"Then we're in business." I slipped my hands into my suit pockets and suddenly remembered what else I had to tell Shay. "It's prickly," I said. "Like walking on a board full of needles. But somehow it doesn't hurt. It smells like Sunday morning, like a mower outside your window when you're trying to pretend the sun's not up yet."
As I spoke, Shay closed his eyes. "I think I remember."
"Well," I said. "Just in case you don't." I withdrew the handfuls of grass I'd torn from outside the prison grounds and sprinkled the tufts onto the floor.
A smile broke over Shay's face. He kicked off his prisonissued tennis shoes and began to move back and forth, barefoot, over the grass. Then he bent down to gather the cuttings and funneled them into the breast pocket of his scrubs, against a heart that was still beating strong. "I'm going to save them," he said.
"I know God will not give me anything I can't handle.
I just wish He didn't trust me so much."
--MOTHER TERESA
June
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Everything comes with a price.
You can have the man of your dreams, but only for a few years.
You can have the perfect family, but it turns out to be an illusion.
You can keep your daughter alive, but only if she hosts the heart of the person you hate most in this world.
I could not go straight home from the prison. I was shaking so hard that at first, I couldn't even drive; and even afterward, I missed the exit off the highway twice. I had gone to that meeting to tell Shay Bourne we didn't want his heart. So why had I changed my mind? Maybe because I was angry. Maybe because I was so shocked by what Shay Bourne had said. Maybe because if we waited for UNOS to find Claire a heart, it could be too late.
Besides, I told myself, this was all likely a moot point. The chance of Bourne even being a good physical match for Claire was negligible; his heart was probably far too large for a child's body; there could be all sorts of compromising diseases or long-term drug use that would prohibit him from being a donor.
And yet, there was another part of me that kept thinking: But what if?
Could I let myself hope? And could I stand it if, once again, that hope was shattered by Shay Bourne?
By the time I felt calm enough to drive home and face Claire, it was late at night. I had arranged for a neighbor to check on her hourly throughout the afternoon and evening, but Claire flatly refused a formal babysitter. She was fast asleep on the couch, the dog curled over her feet. Dudley lifted his head when I walked in, a worthy sentry. Where were you when Elizabeth was taken? I thought, not for the first time, rubbing Dudley between the ears. For days after the murders, I had held the puppy, staring into his eyes and pretending he could give me the answers I so desperately needed.
I turned off the television that was chattering to nobody and sat down beside Claire. If she received Shay Bourne's heart, would I look at my daughter but see him staring back at me?
Could I survive that?
And if I couldn't ... would Claire survive at all?
I fitted myself around Claire's body, stretching beside her on the couch. In her sleep, she curled against me, a puzzle piece fitting back where it belonged. I kissed my daughter's forehead, unconsciously reading it for fever. This was my life now, and Claire's: a waiting game. Like Shay Bourne sitting in his cell, waiting for his turn to die, we sat imprisoned by the limitations of Claire's body, waiting for her turn to live.
So don't judge me, unless you've fallen asleep on a couch with your ill child, thinking this night might be her last.
Ask instead: would you do it?
Would you give up your vengeance against someone you hate if it meant saving someone you love?
Would you want your dreams to come true if it meant granting your enemy's dying wish?
Maggie
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In school, I was the kinds of kid who crossed her t's and dotted her i's. I made sure to right-justify my papers, so that the type didn't look ragged. I'd craft elaborate covers--a tiny, two-dimensional working guillotine for my essay on A Tale of Two Cities; a science lab on prisms with the header rainbowed in multiple colors; a scarlet letter for ... well, you get the picture.
To that end, putting together a letter to the commissioner of corrections reminded me a little of my days as a student. There were multiple parts involved: the transcript of Shay Bourne attesting that he wanted to donate his heart to the sister of his victim; an affidavit from Claire Nealon's cardiac surgeon, stating that she did indeed need a heart to survive. I had made a call to facilitate a medical visit for Shay, to see if he was a match for Claire; and I had spent an hour on the phone with a UNOS coordinator, to confirm that if Shay gave up his heart, he could pick the recipient. I fastened all these letters together with a shiny silver butterfly clip and then turned back to the computer to finish my note to Commissioner Lynch.
As evidenced by the letter from the defendant's spiritual advisor, Father Michael Wright, execution by lethal injection will not only prevent the defendant from his intention of donating his heart to Claire Nealon--it also interferes with his practice of religion--a blatant violation of his First Amendment rights. Therefore, under the New Hampshire criminal code 630:5, subsection XIV, it would be impractical for the commissioner of corrections to carry out the punishment of death by lethal injection. A sentence of death carried out by hanging, however, would not only be allowed by the criminal code, but also would allow the defendant to practice his religion up to the moment of his execution.
I could imagine, at this moment, the commissioner's jaw dropping as he realized that I had managed to piece together two disparate laws in a way that would make the next few weeks a living hell.
Furthermore, this office would be pleased to work in conjunction with the commissioner of corrections to facilitate what needs to be done, as there are tissue matches and medical testing to be completed prior to the donation, and because time is of the essence during the organ harvest.
Not to mention--I don't trust you.
It is imperative to settle this matter swiftly, for obvious reasons.
We don't have a lot of time to work this out. Because neither Shay Bourne nor Claire Nealon have a lot of time left, period.
Sincerely,
Maggie Bloom, Attorney
I printed out the letter and slipped it into a manila envelope I'd already addressed. As I licked the envelope, I thought: Please make this work.
Who was I talking to?
I didn't believe in God. Not anymore.
I was an atheist.
Or so I told myself, even if there was a secret part of me that hoped I'd be proven wrong.
Lucius
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People always think they know what they'd miss the most if they had to trade places with me in this cell. Food, fresh air, your favorite pair of jeans, sex--believe me, I've heard them all, and they're all wrong. What you miss the most in prison is choice. You have no free will: your hair is cut in one style, like everyone else's. You eat what's being served when it is given to you. You are told when you can shower, shit, shave. Even our conversations are prescribed: If someone bumps into you in the real world, he says "Excuse me." If someone bumps into you in here, you say "What the fuck, motherfucker" before he can even speak. If you don't do this, you become a mark.
The reason we have no choice now is because we made a bad one in the past--which is why we were all energized by Shay's attempt to die on his own terms. It was still an execution, but even that tiny sliver of preference was more than we had on a daily basis. I could only imagine how my world would change if we were given an option to choose between orange scrubs and yellow ones; if we were asked whether we'd like a spoon or a fork with our meal trays, instead of the universal plastic "spork." But the more animated we got at the possibility of, well, possibility ... the more depressed Shay grew.
"Maybe," he said to me one afternoon when the
air-conditioning had broken and we were all wilting in our cells, "I should just let them do what they want."
The officers, in an act of mercy, had opened the door that led to the exercise cell. It was supposed to afford us a breeze, but that hadn't happened. "Why would you say that?"
"Because it feels like I've started a war," Shay said.
"Well, imagine that," Crash laughed. "Since I'm over here practicing my shooting."
This afternoon Crash had been injecting Benadryl. Many of the inmates here had made their own points--homemade hypodermics that could be sharpened every few uses by scraping them against a matchbook. Benadryl was given out by the prison nurse; you could accumulate a stash and open up a capsule, then cook down the tiny beads of medicine in a spoon over a soda-can stove. It was a speed high, but the buffers used in the medicine would also make you crazy.
"Whaddya say, Mistah Messiah ... you want a hit?"
"He most certainly does not," I answered.
"I don't think he was talking to you," Shay said. And then, to Crash: "Give it to me."
Crash laughed. "Guess you don't know him as well as you think you do, Liberace. Ain't that right, Death Row?"
Crash had no moral compass. He aligned himself with the Aryan Brotherhood when it suited his needs. He talked of terrorist attacks; he'd cheered when we were watching the news footage of the World Trade Center collapsing. He had a list of victims, should he ever get out. He wanted his kids to grow up to be addicts or dealers or whores, and said he would be disappointed if they turned out to be anything else. Once, I heard him describing a visit with his three-year-old daughter: he told her to punch another kid at school to make him proud, and not to come back till she did. Now I watched him fish Shay the hype kit, hidden neatly inside a dismantled battery, ready for a hit with the liquefied Benadryl inside it. Shay put the needle to the crook of his elbow, set his thumb on the plunger.
And squirted the precious drug onto the floor of the catwalk.
"What the fuck!" Crash exploded. "Gimme that back."
"Haven't you heard? I'm Jesus. I'm supposed to save you," Shay said.
"I don't want to be saved," Crash yelled. "I want my kit back!"
"Come and get it," Shay said, and he pushed the kit under his door, so that it landed square on the catwalk. "Hey, CO," he yelled. "Come see what Crash made."
As the COs entered to confiscate the hype kit--and write him a ticket that would include a stay in solitary--Crash slammed his hand against the metal door. "I swear, Bourne, when you least expect it ..."
He was interrupted by the sound of Warden Coyne's voice out in the courtyard. "I just bought a goddamn death gurney," the warden cried, conversing with someone we could not see. "What am I supposed to do with that?" And then, when he stopped speaking, we all noticed something--or the lack of something. The incessant hammering and sawing that had been going on outside for months, as the prison built a death chamber to accommodate Shay's sentence, had fallen silent. All we heard was a simple, blissful quiet.
"... you're gonna wind up dead," Crash finished, but now we were starting to wonder if that would still be true.
MICHAEL
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The Reverend Arbogath Justus preached at the Drive-In Church of Christ in God in Heldratch, Michigan. His congregation arrived in their cars on Sunday mornings and received a blue flyer with the day's scripture, and a note to tune in to AM 1620 in order to hear the good reverend when he took the pulpit--formerly the snack bar, when it was a movie theater. I would have ridiculed this, but his flock was six hundred strong, which led me to believe that there were enough people in this world who wanted to tuck their prayer requests beneath windshield wipers to be collected, and to receive Communion from altar girls on roller skates.
I suppose it wasn't a big stretch to go from the movie screen to the small one, which is why Reverend Justus ran a television ministry site, too, on a cable station called SOS (Save Our Souls). I'd caught it a few times, while I was flipping through channels. It was fascinating to me, in the same way Shark Week was fascinating on the Discovery Channel--I was curious to learn more, but from a nice, secure distance. Justus wore eyeliner on television, and suits in a range of lollipop colors. His wife played the accordion when it came time to sing hymns. It all seemed like a parody of what faith was supposed to be--quiet and heart-settling, not grandiose and dramatic--which is why I always eventually changed the channel.
One day, when I went to visit Shay, my car was stopped in traffic leading to the prison. Shiny, scrubbed Midwestern faces worked their way from car to car. They were wearing green T-shirts with the name of Justus's church on the back, scrawled above a rudimentary drawing of a '57 Chevy convertible. When one girl approached, I unrolled the window. "God bless you!" she said, and offered me a slip of yellow paper.
There was a picture of Jesus, arms outstretched and palms raised, floating in the oval of a sideview car mirror. The caption read: OBJECTS IN MIRROR ARE CLOSER THAN THEY APPEAR.
And then below it: Shay Bourne: A Wolf in Sheep's Clothing? Don't Let a False Prophet Lead You Astray!
The line of cars chugged forward, finally, and I turned into the parking lot. I had to pull my car onto the grass; it was that crowded. The throngs of people waiting for Shay, and the media covering his story, had not dissipated.
However, by the time I came close to the prison, I realized that the attention of most of these people was not held by Shay at that moment, but by a man in a three-piece lime-green suit, wearing a clerical collar. I got close enough to see the pancake makeup and the eyeliner, and realized that Reverend Arbogath Justus had now moved into the realm of satellite ministries ... and had chosen the prison as his first stop. "Miracles mean nothing," Justus announced. "The world is full of false prophets. In Revelations, we're told of a beast that uses miracles to fool men into worshipping it. Do you know what happens to that beast on Judgment Day? He and the people who were fooled are all thrown into a lake of fire. Is that what you want?"
A woman fell forward from the cliff-edge of the crowd. "No," she sobbed. "I want to go with God."
"Jesus can hear you, sister," Reverend Justus said. "Because He's here, with us. Not inside that prison, like the false prophet Shay Bourne!"
There was a roar from his converts. But just as quickly, it was matched by those who hadn't given up on Shay. "How do we know you're not the false prophet?" one young man called out.
Beside me, a mother tucked her sick child into her arms more tightly. She looked at my collar and frowned. "Are you with him?"
"No," I said. "Definitely not."
She nodded. "Well, I'm not taking advice from a man whose church has a concession stand."
I started to agree, but was distracted by a burly man who grabbed the reverend from his makeshift pulpit and yanked him into the crowd.
The cameras, of course, were all rolling.
Without thinking twice about what I was doing, or that I was doing it on film, I pushed forward and rescued Reverend Arbogath Justus from the clutches of the mob. He wrapped his arms around me, gasping, as I pulled us both up onto a granite ledge that ran along the edge of the parking lot.
In retrospect, I didn't know why I had chosen to play the hero. And I really didn't know why I said what I did next. Philosophically, Reverend Justus and I were on the same team--even if we pitched religion with very different styles. But I also knew that Shay was--maybe for the first time in his life--attempting to do something honorable. He didn't deserve to be slandered for that.
I might not believe in Shay--but I believed him.
I felt the wide, white eye of a television camera swing toward me, and a herd of others followed. "Reverend Justus came here, I'm sure, because he thinks he's telling you the truth. Well, so does Shay Bourne. He wants to do one thing in this world before he leaves it: save the life of a child. The Jesus I know would endorse that, I think. And," I said, turning to the reverend, "the Jesus I know wouldn't send people to some fier
y hell if they were trying to atone for their sins. The Jesus I know believed in second chances."
As Reverend Justus realized that I might have saved him from the mob to sacrifice him all over again, his face reddened. "There's one true word of God," he proclaimed in his camera-ready voice, "and Shay Bourne isn't speaking it."
Well, I couldn't argue with that. In all the time I'd been with Shay, he had never quoted the New Testament. He was far more likely to swear or go off on a tangent about Hanta virus and government conspiracy. "You're absolutely right," I said. "He's trying to do something that's never been done before. He's asking questions of the status quo. He's trying to suggest another way--a better way. And he's willing to die for it to happen." I raised a brow. "Come to think of it, I bet Jesus might find a lot in common with a guy like Shay Bourne."
I nodded, stepped down from the granite ledge, and shoved my way through the crowd to the security partition, where a correctional officer let me through. "Father," he said, shaking his head, "you got no idea how big a pile of you-know-what you just stepped into." And as if I needed proof, my cell phone rang: Father Walter's angry summons back to St. Catherine's, immediately.
I sat in the front pew of the church as Father Walter paced in front of me. "What if I blamed it all on being moved by the Holy Spirit?" I offered, and received a withering glare.
"I don't understand," Father Walter said. "Why would you say something like that ... on live television, for the love of God--"
"I didn't mean to--"
"--when you had to know that it was going to bring the heat down on St. Catherine's?" He sank down beside me and tipped his head back, as if he were praying to the carved statue of Jesus on the Cross that rose above us. "Michael, seriously, what were you thinking?" he said softly. "You're a young, handsome, smart, straight guy. You could write your ticket in the Church--get your own parish, wind up in Rome ... be whatever you want. And instead, I get a copy of an affidavit from the attorney general's office, saying that as Shay Bourne's spiritual advisor you believe in salvation through organ donation? And then I turn on the midday news and see you on a soapbox, sounding like some kind of ... some kind of ..."