by John Grisham
He stepped outside to speak to the ambulance driver and get some air, then he walked back through the Isolation Room to Tier A. Like everyone else, he was waiting for the damned Supreme Court to rule one way or the other.
He sent the two tallest guards onto the tier to close the windows along the top of the outside wall. Like the building, the windows had been there for thirty-six years and they did not shut quietly. The guards pushed them up until they slammed, each one echoing along the tier. Thirty-five windows in all, every inmate knew the exact number, and with each closing the tier became darker and quieter.
The guards finally finished and left. The Row was now locked down—every inmate in his cell, all doors secured, all windows closed.
Sam had begun shaking with the closing of the windows. His head dropped even lower. Adam placed an arm around his frail shoulders.
“I always liked those windows,” Sam said, his voice low and hoarse. A squad of guards stood less than fifteen feet away, peering through the tier door like kids at the zoo, and Sam didn’t want his words to be heard. It was hard to imagine Sam liking anything about this place. “Used to, when it came a big rain the water would splash on the windows, and some of it would make it inside and trickle down to the floor. I always liked the rain. And the moon. Sometimes, if the clouds were gone, I could stand just right in my cell and catch a glimpse of the moon through those windows. I always wondered why they didn’t have more windows around here. I mean, hell, sorry preacher, but if they’re determined to keep you in a cell all day, why shouldn’t you be able to see outdoors? I never understood that. I guess I never understood a lot of things. Oh well.” His voice trailed off, and he didn’t speak again for a while.
From the darkness came the mellow tenor of Preacher Boy singing “Just a Closer Walk with Thee.” It was quite pretty.
“Just a closer walk with Thee,
Grant it, Jesus, is my plea,
Daily walking close to Thee …”
“Quiet!” a guard yelled.
“Leave him alone!” Sam yelled back, startling both Adam and Ralph. “Sing it, Randy,” Sam said just loud enough to be heard next door. Preacher Boy took his time, his feelings obviously wounded, then began again.
A door slammed somewhere, and Sam jumped. Adam squeezed his shoulder, and he settled down. His eyes were lost somewhere in the darkness of the floor.
“I take it Lee wouldn’t come,” he said, his words haunted.
Adam thought for a second, and decided to tell the truth. “I don’t know where she is. I haven’t talked to her in ten days.”
“Thought she was in a rehab clinic.”
“I think she is too, but I just don’t know where. I’m sorry. I tried everything to find her.”
“I’ve thought about her a lot these past days. Please tell her.”
“I will.” If Adam saw her again, he would struggle to keep from choking her.
“And I’ve thought a lot about Eddie.”
“Look, Sam, we don’t have long. Let’s talk about pleasant things, okay?”
“I want you to forgive me for what I did to Eddie.”
“I’ve already forgiven you, Sam. It’s taken care of. Carmen and I both forgive you.”
Ralph lowered his head next to Sam’s, and said, “Perhaps there are some others we should think about too, Sam.”
“Maybe later,” Sam said.
The tier door opened at the far end of the hallway, and footsteps hurried toward them. Lucas Mann, with a guard behind him, stopped at the last cell and looked at the three shadowy figures huddled together on the bed. “Adam, you have a phone call,” he said nervously. “In the front office.”
The three shadowy figures stiffened together. Adam jumped to his feet, and without a word stepped from the cell as the door opened. His belly churned violently as he half-ran down the tier. “Give ’em hell, Adam,” J. B. Gullitt said as he raced by.
“Who is it?” Adam asked Lucas Mann, who was beside him, step for step.
“Garner Goodman.”
They weaved through the center of MSU and hurried to the front office. The receiver was lying on the desk. Adam grabbed it and sat on the desk. “Garner, this is Adam.”
“I’m at the capitol, Adam, in the rotunda outside the governor’s office. The Supreme Court just denied all of our cert petitions. There’s nothing left up there.”
Adam closed his eyes and paused. “Well, I guess that’s the end of that,” he said, and looked at Lucas Mann. Lucas frowned and dropped his head.
“Sit tight. The governor’s about to make an announcement. I’ll call you in five minutes.” Goodman was gone.
Adam hung up the phone and stared at it. “The Supreme Court turned down everything,” he reported to Mann. “The governor’s making a statement. He’ll call back in a minute.”
Mann sat down. “I’m sorry, Adam. Very sorry. How’s Sam holding up?”
“Sam is taking this much better than I am, I think.”
“It’s strange, isn’t it? This is my fifth one, and I’m always amazed at how calmly they go. They give up when it gets dark. They have their last meal, say good-bye to their families, and become oddly placid about the whole thing. Me, I’d be kicking and screaming and crying. It would take twenty men to drag me out of the Observation Cell.”
Adam managed a quick smile, then noticed an open shoe box on the desk. It was lined with aluminum foil with a few broken cookies in the bottom. It had not been there when they left an hour earlier. “What’s that?” he asked, not really curious.
“Those are the execution cookies.”
“The execution cookies?”
“Yeah, this sweet little lady who lives down the road bakes them every time there’s an execution.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. In fact, I have no idea why she does it.”
“Who eats them?” Adam asked, looking at the remaining cookies and crumbs as if they were poison.
“The guards and trustees.”
Adam shook his head. He had too much on his mind to analyze the purpose of a batch of execution cookies.
______
For the occasion David McAllister changed into a dark navy suit, freshly starched white shirt, and dark burgundy tie. He combed and sprayed his hair, brushed his teeth, then walked into his office from a side door. Mona Stark was crunching numbers.
“The calls finally stopped,” she said, somewhat relieved.
“I don’t want to hear it,” McAllister said, checking his tie and teeth in a mirror. “Let’s go.”
He opened the door and stepped into the foyer where two bodyguards met him. They flanked him as he walked into the rotunda where bright lights were waiting. A throng of reporters and cameras pressed forward to hear the announcement. He stepped to a makeshift stand with a dozen microphones wedged together. He grimaced at the lights, waited for quiet, then spoke.
“The Supreme Court of the United States has just denied the last appeals from Sam Cayhall,” he said dramatically, as if the reporters hadn’t already heard this. Another pause as the cameras clicked and the microphones waited. “And so, after three jury trials, after nine years of appeals through every court available under our Constitution, after having the case reviewed by no less than forty-seven judges, justice has finally arrived for Sam Cayhall. His crime was committed twenty-three years ago. Justice may be slow, but it still works. I have been called upon by many people to pardon Mr. Cayhall, but I cannot do so. I cannot overrule the wisdom of the jury that sentenced him, nor can I impose my judgment upon that of our distinguished courts. Neither am I willing to go against the wishes of my friends the Kramers.” Another pause. He spoke without notes, and it was immediately obvious he’d worked on these remarks for a long time. “It is my fervent hope that the execution of Sam Cayhall will help erase a painful chapter in our state’s tortured history. I call upon all Mississippians to come together from this sad night forward, and work for equality. May God have mercy on his soul.”
He backed away as the questions flew. The bodyguards opened a side door, and he was gone. They darted down the stairs and out the north entrance where a car was waiting. A mile away, a helicopter was also waiting.
Goodman walked outside and stood by an old cannon, aimed for some reason at the tall buildings downtown. Below him, at the foot of the front steps, a large group of protestors held candles. He called Adam with the news, then he walked through the people and the candles and left the capitol grounds. A hymn started as he crossed the street, and for two blocks it slowly faded away. He drifted for a while, then walked toward Hez Kerry’s office.
Fifty
The walk back to the observation cell was much longer than before. Adam made it alone, by now on familiar terrain. Lucas Mann disappeared somewhere in the labyrinth of the Row.
As Adam waited before a heavy barred door in the center of the building, he was immediately aware of two things. First, there were many more people hanging around now—more guards, more strangers with plastic badges and guns on their hips, more stern-faced men with short-sleeved shirts and polyester ties. This was a happening, a singular phenomenon too thrilling to be missed. Adam speculated that any prison employee with enough pull and enough clout just had to be on the Row when Sam’s death sentence was carried out.
The second thing he realized was that his shirt was soaked and the collar was sticking to his neck. He loosened his tie as the door clicked loudly then slid open under the hum of a hidden electric motor. A guard somewhere in the maze of concrete walls and windows and bars was watching and punching the right buttons. He stepped through, still pulling on the knot of his tie and the button under it, and walked to the next barrier, a wall of bars leading to Tier A. He patted his forehead, but there was no sweat. He filled his lungs with muggy, dank air.
With the windows shut, the tier was now suffocating. Another loud click, another electric hum, and he stepped into the thin hallway, which Sam had told him was seven and a half feet wide. Three dingy sets of fluorescent bulbs cast dim shadows on the ceiling and floor. He pushed his heavy feet past the dark cells, all filled with brutal murderers, each one now praying or meditating, a couple even crying.
“Good news, Adam?” J. B. Gullitt pleaded from the darkness.
Adam didn’t answer. Still walking, he glanced up at the windows with their various shades of paint splattered around the ancient panes, and was struck by the question of how many lawyers before him had made this final walk from the front office to the Observation Cell to inform a dying man that the last thin shred of hope was now gone. This place had a rich history of executions, and so he concluded that many others had suffered along this trail. Garner Goodman himself had carried the final news to Maynard Tole, and this gave Adam a much needed shot of strength.
He ignored the curious stares of the small mob standing and gawking at him at the end of the tier. He stopped at the last cell, waited, and the door obediently opened.
Sam and the reverend were still sitting low on the bed, heads nearly touching in the darkness, whispering. They looked up at Adam, who sat next to Sam and placed his arm around his shoulders, shoulders that now seemed even frailer. “The Supreme Court just denied everything,” he said very softly, his voice on the verge of cracking. The reverend exhaled a painful moan. Sam nodded as if this was certainly expected. “And the governor just denied clemency.”
Sam tried to raise his shoulders bravely, but power failed him. He slumped even lower.
“Lord have mercy,” Ralph Griffin said.
“Then it’s all over,” Sam said.
“There’s nothing left,” Adam whispered.
Excited murmurings could be heard from the death squad squeezed together at the end of the tier. This thing would happen after all. A door slammed somewhere behind them, in the direction of the chamber, and Sam’s knees jerked together.
He was silent for a moment—one minute or fifteen, Adam couldn’t tell. The clock was still lurching and stopping.
“I guess we oughta pray now, preacher,” Sam said.
“I reckon so. We’ve waited long enough.”
“How do you wanna do it?”
“Well, Sam, just exactly what do you want to pray about?”
Sam pondered this for a moment, then said, “I’d like to make sure God’s not angry with me when I die.”
“Good idea. And why do you think God might be angry with you?”
“Pretty obvious, isn’t it?”
Ralph rubbed his hands together. “I guess the best way to do this is to confess your sins, and ask God to forgive you.”
“All of them?”
“You don’t have to list them all, just ask God to forgive everything.”
“Sort of a blanket repentance.”
“Yeah, that’s it. And it’ll work, if you’re serious.”
“I’m serious as hell.”
“Do you believe in hell, Sam?”
“I do.”
“Do you believe in heaven?”
“I do.”
“Do you believe that all Christians go to heaven?”
Sam thought about this for a long time, then nodded slightly before asking, “Do you?”
“Yes, Sam. I do.”
“Then I’ll take your word for it.”
“Good. Trust me on this one, okay?”
“It seems too easy, you know. I just say a quick prayer, and everything’s forgiven.”
“Why does that bother you?”
“Because I’ve done some bad things, preacher.”
“We’ve all done bad things. Our God is a God of infinite love.”
“You haven’t done what I’ve done.”
“Will you feel better if you talk about it?”
“Yeah, I won’t ever feel right unless I talk about it.”
“I’m here, Sam.”
“Should I leave for a minute?” Adam asked. Sam clutched his knee. “No.”
“We don’t have a lot of time, Sam,” Ralph said, glancing through the bars.
Sam took a deep breath, and spoke in a low monotone, careful that only Adam and Ralph could hear. “I killed Joe Lincoln in cold blood. I’ve already said I was sorry.”
Ralph was mumbling something to himself as he listened. He was already in prayer.
“And I helped my brothers kill those two men who murdered our father. Frankly, I’ve never felt bad about it until now. Human life seems a whole lot more valuable these days. I was wrong. And I took part in a lynching when I was fifteen or sixteen. I was just part of a mob, and I probably couldn’t have stopped it if I’d tried. But I didn’t try, and I feel guilty about it.”
Sam stopped. Adam held his breath and hoped the confessional was over. Ralph waited and waited, and finally asked, “Is that it, Sam?”
“No. There’s one more.”
Adam closed his eyes and braced for it. He was dizzy and wanted to vomit.
“There was another lynching. A boy named Cletus. I can’t remember his last name. A Klan lynching. I was eighteen. That’s all I can say.”
This nightmare will never end, Adam thought.
Sam breathed deeply and was silent for several minutes. Ralph was praying hard. Adam just waited.
“And I didn’t kill those Kramer boys,” Sam said, his voice shaking. “I had no business being there, and I was wrong to be involved in that mess. I’ve regretted it for many years, all of it. It was wrong to be in the Klan, hating everybody and planting bombs. But I didn’t kill those boys. There was no intent to harm anyone. That bomb was supposed to go off in the middle of the night when no one would be anywhere near it. That’s what I truly believed. But it was wired by someone else, not me. I was just a lookout, a driver, a flunky. This other person rigged the bomb to go off much later than I thought. I’ve never known for sure if he intended to kill anyone, but I suspect he did.”
Adam heard the words, received them, absorbed them, but was too stunned to move.
“But I could’ve stopped it. And tha
t makes me guilty. Those little boys would be alive today if I had acted differently after the bomb was planted. Their blood is on my hands, and I’ve grieved over this for many years.”
Ralph gently placed a hand on the back of Sam’s head. “Pray with me, Sam.” Sam covered his eyes with both hands and rested his elbows on his knees.
“Do you believe Jesus Christ was the son of God; that he came to this earth, born of a virgin, lived a sinless life, was persecuted, and died on the cross so that we might have eternal salvation? Do you believe this, Sam?”
“Yes,” he whispered.
“And that he arose from the grave and ascended into heaven?”
“Yes.”
“And that through him all of your sins are forgiven? All the terrible things that burden your heart are now forgiven. Do you believe this, Sam?”
“Yes, yes.”
Ralph released Sam’s head, and wiped tears from his eyes. Sam didn’t move, but his shoulders were shaking. Adam squeezed him even tighter.
Randy Dupree started whistling another stanza of “Just a Closer Walk with Thee.” His notes were clear and precise, and they echoed nicely along the tier.
“Preacher,” Sam said as his back stiffened, “will those little Kramer boys be in heaven?”
“Yes.”
“But they were Jews.”
“All children go to heaven, Sam.”
“Will I see them up there?”
“I don’t know. There’s a lot about heaven we don’t know. But the Bible promises that there will be no sorrow when we get there.”
“Good. Then I hope I see them.”
The unmistakable voice of Colonel Nugent broke the calm. The tier door clanged, rattled, and opened. He marched five feet to the door of the Observation Cell. Six guards were behind him. “Sam, it’s time to go to the Isolation Room,” he said. “It’s eleven o’clock.”
The three men stood, side by side. The cell door opened, and Sam stepped out. He smiled at Nugent, then he turned and hugged the reverend. “Thanks,” he said.
“I love you, brother!” Randy Dupree yelled from his cell, not ten feet away.
