Candlemoth Read Free Page A

time
before they fry your brain, and hell if I ain't gonna be here long after you're
gone, so understand that when you're in my house you abide by my rules, you
mind your manners and say your prayers. Are we on the same wavelength now?'
        I was
unable to move my head, barely able to breathe.
        'I
will take your silence as an expression of understanding and compliance,' Mr.
West said, and then he gave one last vicious dig of the billy and released me.
        I
came up gasping, half-suffocated, my eyes bursting from my head, the pressure
behind my ears like a freight train.
        It
was Mr. Timmons who helped me back to the cell, helped me to lie down, brought
me some water which I was unable to drink for a good twenty minutes.
        And
it was Mr. Timmons who told me to watch Mr. West, that Mr. West was a hard man,
hard but fair, and I knew in his tone, from the look in his eyes, that he was
all but lying to himself. Mr. West was an emissary of Lucifer, and they all
knew it.
     
            
        And that
was eleven years ago, best part of. Arrested in 1970. A year in Charleston Pen.
while the first wave of protests erupted, died, erupted once more. And the
appeals, the TV debates, the questions that no-one wanted to answer. And then
to Sumter, a year or so in General Populace while legal wrangles went back and
forth in futile and meaningless circles, and then to Death Row. And now it's
1982, summer of '82, and Nathan would have been thirty-six as well. We'd have
been somewhere together. Blood brothers an' all that, you know?
        Well,
maybe that ain't so far from the truth. Because if Mr. Timmons is right, and
God knows who's guilty and who's innocent, and if there is some place we all go
where sins are called to account and judgement is fair and just and equitable,
then me and Nathan Verney look set to see each other once more.
        Nathan
knows the truth, he most of all, and though he'll look me dead square in the
eye and hold his head high, just as he always did, I know he'll carry a heavy
heart. Nathan never meant for it to be this way, but then Nathan was caught up
in this thing more than all of us together.
        
        
        Some
folks say the death penalty's too easy, too fast by far. Folks say as how those
who commit murder should suffer the same. Well, believe me, they do. Folks
forget the years people like me spend down here, two floors up from Hell. They
don't know of people like Mr. West and the way he feels the punishment should
befit the crime whether you did the crime or not. Folks really have no idea how
it feels to know that you're gonna die, and after the first few years that day
could be any day now. They know nothing of the raised hopes that fall so fast,
the appeals that go round in circles until they disappear up their own
tailpipe. They know nothing of discovering that Judge so-and-so has reviewed
your case and denied the hearing that you've waited on for the best part of
three years. These things are the penalty. Gets so as how when the time comes
you're almost grateful, and you wish away the days, the hours, the minutes…
wish they all would fold into one single, simple heartbeat and the lights would
go out forever. People talk of a reason to live, a reason to fight, a reason to
go on. Well, if you know in your heart of hearts that all you're fighting for
is someone else's satisfaction as you die, then there seems little to fight
for. It is ironic, but most times it's the guy who's being executed who wants
to be executed the most.
        Mr.
Timmons understands this, and he cares as best he can.
        Mr.
West understands this too, but the emotion he feels is one of gratification.
        Mr.
West wants us to die, wants to see us walk the long walk, wants to see us sit
in the big chair. Knows that once one has gone another will come to take his
place, and there's nothing that pleases him more than fresh meat. Spend
six months here and he calls