Story XIX: Pigeons (Part 3 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 3 of 3
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 it. 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.
If you missed a previous section, here’s the full-length story: