visit with Donte from 8:00 a.m. until noon on this, his final day. After their last farewell, he would be transported to the death chamber at the prison in Huntsville.
Eight in the morning was hours away.
The schedule was fixed, all movements dictated by a system famous for its efficiency. At 5:00 that afternoon, the family would report to a prison office in Huntsville and then take a short ride in a van to the death chamber, where they would be herded into a cramped witness room just seconds before the drugs were administered. They would see him on the gurney, tubes already in his arms, listen to his final words, wait ten minutes or so for the official declaration of death, then leave quickly. From there, they would drive to a local funeral home to retrieve the body and take it home.
Could it be a dream, a nightmare? Was she really there, awake in the darkness contemplating her son's final hours? Of course she was. She had lived the nightmare for nine years now, ever since the day she'd been told that Donte had not only been arrested but also confessed. The nightmare was a book as thick as her Bible, every chapter another tragedy, every page filled with sorrow and disbelief.
Andrea rolled from one side to another, the cheap bed squeaking and rattling. Then she was still and breathing heavily.
For Roberta, one horror had been replaced by the next: the numbing shock of seeing her boy in jail for the first time, in an orange jumpsuit, eyes wild and scared; the ache in her stomach as she thought about him in jail, locked away from his family and surrounded by criminals; the hope of a fair trial, only to suffer the shock of realizing it was anything but fair; her loud and unrestrained sobbing when the death sentence was announced; the last image of her son being led from the courtroom by thick deputies so smug in their work; the endless appeals and fading hopes; the countless visits to death row, where she watched a strong, healthy young man slowly deteriorate. She lost friends along the way and she really didn't care. Some were skeptical of the claims of innocence. Some grew weary of all the talk about her son. But she was consumed, and had little else to say. How could anyone else know what a mother was going through?
And the nightmare would never end. Not today, when Texas finally executed him. Not next week, when she buried him. Not at some point in the future, when the truth was finally known, if ever.
The horrors add up, and there were many days when Roberta Drumm doubted she had the strength to get out of bed. She was so tired of pretending to be strong.
'Are you wake, Momma?' Andrea asked softly.
'You know I am, honey.'
'Did you sleep any?'
'No, I don't think so.'
Andrea kicked off the sheets and stretched her legs. The room was very dark with no light filtering in from the outside. 'It's four thirty, Momma.'
'I can't see.'
'My watch glows in the dark.'
Andrea was the only one of the Drumm kids with a college degree. She taught kindergarten in a town near Slone. She had a husband and she wanted to be at home, in her bed, far away from Livingston, Texas. She closed her eyes in an effort to fall asleep, but only seconds passed before she was staring at the ceiling. 'Momma, I gotta tell you something.'
'What is it, honey?'
'I've never told anyone this, and I never will. It's a burden I've carried a long, long time, and I want you to know it before they take Donte.'
'I'm listening.'
'There was a time, after the trial, after they'd sent him away that I began to doubt his story. I think I was looking for a reason to doubt him. What they said sort of made sense. I could see Donte fooling around with that girl, afraid of getting caught, and I could see her trying to break up and him not wanting to. Maybe he sneaked out of the house that night when I was asleep. And when I heard his confession in court, I have to admit it made me uneasy. They never found her body, and if he threw her in the river, then maybe that's why they'll never find her. I was trying to make sense out of everything that had happened. I wanted to believe that the system is not totally broken. And so I convinced myself that he was probably guilty, that they probably got the right man. I kept writing to him, kept coming over here to see him and all, but I was convinced he was guilty. For a while, it made me feel better, in some strange way. This went on for months, maybe a year.'
'What changed your mind?'
'Robbie. You remember that time we went to Austin to hear the case on direct appeal?'
'Indeed I do.'
'It was a year or so after the trial.'
'I was there, honey.'
'We were sitting in that big courtroom, looking at those nine judges, all white, all looking so important in their black robes and hard frowns, their airs, and across the room was Nicole's family and her big-mouthed mother, and Robbie got up to argue for us. He was so good. He went through the trial and pointed out how weak the evidence was. He mocked the prosecutor and the judge. He was afraid of nothing. He attacked the confession. And he brought up, for the first time, the fact that the police had not told him about the anonymous phone caller who said it was Donte. That shocked me. How could the police and the prosecutor withhold evidence? Didn't bother the court, though. I remember watching Robbie argue so passionately, and it dawned on me that he, the lawyer, the white guy from the rich part of town, had no doubt whatsoever that my brother was innocent. And I believed him right then and there. I felt so ashamed for doubting Donte.'
'It's okay, honey.'
'Please don't tell anyone.'
'Never. You can trust your mother, you know.'
They sat up and moved to the edges of their beds, holding hands, foreheads touching. Andrea said, 'You wanna cry or you wanna pray?'
'We can pray later, but we can't cry later.'
'Right. Let's have us a good cry.' – The predawn traffic picked up as they approached Oklahoma City. Boyette's forehead was pressed against the passenger's window, his mouth open in a pathetic drool. His nap was entering its second hour, and Keith was happy with the solitude. He'd stopped back near the state line for a cup of carryout coffee, a dreadful machine brew that he would normally pour into a ditch. But what it lacked in flavor it more than made up for in caffeine, and Keith was buzzing right along, his head spinning, his speedometer exactly eight miles per hour over the limit.
Boyette had requested a beer at the last stop. Keith declined and bought him a bottle of water. He found a bluegrass station out of Edmond and listened to it at low volume. At 5:30, he called Dana, but she had little to say. South of Oklahoma City, Boyette jerked from his slumber and said, 'Guess I dozed off.'
'You did indeed.'
'Pastor, these pills I take really work on the bladder. Can we do a quick pit stop?'
'Sure,' Keith said. What else could he say? He kept one eye on the clock. They would leave the expressway somewhere north of Denton, Texas, and head east on two-lane roads. Keith had no idea how long that would take. His best guess was arriving in Slone between noon and 1:00 p.m. The pit stops, of course, were not helping their progress.
They stopped in Norman and bought more coffee and water. Boyette managed to blaze through two cigarettes, sucking and blowing rapidly as if it might be his last smoke, while Keith quickly refueled. Fifteen minutes later, they were back on I-35, racing south through the flat country of Oklahoma.
As a man of God, Keith felt compelled to at least explore the subject of faith. He began, somewhat tentatively, 'You've talked about your childhood, Travis, and we don't need to go back there. Just curious, though, if you were ever exposed to a church or to a preacher when you were a kid?'
The tic was back. So was the contemplation. 'No,' he said, and for a moment that seemed to be all. Then, 'I never knew my mother to go to church. She didn't have much of a family. I think they were ashamed of her, so they kept away. Darrell certainly didn't do the church thing. Uncle Chett needed a good dose of religion, but I'm sure he's in hell right now.'
Keith saw an opening. 'So you believe in hell?'
