Faithless: Tales of Transgression Read online

  The press conference had begun. Birdsall was telling us how he’d “seen Jesus” three days before after hours of praying on his knees with Reverend Hank (Hank Harley, a popular, ebullient Baptist minister with a long string of death row conversions to his credit, whom I’d interviewed for “Deathwatch” a few years ago); Jesus had “held my aching head in His hands, and washed my face in the balm of Gilead.” It was all so simple, and so sincere; you wanted to believe Birdsall, even if he was mad; his eyes clutched at mine as I tried not to see. As if at this hour people like me, “media” people, had the power to save his life.

  “… terrible darkness and sin in my heart … now there is light and love. Praise Jesus!”

  A nasal Alabama twang, which not even the poetry of Homer, Shakespeare, Milton could have elevated. And how ghastly the man’s smile, a lockjaw-smile, even as he shifted his rounded shoulders like a barnyard animal beset by swarms of flies.

  God, this was agony.

  Praise Jesus I wrote quickly on my notepad. Wanting Roy Beale Birdsall to see I was rapt with attention.

  It was an old, sad, familiar tale: how Roy Beale Birdsall’s court-appointed attorneys had gone through the motions for seven years—filing appeals to the Alabama state court and to the governor for commutation of sentence. At each stage there had been delays, premature glimmerings of hope, disappointments. The issue of Birdsall’s possibly coerced confession, like the issue of his mental age, had been ruled out, as was the issue of his claiming not to remember any ax murders. Ruled out, too, was the likelihood of another man’s having committed the crime, now long vanished. Naturally, Birdsall’s claim to totally not remember any ax murders was discredited. For his final appeal, the only argument Birdsall’s lawyers could come up with was the claim that death in the electric chair constituted “cruel and unusual punishment”—the most melancholy of clichés—and the presiding judge of the Alabama district court had rejected it wittily. Electrocution may be unsightly, it may bother some folks, but I have yet to see evidence that it is cruel and unusual punishment for the person who is executed. The governor, too, was on record as pro-capital punishment, pro-death. You’ll find here in Alabama we don’t coddle murderers and perverts like you do up north. The death penalty is kind of sacred to our soil. An ugly sentiment but a terrific quote! Unfortunately I’d already used it in “Death Watch” five years ago when I’d interviewed the governor regarding another controversial capital case.

  The one mitigating factor in the Birdsall case, as my colleague Claude Dupre remarked, was that Roy Beale Birdsall was Caucasian, for a change. For the past year we’d been on a dispiriting run of black and Hispanic males, I’d lost count of how many—electrocution, lethal injection, firing squad, and gas; Virginia, Florida, Oklahoma, Utah, Georgia, California, Texas, and Nevada. I’d been hammering away in my column at the “race issue”—the disproportion of non-Caucasian males put to death in the United States—until I couldn’t think of any more ways of presenting it, let alone engaging or dramatic ways. If you looked closely, however, Birdsall wasn’t very Caucasian. I’d have guessed some Native American blood, maybe. His skin was sallow with a coppery tincture and his thinning hair was flat dead black where it wasn’t streaked with gray.

  Claude was asking questions of Roy Beale Birdsall’s attorney, practically interrogating the man. They were questions I might have asked, myself; I suppose they were questions I had asked, in other pre-execution press conferences, at which Claude had been present. Claude and I were old, friendly rivals on the deathwatch beat. Years ago at Yale, as undergraduates, we’d been fairly close friends, and allies, involved in passionate meetings and demonstrations during the Vietnam War. Now, decades later, we were middle-aged brother-seamen huddling together in the same cramped life-boat. My “Death Watch” was still read by many more people than Claude’s eloquent freelance pieces (which appeared frequently in The New York Review and The Nation); but in intellectual-leftist quarters Claude was famous as a beloved champion of lost causes while I seemed to lack identity, density. There’s a bittersweet accumulative impression that comes from catching odd, unflattering glimpses of yourself in mirrors; so I’d come by slow degrees to understand that my hope of being famous was past, like my prevailing hope of having any significant effect upon society.

  Claude Dupre retained his old youthful edginess and pushy, abrasive ways. He’d become an aging ex-hippie with a wispy beard resembling detergent froth, a ponytail straggling between his shoulder blades, and rimless John Lennon glasses with bifocal lenses. For the past fifteen years he’d been wearing the identical black leather jacket, and hiker’s boots, both grown shabby. A single gold stud glittered in his left earlobe. He had broad, sloping shoulders that sagged in repose (as I’d happened to notice on the flight down) but were kept rigidly erect when he was being observed. We can’t afford to give the impression of being defeated, superannuated people, Claude had said with an angry smile.

  Our press conference was faltering to an end. Claude Dupre was the only one of us to have asked more than a few perfunctory questions, pursuing his usual line of inquiry into the condemned man’s background, there to discover, like glass gems hidden in a few inches of soil, the usual depressing evidence of poverty, alcoholism, child beating, and molestation in state-run foster homes. In an Alabama mumble Birdsall was saying, eyes downcast, “—yeh I was beaten and m’lested till I couldn’t hardly sit. Ran away age eleven and never looked back. And so when Jesus came into my heart just the other day—”

  I took notes; it was my duty. Worthless notes! For all this had been said before by other condemned men. It’s a bitter truth: In a capitalist society, truth must be marketed like any other product.

  Birdsall’s words ran out. There was silence. I felt a rush of panic: The poor bastard was going to be taken away, the doors shut upon him, I hadn’t asked a single question so far, drawing glances of curiosity and disapproval from Claude Dupre—as if I’d betrayed him personally. So there I was raising my hand, and asking a question that flew into my head that very moment, “Mr. Birdsall, what will be your meal this evening?” (How much more tactful to phrase it this way, instead of asking What will be your last meal?) As if I’d uttered unexpected, startling lines in a play others had assumed they knew by heart, everyone stared at me; Birdsall most eagerly, rattling his shackles as he hunched forward. As if, simply by asking this question, I’d bonded with him in some mysterious way. But Birdsall was at a loss to say anything sharp, witty, original. He mumbled in his apologetic way he’d like maybe a Big Mac double cheeseburger, home fries and grits and ketchup and Coke, and cherry pie with chocolate ice cream; in a pathetic gesture of bravado he smacked his lips, but I saw the rising terror in his eyes.

  It was then inspiration came to me. A wild, impulsive gesture. I asked permission of Birdsall to order his meal myself—“Something a little more imaginative, just this once?” Claude Dupre was gaping at me; and Mr. Jesse Heaventree, the warden at Hartsfree; and most intensely, Roy Beale Birdsall. His broad, coarse face colored with embarrassment and pleasure. He said, glancing shyly at me, “—gosh, wouldna know what fork to use—” and wiped at his face and laughed; but I refused to take no for an answer, this was the poor guy’s opportunity to sample a decent meal before he died, it fell to me to provide it. I’ve been told that I have a personality like a steamroller once I’m roused to action and purpose, and this appeared to be one of those times. Most reasonably I argued, “Now, Mr. Birdsall, you’ve had Big Macs and french fries all your life, why not a gourmet dinner for—for tonight? I’m not a food specialist but I do know a little about food, and Italian wine, and—” The condemned man’s eyes, fixed on mine, began to go dreamy, abstract; as if he were staring through me, and through the prison walls, to the very horizon. At this point the warden Mr. Heaventree intervened, saying sourly there was no budget for fancy food, the limit was $15 and that was enough for what most inmates requested. I said, incensed, “Of course I intend to pay for Mr. Birdsall’s dinn
er. Will you trust me with the menu, Mr. Birdsall?”

  Birdsall shrugged, laughed, and mumbled what sounded like, “—well my granddaddy used to say it don’t hurt none to try one thing once.”

  STILL, THE WARDEN had to be convinced, so I went with him into his office. He wasn’t a bad fellow—warden of Hartsfree for twenty-six years—I’d interviewed him often in the past. Heaventree was belligerent to outsiders but congenial, like most southern men, when you come to know them. “The State of Alabama has never executed an innocent man,” he would say, with a waggish smile; I would ask how he knew, and Heaventree would say, “Son, I know.”

  Today, when I brought up the subject of Roy Beale Birdsall, who was probably an innocent man, Heaventree said, in a lowered voice, as if to flatter me with a confidence, “It’s a principle of sacrifice, son. People want to know that there’s punishment. If the punishment don’t always go to the guilty party, ’cause we can’t find the guilty party one hundred percent of the time, then the punishment goes where it fits.”

  Goes where if fits. I made a mental note of this.

  “Why’d you care, son? Educated white man like you, you’re not gonna wind up on death row, see? So—better leave this to us pros.”

  Heaventree objected to my proposal, initially. Providing a special meal for Roy Beale Birdsall might set a bad precedent, he said, for other death row inmates, of whom there were quite a few; I listened politely, and countered his logic by offering to provide him a second, identical meal, plus a bottle of Old Grand-Dad thrown in, to be delivered to the warden’s office at the same time Birdsall received his in his cell on death row.

  So the delicate matter was resolved; we shook hands; most generously, Heaventree allowed me to use his private office phone, for I needed to work quickly. Already, as in a nightmare, it was 3:35 P.M.; in nine hours, Roy Beale Birdsall would be a thoroughly cooked, cooling corpse.

  I was INSPIRED. In earlier days I would have written in outraged defense of a luckless victim of the system like Roy Beale Birdsall, but now the lastmeal menu was a kind of poem; an ode and an elegy combined; a musical composition, even. I called several Birmingham restaurants before settling upon The Castle, a pricey three-star place I’d dined in once or twice (a long time ago, when the paper allowed me a considerable expense account for such trips into the American heartland); and explained the situation to the bemused chef; and worked out with him a dream last meal for Roy Beale Birdsall. No compromises, I said; no condescension; no down-homey southern cuisine; Birdsall had entrusted me with this menu and I intended to do us both proud. It’s my belief as a political liberal that the “common man” can appreciate good food and wine just as he can appreciate good art, music, literature if he’s properly introduced to it; if he isn’t made to feel inadequate, ignorant. Since this was his last meal, Birdsall would savor each morsel; he wouldn’t rush through it, as no doubt he’d rushed through most meals of his life. My one disappointment was that I couldn’t talk Heaventree into allowing Birdsall even a single glass of wine … A ridiculous state law forbade alcohol to the condemned prisoner, like tranquilizers or sedatives of any kind.

  Here is my dream menu for Roy Beale Birdsall:

  Vichyssoise garnished with salmon roe and fresh chives

  (with hard-crusted French bread, lightly salted butter)

  A light risotto with chopped shiitake mushrooms

  Lobster à l’américaine (fresh-killed, boiled lobster)

  Sautéed snow peas, button onions, julienne carrots, zucchini

  Mixed green salad including arugula and Belgian endive

  (with a classic Italian dressing made with imported olive oil)

  Assorted desserts—chocolate mousse, zabaglione, strawberry crêpes, crème brÛlée

  By way of my Visa account, I arranged for two such exquisite meals to be prepared, packaged, and delivered (by a Birmingham car service) to the Hartsfree facility kitchen, to be reheated in time for a 6:30 P.M. serving. The Castle was charging double what the already exorbitant meals would have cost under ordinary circumstances, since this was an emergency. I couldn’t afford it, but in my excitement and euphoria I didn’t give the price a second thought.

  “A SHAMEFUL TIME in America,” Claude Dupre said wearily. “Even as police departments across the country are being exposed as racists and extortionists, victimizing the very citizens they’re paid to protect, faking evidence, lying on the witness stand, there’s more and more public pressure for executions. Outrageous!”

  “God, yes.” I tried to sound vehement, incensed.

  “Is that all you can say? ‘God, yes’?”

  My head was an echo chamber of words too clamorous yet indistinct to be heard. I kept glancing in dread at my watch—it was already after six! Claude and I were having drinks in the near-deserted cocktail lounge of our motel, the Hartsfree Holiday Inn; but neither of us was enjoying them much. Our drinks, our outrage, our commiseration: all had an air of déjà vu, like recycled breaths. Seeing that Claude was looking at me reproachfully, I said, “It’s just that we’ve had this conversation before, Claude.”

  Claude grimaced, and plucked at his earlobe.

  “We have? When?”

  “Niles, Texas. Last Easter. Willie Joe Rathbone, remember? The three-hundred-pound boy who torched his—“

  Claude turned away irritably, signaling the bartender for another beer. How many vigils of this kind we’d passed together in each other’s company, drinking; how many years. Waiting for 11 P.M. and the inevitable drive to a prison for an execution we were “covering.” Sometimes we ate together, more often not. (But Claude was drinking more than I remembered.) We were intimates without being friends any longer. Or maybe we’d never been friends, only frustrated idealists together.

  “And another thing,” Claude said, as if we’d been quarreling, frowning at me through his round priggish glasses, “I don’t approve of you ordering that absurd meal for Roy Beale Birdsall. Lobster!”

  “Why not? The poor man is going to die at midnight, why not send him off with a good meal for once?” I protested. “And it’s lobster à l’américaine, he won’t have any trouble eating it.”

  Claude said, disgusted, “It’s obscene. He’s going to die. And you, of all people, are celebrating his death.”

  My face burned as if Claude had struck me. “I’m not celebrating anything,” I said. “You know how I feel about capital punishment.”

  “You’re cooperating with the system, you’re buying into it.”

  “I feel sorry for the poor man, where’s the harm in that?”

  So we quarreled, with surprising bitterness. I accused Claude of being jealous of me for having thought of buying a condemned man a last meal; Claude accused me of “bourgeois excess.” I’d known that Claude was priggish about spending money on food and drink, primarily, I’d thought, because he couldn’t afford it himself. Most of our fellow journalists, even the younger ones, were more obsessed with food and drink than I was, fanatics about French cuisine, Italian cuisine, vineyards; in me, the predilection had grown gradually with the years, compensation, I suppose, for the uncertainty and frequent misery of my professional life. It’s what we journalists have instead of God. I might have joked with Claude except the man had no sense of humor.

  Claude knew how to hurt me: threw a few bills down onto the bar, and stalked out. Leaving me alone with my thoughts.

  IT HAD BEEN a season when many things were going wrong.

  My nation. My political beliefs. My personal life. (Of course I couldn’t afford the meals from The Castle, or the car service.)

  Once, not too long ago, when they were relative rarities, and therefore the more outrageous, I’d covered executions and publicly protested death penalty legislation with a true sense of mission. I was twenty-five years old when I witnessed my first hanging, in Utah in 1979. I’d done freelance political-activist writing before then but I’d never written about anything so real. I could not have guessed that the hanging of a human being
(in this case a black man convicted of armed robbery and murder), while morally and physically revolting as you would expect, could be so mesmerizing!

  Or that the essay it inspired, originally printed in Mother Jones, would draw so much attention, and launch my career. “The Cruelest Death: Politics and Aesthetics of ‘Legalized’ Strangulation”—a classic.

  A year later, when the Utah legislature voted to abandon their old frontier traditions of hanging and firing squad, and replace them with lethal injection, I had reason to think it was in response to my essay.