Love Her Madly

by Mary-Ann Tirone Smith

  Now I couldn’t help but smile, just as he couldn’t help the serious look that accompanied his solemn words. I said, “How is that literal? Frankly, it’s about as metaphoric as I can imagine.”

  The smile came back, smaller, though. “An evangelical preacher does not speak metaphorically. There is not one thing Jesus said, nothing in the New Testament, that is metaphoric. It is fundamental. There is no need to interpret. It is all there for us to see, plain as day.”

  He picked up the Bible next to the Wheat Thins.

  I said, “I cannot believe that women taking over the world and annihilating the male gender is a real possibility to you. How can you trust Jesus to the exclusion of human dignity?”

  His eyes were very dark brown, almost black. Up until this moment, soft. But now he wanted me to see him. “Miz Rice, you are not just an FBI agent, you are a theologian. I would like to talk to you about human dignity, the lack of which is what happens when Satan infiltrates a person. I would like to do that because I forget that sometimes the drama of the pulpit is out of place in a conversation. But there is no time for the two of us to try to understand each other. I feel, though, that you and I want the same thing: that which is right and just.”

  I’d give him that. I joined him in a few Wheat Thins.

  “For ten years I have been chaplain to women condemned to die and to women serving hard time for felonies. And here is what I have witnessed. At some point during their incarceration, the gravity of what they’ve done just hits them like a bolt of lightning. In almost all cases the women are convinced the bolt was sent by Jesus. And when they experience that encounter with the Holy Spirit, they feel terrible … terrible. Mortified.

  “They feel huge and grievous guilt. They experience remorse. And, finally, they repent. Although I give credit to the Lord, I know that He didn’t send any lightning bolts. I am not blind to the benefits these women receive from a life of order when previous to their time in prison they didn’t know order. I do not deny the humanizing effects of education on them, the learning available to them here, minimal though it may be.

  “The point is, they come to accept their punishment fully. They learn to live with it, they welcome it as their due. When the bolt of lightning strikes, they suffer severe depression, and what takes them out of that depression is their need to give back. It drives them. It replaces their previous driving force—rage.”

  He’d finally put the Bible back down. His cheeks were pink, and now his hands clenched together.

  I said, “So what do they do about it?”

  “There are women here making afghans for the poor and knitting booties for foster babies during every spare moment they can find. But they need better means of giving back, of physically demonstrating remorse.

  “There are none. Rona Leigh is one of those women. She tried to organize a cooperative, to unify a group to create beautiful objects. Those same afghans but ones they designed themselves. And quilts. Dolls. All to be sold at a profit so that the money could go to shelters for battered women. To help take care of crack babies. Whatever. But she was stymied at every turn and was in fact forced to dissolve the network she’d formed with other prisons all over the state.” He smiled. “Many addictions here have been replaced with another: e-mail.

  “Miz Rice, I fell in love with the human being Rona Leigh has become. She is no longer evil. I want her life spared not because women shouldn’t be executed while men should, not because I’m against the death penalty, not because her victims were scum to begin with and were no loss to society whatsoever, not because of any of that. Though I see it is God’s will that this particular woman should be spared, the larger reason for me is this—and may God forgive me that I do not have the meekness he commands—I don’t want to lose her. I love her.”

  Ah, love.

  I said, “Let me tell you what I think about love. I think people fall in love not because of the individual who has come along and made their hearts go pitter-pat but because of the timing. When you’re ready for love … looking for love … you zero in on the very first person who comes along. Unless, of course, that person looks like Quasimodo. Then it’s the second person to come along.”

  This was true of myself but not anyone else I’ve ever met. Somewhere along the line, I realized I didn’t want to be married to the guy who happened to beat out Quasimodo due to fortuitous timing.

  Vernon gathered up some more Wheat Thins and started popping them into his mouth whole. He said, “I pray you are not correct about that.”

  C’mon, Vernon, old boy, stand up for your love for Rona Leigh. “Vernon, I wish I weren’t. But it explains why so many people find love in the wrong places. Because we go to the wrong place when we’re feeling the need for love.”

  “When we feel the need for love, we should go to church.”

  “That’s not where you went. You went to death row in a women’s prison. Perhaps Jesus led you there.”

  He could keep his voice steady, but he kept shoving fistfuls of Wheat Thins down his throat. He said, “I am almost afraid to ask. I worry that I am sinning if I ask. But I will. Do you see the Lord, then, as a manipulator?”

  “I don’t believe in the Lord.”

  He choked a little. He cleared his throat. He said, “You blaspheme.”

  I didn’t respond, but I held his gaze. Then he looked away, wounded, down at his Wheat Thins. Finally, he came back. “The Lord God is real. But it’s not a matter of belief. It’s faith. You haven’t faith. I will pray for you.”

  “Vernon, you claim to appreciate my honesty. Faith, as far as I’m concerned, is the need to believe what those in authority tell you is true. Once I had faith in the Tooth Fairy. I had faith because when I was five years old I lost a tooth and I found a quarter under my pillow the next morning. The preposterous tale my parents told me was true. But the next year, when I was six, I made believe I was asleep so I could peek at the Tooth Fairy as she exchanged my molar for a quarter. She turned out to be my dad.” Who was not a light-footed fellow. “At six I learned there wasn’t a Tooth Fairy or, for that matter, a Santa Claus, and probably not a God either. Faith to me is buying into bullshit—excuse me—when you’re a child and then, as an adult, refusing to accept that you were hoodwinked. By your parents, no less.”

  Now I waited. I expected self-righteousness and, I hoped, anger. Then I could get him to speak about Rona Leigh from the point of view of reality. Reality was the only thing that might possibly mean a new trial for the woman. But I didn’t get either. I got compassion. I got a benevolent smile.

  “Excuse me, ma’am, but you are wrong. There is faith and there is trust. They are not the same. But now I know something I didn’t know before. I can trust you, Miz Rice. You are honest and direct. To admit to atheism requires grand courage. But Lucifer lurks within you, and I will beg God with my very being to protect me from him as he is crouching so close by. And I will pray for your conversion more fervently than I have ever prayed for anything in my life. I believe it could well be harder to save your soul than to save the life of my wife. Not her soul … it’s already been saved. Her life is my more pressing need. So tell me exactly what you must know. Ask me and I will be direct with you. What can we do?”

  “We can go to the governor with something more than redemption.”

  “But what else is there?”

  “Two things. There is the strong possibility that she didn’t receive a fair trial. I’m gathering up several pieces that I intend to put together for the governor. And another thing is the truth about the crime itself. The truth of the actual crime that might never have been considered to begin with. Vernon, has Rona Leigh ever told you that she didn’t kill Melody Scott?”

  His eyes grew wide. Such a question amazed him. “No. Of course not. She has maintained her guilt from the start. And then—through the grand gift of the Lord Jesus—she came to take responsibility.”

  “Has she ever said she didn’t remember what happened that night?”
>
  “No. She remembers each directive Satan ordered.”

  “Has she ever revealed a motivation for killing beyond the drugged and drunken state she was in?”

  “No. When Satan controls you, there is no other explanation for your actions.”

  “Have you ever thought she didn’t commit the crime?”

  “I never knew the vessel she was when she was inhabited by the devil. I only know the woman she became, the woman she is today, a woman who sees a spider and won’t kill it. Who asks a corrections officer to take it outside. The saintly woman my wife became once released from Satan’s iron grip. Now she can’t kill anything. Not even a spider, let alone a human being.”

  I leaned forward. I put my hand out to him, placed it over his. I said, “I’ll ask you again. Have you ever thought that she didn’t kill Melody Scott and James Munter?”

  I could tell by the expression that came over him that he hadn’t. Ever. Or maybe he never wanted to. If such was the case, I would confirm his fear that his sin lay in the absence of any meekness. I waited. I wouldn’t prod any further.

  He said, “But … Rona Leigh confessed.”

  “I know. Vernon, people confess all the time to crimes they didn’t commit. They confess because they want to be famous. Or because they’re alone and confused. Because they’re being threatened or tortured, or, if they’re young, they want to please those in authority. Conversely, sometimes when they’re young they need to brag about how tough they are. There are a lot of reasons why people confess. Perhaps Rona Leigh confessed because she had faith in the authority who told her to confess. Faith, or maybe … trust.”

  “But who else could have done it?”

  “Lloyd Bailey.”

  His chest puffed out. He pulled his hand out from under mine. He found a foothold. “They were equally guilty.”

  “Is she guilty if he convinced her that she’d committed the crime when she hadn’t? So he could get a lighter sentence? What if the police got her to admit it by reinforcing what he told her? She was in withdrawal. What if she confessed because she was promised drugs?

  “Reverend Lacker, you never answered the first question I asked you. How did she find redemption with such ease? Perhaps the answer is because she’s innocent.”

  He leaned way back into the sofa. Sank himself into the cushions. His eyes filled. “Ma’am, please. She was besieged by Satan. What difference does it make whether Lloyd killed them or she did? She was there with him, in the room where the killing happened. The point is that they became one evil entity in a marriage of degradation. They had been joined by the devil. The details of who did exactly what are pointless. They committed the crime together.”

  If Rona Leigh didn’t do it, he couldn’t give his hero, Jesus Christ, credit for saving her.

  But I had to make amends and do it fast. I said, “Pray for me.”

  With a stinking great heap of humility, he said, “I will.”

  Little son of a bitch.

  * * *

  The warden had an office-cum-sitting room on the third floor of the house under the eaves. He was probably more comfortable in his home than in an official office. That’s because he was, in effect, a plantation owner, the prison fields his land, the prisoners his chattel.

  He sported formal cowboy wear: white shirt, black string tie with a silver ornament, pressed jeans, and boots. The boots were chestnut brown, the leather shiny but with a patina that muted the shine to a lovely warm glow. A nice leather jacket hung on a hook behind him, and a Stetson, a perfect sculpture, white and solid as if carved from bone, rested on the shelf above.

  I hoped I’d be able to see a view of the mountain from the window—we were just high enough to see over the top of the post oaks. On the map I got from the library, I noticed that the highest elevation in the Gatesville area had in fact been something called South Mountain. Through the window, I looked south. The highest hill seemed ever so slightly higher than the second highest.

  I said to the warden, “Is that South Mountain?”

  “Yes, Agent, it is.”

  I’d say the elevation of South Mountain was maybe nine hundred inches. There was no mountain. Someone gave the women’s death row its name as a joke.

  Beyond the prison complex I made out a narrow line of muddy water, one of those creeks the army engineers had impounded and turned into Belton Lake. The prison fields were surrounded by a wetland that spread out into the far distance. State School Road had been laid across a swamp, the houses on either side built on fill.

  The warden said, “So you’ve come to speak to the prisoner.”

  I turned from the window. “Yes, I have. But there are a few things I’d like to know before I do.”

  “For instance?”

  “When will she be transported to Huntsville?”

  “Rona Leigh’s not goin’ anywhere.”

  “I’m sorry? I understood…”

  “The death house in Huntsville is smack in the center of town. It’s a big brick box, takes up two city blocks. The Walls. Nickname ’cause that’s what you see: walls. The holding pen is in the Walls too. We’ve decided we can’t send her to a unit where the population is entirely men. If we do they will become, let’s say, agitated. The law says executions shall be carried out at the Walls. However, the wording doesn’t say women shall be executed there, it says men. So we were able to get around it. Rona Leigh will die right here at her home, something all of us wish for when it comes time for our own passin’. It’ll be real hard on my corrections officers. The guards. They’ve all come to know her. Whereas at the Walls, the boys execute strangers. So I’ve had to make clear to our own boys that they’re just cogs in the wheels. The people responsible for the execution of Rona Leigh Glueck are her jury, her arrestin’ officers, ex cetra. The governor himself.

  “The holding pen is in our death house, in the same building as the execution chamber. The execution will be carried out on my turf, and I intend to do my turf proud.”

  He sounded like the father of the bride.

  I said, “Will the details be the same? I mean, the holding pen, for example. Is it a cage?”

  “Nothing could describe it better. It just arrived from the manufacturer three days ago.”

  “Where is the building?”

  He rose and joined me at the window. He pointed.

  “See just inside the front gate? The little bungalow? Used to be a rest station for the watch guards, if they needed a little nap during their break. It’s been converted to a death house. It’s not quite ready. End of the week.”

  “May I have a look?”

  “Can’t see why not.”

  He took a key from a wall safe and grabbed his Stetson. Same one that the Texas Rangers wear. He set it on his head at a perfect angle without having to look in a mirror.

  Outside, we climbed into his pickup for the fifty-yard trip. I asked him, “Have you spent much time with her?”

  “Yes, Agent, I certainly have. She is allowed to ask to speak to her warden. I have accommodated Rona Leigh as to all reasonable requests, just as I have accommodated yours. And that brings me to a request of my own. Strictly based on curiosity. I think I am entitled to know what your aim is here, considerin’ my hospitality.”

  I would be honest. Why not? “Rona Leigh Glueck’s defense requested information from the FBI pretrial. Through a bureaucratic laxity, they didn’t get the information. I have it. I want to determine if it would have had any bearing on the outcome of the trial.”

  “You aim to spring Rona Leigh?”

  He was half smiling at me.

  “I aim to know the truth.”

  “Ain’t got a hell of a lotta time, have you?”

  “No, I don’t.”

  “You know, ma’am, I have had to call on her many times without her askin’. I had to lay down ground rules throughout this past year when all the other do-gooders decided to come to her rescue.”

  I was a do-gooder. I’d been demoted from agent
to ma’am.

  “She isn’t deserving of rescue is your feeling?”

  “My feeling? My feeling doesn’t enter into it. I am not paid to cross the courts, no matter what my feeling might be.”

  “Warden, why do you think there is such a clamor to save her? The do-gooders aren’t your typical anti-death-penalty people. Many of the people who are calling for the governor to save her life support the death penalty.”

  “All but one of ’em: the pope. He ain’t for the death penalty. But the rest of them—Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, each and every member of the Christian Coalition—they are. But them and the typical do-gooders like that Morley Safer, say, or the guy from 20-20 Vision, all those fools think Rona Leigh isn’t a murderer anymore. She was, sure, but now she’s a woman-aglow-with-Jesus instead. Hell’s bells.

  “A murderer stays a murderer, no matter what she’s like years after she committed the crime. And all murderers are actors, I’ll tell you that right now. Some movie producer ought to cast these killers for their pictures. A psycho can act any role he wants to. Rona Leigh Glueck has spent every wakin’ minute playin’ a part. That sweet-as-molasses smile a hers? An act. You ever see a picture of that Catholic statue, ma’am? The one with Mary holding Jesus across her lap after they took him down from the cross?”

  “Yes.” I didn’t say I’d seen the statue itself. “The Pietà.”

  “That’s the one. Who built that?”

  “Michelangelo.”

  “Right. I was readin’ about that statue one day in Christianity Today. Long time ago, someone asked Michelangelo why he’d given his statue the face of a young girl. And he said that the mother of Jesus was chaste, a virgin; he was a Roman Catholic, after all. He said, Therefore she don’t age.

  “Rona Leigh, at her trial? She was still in her teens, but she had the face of a played-out, drugged-up, alcohol-sodden, hooker killer, which is what she was. Inside a few months, once Rona Leigh was dried out? She didn’t want to be in prison anymore. She figured it would take a miracle to get her off death row. So that’s what she decided to go for: a miracle. Honest to Pete, she put on the face of the actual mother of Jesus, like Michelangelo’s statue. No lines, no wrinkles, pure white skin, and she’s stayed the same even now and she’s no spring chicken.