Notes on an Execution, page 16
* * *
Dear Ansel.
I hope that you can smell the trees. They talk, did you know? If you ever feel lost, just whisper to the bark.
Dear Ansel.
I hope the world has been good to you. I hope you have been good to it.
Dear Ansel.
My love. My heart. My little boy.
I—
* * *
Home. The smell of leaves, trampled into the ground. Damp oak, the smoky char of Sequoia’s cooking stove. When Lavender creaked open the door to her room, her patterned quilt sat folded on the edge of the bed, gentle and welcoming, just how she’d left it.
The next morning, the women recited a poem. Juniper herself had requested printed copies of Lavender’s favorite Mary Oliver and placed a sheet on each clean breakfast plate. Harmony was sheepish—when she laid a hand on Lavender’s shoulder to excuse her from dish duty, Harmony’s fingers trembled like she knew she’d made a mistake. It wasn’t Harmony’s fault; Lavender could only blame her for the idea. Lavender herself had stepped into that gallery.
After dinner, she and Sunshine took a walk around the valley. They sank into the evening glimmer, the vague insect clatter, the sleepy rustle of birds in their nests. When the campfires had been extinguished, when the lights flickered one by one and Gentle Valley was blanketed in sleep, Sunshine followed Lavender back to her bedroom. They left the lights off, clamored fully clothed beneath Lavender’s sheets. Lavender shook with the grief of it all, as Sunshine wrapped herself tenderly around, the shape of her body a reassurance against Lavender’s heaving spine. In another life, maybe, Lavender would have turned to face Sunshine, would have let her tongue ask about its own wanting. But this was Lavender’s life, and Sunshine was simply a good friend who knew what she needed—a swaddle, a rocking, the sweet lullaby of skin.
When Sunshine fell asleep, Lavender stood in the generous dark. She pulled the chair from the desk beneath her window, settled her aching hips into the frame. In the moonlight, the blank sheet of paper was luminescent. The pen in her hand a glistening dagger.
Dear Ansel, she thought, as she pressed the ink to the sheet. A missive she would write but knew she’d never send, another addition to a universe of what-ifs.
Dear Ansel. Tell me. Show me. Let me see what you’ve become.
4 Hours
Bend, the officer says. Pants off.
The new prison smells different. Like the paste that holds old bricks together, like wet concrete and steam, which rises from the building next door—the factory, where the low-security prisoners make lumpy mattresses for college dorms.
Pants off, the officer repeats.
The sheet of notebook paper is still folded against your hip, a sharp edge pressed into elastic. Blue’s letter. As you fiddle with your waistband, you try to tuck the paper into your palm, but a corner of white flutters inevitably into sight. The officers move fast: in a matter of seconds, your cheek is pressed to the dusty floor, wind pummeled from your chest, pants tangled around your feet. The officers cackle as they unfold the note, taunting.
What do we have here?
Dear Ansel, one of them begins to read aloud in a high, false woman’s voice. My answer is yes. I’ll be there, to witness. I don’t want to—
You struggle to stand, pain flooding your ribs as you wriggle obediently out of your underwear. Your penis curls into its nest of hair, small and soft and unprotected. One officer checks your rectum while the other hovers, mocking. He reads Blue’s words in a nasally mimic:
I don’t want to see you, and I don’t want to talk—
Stop. Please.
The officer gestures like maybe he’ll give the paper back—squatting naked, you reach. The officer grins, holding the page by one delicate corner. Slowly, he rips it in half. He rips again, then again, until the long white strips break down into confetti. Something internal shreds along with the words, but you stay crouched until your knees quake. Blue’s handwriting drifts to the floor. Graceful, like falling snow.
* * *
The officers pull you violently down the hall.
Please, no—
You did not expect to beg. They only tug harder, a warning. Don’t fight. Your legs are sludgy now with a panicked hesitation, but they prod you forward anyway, ignoring the weak dig of your heels.
Right now, you should be reaching the river. You should be listening to the grumble of water, flowing over smooth rocks. You should be putting one foot into the stream—a shiver, then the other. You imagine how the cold would feel on your ankles, the icy water slapping you gloriously awake.
The shock spreads. It thrums, then collapses, rolling in waves of bewilderment. Until this instant, you did not realize how wholly you had believed it. You had believed that you would escape, or at least that you would die trying. You had believed this for so long—so fully—that the truth now seems ridiculous. Impossible.
There is no sky. There is no grass. There is no getting out.
* * *
You are a fingerprint.
A thumb, pressed firm to an electronic pad. No question: it is you, wiping dust from your eyes with the back of your hand, it is you, tugged forward by the link of your handcuffs, it is you, wearing new white scrubs that smell inexplicably like meat. It is you, stepping across the threshold. It is you, now, in this place they call the Death House.
The holding cell is small. Back on 12 Building, descriptions of this famed place always varied in shape and size, depending on who came back to tell the story. When you reach the door, you clock the difference immediately: your old cell at Polunsky had a window built into steel. The Walls Unit keeps open bars.
It would be so easy with Shawna, to touch through these bars. But Shawna does not work at the Death House. Shawna is back at Polunsky, walking Jackson down the hall for his shower, her fleshy arms jiggling as she shuffles through the gray. You picture her face, guilty and stupefied, as you walked out of 12 Building for the last time—how Shawna stood, watching useless, knowing she had lied.
There was no gun. There was never any gun.
All those chunks of wasted time. The stolen moments, sappy love notes, grazing touch, all for nothing. Shawna is nothing, with her rolling hips and the sores across her mouth, a stutter forming on her chapped and cracking lips. Shawna is weak. So very woman. Her future will be empty without you—Shawna will complete her morning rounds, she will drink watery coffee from her old stained thermos, she will serve hundreds of meals to other bad men, and eventually she will forget these weeks, in which she was nearly significant, a part of something important. Almost, you feel sorry for her.
But then you see the room.
It is only a glimpse, taken in the tiny second before they shove you into the holding cell. Fifteen feet away, down the hall to the right, the door is propped open. You catch just a sliver of that halfway place, a fleeting flash, the stuff of lore. The execution room. In that millisecond glance, you see the walls, a noxious shade of mint green. You see the window, a curtain shrouding. The two rear wheels of a gurney.
You stumble into the cell, wishing you had not looked. That room is like heaven, or hell, or the moment of death itself: a place you should not see until your name is called.
* * *
Three hours, fifty-four minutes.
The world goes sideways, all wrong with the change. You sit on the edge of the new cot, hands firm on the mattress, trying to figure how you have arrived here.
You have had months—years—to consider this outcome. In all that time, you never imagined you might actually see the Death House. The future always managed to twist itself, expanding into pliant and inscrutable shapes. The future was a mystery, unknowable. You honestly never considered that the future might come to this. It feels too small, too helpless, for a person like you.
You remember that man back at Polunsky—the inmate who famously gouged his own eye out and ate it. You recognize some obscure corner of that feeling, a desire that makes some raw sense to you now. The desperation is intentional, maybe the most important part of this exercise. It is why they made you wait for years, then months, now hours and minutes, the whole of your life transformed into a countdown. The point is this. The waiting, the knowing, the not wanting to die.
* * *
How do you work this job?
You asked the question one noontime shift—Shawna looked tired, purple bags sinking beneath her eyes. Big Bear had been taken to the Walls Unit that morning. He’d sobbed as they marched him out to the van, heaving, wracking, two hundred and fifty pounds of utter devastation. Big Bear, a Black man with a singing voice like God. Big Bear, the only person you are absolutely certain did not deserve the Death House. Twenty years ago, Big Bear had been watching TV in his living room when a team of police officers burst in with a no-knock warrant, meant for the man in the apartment one floor above. Big Bear kept a gun beneath the couch cushions. The room was dark.
That day, the row went silent in mourning. The only sound was your whispering rage as Shawna grasped vaguely for comfort, twirling her hair anxiously between her fingers.
How do you wake up every morning? you had asked, unable to keep the anger from your voice. How do you get out of bed, knowing you work in a system like this?
My dad had this job, she said with a shrug. My brother, too.
But don’t you ever think about what you’re participating in?
Not really, Shawna had said, disinterested.
You wanted to tell Shawna that she was a cog in a deplorable machine, that prisons are also companies, maximizing profit, staying afloat on a pile of bodies like Big Bear’s. You have been watching the news. You have been reading the paper. It is not your problem, not your concern, but still no coincidence that you are one of only three white men on A-Pod. You wouldn’t care much about all that, if you were not subject to the same psychotic system.
You wanted to push Shawna, but it wasn’t worth the risk. You needed her too badly. She wiped a sheen of sweat from her forehead with the back of her hand—you both listened to the sound of the row, muted for once, a group of men grieving over something more despicable than themselves.
* * *
The new warden appears. He has a crew cut and a boxy jaw—his gaze makes you feel like an earthworm, crushed soggy along the bottom of his shoe.
Do you understand today’s procedure?
Yes.
Here is your Execution Summary, your Religious Orientation Statement, a copy of your Offender’s Travel Card, your Current Visitation List, your Execution Watch Notification, your Execution Watch Log, your Offender Property Inventory, your medical records. Do you have any questions?
No.
He slides the paperwork beneath the steel bars. You cannot speak, those first rigid questions echoing.
Do you know who you are?
Yes.
Do you know why you are here?
You had no choice.
The answer was yes.
* * *
Into a new visitation room.
Tina wears the same outfit as this morning, which feels like a thousand years ago. Sitting behind the glass, you recall the smug surety of your last meeting—the fact jumps angry in your throat. Impossible.
Hello, Ansel, Tina says through the phone. I’m afraid I don’t have the best news.
You know what is coming. You clench your jaw until it aches—you have given very little thought to the appeal. It was supposed to be irrelevant.
The appeal, Tina says. The court decided not to consider it.
What do you mean? you ask. They can’t just ignore it entirely.
Yes, Tina says, they can. It’s not uncommon.
But didn’t you tell them? Didn’t you tell them I’m—
You cannot say the word. Innocent. Tina knows better.
Didn’t you tell them I don’t want to die?
As soon as the phrase leaves your mouth, you regret it. It sounds childish, too hopeless.
We filed, Tina says, not answering the question. I’m sorry. We did everything we could.
You hate her for this lie. This glossy woman, who clicks her nails against the table like little hard candies, flicking her tongue between white Chiclet teeth. It occurs to you then, a burst of clarity: Tina believes you deserve this punishment.
I’m sorry, Tina says. I’m—
You don’t let her finish. You consider the weight of the telephone in your hand, then rear your arm back. You hurl the phone against the glass, which does not shatter, only bounces the phone off with a loud, unsatisfying crack. Tina does not move, does not even flinch.
The guards come running, like you knew they would. You don’t fight, but they handle you hard anyway, twisting your arms so far back that your shoulders will be sore tomorrow. Tomorrow. The last you see of Tina is the top of her head, bowed in reverence or disdain or indifference or sorrow, you cannot tell which.
* * *
A violent push, back into your cell. The door slams shut. You lie flat on the lumpy cot, arm flung over your eyes. You try to think of Blue—usually, she brings you comfort. But it’s this room. It’s this cell, new and alien. When you conjure Blue now, she is looking at you with that familiar question.
What happened with Jenny? Blue had asked.
It was your second week at the Blue House. A sunny day, humid and fragrant. You had spent all morning in the yard sawing lumber, and a trail of sweat trickled slow down your back.
Sometimes things just don’t work out, you said.
Why not? Blue asked.
She held a can of Coke with the tab flicked off, her head tilted hopeful and curious.
Marriage isn’t easy, you said simply.
Do you still love her? Blue asked.
You wiped your forehead with your shirtsleeve, considering. As Blue waited for an answer, innocent and quizzical, there came a swelling fondness. For Blue, and for this place. For the breeze that soothed your salty skin.
Of course I still love her, you said. But the good parts of the story are nowhere near the end.
You decided, then, to go back to the beginning.
* * *
You first saw Jenny on a warm evening in October.
Freshman year of college, first semester. You were seventeen years old, standing on the quad, unsure as always what to do with your body. You’d arrived at Northern Vermont University on a full scholarship—the principal at your high school had cried with the news. The kids at school had never liked you much, but you had always been good with teachers, counselors, social workers. You knew how to let them feel useful.
It was the same with your professors; you were quiet, hardworking, charming when you needed to be. You buried yourself in lectures and late study sessions, ignored your beefy roommate when he came home puking drunk. You avoided the squawking girls on your dorm hall and the other work-study students at the cafeteria. You bought a pair of glasses at the drugstore, lenses blurry with a prescription you did not need. You examined yourself in the bathroom mirror. You tried to conjure someone new.
The rest of that awful summer had passed in a haze. The baby screamed constantly, background noise, as you scooped cones and listened to the radio next to the cash register. No leads on the missing Girls. You carried those Girls with you at first: they lived and died in your memory as you waited in line at the dining hall, as you raised your hand in philosophy class. They lived and died in the shadows of the trees, as you walked from the library to your dorm in the middle of the night. You wondered if people could see those Girls on you, if you wore them visibly or just internally, like any other secret.
Everything changed, when you saw her.
Jenny sat in the grass on the quad, the late-autumn light glowing everything orange. She wore a pair of nylon pants and tall white socks—her friends cheered as she did a confident backbend, hands planted in the grass. You watched from across the yawning lawn as Jenny’s belly button arched toward the sky, the curve of her like a monument to something holy.
Right then, you made the promise. You would be normal. You would be good. You took the memories of that summer, and you balled them up, shoving them deep into the crevasse of your unruly body. The sight of her arching back would dissolve those Girls, somehow erase them. You would offer yourself up to her sly, teasing grin, her soft fawn eyes—you would hand her the microscope.
You picked up your notebook, took the first step toward her. That was the great power of Jenny: not love at first sight, but some kind of un-haunting.
This would be it. Your last and only Girl.
Hazel
2011
The night before everything changed, Hazel woke to a squeezing in her chest.
The pain was searing, clenched like an angry fist beneath her ribs. She sat up, shrieking a gasp—it was a September midnight, the sort of humid that still felt like summer, and Hazel panted into the empty vacuum of the bedroom, clutching at her chest, the flame already fading.
“Hazel?”
Luis blinked up from the pillow. The room was lit only by the baby monitor crackling from her nightstand, and Luis’s breath was stale, like sour toothpaste and the garlic chicken she’d cooked for dinner. From the street, Hazel heard nothing—their cul-de-sac was still. She’d become used to the epic hush, but nights like this, the quiet inhabited a personality of its own. Nights like this, it mocked her.
“It’s nothing,” Hazel said, massaging her sternum. “Go back to sleep.”
The feeling had already gone. It did not leave a trace—not even a lingering spasm. It was a pain that could have been imagined, the tail of a dream flicking briefly as it whipped out of sight.
* * *
