stunt to make everyone feel badly for him, because after a decade, who even remembered feeling badly for that police officer, that little girl?
Idid.
There are people who say that the death penalty isn't just because it takes so long to execute a man. That it's inhumane to have to wait eleven years or more for punishment. That at least for Elizabeth and Kurt, death came quickly.
Let me tell you what's wrong with that line of reasoning: it assumes that Elizabeth and Kurt were the only victims. It leaves out me; it leaves out Claire. And I can promise you that every day for the last eleven years I've thought of what I lost at the hands of
Shay Bourne. I've been anticipating his death just as long as he has.
I heard voices coming from the living room and realized that
Claire had turned on the television. A grainy photograph of Shay
Bourne filled the screen. It was the same photo that had been used in the newspapers, although Claire would not have seen those, since I'd thrown them out immediately. Bourne's hair was cut short now, and there were parenthetical lines around his mouth and fanning from the corners of his eyes, but he otherwise did not look any different.
'That's him, isn't it?' Claire asked.
God, Complex? read the caption beneath the photograph.
'Yes.' I walked toward the television, intentionally blocking her view, and turned it off.
Claire looked up at me. 'I remember him,' she said.
I sighed. 'Honey, you weren't even bom yet.'
She unfolded the afghan that sat on the couch and wrapped it around her shoulders, as if she'd suddenly taken a chill. 'I remember him,' Claire repeated.
M I CHAEL
I would have had to be living under a rock to not know what was being said about Shay Bourne, but I was the last person in the world who would ever have believed him to be messianic. As far as I was concerned, there was one Son of God, and I knew who He was. As for
Bourne's showmanship-well, I'd seen David Blaine make an elephant disappear on Fifth Avenue in New York City, but that wasn't a miracle, either. Plain and simple: my job here wasn't to feed into Shay
Bourne's delusional beliefs... only to help him accept Jesus Christ as his Lord and Savior before his execution so that he'd wind up in the
Kingdom of Heaven.
And if I could help him donate his heart somewhere along the way, so be it.
Two days after the incident at I-tier had occurred, I parked my
Trophy outside the prison. My mind kept tripping over a verse from
Matthew where Jesus spoke to his disciples: I was a stranger, and you took me in; naked, and you clothed me; I was sick, and you visited me;
I was in prison, and you came unto me. The disciples-who were, to be brutally honest, a thick bunch-were confused. They couldn't remember
Jesus being lost or naked or sick or imprisoned. And Jesus told them: Inasmuch as you have done it unto one of the least of my brethren, you have done it unto me.
Inside, I was handed a flak jacket and goggles again. The door to
I-tier opened, and I was led down the hallway to Shay Bourne's cell.
It wasn't all that different from being in the confessional. The same Swiss-cheese holes perforated the metal door of the cell, so I could get a glimpse of Shay. Although we were the same age, he looked like he'd aged a lifetime. Now gray at the temples, he still was slight and wiry. I hesitated, silent, waiting to see if his eyes would go wide with recognition, if he would start banging on the door and demand to get away from the person who'd set the wheels of his execution in motion.
But a funny thing happens when you're in clerical dress: you aren't a man. You're somehow more than one, and also less. I've had secrets whispered in front of me; I've had women hike up their skirts to fix their panty hose. Like a physician, a priest is supposed to be unflappable, an observer, a fly on the wall. Ask ten people who meet me what I look like, and eight of them won't be able to tell you the color of my eyes. They simply don't look past the collar.
Shay walked directly up to the door of the cell and started to grin.
'You came,' he said.
I swallowed. 'Shay, I'm Father Michael.'
He flattened his palms against the door of the cell. I remembered a photograph from the crime evidence, those fingers dark with a little girl's blood. I had changed so much in the past eleven years, but what about Shay Bourne? Was he remorseful? Had he matured? Did he wish, like me, that he could erase his mistakes?
'Hey, Father,' a voice yelled out-I would later learn it was Calloway
Reece-'you got any of those wafers? I'm near starving.'
I ignored him and focused on Shay. 'So... I understand you're
Catholic?'
'A foster mother had me baptized,' Shay said. 'A thousand years ago.' He glanced at me. 'They could put you in the conference room, the one they use for lawyers.'
'The warden said we'd have to talk here, at your cell.'
Shay shrugged. 'I don't have anything to hide.'
Do you? I heard, although he hadn't said it.
'Anyway, that's where they give us hep C,' Shay said.
'Give you hep C?'
'On haircut day. Every other Wednesday. We go to the conference room and they buzz us. Number two blade, even if you want it longer for winter. They don't make it this hot in here in the winter. It's freezing from November on.' He turned to me. 'How come they can't make it hot in November and freezing now?'
'I don't know.'
'It's on the blades.'
'Pardon?'
'Blood,' Shay said. 'On the razor blades. Someone gets nicked, someone else gets hep C.'
Following his conversation was like watching a SuperBall bounce.
'Did that happen to you?'
'It happened to other people, so sure, it happened to me.'
Inasmuch as you have done it unto one of the least of my brethren, you have done it unto me.
My head was swimming; I hoped it was Shay's nonlinear speech, and not a panic attack coming on. I'd been suffering those for eleven years now, ever since the day we'd sentenced Shay. 'But for the most part, you're all right?'
After I said it, I wanted to kick myself. You didn't ask a dying man how he was feeling. Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, I thought, how was the play?
'I get lonely,' Shay answered.
Automatically, I replied, 'God's with you.'
'Well,' Shay said, 'he's lousy at checkers.'
'Do you believe in God?'
'Why do you believe in God?' He leaned forward, suddenly intense.
'Did they tell you I want to donate my heart?'
'That's what I came to talk about. Shay.'
'Good. No one else wants to help.'
'What about your lawyer?'
