True Crime

3

Five years earlier, a minor functionary of the state’s Democratic party had approached the Reverend Harlan Flowers in the south city church where the reverend was making his name as a young firebrand. The functionary was a small, bald, pink-faced man who had a damp red smile and a dry, mirthless chuckle which Flowers found peculiarly unattractive. The functionary explained in fairly plain terms that he wanted to contribute a substantial sum of money to Flowers’s discretionary funds. In return for this donation, Flowers would be expected to ensure that the members of his congregation were registered as Democratic voters, transported to the polls come election day and encouraged to vote their party’s ticket from the governor’s office right on down the line. The functionary-rapidly swiping at his smile with a handkerchief-pointed out that Flowers would thus be serving his people-black people-twice over: once by receiving funds which could be used for the betterment of the neighborhood (or not, as Flowers saw fit) and again by pushing them to vote for that party which had “historically been in the forefront of your people’s struggle.” Despite this dual inducement, Flowers refused the donation. To be fair to both the reverend and the Democrats, a Republican functionary turned up only three days later offering substantial sums to ensure that Flower’s congregation did not go to the polls at all-and he was refused as well. Finally, a number of Flowers’s fellow churchmen showed up, expressing the opinion that Flowers was being naive about the political process and otherwise getting in the way of a pretty good thing. When Flowers explained that it seemed immoral to him to sell his vote let alone the votes of his parishioners, the other ministers trooped from the room wearing very serious expressions indeed.

About six weeks after the election, one of these same ministers took to his pulpit to announce in tones of thunderous regret that he had come into possession of disheartening news. Charges had been made, he said, that a certain neighborhood servant of God had strayed from the path of righteousness so far as to misappropriate church funds for his own uses, patronize various local establishments of sin and abuse the trust of at least one young girl who had come to him for spiritual guidance. The young girl was produced, the press was alerted and investigators from both the city and the state were dispatched with what some might have felt was remarkable alacrity. The Reverend Harlan Flowers was in deep, deep trouble.

The scandal that followed was not the less painful and debilitating to Flowers for the fact that he was guiltless. The sight of his name in the newspapers linked to financial boondoggles he hadn’t the nature to devise and sexual improprieties he hadn’t even the inclination to commit, was like a stone gargoyle perched atop his heart devouring the inner substance of it day after miserable day. There were nights during that period when Flowers fell on his knees and begged his God to kill him as a mercy. There were mornings when he awoke made almost faithless by the fact that his prayers had gone unheeded and his consciousness had been allowed to return.

He was saved the disaster of an indictment finally by our froggy friend Cecilia Nussbaum. The circuit attorney soon got wise to the real nature of the charges and not only called off the local dogs but journeyed to Jefferson City where many a political buttock was made to resemble a football field after a particularly rainy Sunday. As for the reporters, after about the fifth time Flowers told them that he had been rigorously faithful to his wife for all seventeen years of their marriage, it finally occurred to them that this was a pretty original defense for a public figure. In fact, they began to feel it was so preposterous it might just be true. And the moment the sex charges evaporated, the financial peccadilloes that had been discovered in the church books appeared miraculously to be exactly what they were: the result of Flowers’s sloppy and indifferent accounting procedures. With a few self-examining editorials to cover their retreat, the media withdrew.

It was a full year before Flowers reestablished himself in the Florissant ministry where Bonnie Beachum found him. Here, his congregation steadily grew, and the functionaries of both political parties, wary of tangling with La Nussbaum again, resolved to gather their votes elsewhere.

But if the scandal did no permanent damage to his career, it had a profound and lasting effect on his personality. In his old parish in the south city, he had been a fierce and crusading activist, a fighter against local drug lords, a gadfly to the mayor and a frequent face on local news programs as he badgered the state and city governments for money and programs to help the slums. In the north, after the scandal, he turned his attention away from these big issues, and it was said by some that he had lost heart for the fight. He became the grave and quiet figure Bonnie knew. When he was away from his church, he spent his time visiting hospitals and clinics; he presided at funerals and comforted the mourning; and he made incessant calls at those prisons where sundry sons and husbands of his congregation had come to reside. He stopped declaiming against the evils of crime and poverty and abandoned his guerrilla war against the injustices of society as a whole. In fact, he seemed to have lost his taste for making moral judgments altogether and concentrated his attention on reminding anyone who would listen that God cared for the least of their troubles as he did for the farthing sparrows. The media, of course, lost interest in him completely. And so, for the most part, if he gained the support and affection of his little church, he dropped from the larger public’s view.

All of which I mention only to explain his attitude toward Frank Beachum’s innocence. That is, he had none. He never thought about it-or if he did, they were idle thoughts, and he attached no importance to them. He had come to care for Frank quite a lot-and for Bonnie too, though he sensed that he-that black people-made her uncomfortable. He hoped Frank wasn’t going to have to answer to God for murdering Amy Wilson but, in the end, he felt that was between Frank and God. His job, Flowers’s job, he felt, was to help Bonnie and Gail within the small range of his abilities, and to make sure that Frank didn’t go to his death without human solace, alone.

To that latter end, he entered the Deathwatch cell at five minutes to ten o’clock for his last visit with Frank before the execution. He saw at once that the prisoner was in a bad way. Frank was sitting on the edge of his cot, hunched over, staring at the floor, rubbing his hands together between his knees. His mouth was working, his face was sallow and his eyes were unnaturally bright. The sight of him came as a small shock to Flowers, who had last seen him when he had come to collect Gail. Then, the prisoner had seemed grief-struck, but straight, composed, inwardly strong. Now, there was nothing radiating from that bent and twisted figure but panic and wretchedness and fear. The preacher guessed what had happened right away: Frank had put all his will into a show of strength for Bonnie and the child; and now that they were gone, he was suffering the inevitable reaction.

Beachum jumped when the bars slid back: he hadn’t heard Flowers come into the cell. Startled from his reverie, his eyes flashed to the clock at once and then he swallowed and breathed again: no, not yet; it wasn’t time yet.

As Benson shut the cage again, Flowers moved to the cot and stood over the condemned man. Beachum ran his fingers up through his hair and Flowers saw that his hair was damp with sweat.

“Getting late, huh?” Frank said with a nervous laugh-and he glanced up as if hoping Flowers would contradict him. He looked away again. “Yeah. Late. Yeah.”

Looking down at the bowed head, the lank hair, the reverend felt a terrible weary sorrow for Frank. For Bonnie too and for the little girl. For all of them: a terrible burden of pity. But then he felt that so often these days-pity, sorrow-and felt it for so many different people that it was less an emotion of the moment than an unshifting point of view, a filter over his vision. He even felt sorrow at his own sense of gratitude and vitality: the surge of petty pleasure he felt standing there that he was not Frank, that he was not scheduled to die at midnight. Like the second titmouse on a branch when a hawk swoops down and carries off his brother, he was thinking: God is good, God has been good today. Flowers felt pity for himself that he was as small and miserable a thing as that.

“Getting bad for you, is it, Frank?” he said.

“Bad! Yeah, bad, it’s bad!” And with that, Beachum shot off the cot, paced quickly to the cage bars and back. During that short journey, he went through a whole catalogue of nervous gestures: running his fingers through his hair, rubbing his hands together, wiping his mouth, casting his eyes at the clock and away and at the clock again. As he neared the cot, he pulled up short, staring at Flowers with those bright eyes as if he had just noticed the reverend standing there for the first time. “I mean, I didn’t do anything,” he said. “I swear it to God, Harlan. I didn’t …” He spun back to the bars, stepped to them, clutched them weakly with his two hands and bowed his head. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m sorry. I’m not doing too well here.”

Flowers walked up behind him, put his hand on Frank’s shoulder. “It’s an awful thing to face.”

“Hey, tell me about it, Reverend,” Beachum snapped. “You don’t have to face it.”

Flowers didn’t answer at first. He mostly went on instinct in conversations such as these. He tried not to think too much and hoped that God would give him the right words to say. In this instance, God seemed to come through for him. Because it occurred to him to say, “We all have to face it in the end, Frank,” and he didn’t say it, the words died in his throat. God apparently felt this was no time to get false and sententious. Flowers and Frank both knew which titmouse on the branch they were, and they both knew that Flowers couldn’t help but be glad.

“No,” the reverend said finally. “I don’t have to face it.”

Beachum butted his head against the bars. Softly, but it made Flowers flinch. “Sorry,” he said again. “Sorry, sorry.”

“Come on and sit down, Frank. Come on.”

Flowers tugged at his shoulder gently. Weakly, his arms hanging at his sides now, the condemned man came away from the bars. He shuffled back to the cot and sat down. Flowers pulled the chair over and sat in front of him, leaning toward him, searching out his downcast eyes. He waited for Beachum to speak again. This was hard in itself: keeping silent, watching the terror corkscrew through the other man, huddling within himself, within his own relative safety. Along with sorrow and pity, there was always so much else involved in these moments, so many less forgivable emotions. Not only the irrepressible joy of existence, but the pride of doing good as well, the self-satisfaction, and the excitement of witnessing a drama, as if you were watching television instead of a fellow creature in pain. Along with the sorrow, of which he was almost constantly aware, Flowers had lived these last five years-perhaps longer than that-with another feeling, more secret from himself, revealing itself only in sour surges that made him want to turn away from the sight of his own soul: He felt there was something rotten inside him, something rotten and low. Something unworthy.

“Man, it’s bad,” Frank broke out. He shook his head at the floor. “Man …!”

“You showed a lot of strength for Bonnie,” said Flowers.

“Yeah, yeah. For Bonnie and Gail.”

“And now they’re gone.”

“Yeah. Gone.” Frank shook his head some more. He had started to rub his hands together again. “They’re sure gone. Ain’t nobody home but us chickens,” he said with another dreadful laugh.

Flowers reached out and squeezed the condemned man’s arm. “What about God, Frank? You got trouble getting through to God too?”

“I lost it!” Beachum cried out like a child-a strangled cry. He threw his hands up around his head in frustration. “I had it. I had it and it just …”

Flowers leaned in closer, speaking without thinking; going on instinct. “God hasn’t lost you, Frank. He hasn’t lost sight of you.”

With an angry noise, Beachum jumped to his feet again, walked to the bars again, glanced again at the clock and away. He wrapped his arms around himself. This time, though, when he’d gone as far as he could, he stood still. He looked up at the ceiling, at the fluorescent lights. He closed his eyes.

“Everybody wants something outta me,” he whispered. And his voice growing steadily louder: “Even now. Christ, Christ, what am I doing here? I’m dying, I’m fucking dying, and everybody’s gotta have something, a piece of me.”

Flowers’s nostrils flared as he drew breath sharply. He understood already what Frank meant and he felt it, felt the truth of it-another charge against himself.

“Gail,” said Frank in a choked voice. “I gotta smile for Gail-you think I don’t see what’s happening to her? — and I gotta smile and say, ‘Good picture, Gail. Daddy loves ya, honey.’ So she’s got some shred of something, see, so she’s not a fucking basket case, which she’s gonna be anyway, Harlan. Christ! And Bonnie. Oh yeah, be strong for Bonnie, don’t let Bonnie see how bad it is. Because she couldn’t take it, what a pit it is, what a black pit. Jesus, Jesus!” He turned to face the reverend, still hugging himself, his mouth twisted, his eyes burning. Flowers felt the heat of those eyes and felt one of those acid gouts of self-disgust. “The warden comes in here,” said Frank. “The warden, I swear to God-he comes in here and I’m looking at him. I know what he wants me to say. ‘Oh, I forgive you, Warden, you’re just doing your job, Warden. No hard feelings, Warden.’ No hard feelings. And the reporter wants his goddamned story …” Frank turned his head-turned so he could wipe his mouth dry on his hand without releasing the grip he had on his own body. He kept his lips pressed there, against the hand, speaking into the fleshy web. “And now you come in here, Harlan. I’m sorry, but you’re coming in here. I gotta give you something too.”

Flowers had known this was coming but still felt it as it struck him. “No,” he said, and felt it was a lie.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah. You want something outta me too. I gotta say, ‘Oh yeah, Harlan, oh yeah, Reverend, I believe.’ Don’t I? ‘I believe in the Lord Jesus and I’m going to Heaven, we’re all going to Heaven.’ ” Frank pressed his face hard into his hand, squeezing his eyes shut. “So you don’t have to be afraid,” he said. “That’s why. I gotta say it so you don’t have to be. I gotta get strapped down and carted off into that needle room singing hymns and praising God so you don’t have to hear me in your bed at night, in your heart, telling you, ‘There’s just nothing, man. My whole family’s ruined, my life, I lived good, I didn’t do anything, Christ! and it’s just fucking nothing.’ ”

Now Flowers’s fine, grave features-those features that the old ladies of his congregation so admired-now he forced them to remain inexpressive and still. He sat with his elbows on his knees, his fingers motionless, intertwined, his grave eyes toward Beachum. He gave no sign-was careful to give no sign-of the cold thrill that went through him as the condemned man spoke. Because he also lived, as Beachum had, with the eye of God upon him. That ever-seeing eye-he had felt it there since he could remember, since he was a child. An invisible audience, a second judgment on his every thought and action. And what if it should go away, he thought, as it had for Frank. What if he were left here on the sere earth with all this sorrow and no one watching? Maybe it would release the stranglehold of guilt, stop up the mouth of his conscience, let him feel right and strong again the way he used to, or thought he used to. But to make that trade, to hand that in in return for nothing but lonesomeness and cosmic laughter … Frank was right: the thought did strike him as terrible, though he couldn’t really imagine what it would be like. So maybe Frank was also right that he had come here to see his faith confirmed in a dead man’s eyes.

It didn’t make Flowers feel much better about himself when he took refuge from those eyes in Scripture.

“You know, Jesus felt this too, Frank,” he said with far more certainty in his bass voice than he felt. “He kneeled and he prayed for this cup to pass, in the garden, when they were coming for him, when they were coming to take him to his execution just like they’re coming to take you.”

“Yeah, well, he got to come back,” Frank muttered, “it’s an important fucking difference.”

“Maybe so. But it didn’t stop him from sweating blood. It says that right in the book. Jesus wept and the sweat poured from him like blood and he said he was sorrowful even unto death. What I mean is, he doesn’t know sort of how you feel, Frank. He knows exactly how you feel.”

Frank stood as he was, hunkered, hugging himself. Flowers saw the second hand of the clock turning in his peripheral vision but did not dare to let Frank see him look. He wished there were another man here to do this, a better, wiser man. Why did God lead him to the Word, he thought, if he wasn’t good enough to speak it?

Beachum, as if his strength for it were gone, let go of his own shoulders. He spread his hands feebly. His body shook as if he were laughing, his mouth opened and his eyes narrowed, all as if he were laughing. “Hey,” he said, “I’ll say anything you want. I’m so scared, man. I’ll sing ‘Glory, Hallelujah’ through my asshole if you want, I swear to God I’m that scared.” He made a noise, a growl, a baffled moan, and pressed the heels of his hands against his forehead, gritting his teeth. “What the hell good is any of it? What the hell good is any of it?”

He came back to the cot, sank down on the cot again, but Flowers kept his head turned, kept looking at the place where he had been, at the bars beyond, and now at the clock beyond the bars. Jesus wept, he thought. At eleven, they would make him leave, eleven or thereabouts, forty-five minutes or so from now. Forty-five minutes. And, Jesus wept, how he was waiting for it. He was too honest with himself not to know. He was wishing they would come, he was wishing this would be over, and the execution would be over, and Bonnie’s tears and the long hours of her mourning and this guilt, this knowledge of his own insufficiency. He was wishing for the time when he could go home, to Lillian, to his wife, and say how sad it all was and drink a glass of brandy with her on the sofa in the living room and be alive, with his self-disgust a secret again, away from this condemned man and the accusations of his suffering.

And, of course, that wish made him feel all the more strongly what a miserable creature he was, what a miserable failure as a minister as well. And the sorrow, the sorrow that he was so small, that they were all so miserable here and insignificant and small, was nearly overwhelming.

“You don’t have to sing ‘Glory, Hallelujah’ for me, Frank,” he said, looking down now, studying the pink palms of his hands. “I hear what you’re saying.”

Beachum moaned again, rubbing his own palms pink and raw.

“And you’re right too,” said Flowers. “Cause what you believe is just what you feel, that’s all. And maybe, like you say, I want you to believe it too so it seems to be more real to me or something. I don’t know. But I got no right to ask that from you, it’s true.” Flowers drew a deep breath. He felt tired. His thoughts were cloudy and confused. He did not even know if what he was saying made sense, but he felt he was supposed to be saying something to the poor man. “But not believing-that’s just a feeling too. What you’re feeling now, you know, what Jesus felt, what anyone would. Cause you’re scared, like you say, cause they’re coming for you. They pulled back those bars right now, they said to you, ‘Go on, home, Frank, you’re free,’ maybe you’d turn to me and say, ‘What do you know, Reverend, there is a God, after all. Look here, he pulled my chestnuts out of the fire. He must be there.’ The facts stay the same either way. They let you go, some other man somewhere, doesn’t even have to be in America, be in Africa, be in that Iran, some other man going through the same thing, going up against the wall for nothing, shot down for nothing. Cause let me tell you, Frank: Life is sad, man. It’s not just sad when it’s sad, it’s sad when it’s happy too, it’s sad all the time. I mean, you want to find God again, you want to believe in God, you’re gonna have to believe in a God of the sad world. The ugly world; with the injustice and the pain. Cause that’s in every heart that beats, Frank. Injustice, ugliness, pain. That’s in every heart and every hand. And it was there yesterday and it’s there today and it’s gonna be there tomorrow, world without end.”

To which Frank Beachum answered: “I don’t want to die, Harlan.” And he began to cry. He buried his face in his hands and shook. Tears dripped out between his fingers. “Don’t let em kill me, man. I didn’t do anything. I swear to God, I don’t want to die.”

The Reverend Flowers put his arm around the crying man. He rested his cheek against his damp hair. He closed his eyes and prayed to God to give Beachum strength and comfort and peace. He wished he were stronger himself, more able in himself to do the job he was supposed to do.

And he wished this night were over. He hated himself for it, but God knew the truth, and he wished this night were done.