by Jodi Picoult
“The thermostat says it’s sixty-six degrees,” the officer said, smacking the bulb with his hand. “It’s May, for chrissake.”
“Well, does it feel like sixty-six degrees to you?” I asked. My toes were numb. There was an icicle hanging from the bottom rung of my stool. “Can we get a heater? Another blanket?”
The temperature continued to drop. I put on my coat and zipped it tight. Shay’s entire body was racked with tremors; his lips had started to turn blue. Frost swirled on the metal door of the cell, like a white feathered fern.
“It’s ten degrees warmer outside this building,” the officer said. “I don’t get it.” He was blowing on his hands, a small exclamation of breath that hovered in the air. “I could call maintenance . . .”
“Let me into the cell,” I ordered.
The officer blinked at me. “I can’t.”
“Why? I’ve been searched twice over. I’m not near any other inmates. And you’re here. It’s no different than a meeting in an attorney-client conference room, is it?”
“I could get fired for this . . .”
“I’ll tell the warden it was my idea, and I’ll be on my best behavior,” I said. “I’m a priest. Would I lie to you?”
He shook his head and unlocked the cell with an enormous Folger Adam key. I heard the tumblers click into place as he secured me inside; as I entered Shay’s six-by-six world. Shay glanced up at me, his teeth chattering.
“Move over,” I said, and sat down on the bunk beside him. I draped a blanket over us and waited until the heat from my body conducted through the slight space between us.
“Why . . . is it so . . . cold?” Shay whispered.
I shook my head. “Try not to think about it.”
Try not to think about the fact that it is subzero in this tiny cell. Try not to think about the fact that it backs up to a gallows from which you will swing tomorrow. Try not to think about the sea of faces you will see when you stand up there, about what you will say when you are asked to, about your heart pounding so fast with fear that you cannot hear the words you speak. Try not to think about that same heart being cut from your chest, minutes later, when you are gone.
Earlier, Alma the nurse had come to offer Shay Valium. He’d declined—but now I wished I’d taken her up on his behalf.
After a few minutes, Shay stopped shaking so violently—he was down to an occasional tremor. “I don’t want to cry up there,” he admitted. “I don’t want to look weak.”
I turned to him. “You’ve been on death row for eleven years. You’ve fought—and won—the right to die on your own terms. Even if you had to crawl up there tomorrow, there’s not a single person who’d think of you as weak.”
“Are they all still out there?”
By they, he meant the crowds. And they were—and were still coming, blocking the exits off 93 to get into Concord. In the end, and this was the end, it did not matter whether or not Shay was truly messianic, or just a good showman. It mattered that all of those people had someone to believe in.
Shay turned to me. “I want you to do me a favor.”
“Anything.”
“I want you to watch over Grace.”
I had already assumed he’d ask that; an execution bound people together much like any other massive emotional moment—a birth, an armed robbery, a marriage, a divorce. I would be linked to the parties involved forever. “I will.”
“And I want you to have all my things.”
I could not imagine what this entailed—his tools, maybe, from when he was a carpenter? “I’d like that.” I pulled the blanket up a little higher. “Shay, about your funeral.”
“It really doesn’t matter.”
I had tried to get him a spot in the St. Catherine’s cemetery, but the committee in charge had vetoed it—they did not want the grave of a murderer resting beside their loved ones. Private plots and burials were thousands of dollars—thousands that neither Grace nor Maggie nor I had to spend. An inmate whose family did not make alternate plans would be buried in a tiny graveyard behind the prison, a headstone carved only with his correctional facility number, not his name.
“Three days,” Shay said, yawning.
“Three days?”
He smiled at me, and for the first time in hours, I actually felt warm to the core. “That’s when I’m coming back.”
* * *
At nine o’clock on the morning of Shay’s execution, a tray was brought up from the kitchen. Sometime during the night, the frost had broken; and with it, the cement that had been poured for the base of the holding cell. Weeds from the courtyard sprouted in tufts and bunches; vines climbed up the metal wall of the cell door. Shay took off his shoes and socks and walked across the new grass barefoot, a big smile on his face.
I had moved back to my outside stool, so that the officer watching over Shay would not get into trouble, but the sergeant who arrived with the food was immediately wary. “Who brought in the plants?”
“No one,” the officer said. “They just sort of showed up overnight.”
The sergeant frowned. “I’m going to tell the warden.”
“Yeah,” the officer said. “Go on. I’m sure he’s got nothing else to think about right now.”
At his sarcasm, Shay and I looked at each other and grinned. The sergeant left, and the officer handed the tray through the trapdoor. Shay uncovered the items, one by one.
Mallomars. Corn dogs. Chicken nuggets.
Kettle corn and cotton candy, s’mores.
Curly fries, ice cream crowned with a halo of maraschino cherries. Fry bread sprinkled with powdered sugar. A huge blue Slurpee.
There was more than one man could ever eat. And it was all the sort of food you got at a country fair. The sort of food you remembered from your childhood.
If, unlike Shay, you’d had one.
“I worked on a farm for a while,” Shay said absently. “I was putting up a timber-frame barn. One day, I watched the guy who ran it empty the whole sack of grain out into the middle of the pasture for his steers, instead of just a scoop. I thought that was so cool—like Christmas, for them!—until I saw the butcher’s truck drive up. He was giving them all they could eat, because by then, it didn’t matter.”
Shay rolled the French fry he’d been holding between his fingers, then set it back on the plate. “You want some?”
I shook my head.
“Yeah,” he said softly. “I guess I’m not so hungry, either.”
* * *
Shay’s execution was scheduled for ten a.m. Although death penalty sentences used to be carried out at midnight, it felt so cloak-and-dagger that now they were staggered at all times of the day. The family of the inmate was allowed to visit up to three hours prior to the execution, although this was not an issue, since Shay had told Grace not to come. The attorney of record and the spiritual advisor were allowed to stay up to forty-five minutes prior to the execution.
After that, Shay would be alone, except for the officer guarding him.
After the breakfast tray was removed, Shay got diarrhea. The officer and I turned our backs to give him privacy, then pretended it had not happened. Shortly afterward, Maggie arrived. Her eyes were red, and she kept wiping at them with a crumpled Kleenex. “I brought you something,” she said, and then she saw the cell, overrun with vegetation. “What’s this?”
“Global warming?” I said.
“Well. My gift’s a little redundant.” Maggie emptied her pockets, full of grass, Queen Anne’s lace, lady’s slippers, Indian paintbrushes, buttercups.
She fed them to Shay through the metal mesh on the door. “Thank you, Maggie.”
“For God’s sake, don’t thank me,” Maggie said. “I wish this wasn’t the way it ended, Shay.” She hesitated. “What if I—”
“No.” Shay shook his head. “It’s almost over, and then you can go on to rescuing people who want to be rescued. I’m okay, really. I’m ready.”
Maggie opened her mouth to speak, but the
n pressed her lips together and shook her head. “I’ll stand where you can see me.”
Shay swallowed. “Okay.”
“I can’t stay. I need to make sure that Warden Coyne’s talked to the hospital, so that everything happens like it’s supposed to.”
Shay nodded. “Maggie,” he said, “promise me something?”
“Sure, Shay.”
He rested his head against the metal door. “Don’t forget me.”
“Not a chance,” Maggie said, and she pressed her lips against the metal door, as if she could kiss Shay good-bye.
Suddenly, we were alone, with a half hour stretching between us.
“How are you doing?” I asked.
“Um,” Shay said. “Never better?”
“Right. Stupid question.” I shook my head. “Do you want to talk? Pray? Be by yourself?”
“No,” Shay said quickly. “Not that.”
“Is there anything I can do?”
“Yeah,” he said. “Tell me about her again.”
I hesitated. “She’s at the playground,” I said, “pumping her legs on a swing. When she gets to the top, and she’s sure her sneakers have actually kicked a cloud, she jumps off because she thinks she can fly.”
“She’s got long hair, and it’s like a flag behind her,” Shay added.
“Fairy-tale hair. So blond it’s nearly silver.”
“A fairy tale,” Shay repeated. “A happy ending.”
“It is, for her. You’re giving her a whole new life, Shay.”
“I’m saving her again. I’m saving her twice. Now with my heart, and once before she was ever born.” He looked directly at me. “It wasn’t just Elizabeth he could have hurt. She got in the way, when the gun went off . . . but the other . . . I had to do it.”
I glanced over my shoulder at the officer standing watch, but he had moved to a far corner and was speaking into his walkie-talkie. My words were thick, rubbery. “Then you did commit capital murder.”
Shay shrugged. “Some people,” he said simply, “deserve to die.”
I stood, speechless, as the officer approached. “Father, I’m really sorry,” he said, “but it’s time for you to leave.”
At that moment, the sound of bagpipes filled the tent, and an accompanying swell of voices. The people outside, maintaining their vigil, had begun to sing:
Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound . . .
That saved a wretch like me.
I once was lost, but now I’m found.
Was blind, but now I see.
I didn’t know if Shay was guilty of murder, or innocent and misunderstood. I didn’t know if he was the Messiah, or a savant who channeled texts he’d never read. I didn’t know if we were making history, or only reliving it. But I did know what to do: I motioned Shay forward, closed my eyes, and made the sign of the cross on his forehead. “Almighty God,” I murmured, “look on this your servant, lying in great weakness, and comfort him with the promise of life everlasting, given in the resurrection of your Son Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.”
I opened my eyes to find Shay smiling. “See you around, Father,” he said.
Maggie
As soon as I left Shay’s cell, I stumbled out of the circus tent—that’s what this was, you know, a circus—and threw up on the grass in the courtyard.
“Hey,” a voice said, “you all right?” I felt an arm steadying me, and I glanced into the dizzying sunlight to find Warden Coyne, looking just as unhappy to see me as I was to see him.
“Come on,” he said. “Let’s get you a glass of water.”
He led me through dark, dismal corridors—corridors far more suited to an execution, I thought, than the beautiful spring day outside, with its brilliant blue sky and tufted clouds. In the empty staff cafeteria, he pulled out a chair for me, then went to the cooler to get me something to drink. I finished the whole cup of water, and still could taste the bitterness in my throat.
“Sorry,” I said. “Didn’t mean to vomit on your parade.”
He sat down in a chair beside me. “You know, Ms. Bloom, there’s a hell of a lot about me you don’t know.”
“Nor do I want to,” I said, standing.
“For example,” Warden Coyne continued blithely, “I don’t really believe in the death penalty.”
I stared at him, snapped my mouth shut, and sank back into my chair.
“I used to, don’t get me wrong. And I’ll perform an execution if I have to, because it’s part of my job. But that doesn’t mean I condone it,” he said. “Truth is, I’ve seen plenty of inmates for whom life in prison is just as well served. And I’ve seen inmates I wish would be killed—there are just some people you cannot find the good in. But who am I to decide if someone should be killed for murdering a child . . . instead of for murdering a drug addict during a deal that went bad . . . or even if we should be killing the inmate himself? I’m not smart enough to be able to say which life is worth more than the other. I don’t know if anyone is.”
“If you know it’s not fair, and you still do this, how do you sleep at night?”
Warden Coyne smiled sadly. “I don’t, Ms. Bloom. The difference between you and me is that you expect me to be able to.” He got to his feet. “I trust you know where you go from here?”
I was supposed to wait at the Public Information Office, along with Father Michael, so that we could be brought to the tent apart from the witnesses for the state and the victim. But somehow, I knew that wasn’t what Warden Coyne had meant.
And even more surprising . . . I think he knew that I knew that.
* * *
The inside of the circus tent was painted with blue sky. Artificial clouds rose into the peaks, above the black iron of the gallows that had been constructed. I wondered if Shay would look at it and pretend that he was outside.
The tent itself was divided by a line of correctional officers, who kept the witnesses for both sides separated, like a human dam. We had been warned about our behavior in the letters from the Department of Corrections: any name-calling or inappropriate actions would result in us being hauled out of the tent. Beside me, Father Michael was praying a rosary. On my other side sat Rufus Urqhart, my boss.
I was shocked to see June Nealon sitting quietly in the front row across from us.
Somehow I’d assumed she’d be with Claire, especially given the fact that Claire would be getting ready for her heart transplant. When she’d called to tell me she wanted Shay’s heart, I hadn’t asked any questions—I hadn’t wanted to jinx it. Now I wished I could go over to her and ask whether Claire was all right, if everything was on schedule—but I would run the risk of the officers thinking I was harassing her; and truth be told, I was afraid to hear her answer.
Somewhere behind that curtain, Christian was checking to make sure the rope and noose were exactly as they should be to ensure as humane a hanging as possible. I knew this was supposed to comfort me, but to be honest, I had never felt more alone in my life.
It was a hard thing, accepting to myself that I had befriended someone convicted of murder. Lawyers knew better than to become emotionally and personally involved with their clients—but that didn’t mean it didn’t happen.
At exactly ten o’clock, the curtains opened.
Shay seemed very small on the gallows platform. He wore a white T-shirt, orange scrub pants, and tennis shoes, and was flanked by two officers I’d never seen before. His arms were fastened behind him, and his legs were bound together with what looked like a strap of leather.
He was shaking like a leaf.
Commissioner Lynch walked onto the platform. “There has been no stay of execution,” he announced.
I thought about Christian’s hands checking the knot against Shay’s neck. I knew the mercy of his touch; I was grateful that Shay’s last physical contact with a human would be gentle.
The warden stepped onto the platform as Lynch exited, and he read the entire warrant aloud. The words slipped in and out of my mind:
.
. . Whereas on the sixth day of March, 1997, Isaiah Matthew Bourne was duly and legally convicted of two counts of the crime of capital murder . . .
. . . said court pronounced sentence upon Isaiah Matthew Bourne in accordance with said judgment fixing the time for the execution for ten a.m. on Friday, the twenty-third of May, 2008 . . .
. . . command you to execute the aforesaid judgment and sentence by hanging in a manner that produces brain death in said Isaiah Matthew Bourne . . .
When the warden finished, he faced Shay. “Inmate Bourne, do you have any final words?”
Shay squinted, until he found me in the front row. He kept his eyes on me for a long moment, and then drifted toward Father Michael. But then he turned to the side of the tent where the witnesses for the victim were gathered, and he smiled at June Nealon. “I forgive you,” he said.
Immediately afterward, a curtain was drawn. It reached only to the floor of the gallows, and it was a translucent white. I didn’t know if the warden had intended for us to see what was happening behind it, but we could, in macabre silhouette: the hood being placed over Shay’s head, the noose being tightened against his neck, the two officers who’d secured him stepping backward.
“Good-bye,” I whispered.
Somewhere, a door slammed, and suddenly the trap was open and the body plummeted, one quick firecracker snap as the weight caught at the end of the rope. Shay slowly turned counterclockwise with the unlikely grace of a ballerina, an October leaf, a snowflake falling.
I felt Father Michael’s hand on mine, conveying what there were not words to say. “It’s over,” he whispered.
I don’t know what made me turn toward June Nealon, but I did. The woman sat with her back straight as a redwood, her hands folded so tightly in her lap that I could see the half-moons her own nails were cutting in her skin. Her eyes were tightly squeezed shut.
After all this, she hadn’t even watched him die.
* * *
The lower curtain closed three minutes and ten seconds after Shay had been hanged. It was opaque, and we could not see what was happening behind it, although the fabric fluttered with movement and activity. The officers in the tent didn’t let us linger, though—they hustled us out separate doors to the courtyard. We were led out of the prison gates and immediately inundated with the press. “This is good,” Rufus said, pumped up with adrenaline. “This is our moment.” I nodded, but my attention was focused on June. I could see her only briefly, a tiny crow of a woman ducking into a waiting car.
