Until today, that was.
He'll talk to you, McGregor had told him after a brief ten-minute consultation the month before, one where Hallas's end of the conversation had mostly been no and no and no.
When it gets close, he'll talk to you plenty. They get scared, see? They forget all about how they wanted to walk into the injection room with their heads up and their shoulders squared. They start figuring out it's not a movie, they're really going to die, and then they want to try every appeal in the book.
Hallas didn't look scared, though. He looked the same as ever: a small man with bad posture, a sallow complexion, thinning hair, and eyes that looked painted on. He looked like an accountant--which he had been in his previous life--who had lost all interest in the numbers that had previously seemed so important to him.
"Enjoy your visit, boys," McGregor said, and went over to the chair in the corner. There he sat, turned on his iPod, and stuffed his ears with music. His eyes never left them, however. The circle of speaking holes was too small to admit the passage of a pencil, but a needle was not out of the question.
"What can I do for you, George?"
For several moments Hallas didn't answer. He studied his hands, which were small and weak-looking--not the hands of a murderer at all, you would have said. Then he looked up.
"You're a pretty good guy, Mr. Bradley."
Bradley was surprised by this, and didn't know how to reply.
Hallas nodded, as if his lawyer had tried to deny it. "Yes. You are. You kept on even after I made it clear I wanted you to stop and let the process run its course. Not many court-appointeds would do that. They'd just say yeah, whatever, and go on to the next loser some judge hands them. You didn't do that. You told me what moves you wanted to make, and when I told you not to make them, you went ahead anyway. If not for you, I would've been in the ground a year ago."
"We don't always get what we want, George."
Hallas smiled briefly. "Nobody knows that better than me. But it hasn't been all bad; I can admit that now. Mostly because of the Chicken Run. I like going out there. I like the wind on my face, even when it's a cold wind. I like the smell of the prairie grass, or seeing the day-moon in the sky when it's full. Or deer. Sometimes they jump around up there on the ridge and chase each other. I like that. Makes me laugh out loud, sometimes."
"Life can be good. It can be worth fighting for."
"Some lives, I'm sure. Not mine. But I admire the way you've fought for it, just the same. I appreciate your dedication. So I'm going to tell you what I wouldn't say in court. And why I've refused to make any of the usual appeals . . . although I couldn't stop you from making them for me."
"Appeals made without the appellant's participation don't swing much weight in this state's courts. Or the higher ones."
"You've also been very good about visiting me, and I appreciate that too. Few people would show kindness to a convicted child murderer, but you have to me."
Once again, Bradley could think of no reply. Hallas had already said more in the last ten minutes than in all their visits over the last thirty-four months.
"I can't pay you anything, but I can tell you why I killed that child. You won't believe me, but I'll tell you, anyway. If you want to hear."
Hallas peered through the holes in the scratched Plexiglas and smiled.
"You do, don't you? Because you're troubled by certain things. The prosecution wasn't, but you are."
"Well . . . certain questions have occurred, yes."
"But I did it. I had a forty-five revolver and I emptied it into that boy. There were plenty of witnesses, and surely you know that the appeals process would simply have dragged out the inevitable for another three years--or four, or six--even if I had participated fully. The questions you have pale before the bald fact of premeditated murder. Isn't that so?"
"We could have argued diminished mental capacity." Bradley leaned forward. "And that's still possible. It's not too late, even now. Not quite."
"The insanity defense is rarely successful after the fact, Mr. Bradley."
He won't call me Len, Bradley thought. Not even after all this time. He'll go to his death calling me Mr. Bradley.
"Rarely isn't the same as never, George."
"No, but I'm not crazy now and I wasn't crazy then. I was never more sane. Are you sure you want to hear the testimony I wouldn't give in court? If you don't, that's fine, but it's all I have to give."
"Of course I want to hear," Bradley said. He picked up his pen, but ended up not making a single note. He only listened, hypnotized, as George Hallas spoke in his soft mid-South accent.
2
My mother, who was healthy all her short life, died of a pulmonary embolism six hours after I was born. This was in 1969. It must have been a genetic defect, because she was only twenty-two. My father was eight years older. He was a good man and a good dad. He was a mining engineer, and worked mostly in the Southwest until I was eight.
A housekeeper traveled around with us. Her name was Nona McCarthy, and I called her Mama Nonie. She was black. I suppose he slept with her, although when I slipped into her bed--which I did on many mornings--she was always alone. It didn't matter to me, one way or the other. I didn't know what black had to do with anything. She was good to me, she made my lunches and read me the usual bedtime stories when my father wasn't home to do it, and that was all that mattered to me. It wasn't the usual setup, I suppose I knew that much, but I was happy enough.
In 1977 we moved east to Talbot, Alabama, not far from Birmingham. That's an army town, Fort John Huie, but also coal country. My father was hired to reopen the Good Luck mines--One, Two, and Three--and bring them up to environmental specifications, which meant breaking ground on new holes and designing a disposal system that would keep the waste from polluting the local streams.
We lived in a nice little suburban neighborhood, in a house the Good Luck Company provided. Mama Nonie liked it because my father turned the garage into a two-room apartment for her. It kept the gossip down to a dull roar, I suppose. I helped him with the renovations on weekends, handing him boards and such. That was a good time for us. I was able to go to the same school for two years, which was long enough to make friends and get some stability.
One of my friends was the girl next door. In a TV show or a magazine, we would have ended up sharing our first kiss in a treehouse, falling in love, and then going to the junior prom together when we finally made it to high school. But that was never going to happen to me and Marlee Jacobs.
Daddy never led me to believe we'd be staying in Talbot. He said there was nothing meaner than encouraging false hopes in a child. Oh, I might go to Mary Day Grammar School through the fifth grade, might even through the sixth, but eventually his Good Luck would run out and we'd be moving on. Maybe back to Texas or New Mexico; maybe up to West Virginia or Kentucky. I accepted this, and so did Mama Nonie. My dad was the boss, he was a good boss, and he loved us. Just my opinion, but I don't think you can do much better than that.
The second thing had to do with Marlee herself. She was . . . well, these days people would call her "mentally challenged," but back then the folks in our neighborhood just said she was soft in the head. You could call that mean, Mr. Bradley, but looking back on it, I think it's just right. Poetic, even. She saw the world that way, all soft and out of focus. Sometimes--often, even--that can be better. Again, just my opinion.
We were both in third grade when I met her, but Marlee was already eleven. We were both promoted to the fourth grade the next year, but in her case it was just so they could keep moving her along through the system. That's how things worked in places like Talbot back then. And it wasn't like she was the village idiot. She could read a little, and do some simple addition, but subtraction was beyond her. I tried to explain it every way I knew how, but she was just never going to get it.
We never kissed in a treehouse--never kissed at all--but we always held hands when we walked to school in the morning and back in the
afternoon. I imagine we looked damn funny, because I was a shrimp and she was a big girl, at least four inches taller than me and already getting her breasts. It was her who wanted to hold hands, not me, but I didn't mind. I didn't mind that she was soft-headed, either. I would have in time, I suppose, but I was only nine when she died, still at an age when kids accept pretty much everything that's put before them. I think that's a blessed way to be. If everyone was soft in the head, do you think we'd still have wars? Balls we would.
If we'd lived another half a mile out, Marlee and I would have taken the bus. But since we were close to the Mary Day--six or eight blocks--we walked. Mama Nonie would hand me my bag lunch, and smooth down my cowlick, and tell me You be a good boy now, Georgie, and send me out the door. Marlee would be waiting outside her door, wearing one of her dresses or jumpers, with her hair done up in pigtails and ribbons and her lunchbox in her hand. I can still see that lunchbox. It had Steve Austin on it, the Six Million Dollar Man. Her mama would be standing in the doorway and she'd say Hey now, Georgie, and I'd say Hey now, Mrs. Jacobs, and she'd say You children be good, and Marlee would say We'll be good, Mama, and then Marlee would take hold of my hand and off we'd go down the sidewalk. We had the first couple of blocks to ourselves, but then the other kids would start streaming in from Rudolph Acres. That was where a lot of army families lived, because it was cheap and Fort Huie was only five miles north on Highway 78.
We must have looked funny--the pipsqueak with his sack lunch holding hands with the beanpole banging her Steve Austin lunchbox against one scabby knee--but I don't remember anyone making fun or teasing. I suppose they must have from time to time, kids being kids and all, but if so it was the light kind that doesn't mean much. Mostly once the sidewalk filled up it was boys saying stuff like Hey now, George, you want to play pickup after school or girls saying Hey now, Marlee, ain't those hairribbons some pretty. I don't remember anyone treating us bad. Not until the bad little kid.
One day after school Marlee didn't come out and didn't come out. This must have been not long after my ninth birthday, because I had my Bolo Bouncer. Mama Nonie gave it to me and it didn't last long--I hit it too hard and the rubber snapped--but I had it that day, and was going frontsies-backsies with it while I waited for her. Nobody ever told me I had to wait for her, I just did.
Finally she came out, and she was crying. Her face was all red and there was snot coming out of her nose. I asked her what was wrong and she said she couldn't find her lunchbox. She ate her lunch out of it same as always, she said, and put it back on the shelf in the cloakroom next to Cathy Morse's pink Barbie lunchbox, just like she always did, but when the going-home bell rang, it was gone. Somebody stoled it, she said.
No, no, somebody just moved it and it'll be there tomorrow, I said. You stop your fussing and stand still, now. You got a mess.
Mama Nonie always made sure I had a hankie when I left the house, but I wiped my nose on my sleeve like the other boys because a hankie seemed kind of sissy. So it was still clean and still folded when I took it out of my back pocket and wiped the snot off her face with it. She stopped crying and smiled and said it tickled. Then she took my hand and we walked on toward home, just like always, her talking six licks to the dozen. I didn't mind, because at least she'd forgotten her lunchbox.
Pretty soon all the other kids were gone, although we could hear them laughing and skylarking their way back to Rudolph Acres. Marlee was chitter-chattering along like always, anything that came into her head. I let it wash over me, saying Yeah and Uh-huh and Hey, mostly thinking about how I'd change into my old corduroys as soon as I got back, and if Mama Nonie didn't have any chores for me, I'd get my glove and run down to the Oak Street playground and get in on the pickup game that went on there every day until moms started yelling it was suppertime.
That is when we heard someone hollering at us from the other side of School Street. Only it was less like a voice and more like a donkey bray.
GEORGE AND MARLEE UP IN A TREE! K-I-S-S-I-N-G!
We stopped. There was a kid over there, standing by a hackberry bush. I'd never seen him before, not at Mary Day or anywhere else. He wasn't but four and a half feet tall, and stocky. He had on gray shorts that went down all the way to his knees, and a green sweater with orange stripes. It was rounded out up top with little boy-tits and a poochy belly underneath. He had a beanie on his head, the stupid kind with a plastic propeller.
His face was pudgy and hard at the same time. His hair was orange like the stripes on his sweater, that shade nobody loves. It was all sprayed out on the sides over his jug ears. His nose was a little blot underneath the brightest, greenest eyes I've ever seen. He had a sulky Cupid's bow of a mouth, the lips so red it looked like he was wearing his ma's lipstick. I've seen plenty of carrottops with those red lips since then, but none as red as that bad little kid's were.
We stood and stared at him. Marlee's chatter came to a halt. She had cat's-eye glasses with pink rims, and behind them her eyes were wide and magnified.
The kid--he couldn't have been more than six or seven--pooched up those red lips of his and made kissy-face noises. Then he put his hands on his butt and began to bump his hips at us.
GEORGE AND MARLEE UP IN A TREE! F-U-C-K-I-N-G!
Braying just like a donkey. We stared, amazed.
You better wear a scumbag when you fuck her, he called over, smirking those red lips. Less you want to have a bunch of retards just like her.
You shut up your face, I said.
Or what? he said.
Or I'll shut it up for you, I said.
I meant it, too. My father would have been mad if he knew I was threatening to beat up a kid who was younger and smaller, but he wasn't right to be saying those things. He looked like a little kid, but those weren't little-kid things he was saying.
Suck my dink, assface, he said, and then stepped behind the hackberry bush.
I thought about going over there, but Marlee was holding my hand so tight it almost hurt.
I don't like that boy, she said.
I said I didn't like him either, but to never mind. Let's go home, I said.
But before we could start walking again, the kid came back out from behind the hackberry bush, and he had Marlee's Steve Austin lunchbox in his hands. He held it up.
Lose something, fuckwit? he said, and laughed. Laughing wrinkled his face up and made it like a pig's face. He sniffed at the box and said, I guess it must be yours, cause it smells like cunt. Like retarded cunt.
Give me that, it's mine, Marlee yelled. She let go of my hand. I tried to hold it, but it greased out on the sweat of our palms.
Come and get it, he said, and held it out to her.
Before I tell you what happened next, I have to tell you about Mrs. Peckham. She was the first-grade teacher at Mary Day. I didn't have her, because I went to the first grade in New Mexico, but most of the kids in Talbot did--Marlee too--and they all loved her. I loved her, and I only had her for playground, when it was her turn to be monitor. If there was kickball, boys against the girls, she was always the pitcher for the girls' team. Sometimes she'd whip one in from behind her back, and that made everyone laugh. She was the kind of teacher you remember forty years later, because she could be kind and jolly but still make even the antsy-pantsy kids mind.
She had a big old Buick Roadmaster, sky-blue, and we used to call her Pokey Peckham because she never drove it more than thirty miles an hour, always sitting bolt straight behind the wheel with her eyes squinted. Of course, we only saw her drive in the neighborhood, which was a school zone, but I bet she drove pretty much the same way when she was on 78. Even on the interstate. She was careful and cautious. She would never hurt a child. Not on purpose, she wouldn't.
Marlee ran into the street to get her lunchbox. The bad little kid laughed and threw it at her. It hit the street and broke open. Her thermos bottle fell out and rolled. I saw that sky-blue Roadmaster coming and yelled for Marlee to look out, but I wasn't really worried because
it was only Pokey Peckham, and she was still a block down, going slow as ever.
You let go of her hand, so now it's your fault, the kid said. He was looking at me and grinning, his lips drawn back so I could see all his little teeth. He said, You can't hold onto nothing, dink-sucker. He stuck out his tongue and blew a raspberry at me. Then he stepped back behind the bush.
Mrs. Peckham said her accelerator stuck. I don't know if the police believed her or not. All I know is she never taught first grade at Mary Day again.
Marlee bent over, picked up her thermos, and shook it. I could hear the rattle it made. She said, It's all broke inside, and starting crying. She bent down again, to get her lunchbox, and that was when Mrs. Peckham's gas pedal must have stuck because the engine roared and her Buick just leaped down the road. Like a wolf on a rabbit. Marlee stood up with the lunchbox clutched to her chest in one hand and the broken thermos bottle in the other, and she saw the car coming, and she never moved.
Maybe I could have pushed her out of the way and saved her. Or maybe if I'd run out into the street, I would have gotten hit too. I don't know, because I was as frozen as she was. I just stood there. I didn't even move when the car hit her. Not even my head moved. I just followed her with my eyes when Marlee flew and then crashed down on her poor soft head. Pretty soon I heard screaming. That was Mrs. Peckham. She got out of her car and fell down and got up with her knees bleeding and ran for where Marlee was lying in the street with blood coming out of her head. So I ran too. When I got a little ways, I turned my head. By then I was far enough so I could see behind the hackberry bush. There was no one there.