Snake Eyes

by Joyce Carol Oates

  Yet, here was, again, repeated by the state’s representative, the case against Sears. His criminal record, his troubled background. His dishonorable discharge from the army. His heroin addiction and his involvement in drug dealing. The “particular brutality” of the murder of which he’d been found guilty—the “wall smeared with blood.” The abduction of a woman and her twelve-year-old daughter, charges of rape, abuse, threats … That these last-named charges had never been substantiated was glossed over in the telling.

  Sears’s lawyer rose hastily to protest, there was muttering on all sides. A current ran through the room—Michael O’Meara felt it like an electric shock—the instinctive male dread of female accusations; the unspoken brotherhood of men at risk with women.

  In his seat Lee Roy Sears gave a sudden convulsive movement. His face crinkled like an infant’s. The two burly guards standing behind him were comically galvanized to alertness, stepping closer.

  Sears murmured hoarsely, “She lied! It’s all a—lie!”

  The young prosecutor concluded his statement by snidely challenging the defense’s “sentimental” claim for Lee Roy Sears as a victim. There was no real proof, for instance, that Sears had the slightest trace of Senecan Indian blood, since his birth records were lost and he seemed to have no relatives at all in Watertown, New York—“Sears” was the name of his first foster parents. There was no absolute proof, upon which medical experts agreed, that he, and numerous other claimants, suffered from either “post-traumatic stress disorder” or the effects of Agent Orange. These were mere fashionable defenses, excuses for criminal behavior, which Sears’s jury in Hartford, in December 1978, had wholly rejected.

  Most alarming, the prosecutor said, was the fact that, since his crime, Sears had shown no remorse whatsoever—“Additional proof, if proof were needed, that the man is a dangerous, psychopathic killer.”

  At this, there were numerous protests. From the rear of the room a man—a radical lawyer whom Michael O’Meara recognized, with a media-familiar face—called out derisively, “How the hell can a man show remorse when he isn’t guilty?” Others joined in. The chairman had to rap his gavel to restore order. By the time the young prosecutor sat down his face was damply flushed. He’d been feeling the tide of popular sentiment in the room running against him, and he did not like the feeling.

  Michael stared at this young man, a fellow lawyer; a careerist. For the first time he saw such people, functionaries of the state, white-collar executioners, as the enemy: as Lee Roy Sears must have seen them.

  Your enemy is my enemy too. I pledge myself to save you.

  The focus of the hearing now shifted to the defense, and Lee Roy Sears was subsequently presented in very different terms: a victim, indeed, of a complex of social circumstances, a man whose criminal activities must be interpreted in the context of his background. He was abandoned by his teenaged mother when less than a month old, discovered wrapped in a filthy blanket, inside a plastic garbage bag, on the steps of the county welfare office in Watertown. He became a ward of county institutions for the next sixteen years—foster homes, juvenile detention facilities. He was poorly educated, a discipline problem. Expelled from school at the age of fifteen. In the Veterans Administration hospital in Hartford, where he’d gone for therapy for his injured knee, he’d been diagnosed as dyslexic, which had surely contributed to his problems in school, but of course no one had known, or much cared, what might have been troubling him. (According to school records, Sears sometimes scored far above average on I.Q. tests, and sometimes far below.) He’d been abused by institutional authorities. He’d been severely beaten, at least once, by Watertown police. In 1969, at the age of eighteen, he joined the army, to serve two and a half years, two of them in Vietnam, where, in jungle combat above Ban Phon, he was exposed to the highly toxic Agent Orange. He was wounded, hospitalized. Acquired a heroin addiction. Ended his army career in the stockade, for having gone berserk and assaulting an officer. Dishonorably discharged, 1972. In the States he worked at a succession of low-paying jobs—dishwasher, janitor, taxi driver, construction laborer—in Manhattan, Jersey City, Danbury, New Haven, Hartford. His first arrest was in 1974, in Hartford, for drug possession; following that he was arrested several times, on varying charges, ending with the 1978 arrest for first-degree murder. During a previous jail term—Sears had been jailed twice before, for brief periods—he’d been described by authorities as an emotionally troubled man who kept to himself unless provoked; hardly a model prisoner, but yet not a troublemaker. Other inmates respected him and kept their distance. He’d even signed up for courses, in remedial reading and art therapy, offered by volunteers associated with a local V.A. hospital. In these courses Sears was described by his teachers as “eager” and “exceptionally motivated”—at least initially.

  A Hartford social worker, a woman, spoke of Sears’s disadvantaged background in greater detail. His “ethnic identity,” which had been denied him; his probable neurophysiological condition, which contrary to those “experts” who denied its existence, is suffered by as many as 200,000 Vietnam veterans, or 12 percent of all Americans who had served in the war. There was a stirring of sympathy, shared outrage. The members of the Board of Pardons appeared to be listening attentively. (Michael scanned their faces with his shrewd lawyer’s eye. He knew that, unlike juries of more representative citizens, such professional panels are often constituted by people who know beforehand how they intend to cast their ballots.) A Boston penologist spoke; a lawyer from the Connecticut Civil Liberties Union; a woman sociology professor from Wesleyan. Then it was, abruptly, Michael O’Meara’s turn.

  Michael had stayed up until two in the morning preparing a statement that would, in assiduous lawyerly fashion, focus upon technical details having to do with Sears’s trial; but this statement, gripped between his fingers, he now forgot. As soon as he got to his feet and felt dozens of eyes swing upon him, he was overcome by a ballooning sensation, as if he were dangerously afloat; suffused with a sudden urgent energy, and purpose. He had to move these people. He had to save Lee Roy Sears’s life.

  Michael O’Meara was not a smooth, practiced, articulate public speaker—given his personality, his very physical type, he’d never dared try for such a style—but, when deeply moved, speaking from the heart, he was wonderfully persuasive. He was one of those guileless and unpremeditated men, whom some politicians cannily imitate, who declare themselves candidly, spontaneously, with an earnest air of discovering truths even as they share them with others. So, now, he told the gathering, these fellow professionals with whom he felt an uneasy but unmistakable kinship, that, this morning, what overwhelmed him most was the simple, obdurate, terrible fact that, as they debated the issue of whether Lee Roy Sears’s sentence should be commuted, they were in the presence of a man condemned to death; this fact should take precedence over everything else. “Only think of it—condemned to death. And on such slender, controversial evidence!”

  Michael paused, breathless. He’d begun to perspire profusely inside his clothes. He continued, for another two or three minutes, speaking haltingly, saying that while, for most of them this morning the hearing represented a forum of a purely legal and ethical sort, for Lee Roy Sears it was his very life. “There’s an irony in this, something grotesque, even tragic, that people like us—middle-class, white, educated, ‘professional’—people who have lived with privilege since birth, breathing it in like oxygen—should find themselves sitting in judgment of Lee Roy Sears, who has been disenfranchised from America since birth. His death would be a meaningless sacrifice—of what, to what, I don’t know. Once in history the death penalty, for all its cruelty, had a sacred meaning. It was part of a religious tradition. The condemned man’s soul was to be redeemed by his physical death—ideally. But now, in our time, there is no redemption. There is just—death.” Michael paused again. He was aware of utter quiet in the room. A sea of blurred faces, grave expressions, here and there a frown, a quizzical half-smile, a grimac
e of embarrassment—or was it startled sympathy? No one had addressed them in this way, so openly, so from the heart, and they did not know how to respond.

  Lee Roy Sears too had woken from his trance and was staring at Michael O’Meara. His skin glowed as if a fierce muffled light illuminated it from within.

  With that gesture that so exasperated Gina, running a hand distractedly through his hair, Michael rapidly summed up his brief on Sears’s behalf, speaking of the egregious technical flaws in the criminal justice system, one day, soon perhaps, to be remedied, that had resulted in Sears’s conviction—“Just let’s hope Lee Roy Sears is still living when these reforms become law.”

  His voice trembled with anger. He sat down, abruptly. A long moment followed of absolute stillness, silence, as if his audience expected him to continue; then, unexpectedly, a number of people, with a particular concentration near the rear of the room and along the wall, burst into spontaneous applause.

  “Quiet, please!” The chairman cleared his throat, rapped tentatively with his gavel, and the hearing continued.

  But its tone had changed, quite palpably. From this point onward there was an air of hope, of uplift, even of triumph in the room: a sense that something deathly had been confronted, surmounted, passed.

  At the end, lee Roy Sears was himself invited to speak if he wished. Everyone leaned forward expectantly.

  For an uncomfortable, protracted minute or so Sears sat stiff and unmoving, as if unhearing; then, slowly, with an air of subtly wounded dignity, like a defiant child, he got to his feet.

  Since Michael O’Meara had spoken, Lee Roy Sears seemed to have lost his pose of stoicism and indifference; he’d been looking out at the spectators, particularly at Michael, peering from beneath his heavy dark eyebrows as if trying to figure out the connection between them. His arms were stiff at his sides, elbows oddly akimbo, wrists at about waist level where the handcuffs linked them; distractedly, not knowing what he did, he tugged at the wristbands of his khaki shirt, pulling the sleeves down, again as a child might, so that the cuffs covered part of his hands. A tic animated his left eyelid so that it looked as if, so very inappropriately, he were winking.

  And how unexpected, the man’s voice, raw, near-inaudible, both shy and reckless, as, suddenly, words tumbled from him: “—I don’t know if my life is worth saving!—I mean, I never did know—from the time I was a kid—they tell you you’re shit, so how d’you know?—you don’t know anything except what somebody tells you and God is mostly silent so—so I don’t know!” He smiled, showing discolored chunky teeth; his eyes shone with tears. His voice was becoming higher-pitched, like an adolescent boy’s. In the face of his listeners’ utter astonishment he continued, his eyelid twitching as if keeping time with his words, “—the main bad things I did, the true evil I repent of, I did in the war—I did because I was told to—I don’t remember exactly because I got sick but I know I did them or somebody right around me because who else, y’know?—I was in the uniform—and you can’t get out of it just have to keep going forward to the end—till you’re dead too, and they send you home. So, like now, this hearing, I thank you kindly for your words and for your concern for me like I’m not just shit but I have to say I don’t know, truly—if God has new plans for me—I am innocent of taking another’s life—except in uniform—but—I don’t know what God wants me to be—whatever it is—that’s up to I guess God?—and I guess you?—”

  Abruptly, Sears ceased speaking; though, for a few seconds, his mouth continued to work. Then he sat down. His movements were jerky, spasmodic. By this time tears were streaming over his cheeks, but he seemed oblivious of them, a small fixed smile stretching his lips.

  Michael O’Meara’s final vision of Lee Roy Sears—Michael was certain it was to be the final vision—was that of the prisoner being led away by the guards who towered over him, back to his cell on death row.

  It was a four-hour drive back to Mount Orion, New Jersey, from Hunsford, Connecticut. When, exhausted from the drive, and the emotional strain of the day, Michael O’Meara entered his house, he was surprised to be so ecstatically greeted by Gina, who rushed at him, slipped her perfumed arms around his neck, kissed him full on the lips; and informed him, eyes bright and sly, that he was to telephone a certain number immediately—the message was on his desk.

  Michael stared at Gina’s animated face. This was a woman who rejoiced in success. “Is it?—Sears?” he asked excitedly.

  Gina pressed a forefinger against Michael’s lips and smiled.

  “Call, darling. And see.”

  The message was from one of the A.C.L.U. organizers of Lee Roy Sears’s defense, and, when Michael called, he was informed that, forty-five minutes after the Hunsford hearing was adjourned, the Board of Pardons had voted unanimously to commute Lee Roy Sears’s death sentence to life imprisonment.

  By the time Michael hung up he’d begun to cry—laughing, and crying. So happy!—so damned relieved!—and tremendously grateful!—as if his own life, or, better yet, the life of someone he loved above his own, had been spared.

  Gina, delightful Gina, who had so resented Michael’s involvement in this time-consuming pro bono work, insisted that they celebrate: before Michael could reply she informed him that she’d already telephoned their closest friends in Mount Orion, another couple whom they saw regularly; she’d already made reservations at Le Plumet Royal, Mount Orion’s distinguished French restaurant. “It isn’t every day that my husband saves a man’s life!” she said.

  Michael laughingly protested that he had certainly not saved Sears’s life: it had been a collective effort on the part of dozens of people, over a period of years.

  Gina said carelessly, caressing his cheek, “I don’t believe that, I know you.”

  That evening as they were dressing to go out, Gina approached Michael, hesitantly, and, her eyes locking with his in a bureau mirror, said with uncharacteristic shyness, “Michael, will you forget that man, now? And move on to—other things?”

  Michael, who was knotting a tie around his neck, stared at Gina in the mirror. Her ashy blond hair lifted from her face in an artful sweep, her eyes were large and grave, her small high breasts, framed in the intricately woven lace of her black silk slip, rose with her breathing, in tremulous apprehension. Michael’s heart kicked.

  He whispered, “Oh, yes. My darling.”

  Thinking, intermittently during the days that followed, until at last he did begin to forget, poor Sears, poor bastard—his life saved but only to be lived out behind bars, behind those particularly grim, ugly, mildewed-looking cement walls of Hunsford State Prison.

  II

  1

  Tight-coiled, oily black and spangled with gold, Snake Eyes slept. Hidden deep inside the jungle. Hidden from the glaring tropical sun.

  Was Snake Eyes sucking out of the depths of the earth his powerful venom?—Lee Roy Sears pondered.

  Of this, Lee Roy Sears was fearful sometimes. Not all the time but sometimes.

  He was innocent, now he had his mission in life.

  Now he had his mission in life, he mostly rejoiced. God forgives a smiling grateful face and so does Man.

  Bare your teeth in just the right way, it’s a smile.

  For, Lee Roy Sears had been spared. Out of justice and mercy and compassion and American bounty. He’d surrendered himself to Death having seen in a dream vision his naked body dumped back into that garbage bag like shit; then, to his astonishment, he’d been spared.

  Some visions, you never forget.

  Some people who intervene on your behalf, you never forget.

  Your enemies, you make a vow to forget.

  You make a vow to forget your enemies those fuckers who hoped to squash you like they’d squash a cockroach under their heels and grind it flat the fuckers who don’t deserve to live who deserve to be whacked off taking it full in the face but these enemies of yours you make a vow to forget.

  For, now, spared and reprieved from Death, Lee Roy Sears was
a new man, and he was embarked upon a new life, and he was determined to be good.

  He had a mission. He was fired with his mission. To bring light into the darkness. To bring light where no light has ever shone. To help other men, Vietnam casualties like himself. To show them the way to deal with their nightmares and bad memories, through art. To fulfill his, Lee Roy Sears’s, own God-given talent as an artist.

  Was the man sincere, yes certainly he was sincere, his voice quivering with passion. Just look into his eyes. His damp slightly bloodshot slightly hooded dark eyes.

  As he told the prison chaplain, maybe if you’ve never been condemned to death in the electric chair then reprieved by the grace of God and Man you can’t know what it is to REJOICE.

  At first, for many weeks, the chaplain was suspicious of Lee Roy Sears—there’s an aura, distinct as a bad smell, that clings to an ex-death row prisoner—then he came to believe. Came to believe that Lee Roy Sears was a purer Christian than he himself was—now was that true, or was that a lucky error?

  2

  “Oh Daddy—!”

  “—Daddy!”

  He lifted his head at once, startled.

  The voices, bell-like, clear, thinly soprano, might have been a single voice and its immediate echo, they were so alike: identical. And, in their childish urgency, with its undercurrent of excitement tinged with mild apprehension, unexpected. So deeply absorbed in his muscle-straining labor was he, Michael O’Meara had lapsed into one of his characteristic fugues of obliviousness, and for a fraction of a second—these curious pleats in memory still occurred, after seven years—he’d virtually forgotten he was a father and that, at any time, he might hear the cry Daddy!—and its echo.