Blackburn

VICTIM NUMBER TWENTY-ONE

Jasmine came to see him in February. Blackburn was surprised. She hadn't written to tell him she was coming. He almost said that he wouldn't see her, but then decided it would be worth it to get out of his cell for the walk to the visitation area. Ever since he had been reclassified from "death row work capable" to "death row segregation," his legs had been stiff.

"Jimmy. Hi." Jasmine was wearing a dark blouse, and her hair was cut just above her shoulders. She sat with her shoulders hunched, as if afraid of being hit. She looked more like Mom than ever.

Blackburn sat down. He hadn't been here before. A Plexiglas panel and a metal grating were set into the wall, and there were wide counters on both sides. Brother and sister were six feet apart. Blackburn didn't mind. He wouldn't have wanted to be closer.

"Hi," he said. "Welcome to Ellis Unit."

Jasmine frowned. "Is it bad?"

Blackburn tried not to laugh. He didn't want to insult her. But he couldn't help smiling.

"I'm sorry," Jasmine said.

"You don't have anything to be sorry for," Blackburn said. "Did you come all the way from Seattle?"

"I'm in Spokane now. I'm a C.P.A."

"Doing okay?"

"Not bad. I make enough."

"I'm glad. You didn't have to spend it to come here, though. But as long as you did, you ought to hit the Huntsville tourist attractions."

Jasmine's eyebrows rose. "I didn't know there were any."

"You bet," Blackburn said. "I haven't seen them myself, but I've read about them in the library. I recommend the Texas Prison Museum, featuring balls and chains, Bonnie and Clyde's rifles, and best of all, 'Old Sparky.' "

"What's that?" Jasmine asked.

"The Texas State Electric Chair, now retired in favor of a more energy-efficient method. But beloved nonetheless."

Jasmine looked down at the counter. "I don't want to talk about this."

"I'm not talking about it," Blackburn said.

Jasmine looked up. She was angry. "Yes, you are."

She was right. Blackburn didn't have any business bothering her with it. But on the other hand, he hadn't asked her to come.

"You had to know it'd be on my mind," he said.

Jasmine was quiet for a long moment. "Yes," she said then. "But there's nothing I can do. So I was hoping we could talk about other things."

"Like what?"

"Well, I thought you might want to hear about Mom. And Dad."

Blackburn supposed that made sense on her side of the wall. "Okay. How's Mom?"

"She got married at Thanksgiving. Her husband's name is Gary. He worked at a cannery for thirty years, but he's retired now."

"That's nice," Blackburn said. "How about you? Married?"

"No."

"Shacking up?"

Jasmine reddened.

"Take precautions," Blackburn said.

Jasmine laughed. Her eyes looked moist.

"I'm not kidding," Blackburn said.

Jasmine put a black purse on the counter and took a tissue from it. She wiped her eyes. "I know you're not," she said. "That's not why I'm laughing. I'm laughing so I don't cry."

"I don't get it."

"I wouldn't expect you to."

Blackburn decided he was glad she had come. He and Jasmine understood each other.

"All right," he said. "So what about the old man?"

Jasmine crumpled the tissue. "He passed away in September."

"He lasted that long?"

Jasmine nodded. "He got better for almost two years. Then he went downhill fast. I had him at my place in Spokane when it happened. He was watching the cable news, and they were talking about you pleading guilty, but I don't think that's what did it. He just sort of dozed off. He was on a lot of painkillers by then, so I don't think he hurt much."

Blackburn sighed. It figured. Those who caused the most pain almost never suffered any themselves. But maybe that meant Blackburn could hope for an easy death of his own. "What are you going to do with the homestead?"

"Sell it," Jasmine said. "I certainly don't want it, and you-" She cut herself off. She looked scared.

"It's okay," Blackburn said. "I don't mind. All I mind is that it's taking so long."

Jasmine shook her head. "I don't understand why you don't fight it," she said. Her voice quavered. "You're the last person I'd expect to give up."

"I'm not giving up," Blackburn said. "I'm accepting reality. It's going to happen, so it might as well be soon." He gestured at the walls. "This place is no fun. For example, I was converting all the work-capable Jesus freaks to Mortonism, so the chaplain had me reclassified. Now I only get three hours a day out of my cell, five days a week. And the cell's six by nine, most of which is bed and toilet." He stood. "I'm upsetting you. I should go."

"Don't," Jasmine said. "We have time left."

"You should spend yours in Spokane." Blackburn turned and nodded to the guard.

"I love you, Jimmy," Jasmine said.

Blackburn couldn't imagine how that could be true. But he had never known Jasmine to lie. He looked back at her and said, "Thanks." Then he returned to his cell.

A week later, an attorney he didn't know came to see him. The attorney sat in the same chair in which Jasmine had sat. He looked miserable.

Blackburn took that as a good sign. "What's the word?" he asked.

The attorney, a man only a few years older than Blackburn, adjusted his crooked wire-framed glasses, making them more crooked. "I have a ruling from the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals," he said. "They upheld your sentence. I'm afraid where the murder of a Texas peace officer is concerned, the court has little compassion for the accused."

"Well, after all," Blackburn said, "I did it."

"That doesn't matter. Your case was rushed to trial, and your counsel presented no defense. So regardless of what the Texas court says, we have constitutional grounds for a U.S. Supreme Court review, and then for habeas corpus appeals if that fails."

Blackburn didn't like what he was hearing. "Look," he said, "my lawyer accomplished the only thing I wanted him to accomplish. The state was saying that I raped and killed a woman, and he got them to admit it was a lie. Then they said that I shot and killed a DPS trooper, which was the truth. The guy had it coming, but apparently that isn't a legal consideration. So I pled guilty, and they sentenced me. Then my lawyer said he'd argue an appeal of the sentence, and I told him to get lost. I knew it'd be pointless."

"You didn't have a choice," the attorney said. "Texas law requires an automatic review by the Criminal Appeals court whenever capital punishment is imposed. So when your counsel resigned, I was appointed to your case. I sent you a letter informing you of that. Didn't you receive it?"

Blackburn shrugged. "Maybe. I get a lot of mail. Some of it's from people who want to preserve my life, and some of it's from people who want to see me fry, even though Texas doesn't do that anymore. But most of it's from lawyers who want to use me to get movie deals."

The attorney adjusted his glasses again, and they fell off his face and clattered on the counter. He picked them up and shoved them back on, then glared at Blackburn. "I took your case because a judge ordered me to," he said, "but that doesn't mean I'm not going to do my job. And my job is to keep you alive."

"Why?" Blackburn asked. "So I can spend my life here?"

"There's parole," the attorney said. "Sometimes even for cop killers."

"You think you can get me parole?"

"It wouldn't be for a long time, but it could happen."

"How long a time? Minimum."

The attorney grimaced. "Given the nature of your crime," he said, "and given that you have another murder trial pending in this state and have confessed to killings in other states, I would say that the soonest you would be eligible for parole would be in twenty years. Now, I know that sounds like forever. But it beats dying."

Blackburn stared at the attorney. The man looked sincere, but sincerity was irrelevant. Blackburn stood.

"I've seen enough death to know more about it than you do," he said. "And I've been in one cage or another for most of the past year, so I know more about incarceration than you do. I've also done extensive reading about the execution procedures in this state, and about the psychological effects of long prison terms. Therefore, given my superior knowledge of these matters, my decision is this: The only way I will stay in Huntsville for twenty years will be as a stuffed mummy in the Texas Prison Museum, perched on Old Sparky. So unless you're going to help make this thing quick and easy, you can take your habeas corpus and stick it."

The attorney stood as well. "Mr. Blackburn, I can understand that you're upset. But you have to realize that you have legal options that could save your life. If you refuse to take advantage of them, you'll be killing yourself." He fumbled with his glasses. "I'll try to come back tomorrow, so you'll have tonight to cool down and think. I might even be able to arrange a consultation without a wall between us, so we can talk more comfortably."

Blackburn fixed the attorney with a steady gaze. "Please do that," he said. "Then I can tear you open where you're soft, hang you up, and watch you drain."

Blackburn didn't really do that sort of thing, but the attorney didn't seem to know that. He went away and did not return.

The execution warrant was issued on Wednesday, April 1, 1987. The execution was scheduled for Thursday, May 14, Blackburn's twenty-ninth birthday. When Blackburn saw a copy of the warrant, he thought someone was playing an April Fools' joke. But the warden sent him a letter the next day, confirming the warrant, and Blackburn knew it was serious. Two days after that, he received a letter from the attorney who had visited him, offering to apply for a stay of execution. He wrote back to the attorney, offering to have people blow up the attorney's home. He received more letters from that attorney and from other lawyers in the weeks that followed, but did not open them.

Then on Monday, May 11, Blackburn received a letter from Heather.

Dear Mr. Blackburn:I have not written you before because my parents and friends say I should not. They say you are a killer and as such do not deserve communication from me. But my heart tells me that since you are a condemned man, you should know that you have a son.This past September, I gave birth to a boy I named Alan. I named him after the man I thought you were when I knew you in December 1985.I hope I have done the right thing in telling you. I hope it will be a comfort.Your son will be eight months old this Thursday.

Blackburn was horrified. He'd had a vasectomy in 1982.

The child was Roy-Boy's.

He grabbed pen and paper and wrote furiously.

For the love of Morton drown it drown it now it is the son of a psychopath and will grow up to torture people but especially people who love it believe me it is not mine I am sterile but his the one who cut you and

Blackburn stopped, breathing hard, his chest thundering. When he could, he read what he had written. Then he tore the paper to shreds.

"You okay, Blackburn?"

Blackburn looked up. A guard was looking in through the bars of the cell door.

"Yeah," Blackburn said. "I'm fine."

"Whatcha doing with that pen?"

Blackburn looked at the pen in his hand. "Writing," he said.

"Let's have it," the guard said.

"Why? I've had pens all along."

"Let's have it."

Blackburn surrendered the pen. A few minutes later he was taken from the cell, and two guards went through it while he watched. They brought out two more pens and three pencils.

"We don't want you hurting yourself," one of them told Blackburn as they put him back into the cell.

Blackburn was confused for a moment, and then he realized what they were talking about. He was to be executed in three days, and they didn't want him beating them to it.

"Don't worry," he said. "For verily, Morton saith: I'd do it myself, but that would queer the deal."

The prison chaplain tried to visit Blackburn that evening. Blackburn mooned him, and he went away.

At 5:00 P.M. on Wednesday, May 13, four guards removed Blackburn from his cell and took him to another building. There they put him into a holding cell. Two of the guards remained outside that cell, watching him. He lay down on the bunk and traced the cracks in the ceiling with his eyes. An hour later, one of the guards who had left returned with fried chicken, mashed potatoes, and gravy. It smelled delicious. Blackburn sat up. The meal was on a metal tray on the shelf in the cell door. Steam rose between the bars.

"Is this my last meal already?" Blackburn asked.

"That's not until tomorrow evening," the guard who had brought the food said, "but they need to know what you'll want. I'll write it down now, if you're ready."

Blackburn grinned. He knew about sphincter relaxation in freshly killed bodies, and had decided that he wasn't going to die without making sure he was remembered. He asked for a pot of chili, bran cereal with milk, celery stalks, asparagus spears, bran muffins, a half gallon of prune juice, a quart of beer, and a carrot cake with "Happy Birthday" written in pink script on white icing. The guards looked puzzled.

"Fiber," Blackburn said. "It's good for you."

He ate the fried chicken and mashed potatoes, and then slept. He awoke late in the morning with no memories of dreams. Breakfast was bacon, eggs, hash browns, and coffee. Afterward, he asked for the current issues of Superman, The Flash, Batman, Hawkman, Spider-Man, X-Men, and Green Lantern. One of the guards made a call from a wall phone, and two hours later, Blackburn had his comic books. He read them slowly. He was in the middle of Hawkman when lunch arrived. Lunch was a cheeseburger, french fries, and a pint of chocolate ice cream. The ice cream was good, so he asked for more. But the pint had been brought in from outside, a guard said, and there wasn't any more.

Blackburn saved Green Lantern until his last meal was served at 7:00 P.M. He read it while he ate, and was disappointed. It had lost something over the years. When he had eaten all of his meal that he could, he lay down on the bunk and reread X-Men. He was stuffed and sleepy, and wondered if he had time for a nap.

He dozed, but the guards awoke him at eight-fifteen and took him to a shower stall next to the holding cell. They had him strip and throw his clothes into a laundry bag. When he finished showering, they handed him a towel, and then clean clothes and a pair of slippers. He dressed, commenting on the fact that the shirt was short-sleeved. The guards did not respond to that, but returned him to the holding cell and told him he could relax for a few hours.

Blackburn couldn't relax. He wasn't frightened, or even nervous; he was simply wide awake. Showers did that to him. One of the guards asked if he would like a television brought in, but Blackburn asked for a Houston Chronicle instead. When that was provided, he skipped the news sections in favor of the advice columns and funnies. He didn't see much point in knowing what was going on out in the world; it was probably just more Iran-Contra bullshit anyway.

The warden and chaplain came at eleven-thirty, along with three men in suits whom Blackburn didn't recognize and a guard wheeling a gurney. Blackburn was glad to see that the gurney had a mattress. He was taken from the holding cell and escorted to a closed door, where he was told to unbutton his shirt and to lie down on the gurney. He did so, lying down with his feet toward the door, and the guards secured him to the gurney with six leather straps. His right arm was strapped to a board that angled out from the side of the gurney. Then the warden opened the door to what Blackburn knew was called "the Death House," and the gurney was wheeled inside.

The room had brick walls. The wall on Blackburn's left had a door that led to the executioner's room. Beside that door were two small, square holes, one above the other. Beside the upper hole was a rectangular mirror. Blackburn knew that the executioner and a doctor on the other side of the mirror would be able to see him, but he wouldn't be able to see them.

The gurney stopped under the mirror. Blackburn looked up at it and winked.

The door beside the square holes opened, and a man in a blue smock stepped into the Death House. This man was not a doctor, but a "medically trained individual." He came around the gurney to Blackburn's right side, reached across Blackburn, and took a long needle attached to a clear plastic tube from the lower of the two square holes. He pulled the tube out so that it lay across Blackburn's bare chest, then smoothed the skin on Blackburn's inner elbow and pushed in the needle.

Blackburn watched the needle go in, but had no pain. "You're good," he told the man in the smock. "I didn't feel a thing."

"Thanks," the man in the smock said. "You have good veins." Then he looked startled, and glanced at the other men in the room. They pretended not to have heard anything.

The man in the smock taped the needle to Blackburn's arm, then pulled a second tube from the lower hole. This tube was gray, ending in a metal disk that the man in the smock taped to Blackburn's chest. It was a stethoscope for the doctor.

The man in the smock returned to the executioner's room and closed the door.

"Hey," Blackburn said. "What's the top hole for?"

The warden's face appeared over Blackburn. The warden had a weak chin and a receding hairline. He wore glasses.

"We don't use the top hole," he said.

"Then why'd you put it in the wall?" Blackburn asked.

The warden didn't answer. Instead, he said, "Jimmy, you can make a statement now, if you like."

Blackburn had known this moment was coming for almost a year, and had rehearsed various statements. But he hadn't been able to pick one and one alone, and he still couldn't decide.

I have never killed a woman; Leslie doesn't count, because she lit the fuse herself.

Auto mechanics are, without exception, crooks.

No man knows love who has never had a dog.

I regret making Leo drink motor oil; I should have just come back later and shot him.

Artimus Arthur will be remembered as the greatest man of letters of the twentieth century.

Go fly a kite.

The unit of currency in Laos is the kip; in Mongolia, the tugrik.

Morton giveth, and Morton taketh away.

Tell Jasmine not to take less than sixty thousand for the homestead.

Tell Dolores I forgive her.

Tell the people of Wantoda, Kansas, that I've made them famous.

Tell Ernie's parents that if they never did anything else in their lives, they can still be proud because they made Ernie.

Tell Heather not to let Alan play with anything sharp.

All of these were worth saying, and none of them were enough.

"Jimmy?" the warden said.

Blackburn tried to shrug, but the leather straps were tight.

"Green Lantern isn't what it used to be," he said.

The warden frowned, then stepped away. The chaplain appeared over Blackburn then, and Blackburn made a noise in his throat as if he were bringing up phlegm. The chaplain stepped away too.

Blackburn felt something cold in his arm, and he raised his head to look at the clear tube lying across his chest. It was full of a colorless liquid. He knew that the liquid was a saline solution, with no poison in it. They would keep this going for a while, so he wouldn't know when the drugs started. The drugs would be sodium thiopental, pancuronium bromide, and potassium chloride. He didn't know what those words meant, exactly, but he had taken pride in learning them. He wasn't sure why. Maybe it was something like learning the words "Colt Python," which also didn't mean anything, by themselves. They only meant something when applied to steel and lead. Just as drugs only meant something when they slid into your body.

He became aware of a dull pressure in his bladder and bowels, and smiled. They would wish they could kill him twice.

He turned his head to the right and saw a glass panel in the far wall. The glare from the ceiling light kept him from seeing the faces of the witnesses behind that panel, but he saw their shapes. They were like ghosts. He stared at them for several minutes to make sure they were uncomfortable. Then he looked up at the ceiling light. This was taking too long.

The ceiling light was a single bright bulb. Blackburn guessed that it was at least two hundred watts. He stared at it, playing a game to see how long he could look without blinking. Then one of the men in the room appeared over him again, blocking his view.

"You're in my light," Blackburn said.

The man stepped away, and the sun was bright in Jimmy's eyes. His black fiberglass rod and Zebco 404 reel gleamed.

"Well, come on if you're coming," Dad said.

Jimmy hurried down the bank, almost falling. Dad took the lid off the Folger's coffee can, reached in, and pulled out a wriggling red worm.

"You do it like this," Dad said, holding the hook of his own rod and reel in his right hand. "You thread it on, head to ass or ass to head. You don't jab it through sideways, 'cause then the fish just bites off what he wants."

Jimmy stood close and watched. The worm bunched up on the hook as Dad pushed it on. The free end flailed.

"Does it hurt it?" Jimmy asked.

"Worms ain't got nerves." Dad took his hands away from the hook. It dangled before Jimmy's face, no longer metal, but hook-shaped flesh. "Now do yours," Dad said.

Jimmy laid his rod on the flat mud beside the water and sat down. He dug into the dirt in the coffee can and pulled up a worm, slimy and strong. It almost slipped away. He clutched the worm in his right hand and picked up the brass hook at the end of his line with his left.

He couldn't get the hook into the worm the way Dad had done. The worm's ass or head or whatever wouldn't stay still long enough for him to push the point of the barb into the hole. He jabbed in desperation and stuck himself in the thumb.

"Ow!" he yelled, dropping both worm and hook.

Dad picked them up and squatted beside him. "I'll show you one more time," he said, "and if you don't get it right after that, we're leaving. Give me your hands."

Jimmy held out his hands, and Dad placed the worm in his left and the hook in his right. Then Dad guided Jimmy's fingers.

"Like this," Dad said. "It ain't hard."

The worm slid onto the hook as slick and easy as macaroni onto a toothpick.

In that instant, Jimmy became dizzy with a joy he had never before experienced. He didn't know what had caused it, but he didn't want it to stop, so he tried to memorize everything: the warmth of the sun on his crew-cut scalp; the coolness of the mud beneath him; Dad's rough fingers wrapped around his; and the smell of earth and blood from the worm on the hook.