Story XIX: Pigeons

A scheming prisoner on Death Row has one last jury to fool: God Himself.

Before Oklahoma put him down, Chester William was upper tier, North end of West Cell House. He had the cell we called the Drainpipe. Heard about him before I even transferred up to McAlester.

First few years at OSP, I worked in the Y-buildings, then the warden handpicked me for West Cell. I’d run afoul with him about something. Prior to that, I’d never stepped foot, though I already knew about Chester and Chester Radio.

West Cell was probably a hundred years old when I started there. It backed up against the Administration Building. Nothing but a brick alley between the two, no windows either side. If there had been a way to measure it, the warden’s secretaries and death row murderers couldn’t have been fifteen feet apart, though I doubt a secretary ever lost a minute of sleep over it.

The administration called West Cell “Capital Case Housing.” The men called it “The Sewer” on account of being Death Row, but also on account of the plumbing. In the Thirties, there had been a first round of plumbing. Men still did their business in clear sight, but they could at least flush a toilet.

In the Sixties, they started over with the plumbing, and all that was left of that first round was Chester’s drainpipe into the alley. After Chester’s time, I saw men stuff it up with their pillows, but Oklahoma winter blew out of that drainpipe either way.

I never saw Chester do that. Fact, I know he didn’t.

Chester William was known for two things: triple homicide and lying.

Even by convict standards, he was a schemer. As a CO we had to know the schemers. When you’re transferred in, it’s the first thing they teach you. Who’s a “Tricky” or a “Picker.” Picker was short for “Soft Apple Picker.” You didn’t want to be a prisoner’s soft apple.

And Chester was a natural-born Picker.

Six months before any kind of clemency hearing, he’d start reading the Bible end-to-end. He had what we called a Warden’s Bible with golden edges, the kind the warden carried around in a cardboard box handing out.

Chester wasn’t just reading out a few chapters or verses. He went front-to-back, then back-to-front, every word, out loud, like a radio. Genesis to Revelation and home again. Everyone in earshot knew he was waiting on the Lord to “speak the language only the hell bound can hear.”

“Chester Radio,” we called it. That’s guards and convicts both.

Once the whole world knew he was reading the Bible word-for-word backwards, and he knew it would get back, he’d get up in front of the Clemency Board, or the Governor’s people, or whoever the A.G. sent down to OSP. He’d carry that Bible in with him to the interview. He’d say, “The Lord sent me to you with a message no man on Death Row wants to deliver, not to the men who hold his fate.”

“Repent.”

He bet the house on playing prophet.

Maybe hearing about all that backwards Bible reading and commotion stalled a few of them for a minute or two, and maybe it didn’t, but Chester never got the soft apples he needed: not five out of seven, or three out of five. Oklahoma Clemency saw through it. The Federal Courts in Oklahoma City saw through it, as did the Governor.

In April of 1977, the Supreme Court of the United States came back with a cert. America wiped its hands. This was right before my time in West Cell, but Chester told me personally a guard gave him the news, told him while delivering a breakfast tray. Didn’t even let Chester read it himself.

“It’s certiorari. They’re shutting down Chester Radio, my friend. Here you go, and eat up.”

Chester William was headed to the Lounge, short for Basement Lounge. For the chair, in other words. They had him lined up for 1982. Five years out when I met him.

But then, when there was nobody left to fool, Chester William caught everyone off guard.

He started reading that Bible for real now and not so loud.

Maybe he had one more jury to fool, God Himself. One vote. “Chester’s still looking for that odd number,” was the joke. He started out reading a few hours a day, then half the day, and then he never stopped except for putting food in his mouth. Twenty-four seven. Three in the morning sometimes, I’d hear him whispering and turning pages.

It got around to Warden Michaels that Chester was still reading his Bible back-to-front, and he didn’t believe this was for real for a second, but he couldn’t figure out what it was. He came over to West Cell personally, told Chester to wind it up, or he’d move him to the Drainpipe.

“I don’t like the hijinks, and the Lord won’t either.”

Warden kept his word, showed Chester around his new cell himself. “Pray into the pipe, so God can hear you better.” You could have heard a pin drop after he said that. Even dead men thought Warden was on shaky ground.

But Chester kept on reading. Warden couldn’t stop it. Government is strange. You can put a man down, but you can’t take away his Bible.

Maybe a month later, Chester William surprised us a second time. He started sticking his arm up into the drainpipe. Now he was reading his Bible verses backwards with his arm all the way up, kneeling on the ground and pushing his head against the cement like he was listening for a heartbeat.

I asked him what he was doing, and he turned to me, his arm was up the drainpipe, and he said straight out, “Repent, Frank Andersen.”

He had no business using my full name like that, but then and there, he stopped reading back-to-front, right while I was standing there.

“In the beginning was the Word, Frank Andersen.”

Still makes the hair on my arms go up, him saying that and looking over at me on his knees.

So, I came around and gave Chester William the benefit of the doubt on how he saw it. The man was in the sewer of the Sewer. Nobody knows how they’d behave waiting to be put down, watching your calendar burn. And his thing was sticking his arm up a drainpipe in the middle of winter. I saw a lot crazier than that.

But I was a soft apple, and he got me.

In spite of eight years of common sense, my curiosity caught its cat. I needed to stick my own arm up that drainpipe for reasons I can’t explain. Chester and I got in a long conversation middle of the night, him trying to tell me what a drainpipe felt like and reaching for God.

He seemed peaceful when we were talking, so I stared right at him, walked past, and got down on my own knees to reach up it.

It was bold to kneel with my gun hand up a drainpipe. You can imagine how foolish this was. They could have fired me for letting a Picker get me like that. But after conversations here and there, I’d started to trust him. Trust is funny. You give a dying man something when you trust them. I suppose you have to know the rules of prison.

So, when I put my arm up the pipe, it blocked at a dogleg. I couldn’t get any further in.

“Twist sideways, Guard, with your shoulder.” Chester stared over at me. He was still across the cell at that point, but before I knew how he got there, he was touching me through the air sort of, showing me how to move my shoulder to position it crooked. He was closer to my gun than I would have had time to reach for it, the two of us looking at each other, man to man, and Chester William triple homicide, premeditated.

But I kept going up the drainpipe. I felt my way through. Got to the sharp lip at the end like he said, and there was cold air on my hand. Maybe a little of my arm out after that, and him standing there like he’d just taught me how to throw a curveball.

Each of us as crazy as the other.

I took my time about staying there, proving I wasn’t afraid, but it was like holding my hand over a flame. And Chester’s looking at me wild-eyed, not so calm now.

“You have your hand open, Guard? Flat?”

That was too much. I pulled my arm out.

My voice hardened up on autopilot. I stood up next to him as tall as I could until he knew to step back. He walled up on his own.

“You’re never going to fit your body out a drainpipe, Chester William.”

“Not in the way you think, Guard Frank Andersen,” he said, looking back over his shoulder. “That pipe is how I’m getting out and taking the whole cell block with me.” He said some scripture that’s lost on me.

You don’t talk about escaping. That’s a hard rule, cold as winter.

Still, after him letting me stick my arm up his drainpipe and not killing me, I wasn’t going to have a big battle over it. You pick your moments. He was giving me some trust back. He could have gotten 365 in the hole, and I could have been dead on Death Row myself, but for no good reason either way.

Believe me, I thought about it afterwards. I don’t know what I was thinking other than being Chester William’s soft apple.

And maybe I was his apple, because Christmas-time I snuck him a 60-watt bulb so he could swap out the 32-watt mandatory. Not so bright anyone would notice unless they knew to look for it, but I knew it made it easier for him to read with the Bible on the floor.

I remember him on the bed unscrewing the 32 and handing it back through the bars.

I said, “Merry Christmas,” thinking he’d say it back, but he didn’t say anything, and he didn’t look at me either. Just went back to his Bible reading.

You get to know them. Maybe he didn’t want to be Guard Frank Andersen’s soft apple. It goes two ways. All of it.

It couldn’t have been six months later, when a rumor started spreading that Chester was reaching out for God to send him a bird. He never said anything about birds himself, or maybe he had. At that point, as far as I was concerned, everything was what it looked like. A man was reading the Bible with his arm stuck up a drainpipe.

“You got pigeon mail, Chester?” they said.

“Bird bringing him the keys.”

All this whatnot.

Meanwhile, I had a whole other thing going on with Chester that he didn’t know a thing about.

I used to have to walk by the alley between Administration and West Cell to and from the parking lot. I’d look up and see his hand out there. If you even thought to look up, you wouldn’t have noticed anything but some man with his hand out a drainpipe in a brick alley. You’d guess it was a prisoner.

And that’s when it crossed my mind.

If he’d been waving his hand around or just dangling it there, I don’t think I would have thought much about it, but Chester held his hand out flat and still, palm up, like he was holding a tray, the same way he showed me in his cell. In the alley, though, it wasn’t for anybody’s benefit.

In a way, I knew Chester William two ways, inside and out. I knew his hand on the one side, and I knew a triple-murderer on the other. I never let him know, not for a second, that I could see him holding his hand out there. The way he held it was a private business, if you can understand me.

I knew that hand wouldn’t be reaching out forever. One day, I was going to head in from the parking lot and not going to see it. I told my first wife seeing his hand was like I had a date, too.

Everything took a turn the day I walked Mercer Patterson.

We’d woke Mercer at 4:00am, not that he’d been sleeping. We started “The Sequence,” we called it. Had him out of West Cell 4:00 to 8:00 for the chaplain and visitation, then back in until 10:00. We let him shower and shave and put on a fresh uniform. Oklahoma wanted to see a clean man off.

The whole time we’re stepping through the Sequence with Mercer, Chester hasn’t stopped his reading. Chester Radio is going on and on. I went up and asked him to respect Mercer, but he wouldn’t listen.

It was down to me to lead Mercer to the Lounge. The men yelling out their goodbyes the whole time. The whole thing is a mess. You’d see the good in the men then, mostly. Some would just nod at him, but they watched. Some said, “I’ll see you in Heaven, brother,” things like that. If the blood was really bad, you might get worse, but I only heard that once or twice.

With Patterson walking, everyone but Chester William kept quiet the best they could, maybe out of fear for themselves, but it’s more than that. Guards might say something out loud here and there, but they’re making a show of it. They don’t tell you when you sign up that a part of everybody gets executed. It’s like swimming in ice water.

They always ordered us to wait before we started a man’s last walk. Made it like getting ready to go down a wedding aisle. Right from the far end of the dayroom.

There used to be a starting line the warden put there. So thin you almost didn’t see it, but you did. They knew it was there. Even the guards didn’t step on it. Later on, the Courts made us buff it out on the Eighth. Cruel and unusual.

With Mercer, it was me walking him. They let the men pick their guards, and one reason or another I got picked a lot. You stood and waited for a nod from the warden at the block door, then the two of you set off. All I’d hear were shoes and a man breathing hard.

While this was going on, I heard Chester start yelling from his cell. Screaming maybe is a better way to describe it. Mercer and I walking along forgot what we were doing and stopped cold in the middle of the dayroom.

“A bird, Mercer! God sent you a bird!”

Chester was positively wailing now. I know chills went racing down my arms.

“He’s on my hand, Mercer. It’s God. He’s come. Your bird.” Then he’s reading his Bible a thousand miles an hour.

I didn’t have the heart to keep moving Mercer. Then Chester wasn’t yelling any more. He was whispering and you could hear it. It was pin drop.

“There’s more of them now. There’s a thousand, Mercer. They’re in my hand.”

Mercer lost it. It all seemed to come out. Four murders, rapes, an underage. I don’t even remember what else, but he was a brutal man. Big man. He fell to his hands and knees, dragged me down with him.

It took four of us to get him back up. And the whole time Chester carrying on about the birds in his hand, the Lord pecking at his palm.

“Pigeons, Mercer. In my palm.”

Palm, palm, palm he’s saying.

Chester William was sobbing like he’s the one about to get electrocuted.

“Pigeons,” was probably the last word Mercer heard, from West Cell anyway.

And Mercer Patterson was the first man out the Drainpipe, so to speak.

It wasn’t three months later when Stacy Richards walked. They had Stacy for killing his wife and daughter, aggravated, and twenty other things. He said he couldn’t remember any of it. Not by reason of temporary insanity, cause that’s what he tried for.

We were stepping Stacy through the Sequence, and Chester was reading away. The Warden said it didn’t make a bit of difference to him, but it did. He liked the ceremony the way it was, like it was a tradition he had no part of, other than to keep it.

And sure enough, it comes over Chester Radio: “Your bird, Stacy. Oh, Lord, you got your bird.”

I tried to pull him together while we were headed down to the Basement, I got myself involved. “You’re alright, Stacy. You’ll be alright,” I said. “God’s got you. That’s what it means.”

Till then, I didn’t even believe any of it, not a single word, but there I was. Not the only one either.

The third time I had to see for myself from the outside. Anybody else wouldn’t have been any different, so I called in sick, which a lot of the men did execution days. I got the keys and went into the Administration alley to have a look and watch his hand stretched out from 8:00am.

While I’m standing in the middle of all the crap they store in there and looking up, I realize the whole alley was screened off top to bottom. Not just barbed wire and fencing, but metal grates. No prisoner was getting out of that drainpipe. And no birds were getting in from God or otherwise.

Chester still had his palm out flat the whole time, till he pulled it back in. Of course, there weren’t any pigeons, and there never had been. Chester William was picking apples. I’d known it.

He was lying to the men walking like he lied to the Clemency Board and the Governor’s office and the Chief Justice of the United States. Not to mention to the families. But he was trying to make up for it.

For me, it was like seeing behind a magic trick, though. There’s nothing there but nothing. Maybe until then I wanted to believe it when I didn’t.

In any event, before Oklahoma took Chester William, he’d freed six men out his drainpipe.

“He’s in my hand, Jackie.”

“He loves you, Malcolm. “

“Jesus loves you with all his heart, Blue. He’s telling me,”

He was a God-given Picker.

There were forty-three soft apples in West Cell, and eight of them were guards.

Everyone but me.

February 17, 1982, Chester was up when I came for him. He hadn’t slept in a week getting ready for his end. He was not a man at peace. I went into his cell, told him to take a seat on his rack.

“I know there ain’t no birds, Chester. I’ve been watching you for some time from the alley, because there’s an alley out there, and it’s grated up, top to bottom.”

It was like he got so confused, he started to stand up to make sense of it.

“Sit down, I ordered him. “There ain’t no birds. You’re a natural born liar, through and through. Oklahoma is done with you, Chester William. You may have fooled the rest of us, but I ain’t your soft apple. You need to know that.”

He didn’t say anything after that. You might have thought to leave it there, but I wasn’t done with a business I’d started on.

After his counseling with the chaplain, I was supposed to bring out the last meal he ordered, but I brought him nothing but an empty tray of birdseed. Birdseed sprinkled over a paper placemat. He sat on his rack and held it on his knees, staring at it.

I told him what my mother used to say. “Every man gets to see one miracle in his life. You better hope you haven’t seen yours yet.”

“I don’t need your miracle, Frank Andersen.”

We were both whispering at each other, cross the room, but eye-to-eye.

“I ain’t your soft apple,” he said.

“Yes, sir, you are. Bruised and soft.”

He looked straight at me.

“And I ain’t walking a Picker,” I said.

With that, I’d broken him exactly like I meant to. It was rough.

In the middle of the Sequence, he had to find someone else to walk him.

I went outside and let myself into the alley to see if he would still stick his hand out into nothing. And again, this was February.

After a long while, just like I expected, that hand came reaching out the drainpipe. I knew he was reaching out for real now. He had less than nothing. I broke him worse than the state of Oklahoma, and in my heart of hearts, I needed to. He was holding out a handful of birdseed and waiting on God from the sewer of a Sewer.

And I sat on a crate and watched the whole time. Didn’t take my eyes off him.

When the first one landed, he jerked so hard he scared it away, but he had his hand out flat there again. Soon after, more of them landed, and those ones stayed. Sends a shiver up my arms.

Of course, I couldn’t hear him from the outside, but I could hear him.

The men inside must have gone crazy. They told me later they were screaming, “Chester William got his bird.”

“I got my bird. I got my bird,” he was saying.

Yes, he did.

I heard there wasn’t anything particular about his execution. The Sequence. Some of the families watching like they always did. “Always some of them, never all of them,” we used to say.

He was calm about it, mostly. Warden said his thing. “You need to have a heart, and the day was a heavy load to be part of. Both sides of justice are heavy. The giving and the receiving,” which was his way of washing his hands of it.

After Chester William, I knew the warden was accidentally right about the giving and receiving. I’ll tell you this: no jury in the world would argue for capital if they had to deliver it themselves. Having said that, I still worked there and felt like the jury execution days.

There was lots of talk of his victims afterwards and fair enough. He’d been a wicked man, and he’d done wicked things. Warden was right as far as that. There was no denying it, but for all that, we unstrap a man’s body fast.

Late that day, when things settled down and the news people left, I opened up the alley gate, held it back with the crate. I counted up the floors to Chester’s drainpipe. It was a long while before I saw the first pigeon fly out the gate.

Then a second one.

The rest of them seemed to come out all at once.

There has always been something about a flock of birds flying into the sky. Even when it’s only pigeons.

On the ground they’re hard to catch, but with a little birdseed and enough patience, you get a knack for catching them. I did, anyway.

Once I counted my pigeons were all out, I locked up afterwards, and that was the end of Chester William. Rest in peace.

Oklahoma triple murder premeditated and Guard Frank Andersen’s soft apple.