“I heard her screaming — or a girl’s voice screaming — at approximately nine at night at River’s Point on July 26th of this year,” Mr. Stevenson Smith said on the stand. “My boy was with me at the time. We were looking for our dog, Peacock, who that same afternoon jumped out of the car window when Jimmy and I were fishing. And when we heard that poor girl screaming like she was being maliciously raped—” “Objection, Your Honor.” “I mean viciously raped.” “Objection, Your Honor.” “When we heard a girl screaming — is that all right?” “That’s fine, Mr. Smith,” the judge said. “Well Jimmy got so scared he ran back into the woods. I wanted to run and see what the screaming was about, but I also didn’t want Jimmy disappearing like Peacock did, so I went after the boy. I found him back in the car, doors locked and windows up tight, and with the car keys in the glove compartment. I had to tell him through the side vent to calm down for I wanted to see what the trouble was with that screaming voice. Coaxing him to calm down took a while because he’s a very emotional boy, very sensitive, and when he heard that screaming he, like me, didn’t know what to think. He said ‘No, don’t go, poppa.’ I said ‘I have to go, Jimmy. Some lady might be in trouble, so I’ve got to help.’ He said ‘Please don’t go, Poppa, I don’t want to be left alone.’ So I told him ‘Then unlock the door, Jimmy, and come with me.’” “Get to the point, Mr. Smith.” “The point is that I eventually did go back, though without Jimmy, and by this time the girl was no longer screaming. Nobody was screaming. Everything was quiet. And there she was on the grass without any clothes on and her hair combed back nice and tight and her head smashed in and blood all over the ground and her and bruised so bad I wanted to throw up. I felt if I’d have got there a half-minute sooner I could’ve saved that girl. I could’ve, you know, if my son wasn’t so emotional, so sensitive. It upset him so much he’s now taking pills to stay reasonably in control of himself.” “Thank you, Mr. Smith. Does the State have any further witnesses?” It had none. They already paraded about fifteen against me. There wasn’t anyone to say anything good about me. Just letters from my hometown that my lawyer read in court saying what a pleasant child I was when I was three and five and eight and ten but nobody had anything good to say about me after that. “A very slow worker”—an ex-boss. “Never liked to take orders”—another ex-boss. “Intelligent but with proclivities toward temper tantrums and occasional furious rages”—a grade-school teacher. “Too self-assured with no self-restraint.”—a junior-high-school teacher. “Kind of creepy and slimy most times but definitely not like a murderer”—the girl I was once engaged to. “Showed tremendous potential in the beginning, but once he got involved with motorcycles I just gave up on him”—my high-school football coach. “Unstable”—my mother. “Though do have pity on him,” she said from a thousand miles away, “as he’s my only child and I have no one else for support.” Except for the hundred thousand dollar insurance policy my dad left and which she refused to give me a cent of when I was accepted into college. “Guilty”—the jury. “Hanged till you are dead”—the judge. “They’ll never hang you because the state law is unconstitutional”—my lawyer. That was three years ago. I’m still in the death cellblock and there are no windows in my cell and I’m never allowed out in the sunlight and I never get any real earth to walk on and there are ten other men here who are also waiting to see how the Supreme Court deals with my case, since each of their death sentences will be affected by the decision. None of them is very hopeful. And if the court does decide the state’s execution law is constitutional, then I’ll be the first to go. None of these men likes to talk about the sun and stars and galaxies with me. They say “What’s the difference?” They say “So what, a star’s a star.” They’re interested in our men walking on the moon though — very proud that fellow human beings from our own country can do that. They like to watch it each time it happens on television and also all kinds of television movies and soap operas and ball games and a few of the funnier commercials — but that’s all. They actually don’t like to discuss anything with me — they think it might be bad luck. So I mostly talk to myself. I say “Let me out.” I plead “I didn’t do anything wrong to justify being here.” I shout “All I did was shove a girl. Lots of men have shoved girls and they’re not in prison. She fell back over her own foot and so in a sense killed herself. She already came at me once with a branch. She was going to come at me with a rock. Now who would stand still and let his head get hit by a rock? Would you stand still? And you there, would you stand still? Oh knock it off. Because none of you would. You say so, you might think so, but all of you would have probably done worse than me. You probably would have beaten her up. And then maybe raped her after you knocked her unconscious to the ground.” And I think about the sunsets I haven’t seen these past three years. And that last holy sunset I saw with Jenny Lou. My traveling would probably be over by now, I think. I’d probably be married — and maybe with a baby — to a girl I loved very much and who didn’t always interfere with my quietest thoughts.
“You can take your rest period,” guard Vernon says, coming into my cell with guard Simms, both of them armed. They walk me to the adjoining six-by-six-foot outdoor space. I look up at the other suns — the stars. It’s a clear night. The Big and Little Dippers are easily recognizable. Even the Andromeda galaxy can be seen. I’ve read all the prison astronomy books several times. I can identify every star formation on both sides of the equator, every significant star. I can make out planets. I can tell exactly what day of the year it is by how the stars are arranged. I could guide myself across any continent or body of water and come to the point a few thousand miles away I originally intended to get to just by following the stars. I could do all that. I learned all that here by myself. This outdoor cell is surrounded by walls several feet above my reach and on top of these walls are electric wires and there are lights all around my yard making the stars tonight a little tough to see and the two guards sit in the yard while I stand and if I stop for a second they always tell me to keep moving, now keep it moving, but the view is still something. My lawyer says the court ruling should come on my test case in a minimum of two years. He’s very hopeful the state’s mandatory death penalty law will be declared unconstitutional and that with a few years off for good behavior and a governor’s pardon I ought to be out of here by the time I’m sixty-five.