True Crime

2

For a long time after the warden left, Frank sat at his table, the sheets of paper blank in front of him. His hand shook weakly as he reached to pick up the pen. Plunkitt’s words-your remains … the procedure … the funeral … thrummed in his head. The clock on the wall above CO Benson went on turning, and Frank felt it turn. Flinging the minutes away like chicken feed. It was hard to focus his mind, hard to think.

But he had to. They would be there soon. His wife and daughter. It was nearing eleven now and they would come at one. He had to do this, he had to get it done before they arrived. He put the pen’s tip to the paper-not for the first time that morning. And not for the first time, he held it there motionless. He had written this letter over and over in his mind a hundred times, for six years he had been composing it. But it was not so easy to set it down now in ink. It mattered too much to him. No real words could do what he wanted them to do. In his mind, the phrases were eloquent, even wise. They were charged with his desperate feeling. On the page, they were ashes. He might just as well have burned the paper and left that to his little girl.

He raised his eyes, his stomach clutching, his mind seizing with panic at the passing time. Benson glanced up at him hopefully. The guard, Frank knew, had been disappointed that he would not watch a video on the cell TV as most condemned prisoners did. But the movies made things worse for Frank. The actors pretending to be in trouble or in love. He was too aware of the camera watching them. No matter what they said or did, he was too conscious that they were only pretending, doing their job really, the work they enjoyed, waiting to go home to their wives or their husbands, their houses and their lawns. It made him feel ill. It made him remember that other camera, the one that was watching him-the eye of God. When he watched movies, he could see himself through that other eye, lying on his cot, gazing at the TV while the seconds were flung away.

Frank lowered his gaze to the page again. Finally, he began writing.

Dear Gail, he wrote,

This is kind of hard for me, because I’m not writing to the little girl I know-I’m writing to a young woman I’m never going to get to know. I’ve been trying for a long time to think of what to say to her-to you-because I wanted to give you some of the things I’m not going to get to give you over the years. I was thinking you might be able to turn to this letter when you’re older and you can understand it, and feel you’ve got some idea of who your father was and how much he loved you. But now I know I can’t do that. That’s why it’s so hard to get started. I had this idea that I would write down all this advice, and all these words of wisdom I might have had a chance to say to you while you were growing up in my house with me around you-things to watch out for, things I’ve seen and been through that might help you through the things that you have to see and go through. I guess I always figured that was part of what a father did-I always had to figure that out for myself because I didn’t have a father who taught me how to do them. But I did want to do them right, kid. I hope you know that, even though I’m not there anymore. I wanted like anything to do them right because I loved you so much. But the thing is, what I’m thinking now as I write this, is that it wasn’t about any of the things I would’ve said anyway. Not the words, you know. A guy wants his experiences and the things that he thinks about and believes to be important to somebody, to his kid most of all, but I don’t know now if they really are. What’s important really is who you are, the whole thing of you, even the way you smell and laugh and stuff, and that you’re there, whatever the breaks are, that you’re there standing up for the people around you, and that’s exactly what I won’t be able to give you. You gotta know that it’s killing me that I won’t be able to give you that and that I really wanted to. Don’t ever think, not for even a single second, that I didn’t want to be there, every day, all the time. It was just the way things turned out for us, but I wanted to. So that’s one thing I want you to know right there.

I don’t want to spend a lot of time telling you that I didn’t do what they said I did-kill Amy, I mean. A lot of guys in here who I see they spend all their time talking about that, saying that, about how they’re innocent, and it eats them up inside and makes them crazy. I hope your mother will tell you the truth and that you’ll believe her because she’s a woman who doesn’t lie as you’ll probably have figured out by the time you get this. But just so you hear it from me too, I never hurt her or did anything to her and never would have. It was just a terrible mistake that the law made, and that’s it. I did some rough things when I was younger and that was part of my life, but when I met your mother I put all that aside and all I wanted to do was love her and then you when you came so there was no reason for me to hurt anyone anymore. So here’s something else I want to say, because one of the worst things about being here and knowing that I’m going to die tonight is thinking about what it’s going to be like for you, about how you’re not going to have a father now like I didn’t even though I wanted you to so much and how maybe you’ll feel you got cheated and all the cops and the lawyers and judges did a bad thing to you. And what I want-if I could reach out to you from where I am and tell you one thing more than anything else-is for you not to be angry about it all the time. In the Bible it says that the rain falls the same way on the just and the unjust so it’s been that way for thousands of years and believe me when I tell you it’s not going to get any different, not in this world. And when you’re on the receiving end of something that’s wrong you can get angry about it and think that everything’s screwed up and you never get a fair break and this and that. And there’ll be people around you, Gail, all the time, everywhere you go, and they’ll be telling you all the time about how you should be angry and how it’s good to be angry even and look what they did to your father and let’s change the world this way or the other way and on and on. So maybe if you have this letter you’ll know that that’s not what I would’ve wanted at all. The way I see it, Gail-little Gail-is that the Good Lord gives you a patch of ground, just that little patch of ground beneath your two feet. You see that patch of ground clear right to the ending, baby, don’t let anybody talk you off it with their big talk or anything else, you make sure that the people on that patch are okay, that you take care of them and be good to them, and when you get to where I am, I tell you sure as anything, they’re gonna say yeah, kid, okay, and open the door for you. And we’ll all be there cheering for you too, I promise, me more than anyone. So that means don’t be telling people how to do right or thinking about what they should be doing. Just look into yourself and find the right and do it, and if you’re good to the people on your patch of ground, they’ll do it too, and that’s the ticket right there, that’s everything. I know the bad stuff is painful, but you gotta believe that God knows what He’s doing. I believe that even now. So that’s what I would’ve told you if I was there.

But there’s so many other things too and now they’re all coming into my mind at once and I can’t write them down fast enough. I want to tell you to listen to what your mother says and go to church and don’t mess up in school, read those books, kid, because maybe it doesn’t seem like a big deal now but it’s the whole ball game in the long run, believe me. A hundred things. Guys-you gotta be careful with guys, you know, and don’t listen to the first thing some boy tells you. But it’s like I said-I write it down and it doesn’t seem like anything. It doesn’t seem as important as when I was thinking about it in my head. I guess that’s just the way it is though. And you’ll probably hear all that from Mom anyway, in fact I can pretty much lay money that you will. She’ll probably even drive you crazy with it sometimes. I guess that always happens. But don’t let that throw you off. You’ve got to see what a great person she is. That’s important too, and it’s not something I can explain to you in a letter. But I guess you either figured it out for yourself by now, or else you took a wrong turn at the last light or something. Maybe there’s some woman who’s in the news now who you think is pretty important or some movie star or rock star or something you like. But just remember: those people, Gail, they’re just made of paper, they’re just pictures on the TV. Maybe they’re okay, maybe they’re not, but you don’t know, one way or the other, and the truth is, it doesn’t make one bit of difference to you and your life what they are or anything they do. It doesn’t matter even a hair turned this way or that. But she matters-Mom-to you. And to me-I can’t even begin to tell you about that. To me, she was like Amazing Grace-I was lost and then I was found because of her. And not because she said do this or that-although she could get after you sometimes about some things as you probably know-but really just because she was there and she loved me-God knows why-and I saw how she always tried to do right. These past six years, Gail, you probably don’t know half of it, but she just went through hell, not just having her husband locked up and on death row and everything, but getting sick and losing the house and having to find a new church and a lot of her friends turning away from her because of me, all kinds of hell. And she wasn’t on some TV show either with people clapping for her because she managed to check in to some big clinic and give up Oreos or something. She’d just come in here sometimes on visiting days and she’d say, Oh, you know, I’m sorry I didn’t wear my nice dress but it got a stain on it or something cause she didn’t have any nice dress, Gail, hell I knew that. And they don’t even let you touch for too long, they break you up if you hug each other for too long, so all I could do was just sit at the table with her, holding her hand and seeing what it was doing to her and not being able to help her. So anyway, you ever want to know in your life which road to take, you just think back on that time and ask yourself if she ever let you down or was mean to you or anything or didn’t listen to what you were saying. You ever think oh, this is hell and I can’t get through this, you think back on that take care of her Jesus God in the name of Jesus God.

I don’t know, Gail. I don’t know if any of this makes sense or means anything to you. There are a lot of smarter people in the world than me, and you already probably know about things that I didn’t even know a person could know. Maybe you’ll be some kind of professor or something or some rocket scientist reading this and there’ll be words I spelled wrong or whatever and you’ll see all this advice and figure you know better than some mechanic guy who’s been dead all these years and was in prison. And you know what-you probably do know better too. It wouldn’t be so hard. But even rocket scientists have bad nights, I bet, and so if all these things I’m saying don’t mean anything then maybe the important thing is just that I touched this piece of paper and I wrote on it for you and now you’re holding it and looking at it and if you can read it, or just touch it, or smell it and know that I was here once loving you so much and wanting so much for you to be all right then maybe if something is hard for you sometime it won’t be so hard when you think about that I don’t know. I don’t know what kind of things there’ll be or who you’ll be. So that’s really my whole message, Gail-whether you’re standing on top of the world or things break wrong sometimes or whatever. I know after today I’m going to be in a place where there’s no pain or hardship and I know that Jesus Christ is waiting for me at the door and I just know for a fact he’s gonna say, Yeah, Frank, okay, a couple of mess-ups in there, man, but yeah, come on in. But the thing that I hope, the thing that I’m asking Him for right now, is that He’ll let me leave just enough of myself back here in this world, in this letter, so you can pick it up whenever you need it and whether the words matter or they don’t matter it’ll be like I’m there with you and I’m saying to you: I’m here, Gail. Your father is here. Your father …

Frank dropped the pen and threw his arms up, crossed, in front of his face. A hoarse growl sounded deep in his throat and his whole body trembled as he fought for control. Benson, at his table, glanced over at him.

But now, Frank lowered his arms again, and sat still in his chair, staring about him wildly.