, squawking at us so loudly I have to cover my ears. And then my father comes through the door. Looks at Jack, who has stopped moving. Feels for a pulse. Looks at my mother and says, “He’s dead.”

My mother drops the gun.

Starts to scream.

I start to scream.

My father puts his arms around us.

Holds us.

“Don’t worry. It’s going to be all right. Everything will be all right. This wasn’t your fault. Listen to me. It wasn’t your fault.”

My mother stops screaming and starts crying. “I came back for Dylan.”

“I know.”

“And you.”

“I know.”

“All I wanted was for us all to be safe … and together.”

“The two of you will be. Listen, you didn’t kill Jack. I killed Jack.”

He picks the gun up from the floor and slips it into his back pocket.

“They’ll send you to prison.”

“Probably.”

“You can’t.”

“For God’s sake, Mollie, think of Dylan and let me do one decent thing for our family.”

I squeeze my mother’s hand. I’m crying. I don’t want my mother to go to jail. She is the only one who can protect me. “Mama, I’m scared. I want to leave. Take me away from here. Mama, please.”

“I’m in too deep,” my father tells her. “They’re going to send me to prison, no matter what. We can’t leave our son alone.”

“What if they kill you?” she asks him, crying.

“That won’t happen. I promise you.”

“I won’t let them kill you. I love you.”

“I know.”

“Dylan, are you okay?” asks Jess.

She is so beautiful, standing there in the late afternoon sun coming through the window, light illuminating her face.
I would do anything for her. I would kill to protect her. Die to protect her.

And in that moment I understand everything my father has done.

“There’s something I gotta do,” I tell Jess. “Somebody I gotta see.”

“Who?”

“The governor of Texas.”

THE HEART OF TEXAS, 3

In the heart of Texas there’s a sound,

the sound of weeping in the halls.

The witnesses are drawing near

to press their faces to the glass.

Watching minutes ticking past.

Praying, crying, listening.

Waiting for fate’s arm to swing.

And then the warden starts to speak,

of the sacred trust that he must keep

in this place of death and sleep,

deep, deep in the heart of Texas.

I
T’S FIVE FORTY-FIVE BEFORE I GET TO
A
USTIN AND ALMOST
six o’clock before I reach the capitol building.

I go to the front desk.

“I have to see the governor,” I tell the woman wearing a security uniform.

She looks at me and smiles as if she’s talking to a small child. “You can call his secretary tomorrow morning and see if he has any appointment time available. Here’s the number.” She writes a number on a piece of paper and hands it to me.

“I don’t have time. They’re going to kill my father any minute now by lethal injection.”

She studies my face, pity replacing her coolness. “You’re Dozer Dawson’s son.”

“Please. I have to talk to Governor Banks.”

“I really wish I could help you.”

“Just ask him,” I say, grabbing the phone on the security desk and handing it to her. “It won’t hurt you to ask him.”

“It won’t help you either.”

“Please.”

She stares at the phone.

“Please!”

She picks it up. Presses in a number. “This is Sally at security. There’s a boy down here who wants to talk to the governor. His name is …” She looks at me.

“Dylan Dawson.”

“Dylan Dawson,” she says into the phone. “Yeah, I can wait.”

While she waits, the security guard covers the mouthpiece and says, “I saw your father play for the Longhorns. He was amazing. Best linebacker that school ever had.” She turns her attention back to the phone. “Really! Wow. Okay then.”

She hangs up and looks at me in total disbelief. “The governor says he’ll see you.”

I take an elevator to the second floor, where a secretary lets me into an office with polished wood doors. “You have five minutes,” she tells me.

I walk inside, march up to the governor’s desk, and, without bothering with an introduction, say, “My father didn’t kill Jack Golden. You have to call off the execution.”

“Whoa, let’s just rewind for a moment, buddy. First of all, it’s a bit late to be coming forward with new evidence, if you even have any. Secondly—”