Notes on an Execution(2)

What are you painting? Shawna asked once, as she slid your lunch tray through the slot in the door. She tilted her head to squint at your canvas.

A lake, you told her. A place I used to love.

She was not Shawna then, not yet—she was still Officer Billings, with her hair pulled back in its tight low bun, uniform pants scrunched around the bulge of her hip. She was not Shawna until six weeks later, when she pressed her flattened palm up to your window. You recognized the look in Shawna’s eyes from other girls in different lives. A startle. She reminded you of Jenny—it was something in her wanting, so vulnerable and unruly. Tell me your name, Officer, you asked, and she flushed a harsh red. Shawna. You repeated it, reverent like a prayer. You imagined the nervous leap of her pulse, fluttering blue-veined from her thin white neck, and you became something bigger, a new version of yourself already stretching across your face. Shawna smiled, revealing the gap between her teeth. Sheepish, mawing.

When Shawna had gone, Jackson hooted his approval from the next cell over, teasing belligerent. You unraveled the fraying strings from your bedsheets, tied a miniature Snickers bar to the end, and shot it under Jackson’s door to shut him up.

You tried to paint something different, for Shawna. You found a photo of a rose, tucked into one of the philosophy textbooks you requested from the library. You mixed the colors perfectly, but the petals wouldn’t sit right. The rose was a blur of searing red, the angles all wrong, and you threw the whole thing away before Shawna could see. The next time she unlocked your cell to walk you down the long gray hall for a shower, it was like Shawna knew—she reached for the metal of your handcuffs and pressed her thumb to the inside of your wrist, testing. The officer on your other side breathed heavily through his nose, oblivious, as you shuddered. It had been so long since you’d felt anything other than gruff arms pulling you through cages, the cool ridges of a plastic fork, the boring pleasure of your own hand in the dark. It was electric, the thrill of Shawna’s touch.

Since then, you have perfected the exchange.

Notes, tucked beneath lunch trays. Moments, stolen between your cell and the recreation cage. Just last week, Shawna slipped a treasure through the slot in your cell door: a little black hairpin, the kind that peppered her slick bun.

Now, you dip the Popsicle stick into a smear of blue while you wait for her footsteps. Your canvas is arranged patiently at the edge of the door, corners aligned. This morning, Shawna will have an answer. Yes or no. After your conversation yesterday, it could go either way. You are good at ignoring doubt, at focusing instead on anticipation, which feels like a physical creature resting in your lap. A new symphony begins, quiet at first, before tightening and deepening—you linger in the rush of cello, thinking how things tend to accelerate, building on themselves, leading always to some spectacular crescendo.

*

You study the form while you paint. Offender Property Inventory. No matter Shawna’s answer, you will have to pack. Three red mesh bags lie at the foot of your cot—they will transfer your most essential belongings to the Walls Unit, where you’ll have another few hours with your earthly possessions before everything is taken away. You stuff them lazily full of the things you have hoarded these past seven years at Polunsky: the Funyuns and the hot sauce and the extra tubes of toothpaste. All meaningless now. You will leave it all to Froggy back on C-Pod—the only inmate ever to beat you in a game of chess.

You will leave your Theory here. All five notebooks. What happens to the Theory will depend on Shawna’s answer.

And still, there is the matter of the letter. There is the matter of the photograph.

You have vowed not to read it again. You have mostly memorized it anyway. But Shawna is late. So when you are certain your hands are dry and clean, you stagger to your feet, reach to the top shelf, and pull the envelope down.

Blue Harrison’s letter is short, concise. A single sheet of notebook paper. She has printed your address in slanting script: Ansel Packer, P.U., 12 Bldg, A-Pod, Death Row. A long sigh. You place the envelope gently on your pillow, before moving aside a stack of books to find the photograph, taped and hidden between the shelf and the wall.

This is your favorite part of your cell, partially because it never gets searched and partially because of the graffiti. You have been in this cell on A-Pod since you got your official date, and sometime before that, another inmate etched the words painstakingly into the concrete: We Are All Rabid. You smile every time you see it—it is so bizarre, so nonsensical, so unlike the other prison graffiti (mostly scripture and genitalia). There is a quiet truth to it that you would almost call hilarious, given the context.

You peel the tape from the corner of the photograph, careful not to rip. You sit on the bed, holding the photograph and the letter in your lap. Yes, you think. We Are All Rabid.

*

Until the letter from Blue Harrison arrived a few weeks ago, the photo was the only thing you kept for yourself. Back before the sentencing—when your lawyer still believed in the coerced confession—she offered you a favor. It took a few phone calls, but eventually she had the photograph mailed from the sheriff’s office in Tupper Lake.

In the photo, the Blue House looks small. Shabby. The camera’s angle cuts out the shutters on the left side, but you remember how they bloomed with hydrangea. It would be easy to look at the photograph and see only a house, bright blue, paint peeling. The signs of the restaurant are subtle. A flag waves from the porch: open. The gravel driveway has been plowed to create a makeshift parking lot for customers. The curtains look plain white from the outside, but you know that inside they are checkered with little red squares. You remember the smell. French fries, Lysol, apple pie. How the kitchen doors clanged. Steam, broken glass. On the day the photo was taken, the sky was tinged with rain. Looking, you can almost smell the sharp tang of sulfur.