I said, Sure, amigo, but you don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to.
He said, I know. But I don’t mind. I wished that I die at the same time as you and Mama, so that way, none of us ever has to be alone.
I’m sure there’s a good way to answer that, but I don’t know precisely what it is.
OUR PARALEGAL BUZZED ME the next morning and told me Ezekiel Green was on the line. Death-row inmates cannot make phone calls. They can talk with their lawyers, but only by prearrangement. I asked her whether she was sure. She said, That’s what he said.
Green said, I can’t talk long, but I heard about your hearing. You need to bench-warrant me up there so I can help.
A bench warrant is an order a judge signs to have an inmate transported to the courthouse. I said, How are you calling me?
He said, Cell phone, man. Don’t worry, it’s all cool.
I didn’t want to know what kind of favors Green was trading with a guard to be able to call me on a cell phone. I said, I don’t think the judge is going to hear from any witnesses. But I’ll let you know. And if you call me again, I’ll tell the warden.
Green said, Merry Christmas, counselor, and he broke the connection.
WINTER IS MY FAVORITE time at the beach. Every year, Katya and I drive down to Galveston a day or two before Christmas and stay until after the first of the year. We have the beach to ourselves. We go on long walks, read, watch the waves, and drink margaritas on the deck. I was going to cancel this year, but Quaker was going to get executed anyway, so why bother?
The day before Christmas Lincoln wanted to practice riding his bike on the beach. When he hit the soft sand, his front tire started to wobble. He squeezed the front brake and went flying over the handlebars. His face hit the sand. He cut his cheek, right below his left eye, and his forehead. He bit through his lip. Blood was streaming down his face and he was crying. I told him falling is normal and he should get back on the bike. He was crying harder. When he gets older, he is going to encounter bad people. He needs to be able to defeat them, or at least avoid being hurt by them. I said, Get back on the bike, amigo, or we are going to take it back to the store. A woman walking down the beach looked at me oddly, but I was not screaming. I wasn’t. Lincoln was sobbing so hard he was shaking.
Just then, Katya came running up to us, and Lincoln wrapped his arms around her. While she stroked his hair, I told her what happened. She said to me in a stage whisper, Can I walk home with him?
I said, Fine. It might have been closer to a hiss.
When O’Neill was twenty-one years old, he rode a kid’s tricycle through his neighborhood. I’ve seen photographs. He looked like a circus clown. He wasn’t doing it to be funny. He played with kids who were six years old. The neighbors thought he was simpleminded but harmless. They were half right.
I pushed Lincoln’s bike for a while, then picked it up and carried it the rest of the way home. The dog usually ran ahead of me, attacked some waves, chased some gulls, and waited for me to catch up. This day she was walking ten yards behind me, like she was embarrassed. Another hall-of-fame parenting day.
Lincoln ate some soup and went to sleep. Katya said, Do you want to go back to Houston? I told her no. She said, Okay. But Lincoln and I will understand if you change your mind. She read until she fell asleep on the couch. I carried her to bed and put Lincoln in bed next to her. I carried a bottle of bourbon out onto the deck and listened to the ocean that was too dark to see. At three I crawled into bed. At five I got up and started to work on my outline for the Quaker hearing. My phone buzzed. I had gotten a text message. It said, Quaker needs to see you. It was signed EG.
At eight I called Jerome, who is also the office ethicist, and asked him whether I needed to report Green to the warden. I was pretty sure it was illegal for death-row inmates to have access to cell phones, meaning I knew a crime was being committed. Green was not my client, so I did not have any duty of loyalty toward him. Jerome said, Don’t you think we need to keep Green warm in case he really knows something about Quaker? I asked Jerome to set up a meeting for me to see Quaker on December 30. He said, One other thing. I went ahead and wrote up something for O’Neill. I’m going to e-mail it to you. I’d like to get it filed the day after Christmas, so can you look at it today?
I said, I thought we decided not to do anything for O’Neill.
Jerome said, Actually, you decided that. But you said that it was based on nobody’s having time. I couldn’t sleep last night so I had eight hours to write the motion. I didn’t think you’d care what I did on my time.
I told him I would look at it right away.
There’s nothing quite like being the boss.
FOR THE NEXT FEW DAYS, I did not turn on my computer or check my voice mail. I was completely focused on trying to avoid being a terrible dad.
My dreams were not so forgiving. The night before I was going to drive to the prison, I dreamed that Katya, Lincoln, the dog, and I were hiking up at Guardsman Pass. It was late November. A dusting of snow covered the steel-hard ground. Deep in the forest, we drank soup from a thermos and ate saltine crackers and chocolate. When we got back to the truck I asked Katya where Lincoln had run to. She said she thought I had him. Winona was running back and forth, nose to the ground, agitated. There was less than an hour of daylight left. Katya and Winona took off to retrace our steps. Just then Henry Quaker came out of the woods, carrying Lincoln on his back. Winona started to bark, a sound of joy. Lincoln was saying, Hooray for Henry, Hooray for Henry.
Maybe we don’t love our son more than you love yours, but I’m certain we love him more than my clients’ parents loved theirs. Henry might have been an exception.
At dawn on the thirtieth I went for a run with the dog. When I got back I wrote a note for Katya and Lincoln saying I’d be home in time for dinner. I drove off to see Quaker.
I TOLD QUAKER that his mom had called me. He asked whether that was why I was there on the day before New Year’s Eve. I told him about the message from Green. He said, The only time I talk to the guy is to say, What’s up? I didn’t tell him nothing about my case.
I’d driven four hours to see a client who did not need to see me.
I asked Quaker whether he wanted anything to eat. He said, They got beer in those machines? He smiled. He said, You know, I was planning on going to see Dorris on the day the police came to get me.
I had avoided asking Quaker what had happened between him and Dorris, but I felt like I had to. It was like listening to a fairy tale. He had gone to a basketball game with her when he was in ninth grade, and that night when he got home he told his mama that he had met the woman he was going to marry. He said to me, This is corny, man, but the first time I talked to her, I felt like I’d known her forever. I knew we belonged together.
Nicole, the guard, came over. She asked Henry how he was doing. I would have sworn she winked at him. She told me Happy New Year and walked away. I looked at Quaker. He shrugged.
Quaker said, Was it love at first sight for you?
I said, I thought love was only true in fairy tales.
He said, Then for someone else but not for me. I love that song. Did you know that Neil Diamond wrote it for the Monkees?
I hadn’t known that. I said, Seriously?
He said, Yeah. Some famous jazz critic, first time he heard Bill Evans, thought the guy was a lounge player. Can you imagine that? Bill Evans?
I had heard that. I said, There’s a certain kind of talent that you have to learn to appreciate.
He said, The flip side of belonging together the way we did is that Dorris needed me, needed me a lot. She was one of those girls who needed to talk and talk. I didn’t have to say nothing, just so long as I was listening, you know? And she liked to be touched. Holding hands, neck rubs. Didn’t matter what. She wanted me to be close to her.
There was a fly buzzing around inside the cage where he was sitting. It landed on his hand. He didn’t try to kill it, just shooed it away.
He said, She needed
