The Chamber (Page 46)

Sam had received several kites during the day. All had expressed sympathy and hope. All offered whatever help was available. The music had been quieter and the yelling that erupted occasionally when someone’s rights were being tampered with had not occurred. For the second day, the Row had been a more peaceful place. The televisions rattled along all day and into the night, but the volume was lower. Tier A was noticeably calmer.

"Got myself a new lawyer," Sam said quietly as he leaned on his elbows with his hands hanging into the hallway. He wore nothing but his boxer shorts. He could see Gullitt’s hands and wrists, but he could never see his face when they talked in their cells. Each day as Sam was led outside for his hour of exercise, he walked slowly along the tier and stared into the eyes of his comrades. And they stared at him. He had their faces memorized, and he knew their voices. But it was cruel to live next door to a man for years and have long conversations about life and death while looking only at his hands.

"That’s good, Sam. I’m glad to hear it."

"Yeah. Pretty sharp kid, I think."

"Who is it?" Gullitt’s hands were clasped together. They didn’t move.

"My grandson." Sam said this just loud enough for Gullitt to hear. He could be trusted with secrets.

Gullitt’s fingers moved slightly as he pondered this. "Your grandson?"

"Yep. From Chicago. Big firm. Thinks we might have a chance."

"You never told me you had a grandson."

"I hadn’t seen him in twenty years. Showed up yesterday and told me he was a lawyer and wanted to take my case."

"Where’s he been for the past ten years?"

"Growing up, I guess. He’s just a kid. Twentysix, I think."

"You’re gonna let a twenty-six-year-old kid take your case?"

This irritated Sam a bit. "I don’t exactly have a lot of choices at this moment in my life."

"Hell, Sam, you know more law than he does."

"I know, but it’ll be nice to have a real lawyer out there typing up motions and appeals on real computers and filing them in the proper courts, you know. It’ll be nice to have somebody who can run to court and argue with judges, somebody who can fight with the state on equal footing."

This seemed to satisfy Gullitt because he didn’t speak for several minutes. His hands were still, but then he began rubbing his fingertips together and this of course meant something was bothering him. Sam waited.

"I’ve been thinking about something, Sam. All day long this has been eatin’ at me."

"What is it?"

"Well, for three years now you’ve been right there and I’ve been right here, you know, and you’re my best friend in the world. You’re the only person I can trust, you know, and I don’t know what I’m gonna do if they walk you down the hall and into the chamber. I mean, I’ve always had you right there to look over my legal stuff, stuff that I’ll never understand, and you’ve always given me good advice and told me what to do. I can’t trust my lawyer in D.C. He never calls me or writes me, and I don’t know what the hell’s going on with my case. I mean, I don’t know if I’m a year away or five years away, and it’s enough to drive me crazy. If it hadn’t been for you, I’d be a nut case by now. And what if you don’t make it?" By now his hands were jumping and thrusting with all sorts of intensity. His words stopped and his hands died down.

Sam lit a cigarette and offered one to Gullitt, the only person on death row with whom he’d share. Hank Henshaw, to his left, did not smoke. They puffed for a moment, each blowing clouds of smoke at the row of windows along the top of the hallway.

Sam finally said, "I’m not going anywhere, J.B. My lawyer says we’ve got a good chance."

"Do you believe him?"

"I think so. He’s a smart kid."

"That must be weird, man, having a grandson as your lawyer. I can’t imagine." Gullitt was thirty-one, childless, married, and often complained about his wife’s jody, or free world boyfriend. She was a cruel woman who never visited and had once written a short letter with the good news that she was pregnant. Gullitt pouted for two days before admitting to Sam that he had beaten her for years and chased lots of women himself. She wrote again a month later and said she was sorry. A friend loaned her the money for an abortion, she explained, and she didn’t want a divorce after all. Gullitt couldn’t have been happier.

"It’s somewhat strange, I guess," Sam said. "He looks nothing like me, but he favors his mother."

"So the dude just came right out and told you he was your long-lost grandson?"

"No. Not at first. We talked for a while and his voice sounded familiar. Sounded like his father’s."

"His father is your son, right?"

"Yeah. He’s dead."

"Your son is dead?"

"Yeah."

The green book finally arrived from Preacher Boy with another note about a magnificent dream he had just two nights ago. He had recently acquired the rare spiritual gift of dream interpretation, and couldn’t wait to share it with Sam. The dream was still revealing itself to him, and once he had it all pieced together he would decode it and untangle it and illustrate it for Sam. It was good news, he already knew that much.

At least he’s stopped singing, Sam said to himself as he finished the note and sat on

his bed. Preacher Boy had also been a gospel singer of sorts and a songwriter on top of that, and periodically found himself seized with the spirit to the point of serenading the tier at full volume and at all hours of the day and night. He was an untrained tenor with little pitch but incredible volume, and the complaints came fast and furious when he belted his new tunes into the hallway. Packer himself usually intervened to stop the racket. Sam had even threatened to step in legally and speed up the kid’s execution if the caterwauling didn’t stop, a sadistic move that he later apologized for. The poor kid was just crazy, and if Sam lived long enough he planned to use an insanity strategy that he’d read about from the California case.

He reclined on his bed and began to read. The fan ruffled the pages and circulated the sticky air, but within minutes the sheets under him were wet. He slept in dampness until the early hours before dawn when the Row was almost cool and the sheets were almost dry.

Chapter 17

THE Auburn House had never been a house or a home, but for decades had been a quaint little church of yellow brick and stained glass. It sat surrounded by a ugly chain-link fence on a shaded lot a few blocks from downtown Memphis. Graffiti littered the yellow brick and the stained glass windows had been replaced with plywood. The congregation had fled east years ago, away from the inner city, to the safety of the suburbs. They took their pews and songbooks, and even their steeple. A security guard paced along the fence ready to open the gate. Next door was a crumbling apartment building, and a block behind was a deteriorating federal housing project from which the patients of Auburn House came.

They were all young mothers, teenagers without exception whose mothers had also been teenagers and whose fathers were generally unknown. The average age was fifteen. The youngest had been eleven. They drifted in from the project with a baby on a hip and sometimes another one trailing behind. They came in packs of three and four and made their visits a social event. They came alone and scared. They gathered in the old sanctuary which was now a waiting room where paperwork was required. They waited with their infants while their toddlers played under the seats. They chatted with their friends, other girls from the project who’d walked to Auburn House because cars were scarce and they were too young to drive.