whether Winona chews up half a pair of Katya’s expensive shoes or whether I smash a cockroach. You can laugh at your smallness or cry. The result’s the same. Nobody cares whether Quaker lives or dies, and nobody should, because nothing is worth caring about.
Well, at least that’s what I tried to tell myself.
The danger of perspective is that it can cause one to conclude that everything is just an aesthetic choice. Whether you are good or bad, assuming those words even mean anything, is, morally speaking, roughly equivalent to whether you prefer chocolate or vanilla. You can disbelieve that if you want. Like I said, belief is a choice. But truth has nothing to do with whether you believe it.
WHEN THE WARDEN SWUNG OPEN the heavy door and I saw Quaker in the holding cell, he was listening to an Al Green CD and—I am not making this up—dancing. The warden looked over at the three guards and furrowed his brow. They dropped their heads but made no move to unplug the music. The warden quietly closed the door behind me. I did not hear it lock. Quaker held up his right hand like a cop stopping traffic and sang a song about being tired of being alone. He asked one of the guards to turn it down a little and said to me, I love the reverend. Then, What’s going on? Why’s this taking so long?
I asked one of the guards if I could sit in the cell with Quaker. He said, This’ll probably get me fired, then he swung open the door and I walked inside. I stuck out my hand. Quaker paused, still cautious and reserved, then smiled a huge smile and took my hand in both of his. He pulled me toward him, like I was a scared dog on a leash, which wasn’t far from the truth, and when he let my hand go, I felt as awkward as a boy on a first date who doesn’t know whether to kiss the girl. Quaker wrapped his arms around me, and I hugged him back. His eyes were moist, but—and this is the craziest thing—he seemed almost happy.
The phone rang and one of the guards answered it. Quaker said, It’s peculiar, I know, but I feel really good. I know why they call it being at peace. I’ve been buzzing on the inside for so long, and now it’s calm, like the ocean with no waves. Even this morning on the row, all this noise and banging, all the usual shit, but it was like muffled, like I was underwater or something.
The guard hung up the phone and told us it was time to go. Quaker smiled again and nodded at me. Shouldn’t he have been shackled? Was he shackled? He said, I hope Pascal bet right. I want to see my Dorris, and my babies. But you know what? Even if I don’t get to, I don’t want to be here anymore without them. You know what I’m saying, Professor? Either way I win.
I said, It’s been a privilege to represent you, Henry.
He said, Do me a favor and don’t be second-guessing all your decisions for once. I know what you did for me. I know you believe me. Tell them lawyers in your office how much I appreciate it.
I will. I will.
And here. Please give this to my mama and tell her I love her.
He handed me his Bible. He hugged me again. He whispered in my ear, Thank you. I might have felt his lips brush against my cheek.
The guard who had answered the phone said, I think we got to go now, Henry.
The guard called Henry by his name. Funny that’s what I remember.
TWO OF THE GUARDS took Henry by either arm. The third opened the door to the courtyard for me and pointed me toward the door for the witnesses. When the door closed behind me, I heard Henry singing.
My phone rang. Kassie told me what I had already inferred. She said, The Supremes denied us. It was five to four. The governor turned us down, too.
I felt my heart quicken. In the Supreme Court, there is something called the rule of four. With only a few exceptions, nobody has an automatic right to have the Supreme Court consider his appeal. You have to get permission. The legal device used to make this request is the petition for writ of certiorari. By a long-standing convention of the Court, if four justices want to hear the case, the Court will hear it. This rule of four can create an anomaly. When a death-row inmate is facing execution, it takes five justices to grant a stay of execution. So it is possible for four justices to want to hear the case, but unless a fifth justice votes to grant a stay, the inmate will be executed before the Court can consider his case, and if the execution goes forward, there will be no case to hear. In the esoteric language of the law, the case will be rendered moot by the death of the petitioner. Many years ago, Justice Lewis Powell would always provide the fifth vote for a stay if four of his colleagues wanted to hear a case, but since Powell’s retirement, nobody does that. Over the past few years, there have been more than a dozen inmates executed even though four justices wanted to hear their case, because no fifth justice would provide the necessary additional vote for a stay.
But I remembered something. Fifteen years earlier, the Supreme Court had agreed to hear the appeal of a Texas death-row inmate, and after the Court announced that decision, a trial court scheduled the inmate’s execution. The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals stepped in and granted the inmate a stay. According to the Texas court, if the Supreme Court had agreed to hear the case, then it would be unseemly for the State of Texas to carry out an execution in the interim. I said to Kassie, We have to file something in state court and ask for a stay so that the Supreme Court can consider the appeal. I told her of another case where we had made a similar argument, so she and the others could work off those pleadings as a template. I said, Call me as soon as it’s filed.
Then I called the attorney general. Charles Allred was the assistant assigned to the case. I’d met him once. He looked barely old enough to shave. People who are so young that they still believe themselves to be immortal should be barred from facilitating death. I told him we intended to file something and explained our theory. I said, I know your usual practice is not to go forward with an execution while an appeal is pending, and I just want to make sure that you all will wait to go forward until our appeal is disposed of.
But nothing is pending yet, right?
It will be within the next few minutes.
It was ten fifty. He said, I’ll give you until eleven, and he hung up.
After the fiasco surrounding the Buckley execution, when the court of appeals had closed before we could file our papers, that court instituted a system for electronic filings. Kassie called. She said, It’s short, and it’s not very good, but it’s ready. Do you want to look at it? I told her just to file it and then to call Allred.
I said, Thanks for getting it done. Call me as soon as you hear something.
I had been standing in the courtyard, right beside the door that opened into the area for the inmate’s witnesses. There were separate doors leading to other areas for witnesses related to the victim, and for the press. There were no witnesses for the victims, so both those rooms were being used for press. A reporter named Marcus Godbold walked outside and said to me, Aren’t you going to come in? They’re getting ready to start.
Are you sure?
Well, they just opened the curtain, and your guy’s on the gurney.
ONCE ON THE LOWER Guadalupe River, a five-mile stretch of whitewater in central Texas that’s mellow except when it’s flooded, one of the kayakers in a group a quarter mile downriver from me missed his roll three times on the swollen river and had to swim. He got pinned between his boat and a massive tree. Water was pouring over his head. He was screaming, I don’t want to drown, don’t let me die. I was running the river with Craig. We both had throw ropes, and I had taken a swift-water-rescue course, but that was pretend. My real-life experience with treacherous rescues was nil. Craig paddled into a two-boat eddy behind a boulder as big as a truck. I followed him in. He pointed to a spot on the bank, and said, Let’s set up rescue lines there. It was so loud I wasn’t sure I had heard him. I wasn’t sure I wanted to hear him. He wedged his boat between two rocks and went scurrying toward the spot.
Two hours later, we were at the takeout, washing down Snickers bars with bottles of Fat Tire, which tastes a lot better than it sounds. I was glad Craig had been there. If it had been up to me, I might just have paddled on, hoping the guy would make it, leaving his rescue to his buddies and the EMTs. I would have read the papers and checked out the whitewater paddling Web sites, looking for news. It would have bothered me forever. I don’t know anybody who wants to be paralyzed by panic.
Maybe I learned something from that experience. But like I said, lessons lose something in translation. When the reporter told me Henry was on the gurney, I had no idea what to do.
