twenty-two

Nuckles looks white and pasty stepping down the court aisle, his hair is reduced to clumps. You'd say he had something more than a nervous breakdown, if you saw him. He's bony and frail under his ton of make-up.

'Marion Nuckles,' says the prosecutor. 'Can you identify Vernon Gregory Little in the courtroom?'

Nuckles's sunken eyes worm through the room. They stop at my cage. Then, as if against a hurricane wind, he raises a finger to me.

'Let the record show the witness has identified the defendant. Mister Nuckles, can you confirm you were the defendant's class teacher between ten and eleven o'clock on the morning of Tuesday, May twentieth, this year?'

Nuckles's eyes swim without registering anything. He breaks into a sweat, and crumples over the railing of the witness box.

'Your honor, I must protest,' says Brian, 'the witness is in no state…'

'Shh!' says the judge. He watches Nuckles with razor eyes.

'I was there,' says Nuckles. His lips tremble, he begins to cry.

The judge flaps an urgent hand at the prosecutor. 'Get to the point!' he hisses.

'Marion Nuckles, can you confirm that at some time during that hour you gave some notes to the defendant, written in your own hand, and sent him with them on an errand, outside the classroom?'

'Yes, yes,' says Nuckles, shaking violently.

'And what happened then?'

Nuckles starts to dry retch over the railing. 'Scorned the love of Jesus – erased his perfume from across the land…'

'Your honor, please,' shouts Brian.

'Doused it all in the blood of babes…'

The prosecutor hangs suspended in time, mouth open. 'What happened?' he shouts. 'What exactly did Vernon Little do?'

'He killed them, killed them all…'

Nuckles breaks into sobs, barks them like a wolf, and from my cage in the new world I bark sobs back, pelt them through the bars like bones. My sobs ring out through both summations, spray the journey to the cells behind the courthouse, and continue through a visit from an officer who tells me the jury has retired to a hotel to consider the matter of my life or death.

Friday, twenty-first of November is a smoky day, tingling with a sense that solid matter can pass through you like air. I watch the jury foreman put on his glasses and lift a sheet of paper to his face. Mom couldn't make it today, but Pam came by with Vaine Gurie and Georgette Porkorney. Vaine is frowning, and seems a little slimmer. George's ole porcelain eyes roll around the room, she distracts herself with other thoughts. She trembles a little. You ain't allowed to smoke in here. And look at Pam. When I catch her eye, she makes a flurry of gestures that seem to describe us eating a hearty meal together, soon. I just look away.

'Mr Foreman, has the jury reached a verdict?'

'We have, sir.'

The court officer reads out the first charge to the jury. 'How do you find the defendant – guilty, or not guilty?'

'Not guilty,' says the foreman.

'On the second count of murder, that of Hiram Salazar in Lockhart, Texas – how do you find the defendant, guilty or not guilty?'

'Not guilty.'

My heart beats through five not guilties. Six, seven, nine, eleven. Seventeen not guilties. The prosecutor's lips curl. My attorney sits proud in his chair.

'On the eighteenth count of murder in the first degree, that of Barry Enoch Gurie in Martirio, Texas – how do you find the defendant, guilty or not guilty?'

'Not guilty,' says the foreman.

The officer reads a list of my fallen school friends. The world holds its breath as he looks up to ask the verdict.

The jury foreman's eyes twitch, then fall.

'Guilty.'

Even before he says it, I feel departments in the office of my life start to close up shop; files are shredded, sensitivities are folded into neatly marked boxes, lights and alarms are switched off. As the husk of my body is guided from the court, I sense a single little man sat at the bottom of my soul. He hunches over a card table under a naked low-watt bulb, sipping flat beer from a plastic cup. I figure he must be my janitor. I figure he must be me.

Act V Me ves y sufres

twenty-three

On the second of December I was sentenced to death by lethal injection. Christmas on Death Row, boy. To be fair, ole Brian Dennehy tried his best. In the end, it doesn't look like they'll cast the real Brian in the TV-movie, I guess because he doesn't lose his cases. But my appeal will draw out the truth. There's a new fast-track appeals process that means I could be out by March. They reformed the system, so innocent folks don't have to spend years on the row. It can't be bad. The only news about me is that I put on twenty pounds since the sentence. It keeps out some of this January chill. Apart from that, my life hangs still while the seasons whip around me.

Taylor 's eyes flicker brightly through the screen. TV makes them sparkle, but they move strangely, as if she holds them back on a leash. Her grin is frozen like it came out of a jelly mold. I watch her almost-but-not-quite staring at me, until, after a minute, I realize she's reading something behind the camera. Her lines must be written there. After another moment I realize she's reading something about me. My skin cools as understanding dawns.

'Then, when the big day arrives,' she says, 'everybody else, including witnesses, will assemble at five fifty-five in the lounge next to the visiting room. The final meal will be served between three-thirty and four o'clock in the afternoon, then, sometime before six, he'll be allowed to shower, and dress in fresh clothes.'

A stray, impassive thought bubbles up through my mind: that Pam will have to supervise my last meal. 'Oh Lord, it's getting soggy...'

'Right after six o'clock,' says Taylor, 'he'll be taken from the cell area into the execution chamber, and strapped down to a gurney. A medical officer will insert an intravenous catheter into his arm, and run a saline solution through it. Then the witnesses will be escorted to the execution chamber. When everyone is in place, the warden will ask him to make any last statement…'

The host of the show chuckles when she says that. 'Heck,' he says, 'I'd recite War and Peace as my last statement!' Taylor just laughs. She still has that killer laugh.

I've seen a whole lot of Taylor these last weeks, actually. First I saw her on Today, then she was with Letterman, talking about her bravery, and our kind of relationship together. I never realized we got so close, until I saw her talking about it. She came out in November Penthouse too, real pretty pictures taken at the prison museum. That's where they keep 'Old Sparky', the State's first electric chair. November Penthouse has these pictures of Taylor posing around Old Sparky, real fetching, if it's not too bold to say. I have one posted in my cell, not the whole body or anything, just the face. You can see a piece of the chair too, in back. I guess lethal injection wouldn't look so good for modeling, like with Taylor draped over the gurney or something.

On the bench in my cell I have one of those ole distractions with the metal balls that hang on fishing wire, in a row, and clack into each other. Next to it sits my towel, with my art project tools hidden under. Yeah, I still hide things under my laundry. Some habits are a real challenge to break. Then, next to my towel, is the baby TV Vaine Gurie loaned me. I reach up and change the channel.

'The Ledesma man is wrong, is criminel, they are many more fax hiden than come out in court.' It's my ole attorney, Abdini, speaking to a panel of ladies on local TV. Lookit ole Ricochet there, my man the underdog. He's dressed like for a Turkish disco.