Then for sixty years, nothing. It was like the rules changed with Connie Whatever-her-name-was. Mr. Jefferies said I was next on the list. There were others who’d been waiting longer, but he said they’d want me because of the publicity. The Marjorie Standiford Case, they called it, like it was all my fault, or the Mach 6 Killers, like Natalie’s book. Not that she made that name up; it was in the papers even before we got caught. She didn’t even write the book, it was this lady sportswriter from the Oklahoman.
But Mr. Jefferies was straight with me. He said we had somewhere between two to four years. All we could hope was for the governor to lose the election.
“Is he supposed to lose?” I asked, cause I really didn’t know. I didn’t even know who the governor was for sure.
“We can’t worry about that,” Mr. Jefferies said. “Right now we need to get this appeal together.”
That was five years ago, so I owe him one.
Thank you, Mr. Jefferies. You didn’t lose. I should have told you about me and Natalie.
That’s the worst thing, the waiting, knowing you can’t stall forever. Like I said, I’ve had two stays, which isn’t a lot but it’s something. Mr. Jefferies is at his office now, faxing things to the Tenth Circuit Court in Denver, so who knows.
The execution itself only scares me a little. I’ve read every book in the library on it. They make you lie down on the table and strap you in. Then the technicians stick an IV line into your vein that pumps in a saline solution. They do that for forty-five minutes just to make sure everything’s set. A lot of people they do are heavy users, so finding a good vein is a problem. They strap you in and let you lie there like you’re going to have an operation, only you’re not waiting for a doctor.
There are three chemicals—sodium pentothal’s the only one I know. Each one is in a syringe that ties into the IV line. Two people press down buttons in two different rooms, and the machine presses down the plungers in order. One set goes into you, the other drains into a bucket so no one feels bad. First, the pentothal knocks you out, then the machine waits a minute before the next one. The next paralyzes your heart and your lungs. The third just makes sure. They say you choke some but in most cases it’s pretty quick. It’s not sleep but it’s not the gas chamber either. Oklahoma was the first state to switch to it. They used to hang you. You might say something about that.
14
I think me being a woman works both ways. Mr. Jefferies talked with me about this. A man in my position would probably be dead already, but he wouldn’t be getting all this bad publicity. People expect killers to be men. A woman’s not supposed to kill, and a mother’s definitely not. Mr. Jefferies said it was better when we were the Mach 6 Killers because people tended to blame everything on Lamont, being the man. That’s stupid but that’s how people think. Since Lamont was dead and we were married, the blame shifted onto me. Even if Natalie didn’t lie, she would have gotten off easier because it looked like she was just going along for the ride.
In the beginning I used to get a lot of letters from women’s groups, but they all wanted me to say things about Lamont beating me, how that was the reason I stayed with him and why I couldn’t see that he was crazy, which isn’t at all true. They just wanted someone else to say what they said so people would think it was true.
That’s a tough question. Darcy could answer it better than I can. She’s read a lot about how terrible it is being a woman. I don’t pay that stuff much attention. What’s my other choice, being a man? I like men, but I wouldn’t trade in a million years. There’s a reason they die first.
15
The media doesn’t have to satisfy me. They don’t even have to tell the truth. All I want from them is equal time.
When Natalie was going to be on “Oprah,” I asked Mr. Jefferies if we could do a remote hookup or just something by phone, but Mr. Lonergan said no. I couldn’t watch it. Darcy said they played up the same things as always—the fingers, the cop in the desert, Shiprock. They take the weird parts and make them the most important thing, like Natalie’s toys.
And they don’t even get things right. They called our Road-runner a Dodge and said that I was a convicted felon. In the Oklahoman there was a map of our route west that showed us going through Amarillo instead of around it. Compared to the big things, I guess it’s nitpicky of me, but why write it if you’re going to get it wrong?
And I’m tired of that picture of me eating the onionburger with the gun in my other hand. I swear it’s the only one they use. Someone must think it’s funny.
All of that would be fine as long as they didn’t drag Gainey into it. They always have to say he was in the car. No matter how small the article is, they get that in.
The whole idea is to make me look stranger so people can pretend they’re normal. It’s not just me, they do that with everybody. That’s their job. No one’s interested in how people really are. I mean, it’s not interesting that I brought Gainey with us because I couldn’t get anyone to sit him and I didn’t want to leave him home by himself. It’s not interesting that I kept looking out the window to make sure he was okay. They never mention that, they just say he was in the car like I’d forgotten he was there, like the woman who drove away with the baby on the roof.
I never planned on getting out of the Roadrunner. I wasn’t supposed to turn it off. I was supposed to wait in the stall until Lamont called me on the intercom, then I’d roll around to the drive-thru and pick up the money. The way it was planned, I would have been with Gainey the whole time. We’d even stopped at the Dairy Kurl up the street and gotten him a junior hot fudge sundae. I was twisted around feeding him when I heard the shots. When we got back to the car, his face was a mess, and I gave Natalie a wet wipe. The whole thing took ten minutes, and except for maybe two minutes in the walk-in fridge, I could see him the whole time. But in the paper they make it sound like I just left him there. I don’t care what they say—a mother worries.
I was on TV once when I was a kid. My whole class was. This was right when Skylab was going to crash. Mrs. Milliken, our art teacher, had us make fake space parts out of papier-mâché and put them all over this burnt field behind the school. She called the TV stations and they came out and pretended it had really hit there. My piece was supposed to be the radio, and the news people asked me if they could take my picture with it.
The camera had a light on top of it that blinded me.
“Did you receive any last messages from Skylab before it hit the ground?” the guy with the microphone asked.
“Just one,” I said, and screamed as loud as I could.
16
Living on Death Row is like living in a small town. It’s slow and everyone knows everyone’s business. The population’s stable, not like in general, where you have people coming through all the time. There are four of us—me and Darcy on one side, Etta Mae Gaskins and Lucinda Williams on the other.
Etta Mae’s next in line after me. She beat an old man in her apartment building to death for his social security check. She was just trying to get him to sign it, she says, but things got out of hand. She hit him with the bar from a towel rack, one of those clear ones. She’s a whistler. Any time of day she’ll just break into song. You don’t notice it after a while and then suddenly you’re whistling too. Darcy turns her boombox up so she won’t hear her, but I don’t mind. She knows lots of old songs you forget, like “The Sunny Side of the Street.” Sometimes when I’ve got my atlas out I pretend they’re on the radio and Etta Mae’s got this big band behind her and an old-style microphone. Etta Mae’s older than the rest of us. She’s got high blood pressure so she gets special meals. Once at lunch the trusty with the cart gave me the wrong tray, and I saw what they gave her; it was all boiled, and no Jell-O, no soft drink. I know it’s hard on her, because she’s always talking about her Aunt Velma’s chicken-fried steak and her biscuits and gravy. When we get on food, we can go.
Lucinda is new and hasn’t calmed down yet. Last month she scratched Jan
ille’s cornea and they took her off to solitary. She shot her boyfriend’s wife when she was eight months pregnant, then waited till her boyfriend got home and shot him in the you-know-what. She says she didn’t do it. It’s a joke around here but you can’t laugh.
“Like you innocent, Miss Cut-their-head-off-and-stick-it-in-a-plastic-bag. And you, running over that little girl. You both going to hell, you dumb ugly trash. That’s right! And Etta Mae, you gonna hold the door for em.”
It’s funny cause we were all like that at first. She still cries at night. She goes through her cigarettes too quick. She’ll learn. Etta Mae’ll take care of her.
In general population there’s a lot of violence, a lot of people moving through. Someone’ll melt the end of a toothbrush and stick a razor blade in it. It’s not to kill, they just want to mark the other gal up. There’s no respect, no sense of being in this together. Over there, you get a lot of denial—gals saying it was the last deal, the last trick, the last job, they were going to quit right after that, like it was bad luck they got caught. A lot of wouldas and couldas. You don’t get that here. Just the amount of time breaks you down, makes you accept things about yourself. It teaches you things you didn’t learn outside, like patience and humility and gratitude. It’s like religion that way.
We’re locked down twenty-three hours a day. The other hour they let us out to use the exercise yard one at a time. We get a shower once every two days. We get three meals. You think you’d look forward to those things but you don’t. They just slide by. Lunch always surprises me.
We all do things. Darcy writes poems. Etta Mae paints and makes origami. Lucinda will have to come up with something, otherwise you lose it.
I drive. I open up my atlas and I’ve got the Roadrunner pegged at 110, headed for the Grand Canyon, the high desert empty on both sides, snow in the ditches. I’m cruising through Albuquerque, the neon of the motels shimmering off the hood. It’s like they haven’t caught me. No one knows where I am. I swing into the drive-in window of a liquor store and pick up a chilled six of Tecate, slide into a Golden Fried and order the carne adovada burrito for ninety-nine cents. Driving all night, I’m three hundred miles out of Needles and the radio’s pulling in Mexico. In six hours I’ll be on the Santa Monica pier, the water running in underneath me. At the end, I cut a neat three-pointer and head east again, into the blur of convenience stores and Pig Stands, highway cafes and adobe trading posts. The families of accident victims plant white crosses by the roadside, the names almost too small to read—Maria Felicidad Baca, Jesus Luis Velez. The night burns away and Monument Valley comes up like a cowboy movie, like the sequel to Thelma & Louise. The Modern Lovers are on the 8-track and that tach is nailed.
Roadrunner, Roadrunner
going fast in miles an hour
gonna drive past the Stop & Shop
with the radio on
It’s been eight years. I’ve been everywhere.
17
What I’ll miss most about the world.
Everything.
My son. I’ll miss having fun with him.
I’ll miss french fries. I’ll miss that first big sip of a cherry slush that freezes your brain and gives you a headache. I’ll miss carnivals and amusement parks, state fairs. I’ll miss the Gravitron and the Tilt-A-Whirl, the Zipper and the Whip, the Spider and the Roundup, the Roll-O-Plane. I’ll miss how your stomach jumps when you go over the top of the Ferris wheel. I’ll miss funnel cakes and roasted corn, fried pies and turkey legs, Sno-Kones. I’ll miss driving. I’ll miss sticking my hand out the window and feeling how heavy the air is.
I already miss a lot. I miss Lamont’s belly and how he used to leave a dab of shaving cream behind each ear. I miss our place, our bed—our Roadrunner, obviously.
Weather. Movies.
I don’t know, everything. It’s a bad question to ask right now. Just say I’ll miss living.
18
I feel remorse for my crimes, the ones I did commit, and I feel remorse for the life I was living then. If I could change any one thing, it would be the drinking. That put me on the road to a lot of the other problems.
It’s easy to blame other people or circumstances, but I won’t. I liked to drink, it’s that simple. I liked sitting in the booth at the Conoco and taking a tug of vodka whenever I felt like it. You’d feel it glide warm into you and everything was right. Outside, lights slid by all sparkly when it rained. Inside, all the cigarettes were in rows, all the gum and Life Savers. The heater felt good on your shins, and you’d watch the traffic at the light, everyone in a hurry to get somewhere and the rain coming down, the wipers going. It made you laugh and take another sip. It made you wish your life could just stay that way.
That was the problem—you were always trying to get back there, to that same place. And you were always ready to try. Between Garlyn, Joy and me, one of us always had something going on. We had good times, the three of us, but I look back and wonder if they were worth it. The last time I saw Garlyn she was living in her mother’s basement and working at Pancho’s Mexican Buffet. We were there for dinner; Gainey was throwing his spoon all over the place and finally spilled his water. She had three stitches in her lip from falling down the cellar stairs. I asked if she was still seeing Danny, because he used to hit her. She was. She said Joy had just gotten fired from the County Line for dumping a platter of hot links on a customer. We laughed because it was just like Joy. That was ten years ago. I don’t know what’s happened to either of them since.
19
I’d like to say I’m sorry to all the relatives of the Closes, Victor Nunez, Kim Zwillich, Reggie Tyler, Donald …
Anderson—Donald Anderson. He was the manager.
I’m sorry, I do remember them, I just can’t remember all eight at the same time. Five men and three women, I know that. I’m missing one of each.
What I’d like to say to their families is that I pray for every one of them each and every day. Mr. Jefferies said that Mrs. Nunez wanted to be here tonight. I wanted to invite her, but the state wouldn’t let me. I wish she could come. I wish they all could. I’m sure they’re outside right now. If that makes the loss of their loved ones easier on them, then fine. In the paper the other day, Mrs. Nunez said she hoped it would be painful, and that I should be killed the same way her son was. I did not kill Victor Nunez. I’d also say that what Natalie did to Kim Zwillich was worse, but I haven’t heard her parents complaining in the paper.
Margo Styles. She was the one at the drive-thru window. So there’s one more.
What do you say to someone in this situation? I’m sorry isn’t good enough. That I’m going to die isn’t good enough. I wanted to make a public apology a few years ago, but Mr. Jefferies warned me against it. Forget it, he said, you can’t win. All you’re going to get for it is grief.
The cop. Sergeant Lloyd Red Deer. He was the reason Mr. Jefferies moved the trial to Oklahoma. New Mexico’s still ticked off about that. Mr. Jefferies said that if he weren’t a cop, I might have gotten off with life. I’d say I’m sorry to his family and the tribal police, but I don’t think it’s right that his life counts more than Margo Styles’s. When you become a policeman, you understand that the job has some risks and you choose to accept that—like the guy in Desperation. Margo Styles didn’t have that kind of choice.
I’d say I’m sorry, but what good does that do anybody?
20
To Lamont, I’d like to say I loved you then and I love you still. I don’t know why you did what you did, but I forgive you. Jesus forgives you. You will always be the man I love.
I have more but it’s private. I’ll tell him when I see him.
I’d ask him why. That would be his book.
21
How do you tell exactly when you fall in love?
There wasn’t any dating like real dating. We were too old for that. We didn’t have to play games.
At first we mostly drove around. Cruised the A&W, the Del Rancho, the Lot-A-Burger. We’
d buy a cherry limeade and cruise Kickapoo till we got hungry. Listen to tapes.
Lamont’s dash was all correct, all the way down to the factory 8-track. We’d go to the Salvation Army or the flea market out at the Sky-Vue and pick up whole boxes of them for nothing, all the classic stuff—Iggy and the Stooges, Blue Cheer, Black Sabbath. When the weather was nice, Lamont would pop the top and turn it up so loud the bass kicked you in the shins. He liked Cream and Jimi Hendrix when we made out. “Little Wing” was our song, the Derek and the Dominos version. Sometimes Lamont would sing along with it, like it was about us. I saw Sting do a cover of it the other day on MTV; it was pretty wimpy.
We’d do stupid things like go bowling or hang out on the seesaw by the Krispy King. We even went fishing once. But mostly we’d cruise.
That 442 was a car. Lamont bought it at the Auto Auction south of town for a thousand dollars and did a full body-off restoration. He loved to talk about what he’d done to that car. He replaced the 400 with a bored-out 455 and swapped the factory tranny for a Muncie rock crusher with a Hurst shifter. He wrote away to Oldsmobile for the original color scheme, he dug through wrecking yards for new seats, he rechromed the bumpers. When he’d see another Cutlass, he’d ask me what year it was, what on it wasn’t correct. He liked it that I knew. He was like my dad at that.
The first time Lamont let me drive it I got a ticket. I bet you’ve got a copy of it. If you don’t, you can look it up; it was the Saturday before Thanksgiving, 1984. It was late. We were driving back from Amarillo on 1-40. We’d gone to the West Texas Rod and Classic Roundup to look for an exhaust manifold, and his eyes were tired. We’d both done a few black beauties, but he was starting to see things—trails floating like neon over the road. I told him to pull into the next rest area. I could tell he didn’t want to, because he knew we’d have a fight.
The Speed Queen Page 5
