The Autobiography of an Execution

BEFORE KATYA AND I were married, while she was still practicing law, we had plans to go to her law firm’s annual meeting in New York. Our flight left Friday morning. On Thursday I went to the prison to see Moises Ramirez. Ramirez was scheduled to be executed the following week. He was not our client. He had written me five letters in three days, begging for help.

When he came into the cage he was wearing horn-rimmed glasses and had peach fuzz on his chin. He looked like the character who played Michael J. Fox’s father in the first Back to the Future movie. He had a tattoo on his left forearm that said Clara. I had no idea what he had done. I was there to tell him there was nothing I could do.

I said, I talked to your lawyers and told them I was going to come talk to you.

He said, I ain’t heard nothing from my lawyers in like five years. They don’t live in Texas no more, do they?

In fact, his lawyers had left the state. But I was surprised they had not even written him. I asked, Who told you about your execution date?

First time I heard about it was when the major called me into his office. That was a month ago.

I looked down at my notebook. I wrote the word Scared. He said, I been writing my pen pals. Cheryl, she lives in West Virginia, wrote me back and gave me your address. I just need some kind of help, man. I want y’all to represent me. My pen pals can get y’all some money.

I said, The problem isn’t money. The problem is that it is really too late to file anything else.

His lower lip quivered. I thought, Please don’t start crying.

That morning the Supreme Court had decided a case having to do with the obligations of lawyers appointed to represent death-row inmates in federal court. In my office we had started constructing an argument based on the new case we thought might buy some more time for a few of our clients. I did not want to waste it on Ramirez.

I said, The Supreme Court decided a case today that we might be able to use to get you a stay.

He said, What’s that?

I said, A stay means you won’t get executed next week.

He said, No. I know. But then what? Does it mean I get another month or something?

I said, At this point, the only goal is to get you a stay. If you don’t get executed next Wednesday, then we can try to figure out what else to do.

The phrase blank stare was invented to describe the look he was giving me. I could not tell whether he did not understand what I was saying, or whether he did not like what I was saying. I said, I’m not going to file anything unless you want me to.

He said, I want you to do anything you can.

I said, Okay, but let me explain how it will work before you decide that.

I went through the normal speech, telling him that we would probably lose, and that we would not know we had lost until twenty minutes before six, and that I would call him and he would not have a chance to prepare or tell anyone good-bye.

He said, I ain’t got nobody I have to say good-bye.

Okay. But you still won’t have much time to get ready.

So you don’t think I’ll get me a stay?

I said, I think there is at most a one percent chance you’ll get a stay.

What’s that?

What’s a stay?

No. A one. What did you say?

I said there is no more than a one percent chance we’ll win.

He said, Yeah, that. What is it? Like out of a hundred?

I said, Percent? Yes. It’s like there are a hundred Ping-Pong balls. One chance we will win. Ninety-nine chances we will lose.

He said, Okay. Yeah. I want you to.

That night I told Katya about the visit. She knew what was coming. I said I couldn’t go to New York. She said, For somebody who claims he doesn’t want people depending on him you sure create a lot of dependency.

I said, I know it won’t make any difference, but I think it helps him to know someone is out there trying to help him. Katya didn’t say anything. I said, I think the worst thing is to feel completely alone in the universe.

Katya was mad I was not going to go to New York. She said, I get that.

LINCOLN AND KATYA were watching SpongeBob SquarePants when I got back to the beach. Lincoln ran over and hugged me. I pretended that he knocked me down and we rolled around on the floor, me tickling him, until he begged me to stop. Katya said, How did it go?

I said, Quaker asked me whether when I met you it was love at first sight.

She laughed. She said, Did you lie and say yes?

I said, If I had said yes it wouldn’t have been a lie. It just took me several years to realize it.

She said, Right.

Lincoln said, What’s love at first sight? Katya explained that it is when two people know as soon as they meet each other that they want to be with each other forever. Lincoln said, That’s impossible.

Katya looked at me and smiled. She said, He’s definitely your son.

ON THE WESTERN TIP of Galveston Island, where the Gulf of Mexico meets the bay, only the ignorant stray far from shore. The vicious swirling currents pull overconfident swimmers out to the open seas and drown a dozen unsuspecting fishermen a year. I got into my kayak and floated into it. Underneath it’s a maelstrom, but from on top of the water, where I intended to stay, it seemed peaceful and calm. The Buddhist river runners I used to know would say that the secret was never to fight the river. I was willing to go wherever the tides wanted to put me.

I saw a couple of dorsal fins. I thought the dolphins had come over to play, then I saw that there was only one fin, not two, and that it was a shark. It was only six feet long, which is long enough when you’re floating in a plastic seven-foot boat in the middle of the ocean. A school of jellyfish, thousands of them, streamed toward my boat, then fanned out along its length, half reaching toward the bow, half toward the stern, forming a torus, and rejoining into a line on the other side. It was cold, a hard wind blowing in from the north, the second day of the new year, and at 3:00 p.m., the sun was already low in the western sky. Four pelicans flew in a line, nose to tail, not a foot above the surf. I watched them until they were a dot. Looking south toward Cuba, I saw nothing, not a boat, not a rig, not a man, just the horizon, and a sliver of moon. The tide pushed me a mile to the east, where the waves began lapping, easing me to the shore. An hour later I was aground. I laced on my shoes and jogged back up the beach, through the soft sand, to my truck. By the time I got back to our cabin, Katya and Lincoln were back from shopping, and my mind was washed. Lincoln asked whether we could go build a sand castle before dinner, and I said sure.

Katya and I sat on the deck and ate fried trout while Lincoln watched TV and ate buttered spaghetti. When I was ten, my brother Mark, who was then eight, decided to be a vegetarian. We had a housekeeper named Evelina, just like Quaker’s mom. The second day of Mark’s vegetarianism, she made pepper steak, his favorite, stirring thinly sliced flank steak in a cast-iron skillet with just a tad of oil, some garlic, a tablespoon of freshly ground peppercorns, and sliced jalapenos. Mark ate two servings. We shared a room. That night, as we were going to sleep, he said, If I’m going to be a vegetarian, I’m not going to be able to eat some things I really like. I told him that was true. He nodded like he had had a great insight then told me good night. He did not eat meat again for more than fifteen years.

Katya said, Where did you go? I told her I was thinking about how Henry’s mom had the same name as a woman who used to cook for us. She said, I think this case is officially under your skin. I told her she might be right. We decided that she and Lincoln and the dog would come back to Galveston in a month, while I would be occupied with the Quaker hearing, so that I did not drive them crazy, and vice versa. We told Lincoln the next day on the drive back to Houston.

He said, But it won’t be fun without Dada. I told him that he and Mama would have plenty of fun. He said, I