The Speed Queen (5 page)

I don't have many fears for myself anymore. My biggest fear is that Gainey won't know who his parents were. That's one reason I'm making this tape. I don't want him reading Natalie's book and thinking it's the truth.

Honey, I love you and I'm always looking over you, and so's your daddy. I know this won't answer everything. We were young and mixed up. Don't you be that way; you see what it leads to.

That's about it for fears. After a while you understand it's a waste of time. There's only so much you control.

I used to be afraid of the weather. Out near Depew you could see it coming a hundred miles away. You were supposed to get hail right before a tornado. It would get dark and then you'd hear it dinging off the hood of our car. My mom loved it. "Look," she said as it hopped in the grass. "How big around would you say those are?" She put a slicker on and a pot on her head and ran outside to put the car in the garage. On the way back she filled her apron, saving the bigger pieces for the freezer. Jody-Jo staved under the dining-room table, resting his head on the carpet. I turned the TV on to see which counties were getting hit. The weathermen were on all the channels. Pea-sized. they said, marble-sized. Golf ball, baseball, soft ball. Outside it was like nighttime. My mom went out on the porch.

"Come see the lightning," she said.

I'd only go to the door. Leaves Flew in around my shins. The glider was going all by itself; the yard looked like it was covered with mothballs. I knew at work my dad would have to calm the horses down. I was afraid one would kick him in the head like they did in the movies. I was afraid he'd be trying to get home, driving with his windshield wipers on high. He d have to lie in a ditch when the tornado came. His car could roll over on him, or the wind might pick him up. and then there were the wires still shooting sparks, the poles falling like trees.

In the west, lightning branched down the sky.

"Marjorie, look!" my mom said. "Isn't it beautiful?"

Of all the ways they kill people, the only one I'm afraid of is the firing squad. Here's why. They're made up of five people, usually guards. They stand behind this screen with a slit in it and you sit in a chair with a cloth target over your heart. If they like you, they don't want to be the one to kill you. So what the state does is put a blank in one of the guns. Anyone who's fired a rifle knows a blank doesn't have a recoil like the real thing. It's not like the electric chair, where there's two switches and one's a fake. The same thing goes for lethal injection; there are two buttons that press the plungers. With the firing squad, you know who's doing it.

What happens sometimes is everyone on the squad like- tin person, and they all fire away from the heart. It's happened a bunch of times in this country, and even more during war. Everyone hits you in the right side of the chest and you bleed to death while they're reloading. So it's better if they don't like you. When they killed Gary Gilmore, the four shots overlapped at the heart of the target —like a four-leaf clover, the book said. I wouldn't want Janille to have to make that choice.

You asked me about dreams. There's this great dream in Monty Python where this guy's about to be shot. The firing squad's locked and loaded on him, and all of a sudden he wakes up in this chaise lounge in his backyard. His mom's there, and he says, "Oh, Mom, thank heavens, it was all a dream." And his mom says, "No, dear, this is the dream," and he wakes up in front of the firing squad again. That's what it's like sometimes, especially this last week. You expect Darcy to be there but there's only Janille.

The firing squad's not very popular anymore. Only Utah and Idaho use it. It's worse in foreign countries and during wars. They'll shoot you anywhere.

But what about you, what are you afraid of? No one reading your books after you're dead, I bet. Hey, it's okay, they'll still watch your movies, and that's what counts.

I don't call myself born-again and I don't go to any particular church. I'm a Christian because I believe in Jesus Christ. That's it and that's all. I don't believe in figuring out all of the world's problems. I don't think I'm going* to save anybody, even myself. There's no guarantees of anything.

When I became one is a tougher question. I began reading the Bible my second year here. Even before my trial I was getting letters From people who didn't know me telling me that God hat! saved me for this. Some of them thought I was innocent and some of them said it didn't matter. It was a kind of tribulation, they said. I would be a witness. I didn't believe them at first because, honestly, some of them sounded crazy. A lot of them talked about the Last Times and the Rapture, things only crazy people would say. I didn't write any of them back and after we lost they stopped writing, all but a few of them.

One day a few months later Janille had a package for me. It had been opened and taped back up like they thought it was a bomb. It was from the Reverend Lynn Walker in Duncan. He'd sent letters before, saying I needed to remember the trials of Job. Now he'd sent me a new Bible, still in its shrink-wrap. He also sent a yellow highlighter with it. His note said I should mark the words that spoke to me, and that I might start with the Psalms. I wasn't forgotten, Reverend Walker said. Every Sunday the congregation of the Duncan House of Prayer was remembering me.

"Got any use for this?" I asked Janille, and stuck it through the bars.

"I already got one," she said, flipping the thin pages. She rubbed her thumb over the gold edges and the rough leather cover like a salesman and handed it back to me. "It's a nice one though."

"Think the library would want it?"

"I think they have enough of them."

"What am I supposed to do with it?" I asked.

And I remember Janille backing away from the bars like it wasn't her problem.

Remember that, Janille —the day my Bible came?

Janille's been a friend. She switched shifts so she could be here tonight. We read a little earlier in Revelations, the seven angels. I haven't told her yet but I want her to have my Bible. Sister Perpetua said that was kind of me, but it's not. Janille knew what I needed then. In a way, she saved me.

I didn't start reading it right then. I put it away where I wouldn't have to look at it. It wasn't for another year that I dug it out again.

It was June because the TV was all repeats and the floors had just started to sweat. The cement turned slick and you had to be careful if you were a pacer. Next door Darcy was listening to her boombox. I had my atlas out, and I was driving through Oak Creek Canyon on Alternate 89, curving along with the water, the red rocks piled high on both sides. Darcy turned her box off, then on again, then off. I rolled out of my bunk and went over to the corner where the bars meet the wall.

"What's up?" I said.

"Your girlfriend Natalie's gettin' out."

"What?" I said, except I didn't say, "What?" Back then I used a lot of unnecessary language. "How?" I said.

"She's done two of her six."

The numbers made sense but it was impossible, like a bill you've forgotten and can't afford to pay.

"When?" I said.

"August first."

I thanked her and went back to my bunk and wondered if I could have Natalie fixed. I couldn't. I didn't have any money, and everyone thought I was crazy. She'd be free and I'd be stuck here the rest of my life.

A little after midnight, I opened the Reverend Lynn Walker's Bible to Psalms and read:

Happy if the man

who does not take the wicked for his guide

nor walk the road that sinner tread

nor take his seat among the scornful;

the law of the Lord is his delight,

the law his meditation night and day.

I uncapped the highlighter and colored the whole thing in.

Sometimes in your books you make fun of religious people. You make them crazy or evil, like in "Children of the Corn" or Needful Things. I'd appreciate it if you didn't this once. Just make me the way I am.

I was wondering if you'd do a 13. It's like a yellow car's supposed to be unlucky, like our Roadrunner. Lamont said you make your own luck. Maybe he was right.

The worst thing about being executed is the waiting, knowing it's going to happen. Five years ago, when they scheduled that Connie gal, Mr. Jefferies said it was just a matter of time for me.

The last woman they did before that was back in the thirties, this woman who ran a tourist court with her husband out west on Route 66. This was in the Dust Bowl days, when families packed everything in the Model A and headed for California. What this woman and her husband did was let them park in a grove of pecans off behind their cabins. In the middle of the night the man and woman would cut their throats, steal their stake and sell the trucks to a man up in Wichita. They got caught when the man in Wichita stopped buying the trucks. The police found a whole barn full on their property. In the house there were fifty wedding rings on a keychain. They hanged the woman first. Her last words couldn't be repeated.

Then for sixty years, nothing. It was like the rules changed with Connie Whatever-her-name-was. Mr. Jefferies said I was next on the list. There were others who'd been waiting longer, but he said they'd want me because of the publicity. The Marjorie Standiford Case, they called it, like it was all my fault, or the Sonic Killers, like Natalie's book. Not that she made that name up; it was in the papers even before we got caught. She didn't even write the book, it was this lady sportswriter from the Oklahoman.

But Mr. Jefferies was straight with me. He said we had somewhere between two to four years. All we could hope was for the governor to lose the election.

"Is he supposed to lose?" I asked, cause I really didn't know. I didn't even know who the governor was for sure.

"We can't worry about that," Mr. Jefferies said. "Right now we need to get this appeal together."

That was five years ago, so I owe him one.

Thank you, Mr. Jefferies. You didn't lose. I should have told you about me and Natalie.

That's the worst thing, the waiting, knowing you can't stall forever. Like I said, I've had two stays, which isn't a lot but it's something. Mr. Jefferies is at his office now, faxing things to the Tenth Circuit Court in Denver, so who knows.

The execution itself only scares me a little. I've read every book in the library on it. They make you lie down on the table and strap you in. Then the technicians stick an IV line into your vein that pumps in a saline solution. They do that for forty-five minutes just to make sure everything's set. A lot of people they do are heavy users, so finding a good vein is a problem. They strap you in and let you lie there like you're going to have an operation, only you're not waiting for a doctor.

There are three chemicals —sodium pentothal's the only one I know. Each one is in a syringe that ties into the IV line. Two people press down buttons in two different rooms, and the machine presses down the plungers in order. One set goes into you. the other drains into a bucket so no one Feels bad. First, the pentothal knocks you out, then the machine waits a minute before the next one. The next paralyzes your heart and your lungs. The third just makes sure. They say you choke some but in most cases it's pretty quick. It's not sleep but it's not the gas chamber either. Oklahoma was the first state to switch to it. They used to hang you. You might say something about that.

I think me being a woman works both ways. Mr. Jefferies talked with me about this. A man in my position would probably be dead already, but he wouldn't be getting all this bad publicity. People expect killers to be men. A woman's not supposed to kill, and a mother's definitely not. Mr. JefFeries said it was better when we were the Sonic Killers because people tended to blame everything on Lamont, being the man. That's stupid but that's how people think. Since Lamont was dead and we were married, the blame shifted onto me. Even if Natalie didn't lie, she would have gotten off easier because it looked like she was just going along for the ride.

In the beginning I used to get a lot of letters from women's groups, but they all wanted me to say things about Lamont beating me, how that was the reason I stayed with him and why I couldn't see that he was crazy, which isn't at all true. I hey just wanted someone else to say what they said so people would think it was true.

That's a tough question. Darcy could answer it better than I can. She's read a lot about how terrible it is being a woman. I don't pay that stuff much attention. What's my other choice, being a man? I like men, but I wouldn't trade in a million years. There's a reason they die first.

The media doesn't have to satisfy me. They don't even have to tell the truth. All I want from them is equal time.

When Natalie was going to be on "Oprah," I asked Mr. Jefferies if we could do a remote hookup or just something by phone, but Mr. Lonergan said no. I couldn't watch it. Darcy said they played up the same things as always —the fingers, the cop in the desert, Shiprock. They take the weird parts and make them the most important thing, like Natalie's toys.

And they don't even get things right. They called our Road-runner a Dodge and said that I was a convicted felon. In the Oklahoman there was a map of our route west that showed us going through Amarillo instead of around it. Compared to the big things, I guess it's nitpicky of me, but why write it if you're going to get it wrong?

And I'm tired of that picture of me eating the onionburger with the gun in my other hand. I swear it's the only one they use. Someone must think it's funny.

All of that would be fine as long as they didn't drag Gainey into it. They always have to say he was in the car. No matter how small the article is, they get that in.

The whole idea is to make me look stranger so people can pretend they're normal. It's not just me, they do that with everybody. That's their job. No one's interested in how people really are. I mean, it's not interesting that I brought Gainey with us because I couldn't get anyone to sit him and I didn't want to leave him home by himself. It's not interesting that I kept looking out the window to make sure he was okay. They never mention that, they just say he was in the car like I'd forgotten he was there, like the woman who drove away with the baby on the roof.

I never planned on getting out of the Roadrunner. I wasn't supposed to turn it oft. I was supposed to wait in the stall until Lamont called me on the intercom, then I'd roll around to the drive-thru and pick up the money. The way it was planned, I would have been with Gainey the whole time. We'd even stopped at the Dairy Kurl up the street and gotten him a junior hot fudge sundae. I was twisted around feeding him when I heard the shots. When we got back to the car, his lace was a mess, and I gave Natalie a wet wipe. The whole thing took ten minutes, and except for maybe two minutes in the walk-in fridge, I could see him the whole time. But in the paper they make it sound like I just left him there. I don't care what they say —a mother worries.

I was on TV once when I was a kid. My whole class was. This was right when Skylab was going to crash. Mrs. Milliken, our ail teacher, had us make fake space parts out of papier-mache and put them all over this burnt field behind the school. She called the TV stations and they came out and pretended it had really hit there. My piece was supposed to be the radio, and the I people asked me if they could take my picture with it. The camera had a light on top of it that blinded me.

"Did you receive any last messages from Skylab before it hit the ground?" the guy with the microphone asked.

"Just one," I said, and screamed as loud as I could.