“Warden,” he asks, “can I ask one favor? Can Sister Helen touch my arm?”
The Warden nods his head.
I am standing behind him. Guards, a mountain of blue, surround us. I put my hand on his shoulder. He is tall. I can barely reach. It is the first time I have ever touched him.
We walk. Pat walks and the chains scrape across the floor. God has heard his prayer. His legs are holding up, he is walking.
I read Isaiah’s words:
Do not be afraid … I have called
you by your name, you are mine.
Should you pass through the sea,
I will be with you …
Should you walk through the fire,
you will not be scorched,
and the flames will not burn you.
(43:2)
As we pass through the lobby the old priest raises his hand in blessing.
We stop. There is the oak chair, dark and gleaming in the bright fluorescent lights. There are the witnesses all seated behind a Plexiglas window. There is a big clock on the wall behind the chair. There is an exhaust fan, already turned on to get rid of the smell of burning flesh. Two guards have firmly taken hold of my arms and are moving me toward the witness room. I lean toward Pat and kiss him on the back.
“Pat, pray for me.”
He turns around toward me and says, his voice husky and eager like a young boy’s, “I will, Sister Helen, I will.”
I see Millard then and I sit on the chair beside him. He reaches over and takes my hand. Mr. Bourque and Mr. LeBlanc are seated in the first row over to the right of us. Their faces are expressionless.
There is a small podium with a microphone on it and Pat is standing behind it. I can see past him to a wall of green painted plywood with a slit of a window behind which the executioner waits.
The warden is standing over in the right-hand corner next to a red telephone.
“Have any last words, Sonnier?” he asks.
“Yes, sir, I do,” Pat says, and he looks at the two fathers, but addresses his words to only one of them. “Mr. LeBlanc, I don’t want to leave this world with any hatred in my heart. I want to ask your forgiveness for what me and Eddie done, but Eddie done it.” Mr. LeBlanc nods his head. Mr. Bourque turns to Mr. LeBlanc and asks, “What about me?”
Pat is in the chair now and guards are moving quickly, removing the leg irons and handcuffs and replacing them with the leather straps. One guard has removed his left shoe. They are strapping his trunk, his legs, his arms. He finds my face. He says, “I love you.” I stretch my hand toward him. “I love you, too.”
He attempts a smile (he told me he would try to smile) but manages only to twitch.
A metal cap is placed on his head and an electrode is screwed in at the top and connected to a wire that comes from a box behind the chair. An electrode is fastened to his leg. A strap placed around his chin holds his head tightly against the back of the chair. He grimaces. He cannot speak anymore. A grayish green cloth is placed over his face.
Millard says, “Father forgive them, for they know not what they do.”
Only the warden remains in the room now, only the warden and the man strapped into the chair. The red telephone is silent. I close my eyes and do not see as the warden nods his head, the signal to the executioner to do his work.
I hear three clanks as the switch is pulled with pauses in between. Nineteen hundred volts, then let the body cool, then five hundred volts, pause again, then nineteen hundred volts. “Christ, be with him, have mercy on him,” I pray silently.
I look up. His left hand has gripped the arm of the chair evenly but the fingers of his right hand are curled upward.
The warden says over the microphone that we will wait a few minutes for the doctor to make the “final check.” Then the prison doctor, who has been sitting with the witnesses, goes to the body in the chair and lifts the mask and raises the eyelids and shines the light of a small flashlight into the eyes and raises up the clean white shirt and puts his stethoscope against the heart and listens and then says to the warden that, yes, this man is dead. Warden Maggio looks up at the clock and announces the time of death: 12:15 A.M. His eyes happen to look into mine. He lowers his eyes.
The witnesses are led from the room. As we walk through the lobby, I go over to the old priest and ask him to give me communion for “both of us,” as Pat had requested. I go to where the witnesses are gathered to sign the papers. Everyone is silent. All you can hear is the papers being shuffled across the white tablecloth and the scrawling of ballpoint pens as people put their signatures on three copies of the official state papers.
As we are filing out of the room, Lloyd LeBlanc is behind me and I turn and look at him and he looks shaken and the rims of his eyes are red. I touch his arm but I have no words. It is all so overwhelming. What can I say? I am not sure why Pat addressed his last words to Lloyd LeBlanc and not to Mr. Bourque, but I suspect it’s because Pat was trying to make his last words loving and he didn’t trust himself to say anything to Bourque, who had been outspoken to the press about wanting to see him die. Who knows? But Pat’s dead now. As dead as Loretta Bourque and David LeBlanc are dead, and I think of Gladys Sonnier waiting out the night.
A guard guides Millard and me to the van that will take us to the front gate. It is very cold outside and it is very dark. We ride past the main prison building where Eddie is and past the administration building where a press conference will soon take place in which only prison officials will speak. There will be no dissenting voices about what took place tonight.
“Look how shamefully secret this whole thing is,” Millard says. “A few select witnesses brought deep inside this prison in the dead of night to watch a man be killed. If most people in Louisiana would see what the state did tonight, they would throw up.”
We arrive at the front gate. There are lights and a SWAT team lined up along the front fence.
At the gate the Sisters are waiting, and here too are Joe Nursey and Kimellen. Joe has on a white Irish sweater. I put my arms around him and he sobs and I can feel his stomach muscles heaving through the thick sweater. And Kimellen, shivering in the car, takes my hand and cries and kisses my hand and cannot stop crying. I feel numb and cold. And Millard takes me by the arm and walks with me awhile around the parking lot and he is telling me not to give up, to keep on fighting, and I am not hearing many of his words but I catch their earnestness and I know that I love this man, this spark of God, who has taught me so much.
Ann and Bill Quigley will ride back with me in the car. We start out down Highway 66, but before we get too far we have to pull the car over to the side and stop because I have to vomit.
CHAPTER
5
I open the car window a little so fresh cold air can blow in my face as we drive to Baton Rouge. Bill reaches to the back seat and takes one of my hands in his and says a prayer.
Ann talks about the SWAT team along the fence as she waited in the parking lot. The weather was cold, so she had mostly stayed inside the car, getting out only for bathroom breaks. She was the only person in the parking lot, but every time she opened the car door and stepped out, the SWAT team stiffened and aimed their rifles toward the ground but in her direction; then, when she got back into the car, they once again stood at-ease. At 5:30 P.M. seven or eight state police cars drove up and the troopers went inside the visitors’ building where they kept watch until the execution was over. She could see them inside, eating sandwiches and playing cards. One, with a rifle, stood watch by the window nearest the parking lot.
“That has to be the weirdest experience of my life,” she says. “I felt like I was in some sort of police state. All that energy and organization and money to kill a man …”
It’s the doctor in her talking. It’s a hard struggle for her to keep the clinic for poor people open. Every year she has to do battle with city and state officials to keep the funds in place.
Arriving in Baton Rouge, we drop Bill off at his car. H
e’ll drive back to New Orleans tonight. At about 2:00 A.M. Ann and I turn into Mama’s driveway. The lamp is on in the den. The door opens and Mama’s arms open wide, her rosary still in her hands. She has a fire going in the fireplace.
Ann hands me a sleeping pill with a cup of hot, sweet milk. I sleep and do not dream.
I awake to clinking dishes and voices in the kitchen and the telephone ringing.
Pat’s body must be at the funeral home by now and maybe the morticians are already at work. I remember how he once told me he had watched his father being embalmed. It was such a bizarre thing to have done, but he told me about it matter-of-factly. His father had died of liver cancer in 1967 when he was not quite sixteen years old, and he knew the mortician and asked if he could watch. He said he was thinking of becoming a mortician, and he thought he’d “see how it was done.”
It seems that in the blur of events outside the prison last night Kathleen had mentioned something about funeral arrangements, but I can’t remember what she said.
It’s Tom Dybdahl from the Coalition office on the phone. When I hear his voice I begin to cry. The shock and numbness are wearing off. I am thawing.
Tom is thanking me for being with Pat. Thanking me. I think of Millard, who never allows anyone to thank him for his work. “I must do this,” he says.
Mama hands me a cup of coffee. But I have no desire for coffee. I see Pat holding up his cup, calling to Captain Rabelais. “Black. No cream, no sugar.”
The phone rings throughout the morning — Millard, Kathleen and Lory, Bill. Phone calls and tears. It reminds me of Daddy’s wake. Each new person that came up to me in the funeral home personalized the grief in a new way. And with each new grief, new tears.
Millard says that he and Joe and Kimellen are getting ready to drive back to Atlanta. He mentions a man’s name, someone else on death row in Georgia, whom they are representing. He doesn’t say much. “I will never forget you, Millard,” I tell him.
Several local reporters call. They have heard that I was a witness at the execution. They interview me over the phone.
Kathleen calls. Pat’s funeral will take place tomorrow morning at ten at Rabenhorst Funeral Home on Government Street, preceded by a wake beginning at nine. She has been telephoning Pat’s family. Community leadership has given its approval for Pat to be buried with our Sisters at Roselawn Cemetery. Afterward, Kathleen says, the Sonniers can come to their house for a meal. Will Eddie be attending the funeral? I realize that I had better call the warden and make the request. From what I know about LSP rules, inmates are allowed to attend only the funerals of parents, not siblings.
I call Warden Maggio’s office. He explains that Eddie’s attendance at the funeral would require bending the rules and added expense — armed guards, a vehicle — but let him think about it and he’ll call me back. And within an hour his secretary telephones and says that the warden has given his permission for Eddie to attend the funeral.
On Friday morning about thirty people gather for Pat’s wake and funeral — half family members and half nuns. Kathleen asks six family members to serve as pallbearers.
Rabenhorst is the funeral home in Baton Rouge that I know best. In this very room where Pat’s body is laid out I had first seen a corpse — Uncle George’s body. I was ten years old. The sight of him dead like that had horrified me, and I refused to kiss the cold forehead when other family members lined up for the final farewell. And now I look down on the still face of Patrick Sonnier. The morticians have bandaged his head with gauze. He seems too big for the coffin. It’s a tight fit. But, then, the people here have been good enough to donate their services and the coffin. Kathleen has found, I see, a powder blue jacket for him. It too seems tight. There is a spray of red roses on the coffin. The tag reads: “Mother and Family.” Pat’s mother is not here. Her sister, Joan, tells me that the funeral would be “too much” for her. The television cameras are assembled outside. No place here for private grief. I think of the Bourques and the LeBlancs. They went through this seven years ago, looking down in disbelief at their youthful, blooming children lying in cushioned coffins, murdered by the Sonnier brothers.
There is a stir at the entrance of the room and Ann whispers to me, “Eddie’s here.” He stands just inside the doorway with guards on either side. I walk over to him. His hands are cuffed tightly on either side of a “black box” at his waist and there is a chain on his ankles. I walk with him over to the body of his brother. He looks down and says, “Well, Brother …” Tears run down his face. I have my arm around his waist and I tell him how Pat loved him to the end, and he says, “Now three people are dead because of me.” Ann has a Kleenex and wipes his tears and helps him blow his nose (the black box prevents him from raising his hands). Star, Pat’s daughter, comes up to him and gives him a light hug. She calls him “Uncle Eddie.”
Someone whispers to me that Bishop Stanley Ott has arrived. The little clutch of people gather in the first two pews for the celebration of Mass. In his homily the bishop says that Jesus has revealed God to us and that God is a God of compassion and love, not a God of retribution. He prays for Pat and for all families who have lost loved ones to violence — the Bourques, the LeBlancs, and the Sonniers.
Eddie is not allowed to go to the graveyard. The guards are about to lead him to the vehicle that will take him back to Angola. Family members line up to kiss him good-bye near the door where the hearse is waiting. Two farewells are happening here — Pat’s and Eddie’s. I know that most of these family members will never see Eddie again. Two brothers in two vehicles are now taking leave of each other: one going into the ground and one going into Angola for the rest of his life.
At the grave site Bishop Ott says the customary prayers for the dead. He prays for God to be merciful to Patrick Sonnier and to receive him into the heavenly kingdom. And then I say a few words to the family, especially to Star. I try through my words to show them love, respect, dignity. I can scarcely imagine how shameful it must be — and so public — for a family member to be killed by the state.
We are in the part of the cemetery, marked by a towering crucifix, where nuns and priests are buried. Pat’s plot is right alongside Sister Isabel’s. She was a feisty soul and quick-witted, and I can’t help but wonder what her comment would be, having this man buried beside her — she who, when young women would come to the convent to introduce their new husbands, would whisper to the Sister near her, “I’m glad I don’t have to share my bed with some man.”
People are beginning to move toward their cars. One of the reporters pulls me aside. “Were you in love with Elmo Sonnier?” he asks. “I mean, his last words, ‘I love you’ — he said he loved you, didn’t he?” The question surprises me and I have to smile (what a good story for the National Enquirer: Nun falls in love with murderer).
No, I tell him, I loved Pat as a sister loves a brother, as Jesus taught us to love each other; it was not a romantic relationship.
I am the last to leave. I reach out and touch the side of the coffin. Men are standing nearby with their shovels.
I am scarcely back at Mama’s house after Pat’s funeral when the doorbell rings and a man from United Parcel Service asks for me. He is delivering three large brown boxes. I look at the return address: Louisiana State Prison. Boxes for me? Then I remember: “I give to Sister Helen Prejean all of my possessions.”
Mama, Ann, and I open the boxes. Wet towels and washcloth and wet soap are thrown in with shoes, pants, shirts, photograph album, legal folders, letters … Everything smells like cigarette smoke. Here’s a rolled up, damp T-shirt. This must be the shirt Pat wore before they shaved his head. I see some old “store” lists and look to see which items he had last ordered: coffee, barbecue corn chips, stamps, Bugler tobacco, and papers (he rolled his own cigarettes — “cheaper,” he’d say, and brag how he could get thirty cigarettes from a pack).
Ann and Mama sort out the clothes and start the first batch in the washing machine. I will need to drive to St
. Martinville and bring these belongings to Pat’s family. He had told me that he wanted his daughter, Star, to have his photograph album. I open it and there he is in his blue denim shirt smiling, and there, in another photo, laughing. Here’s the photo of me on the pony that I had sent him in my first letter, and here’s Eddie and his mother. Here’s Star and some of his young pen pals. The pictures are all neatly arranged under the plastic pages with names printed in black ballpoint pen. Next to my picture he has written “My spiritual adviser.”
Sorting through papers in manila folders, I see a stack of disciplinary reports on Eddie. Pat must have requested these. Or maybe Eddie sent them to him on his own.
The man who owned the things in the boxes is dead. I have to keep reminding myself of that. I think of the scene from George Bernard Shaw’s Saint Joan and what Chaplain Stogumber had said after he witnessed Joan of Arc’s execution. No one had been more eager than he to see her die. So eager that he had physically pushed her into the arms of the executioner and urged him to light the fire quickly. He couldn’t wait to see her die. But then he had watched and in the epilogue says: “I tell my folks they must be very careful. I say to them, ‘If you only saw what you think about you would think quite differently about it. It would give you a great shock.… I did a very cruel thing once because I did not know what cruelty was like. I had not seen it, you know. That is the great thing: you must see it. And then you are redeemed and saved … it was not our Lord that redeemed me, but a young woman whom I saw actually burned to death. It was dreadful: oh, most dreadful. But it saved me. I have been a different man ever since …”1
But that was when the torture was visible. Witnesses could see the flames lick the flesh. They could hear the cries of agony. But this death … with witnesses behind the square of Plexiglas like that, it was like a framed scene, death in the movies, death in celluloid, death under glass. There he was, saying his last words. There he was, walking to the chair. There he was, being strapped in. Three clangs of the switch. No smell of burning flesh (the Plexiglas shields witnesses from the smell). No sight of his face (the mask conceals his face, his eyes). And with his jaw strapped shut like that, he could not cry out.
Dead Man Walking Page 13
