Story XIX: Pigeons (Part 2 of 3)
A scheming prisoner on Death Row has one last jury to fool: God Himself.
This story is being released in both its full version, available directly below, or in three sections this week: Sunday, Tuesday, and Thursday.
Part 2 of 3
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.
Next part on Thursday or continue with the full-length story now: