by Deeanne Gist
“Ready?” the warden asks him, and I hear Striker gasp yes.
The door clangs open, and I hear the black shirt guards enter to chain Striker in leg chains and cuffs.
Striker is silent as he shuffles out of his cell. Jesus made a last walk, I think, and so did Hitler. We all get a turn, and now it is yours. The only one we’ve missed so far is the devil, and once we get him, you and me is out of business.
Striker shuffles past me, flanked with the black shirt guards, who hold his elbows for safety and guidance. He walks down the row, weeping. I pull my cover completely over myself and clutch my book.
“Safe striding,” someone calls.
“Hail Odin,” says another.
Then another long silence, and from the other cell next to mine comes York’s soft, penetrating voice. “I’m next, you bastard. I’m next.”
After Striker is killed, his body is unhooked from the medical vine. The corpse valets quickly strip off his soiled uniform, which will be laundered and sent on to the next inmate, and tumble his naked corpse on one of the battered metal cafeteria carts. An old paint-spattered throw cloth is tossed over the corpse. The valets wait until the area is cleared of all the witnesses before they wheel Striker’s carcass to the crematorium.
When they built this enchanted place, the idea was to make it self-sufficient. They started farms outside the prison walls that were once plowed by the short-timers. Those fields lie fallow now, taken over by wild mustard. They built grinders for the wheat that was grown, and giant mixing bowls for the bread to feed the men—coarse bread with the hulls of the wheat still inside. Those bowls now lie turned on their sides in forgotten basement rooms, filled with dust, and the grinders were dismantled and taken away years ago to be sold as scrap metal. They built factories so the inmates could make their own clothes out of wool that was at that time carded at the women’s prison. The factory is still housed in Building G, but now the convicts make a popular brand of clothing called Convict Blues that is sold for outrageous prices on the outside. They built an infirmary and a tiny chapel in the yard. That chapel is now the rape shed.
The idea a century ago was that the men lived here until they died, and as they lived, they should be no burden to others. When they died, their ashes were to die here, too. There was no reason to waste money on paupers’ graves. How much easier, the first warden thought, if we just burned the dead.
And so a crematorium was built. There are almost three thousand inmates in this prison, with the number being constantly replenished. Men die here all the time, of age and of each other, and so smoke often rises from the graying, sooty smokestack behind Cellblock H.
The oven is buried deep in the basement, in a catacomb of boilers. The oven is nondescript. It could be a big bread oven. It has a metal door with a coiled heavy latch. The inside is scarred with the heat flashes of metal fillings and metal body parts burning.
It is very late when Striker is wheeled across the yard. The moon glows on the dusty dirt. The valets take the creaking elevator down into the basement with the body and leave it at the oven door. Striker’s white legs dangle out from under the haphazard drop cloth. He joins two other bodies on carts. One is Daniel Trubock, the famous wife killer, dead of a gunshot that has been classified a head injury. The other is a nameless old man. He came here years ago on a minor charge—shoplifting—and ended up spending decades of his life in one of the metal coffins of Cellblock H, singing like a loon.
Two new guards come down the metal steps, pulling on thick heat-proof gloves. They open the metal oven door.
Taking hands and feet, the guards load the inmates in the oven. Naked except for a swatch of dark pubic hair and a set of faded navy tattoos on flaccid arms, Striker is tumbled into the oven. His white buttocks look like two narrow white stones.
The door is slammed shut, and the dial for the fire is turned on. The oven heats to 1800 degrees, but it is old and cranky. It takes between three and five hours to burn the bodies, depending on how many men are inside.
No one likes to be by the oven when the men burn, not even the female guards, who seem the toughest and most able to take death. The burning bodies make hissing and popping sounds. When the heads explode from the trapped steam, they make a particularly gruesome sound, like giant bugs being thwapped.
The guards leave and go up the narrow metal stairs to a small damp lunchroom. They eat their packed lunches and drink weak coffee from Styrofoam cups. Neither has much of an appetite. The male guard reads a car magazine. His female counterpart knits a pair of blue baby socks for her best friend’s baby.
“Did you ever expect to be working here?” the male guard asks her at one point.
The woman shakes her head, eyes on the dangling bootie. “But in this economy, I’m not complaining.” She has a friendly working-class smile.
“I’ll just be glad when probation is up and we can get away from the oven,” he says.
All new guards spend their probation at the oven. If you can handle the despair of the oven, you can handle anything. And it is a good place, away from the inmates, for the guards to learn the unspoken rules of the prison. There is one set of rules they teach the guards on paper, but it is the unwritten rules that matter.
It is almost dawn when the guards head back down the steps. They open the smoking door and stand back, waving away the cloying smoke.
“This job has ruined barbecue for me,” the male guard jokes.
The female guard immediately responds, “Now you made me want pork ribs!”
The male guard shakes his head, laughing at her.
They shovel out the hot ashes into coffee-can urns stacked on another old cafeteria cart. They rush and scrape the ashes into the cans. The ashes of the dead men get all mixed up, and who is to complain? When the cans are full, the male guard hammers down the metal lids, and the woman writes the inmate numbers on the top with a black marker. There are no names on the urns. You die a number here.
When they are done, the female guard rakes the oven for any fillings or metal pins while the male guard wheels the new cans into one of the rooms that line the basement like so many closets for the dead.
Wall after wall of ashes are stored on tall wooden shelves in these rooms. Years of flooding have rotted the shelves and rusted the cans. In some rooms, the shelves have fallen and gigantic clumps of cans are fused together with rust into shapes like strange metal gargoyles. In summers, the wet cans dry out and then slowly bulge and explode. Rivers of gray ash have run down the shelves, leaving drifts of ashes on the floor. Over time, an inch of compacted ashes has accumulated on the basement floors. It seeps and sifts down through the broken concrete, so if you dug ten feet or more under this basement, you would find soil riddled with currents of ash.
The male guard walks through this coating as he finds a space and tosses the three new cans on a heap of others on a top shelf. The dried ashes make a gritty sound and stick to the treads of his black work boots.
When the guards are done, they turn off the dim lights and leave the basement. A nugget of a tooth has gotten stuck in the treads of the male guard’s boots, and he stops on the metal stairs on the way up to gouge it out with his regulation knife. The female guard waits patiently for him, one hand resting on the railing.
The oven ticks as it cools down. The last of the sweet-smelling smoke rises from the chimney.
That is when the flibber-gibbets come out.
I am afraid to talk about the flibber-gibbets. Out of all the wonderful, beautiful, and enchanted things in this place, the flibber-gibbets scare me more than anything else.
They come out into the oven room, small and gray, holding their swollen little cannibal bellies with their hands, groaning with pain as if about to give birth. I can smell them even from where I am—they smell like cinnamon sugar gone bad. The flibber-gibbets do not scramble and snicker like the little men with their hammers. They do not sigh and slap like Risk and his cronies. They do not fight like York or cry in pain li
ke the white-haired boy or enjoy the cool grip of the phone like Conroy. They do not lie like the lady or freeze like the priest or try so hard like the warden.
They do nothing that is human, and this is what frightens me.
The flibber-gibbets writhe on the warm floor in front of the oven, gripping their swollen bellies. I can picture the slippery gray coils of death inside them, just waiting to be squeezed into promise.
Their macabre dance over, the flibber-gibbets slowly rise. They go room to room, sniffing for the new cans. They climb up the shelves with silent determination, gripping the rotted wood with their razor-sharp teeth. They make no sound as they find the new cans, still warm with the ashes. They crawl over the cans, their eyes narrowing as they bend arms and legs like insects or reptiles seeking warmth. They bite one another with bland fury if one gets in the way. Their bite marks leave open gray wounds like dead clay. No blood or fluid comes from the wounds. You could put a penny in each gray slot.
When I am dead, I will be put in the oven and burned and shoveled into a can like Striker and the others. I am okay with that. I will be no more than ashes. It would be better if I were less, but a can of ashes is okay.
What I don’t like is the thought of the flibber-gibbets climbing over my new warm metal skin. I don’t like to think of myself wrapped in their limbs, taking the last of my kindling warmth.
But I know that this enchanted place comes with its own vision. My eyes are not the eyes of the Lord. My eyes are not the eyes of the lizards among us, of the dirt and the stones and the bloody hearts. This is the way it is. That is the way it should be.
The day after Striker’s execution, the light above me flickers to tell me the news—the golden horses are going to run. They always seem to run around the time of an execution. I can see their gold-flecked nostrils and bronzed skin, their hard flexing muscles and wild dark eyes. Their eyes are like dark agates or like the color of bronze poured to iron—eyes like the lady’s. Or York’s. Dark eyes that see nothing as they run but the pure wild joy in movement.
It is brassy daylight out, and the men of the yard stop and feel the horses’ movements under their feet. Risk and his cronies at the weight pile stop and feel the trembling under their feet. The whole enchanted place stops and tilts its head to listen.
Go, horses! I think. Go. And they do, running with magic and stretching desire, their flanks out and their tails a whiplash of gold, their manes streaming nothing but butter yellow. No one rides them; no one could. They stretch their bodies underground as if the sun lived there and could rise and warm the earth above, warm it like molten metal. I hear the pounding even from my dungeon, see the faint powder erupt on the walls as they go thundering past. Go, horses! I think. Go.
Another loop and the tremors come again. Another pass and the beating of hooves as they pound past my cell wall. The men on the yard sway, uncertain, and there is a holler from a guard tower. “All down,” the fool yells. Doesn’t he know the horses are running? The men drop for fear of a rifle shot to the back of the skull, and it is for the best, because as they fall, they lie on the ground and feel the clods under their hands. They can feel the golden horses moving, feel their muscles, and feel their strength as they pass.
A voice pipes in from a bandstand far away. It sounds like an old-fashioned radio voice. Nine, it says, eight or six. Four, maybe. The horses run with names no one can understand. Richard, Glenn, Plato. Men try to name them, but men cannot name anything as wild and unpredictable as these horses. Who could name such power? They defy names. One more time, please, I pray, and my prayer is rewarded as the trembling begins, and the horses are suddenly right on the other side of my wall, running so close to the stone that freshets of dust and mica shake from the walls to rain like silver dust on my floor. I fall to the floor and sift their precious dust and I can see them, their hard metal bodies, the way the gold rises to cream on their backs and flows off in ripples of heat, how their eyes are wide with pleasure and their nostrils flared, the smoke of desire bellowing from them.
Go, horses! Run! The whole dungeon is trembling with the heat of their pass, and I can hear the other men of the row cry out with something like fear and wonder as our walls shake. Their hooves are retreating once more, and I am on my knees, my hands swaying in unspeakable pleasure in the fresh dust they have shed.
The radio calls from farther away. The tower lights flash and then flash again, and the men rise from the dirt of the yard outside, dusting it off from their hands, laughing embarrassedly to each other. They do not stop to listen carefully for the sound of the golden horses as they retreat far underground. They do not feel the pang I do at knowing the horses ran so close to me and have ridden away once again.
I do not know when they will come back. They have cleaved back down to the underworld, where red rivers burn and cliffs ignite. I do not know the name of the place they come from. It could be hell or heaven or the gate to either—it defies me as much as their names. But I know the golden horses gallop there, their manes like tongues of fire, their legs stretched out with the pure joy of running, their hooves unafraid of damning the dirt.
The lady is not at the prison during Striker’s execution. She is never around during the executions, not of her clients, not of others. She feels for the priest that he has to be there, but watching men die holds little interest for her.
She is more interested in the living.
She takes the photo of little York and his mother back to Auntie Beth, as promised. The thrill of the blue forest does not abate for her. She hopes to stay the night in the same motel, hopes to spy rental signs for cabins along the way—just dreaming, she tells herself.
Auntie Beth is quiet on this visit. The lady is accustomed to that. A fatigue sets in with the families she works with. There comes a point when all the secrets are told and all that is left are their spent ghosts. She has told Auntie Beth that once the case is over, she will disappear from her life. She always tells the families this important truth.
So they enjoy their friendship for the moment, wrapped in the early-afternoon glow on the front porch as they sit together.
Auntie Beth rubs at her swollen toes, wrapped in her huge pilled slippers. “He gonna die?” she finally asks.
“I don’t know,” the lady softly answers. “Sometimes they do.”
Auntie Beth nods, sighs. She looks at the hills. No promises. The lady sees that she has rubbed a little lipstick for rouge on her cheeks, tidied her iron hair with old clips. These little efforts by families for her visits always touch the lady to the quick.
“Gonna cry when it happens, even if he deserves it.”
“Of course.”
“You know where his mama is buried?”
“No.”
“I’ll get you the address.” The old woman hesitates and then busks her knees against the lady: a quick gesture but a knowing one. “I want to ask you. . .” she stops.
“Yes?”
“I was gonna ask—those poor girls.” Auntie Beth stops. Her chin trembles, and the lady sees grief even in her teeth.
“Yes,” the lady says. Her voice sounds like it can absorb a river of tears.
“You’ll say sorry for me? To their families?”
“Yes,” the lady says. “I will tell them sorry from you.”
The old woman breaks down in tears, there on her front porch, and eventually, the lady reaches one hand over and holds her shoulder as she sobs.
The lady feels drained as she makes it to the address Auntie Beth has given her. It isn’t much as far as addresses go, but it’s easy to find: the back grounds of the state mental hospital.
They used to have paupers’ graves back then. She thinks of the crematorium at the prison and wonders which is worse: to be buried a number or burned?
The slot for York’s mom seems too narrow for a body, and the lady has a gruesome image of the pauper corpses laid side by side, endlessly spooning under the earth. York’s mother was one of these, entombed in a shroud,
buried with dirt thrown over her and only the sky watching. No one was here to say goodbye. There is just a small rusted metal nameplate lined up with the others. There is a date of her death but no date of her birth. Perhaps they didn’t care to check.
The lady looks up and sees she is standing among hundreds of nameplates, stretching to the desultory woods behind the old hospital grounds. The newer grounds—the fancy places they parade for the public—are up front, fresh with splashed pastel paint and sculptures and a big fancy building.
But the truth is back here, the lady thinks, buried in a slot too narrow to contain a body. York’s mother. Shirley. Buried like thousands of other mentally disabled people over the years, nameless and willed to be forgotten.
She reminds herself to make sure her mother has a proper grave when she passes, with a headstone and her name and nice flowers at the side. The normal people in the graveyard can scoot over a bit, she thinks, and make way for Mom. The thought makes her smile.
The lady is glad that she came. Sometimes the roads she takes don’t bring her anyplace she can offer in court, but they give her insight all the same. It feels good to stand with her beaten black boots crunching the dirt above York’s mother’s bones, to feel a recognition: You existed, you counted, you were here.
She takes a picture of the grave, because you never know. Maybe York would like to see where his mom is buried.
As she leaves, she passes an old pink building with windows weeping rust, surrounded by a falling cyclone fence. She looks to the iron bars of the windows and remembers this was once the children’s ward, where, for infamous decades, children as young as eight were housed in nightmarish conditions, drugged with heavy psychotropic medications, and, she has heard, raped by older kids. She has heard stories of what life was like for the children in that building, before they shut it down.
And then she goes looking for the doctors who treated York’s mother before she died.
