Sleep Toward Heaven (22 page)

I know it is Mountain View Unit because there are more guards perched in towers, their guns trained on the roads out. There are rows of fences; climbing one is not enough. I am shaking as I pull up to the guard station.

A short man with big sunglasses looks up from the book he is reading. (It is a Tom Clancy novel, Without Remorse.) He takes a clipboard from his desk and walks to my car. He raps on the window. “Oh,” I say, and roll it down.

“Name of visitor,” he says in a metal monotone.

“Karen Lowens.”

When he raises his eyebrow, it is almost imperceptible, but I see it. “Your name,” he says.

“Celia Mills.” This does not elicit any response, though they have been showing my picture on the news for days. That damn honeymoon picture! If I had known that our honeymoon picture would be all over the news, I certainly would have brushed my hair. (I was astonished when I finally realized how reporters had gotten the picture in the first place: one of Henry’s colleagues had taken it off Henry’s desk and sold it.)

The man holds the clipboard out for me to sign. I take it, but the pen does not work, no matter how hard I press down. I unlatch the glove compartment to reach for another pen, and before I know it, the guard is barking for me to stay still, and he is reaching for his gun. “I just need a pen,” I say.

“Oh,” he says. I cannot see his eyes behind the mirrored glasses. He hands me a ballpoint from his pocket. When I hand back the clipboard, he says, “Pop the hood.”

“Excuse me?”

“Pop the hood,” he says slowly, as if I am a child. I pull the cables, and he takes his time looking at my engine, and then in my back seat. (I try to think of what he’s seeing: my gym bag, raincoat, those red high-heels that look fabulous but hurt too much to walk in.)

Finally, he closes my hood and comes back around. “Go ahead,” he says.

I drive to the Visitors’ Parking Area. When I climb from the car, the heat punches me like a fist. I walk to the prison entrance. From a tower, a guard watches me. His face is blank and his hand is on his rifle. When I lift my hand in greeting, he does not respond.

The door is heavy and the knob is hot. I pull it open, expecting air-conditioning, but it is the same temperature inside as out. The warden is waiting for me. She is a tall, black woman in a neat uniform. She takes my hand in both of hers. She looks tired. “I’m glad to meet you,” says the warden. I do not tell her that I find this strange. She asks me if I want to come into her office for a cold drink, gesturing with an elegant turn of her wrist. I say no.

“Karen is expecting you,” says the warden. “She’s in the visiting room.”

The warden sees the flicker of fear across my face. “She’s handcuffed, and behind glass,” says the warden. “You’re completely safe.” I nod. I am feeling dizzy.

The visiting room is empty except for two guards and a frail woman in a wheelchair. There is a soda machine in the corner. My eyes adjust to the bright light (the hallways of the prison are dim and close) and I see that the frail woman is Karen Lowens. “Just let the guards know when you’re done,” says the warden.

“Thank you,” I say.

I walk toward the wall of glass and sit in a plastic chair opposite Karen. She watches me. Her face is like a skeleton, and her mouth is wet with sores. Her eyes look hollow. I pick up the receiver.

“Karen?” I say. She nods, and does not say anything. We sit like this, in silence, and her eyes fill with tears.

She says something into the phone, and I press it to my ear. She says, “I wish I hadn’t killed him.”

It is not enough; it is nothing, and yet something hard inside me yields.

“I got your letter,” she says. She looks down. Her wrists are cuffed in metal.

“You never wrote back,” I say.

“I didn’t know what to say.” Again, the long silence. Our eyes are locked, and my heart beats rapidly.

“What did it look like?” I say. “What was it like, for Henry?” I find that I am holding my breath.

Karen begins to speak quickly. “I shot him and he fell,” she says. Her voice is dark. “He fell and looked at me. I watched him pass over. He knew and I knew. He closed his eyes. I saw…”

“What?” I say. “What did you see?”

Karen clutches her receiver. She swallows with difficulty. I can see the machine next to her, the morphine machine that the drunk woman at the bar went on about. “I can’t,” says Karen.

“Karen,” I say. “Please tell me what you saw.”

Her eyes are wide and confused. She is so close to death. “I saw his soul come up from him,” she says.

“What did it look like?”

She told me, but I already knew. “Like lightning,” she said.

K
aren wakes early on Saturday morning. She is disoriented, pulled from dreams of dark hallways, only the faint sound of guards’ voices to keep her company. Suddenly, she is afraid. She hates her life, the noise, the searches, the vomit smell, but what awaits her? Karen presses her lips together. Something bigger, she thinks, something silent, like snow. She has never seen snow. Of course, she has seen it in movies, but not for real. She has never tasted a snowflake, or skated on ice. She touches her book, remembers the words: that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice.

Breakfast: cereal with warm milk. A guard comes to her. He is red-haired, tall with freckles and glasses. He looks away as he hands her a paper cup, and then walks quickly to his station. Karen holds it between her palms. It is hot, and she takes a sip: strong coffee, full of cream and sugar. Karen gulps it down. She almost cries with gratitude, and then thinks: the guards could have brought her good coffee any day, every day. Only on her last day did they bother.

The other women are quiet all morning, ignoring the blaring television. This is hard on them, Karen knows. They have to stay.

After lunch (sloppy joes, Karen is given two, and then a Hershey bar, which she eats and promptly throws up), they come for her. There is a special guard, who nobody knows, from Huntsville. With him is the guard named Hamm; Karen hears his voice in the hall. The gates sliding, metal on metal. She sits up.

“Karen Lowens?”

“Yes.”

They open her cell, take her small box of things. “Can I say goodbye?” asks Karen as they chain her wrists and legs.

“No,” says Hamm, but the other says, “Come on, Guy.”

They take her arms, pull her up.

“She’s supposed to have a wheelchair!” says Tiffany. She is getting hysterical. “She’s too weak to walk!”

Hamm sticks his hand under Karen’s arm, holding her upright. “She’s just fine,” he says. Karen feels dizzy, and her knees give, but Hamm does not let her fall. The IV snakes from her arm, and the other guard wheels the machine from her cell.

Tiffany is crying, gripping the bars, her straw-colored hair askew from sleeping. She has stopped painting her nails, stopped her sit-ups. She looks like a hundred other inmates, her splashy beauty drained away. “Oh my God,” she says. “Oh my God. Oh my God.”

“Hey, hey,” says Karen. There are spots swimming in her vision.

“God loves you. He loves you, Karen,” says Tiffany.

Veronica is sitting on her bed, touching her permanent ink wedding ring with her thumb. “I’m next, aren’t I?” she says. Below her eyes are dark circles. It will be worst for Veronica, thinks Karen. She has false hopes. Veronica still dreams of sleeping next to a warm man, yearns for grass and the sound of birds.

“It’s OK,” says Karen, lamely.

“See you up there,” says Veronica. She stands and reaches for Karen’s hand, but Hamm jerks her away. The handcuff bites into her skin, and Karen cries out. Hamm’s cheap cologne fills Karen’s nostrils. He has combed his hair into a stiff wave for the cameras.

“Guy, come on,” says the other guard. Hamm jerks her arm again. Karen grits her teeth, and is silent.

The television is on, a soap opera. A man and a woman drink champagne by candlelight. Karen wants to say goodbye to Sharleen, but Sharleen is asleep. Her face is peaceful. “Goodbye,” says Karen.

Sharleen’s eyes snap open. “Hey,” she says. “Goodbye.” Even Sharleen’s voice is weak.

Samantha sings as they carry Karen out: So long, farewell, it’s time to say good-night!

They take Karen into the hallway, past the guards seated at the desk, past the other inmates who scream and bang their bars. The din is unbelievable, they call her name again and again. This time it is “Karen! Karen!” and not her nickname. For this, Karen is thankful.

While they fill out paperwork in the narrow hallway, Karen sits between two guards. One smells of coffee, the other of cologne. Their arms are hot against hers. Karen tries to think about the quiet earth, but there is noise everywhere: women’s hoarse voices, televisions, the guards’ whispers and occasional barking cries: “Hey! Watch it! I’m warning you, bitch.” Karen pushes the black button, and the morphine courses into her bloodstream.

Karen knows that she will have a few seconds, after being led from the prison, but before being put in the van. A few precious seconds to turn her face to the sun, feel the air on her skin, and smell life outside the walls. As they pull her to her feet, and walk down the corridor, she waits.

The doors bang open and it hits her at once: the bright sun, the screaming, signs held high, open mouths, fists rising heavenward. She closes her eyes, raises her face, feels the warmth, and then it is over. Hamm’s hard fingers push her head down and she is inside the van, the thick tinted windows sealing her off completely.

She can see the town dimly once her eyes adjust to the van’s darkness. Through the back window she sees storefronts, Andy’s Home Cookin’, the Gatestown Motor Inn. She sees people going about their lives, carrying groceries, mowing the lawn. A boy with a dog on the end of a piece of twine, a woman with a baby in her arms, sitting on her porch, drinking lemonade. They have no idea that they are blessed.

The drive to Huntsville takes five hours. The back of the van is quiet, and Karen closes her eyes, gives herself morphine from the machine, and feels the road beneath them, the bumps, the hissing of the air conditioner. The van smells new, like leather. The handcuffs make her wrists ache. Her mind is blank; she basks in the silence.

The Huntsville Prison is huge and feels sinister, violent. As soon as they take Karen through the front gate, she feels it: death. Two hundred and six men—and one woman, Jackie—have been executed at Huntsville since 1976, some by electrocution, some by firing squad, some by lethal injection.

Karen can smell the scorched hair. She can hear the gunshots ripping through flesh. She remembers reading about Stephen McCoy, who was not given enough drugs in his injection. He choked, began to spasm. A witness fainted. Karen can hear him in the hallways, his pain echoing in her ears. She begins to cough. Her lungs! They have no air. The burned taste of death fills her mouth.

“Shut up, damnit,” says Hamm.

“I can’t breathe,” says Karen. She begins to gasp.

“It’s an act,” says Hamm. To the alarm of the guards around him, he lets go of Karen’s arm. She wobbles on her feet, coughing.

“See?” says Hamm, and then Karen falls. She cannot breathe, she feels her legs collapse, her head hits the floor, and then everything goes black.

W
hen Franny came out of the bathroom, Rick’s was standing with a hand on the refrigerator, leaning against it. “Rick?” Franny stopped, her hair dripping, a towel wrapped around her.

“Franny,” he said. “She’s collapsed.”

“What?”

“Karen. She’s unconscious. She couldn’t breathe—hit her head…”

“Where is she?” Franny turned and ran back into the bathroom to gather her clothes.

“The Medical Center at The Walls. As soon as they stabilize her, though, she’ll go back to a cell.”

“I’m going.” Franny pulled on her clothes. When she was dressed, she saw that Rick was holding his car keys.

“Are you coming, Rick?” He shook his head.

“I’m going to the governor. And I’m getting a goddamn stay. They can’t pull her out of a coma to kill her.”

“They wouldn’t.”

“Goddamn right,” said Rick. “Not if I have anything to do with it.”

Franny drove to the prison with the radio off. She rolled down the window, and then rolled it back up. There were so many stoplights. When she hit her third, Franny screamed, “Come on, for God’s sake! Come on!” and then she began to cry. She chanted, “Come on come on come on…”

Finally, she reached the Huntsville prison, and parked illegally. There was a throng of reporters and picketers outside the front door. “Let me through!” she screamed, and some people got out of her way.

“Franny! Franny!” she heard a familiar voice. When she turned, it was Christopher from News 2, his microphone in front of her mouth. “Do you have any comments on your patient, Karen Lowens?” he said, motioning for the camera to tape her. Franny looked at him, shocked, and then turned away. But the other reporters had seen, and trailed her. She ran to the prison gate.

“No visitors,” said a guard with a terrible complexion and startlingly kind eyes.

“I am her doctor,” said Franny. “Let me inside. Now.”

The guard looked up with surprise, and respect. “Your name?” he said.

“Dr. Wren,” said Franny, feeling proud to have the same name as Uncle Jack.

Franny thought she was used to prisons, but The Walls was different. She shuddered as she walked down the rows of bellowing men, finally reaching the Medical Center.

The nurse at the desk wore her hair in a purple band. “I’m here to see Karen Lowens,” said Franny, leaning on the counter to catch her breath.

“No visitors,” said the nurse, not even looking up from her computer.

“I’m not a visitor,” said Franny. After she opened her wallet, explained herself, the nurse let Franny pass.

Karen was still unconscious, threaded with tubes and IV lines. Her face had a bluish tint, the skin pulled tight, eyes sunk deep in her skull. The chart said that she had experienced respiratory failure, collapsed, and hit her head on the floor. Her pneumonia was worse, her lungs filled with fluid.

“Oh, Karen,” said Franny. “Hold on. Don’t leave me.”