Acid West by Joshua Wheeler

Author:Joshua Wheeler
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Sane and Ready for Heaven

November 5, 2001. The Penitentiary of New Mexico in Santa Fe. Dinnertime. This is not quite Terry’s last meal but it is the one where he exercises these last freedoms: fried jumbo shrimp, fried okra, french fries, vanilla ice cream and peach cobbler. He has been on death row for fifteen years and still has years more of appeals but has volunteered to go ahead and get the poison in his veins tomorrow night. He has found Jesus. He believes in a thing called grace. When his lawyers and groups such as Amnesty International tried to stop the execution on his behalf, claiming he was mentally unstable—suicidal—Terry wrote to the judge, wrote to the state’s Supreme Court, insisted he was sane and ready for heaven.

At his sentencing all those years ago he’d flung a kind of conundrum at the jury: If you come back with a verdict of death, then I’ll just have to live with that. But now he will live with death for only twenty-four hours more. He will have breakfast tomorrow morning, technically his last meal, but it will be the standard prison fare: soggy eggs and potatoes and green chili. He will decline lunch and die on a mostly empty stomach at 7:12 p.m., the first man executed by New Mexico in nearly forty-two years. With his not-quite-last meal Terry gets two packs of Camel cigarettes from the warden, who often lets him smoke despite the prison’s ban on tobacco. Terry is a good guy these days, all the prison staff often said to one another.

This shrimp isn’t bad for prison food, Terry says. He shares the symbolic supper with Brother Maxey, who chuckles often as they eat. Though the moment is grave, it is always cause for celebration when a man repents. And here is one willing to repent to the death, a sincerity the likes of which most preachers never see. Brother Maxey laughs with only his face and even then just his mouth and even then there’s that mustache hiding his lips, the same long push broom he’s cultivated since his days in the Navy.

I wasn’t sure I even wanted a last meal.

Well, I’m glad you got the shrimp.

I knew I’d break down and get the peach cobbler, I guess.

The concrete death-house cell is small. The meal is large. The quiet loud as Terry scrapes around with his plasticware. Brother Maxey waits for Terry to speak. And waits. And then: The shrimp don’t seem important as spending the time with you in study and prayer. Terry works up the nerve to ask if the congregation down in Alamogordo will sing “Amazing Grace” for him once he’s gone. Brother Maxey can think of no better tribute. They gather the food back into the serving dishes.

It’s sure a lot. A lot of food here.

Terry bangs on the cell door twice. Waits for it to crack. Hands the dishes through. You boys enjoy, Terry says behind the grub. Them guards always have an appetite.

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