Change of Heart Read online

  I didn't answer. Instead I lay down on my bunk and stuffed more wadded-up toilet paper into my ears. And still, I could hear Calloway singing his white-pride anthems. Still, I could hear Shay when he told me a second time that he hadn't been talking about the bird.

  That night when I woke up with the sweats, my heart drilling through the spongy base of my throat, Shay was talking to himself again. "They pull up the sheet," he said.

  "Shay?"

  I took a piece of metal I'd sawed off from the lip of the counter in the cell--it had taken months, carved with a string of elastic from my underwear and a dab of toothpaste with baking soda, my own diamond band saw. Ingeniously, the triangular result doubled as both a mirror and a shank. I slipped my hand beneath my door, angling the mirror so I could see into Shay's cell.

  He was lying on his bunk with his eyes closed and his arms crossed over his heart. His breathing had gone so shallow that his chest barely rose and fell. I could have sworn I smelled the worms in freshly turned soil. I heard the ping of stones as they struck a grave digger's shovel.

  Shay was practicing.

  I had done that myself. Maybe not quite in the same way, but I'd pictured my funeral. Who would come. Who would be well dressed, and who would be wearing something outrageously hideous. Who would cry. Who wouldn't.

  God bless those COs; they'd moved Shay Bourne right next door to someone else serving a death sentence.

  Two weeks after Shay arrived on I-tier, six officers came to his cell early one morning and told him to strip. "Bend over," I heard Whitaker say. "Spread 'em. Lift 'em. Cough."

  "Where are we going?"

  "Infirmary. Routine checkup."

  I knew the drill: they would shake out his clothes to make sure there was no contraband hidden, then tell him to get dressed again. They'd march him out of I-tier and into the great beyond of the Secure Housing Unit.

  An hour later, I woke up to the sound of Shay's cell door being opened again as he returned to his cell. "I'll pray for your soul," CO Whitaker said soberly before leaving the tier.

  "So," I said, my voice too light and false to fool even myself. "Are you the picture of health?"

  "They didn't take me to the infirmary. We went to the warden's office."

  I sat on my bunk, looking up at the vent through which Shay's voice carried. "He finally agreed to meet with--"

  "You know why they lie?" Shay interrupted. "Because they're afraid you'll go ballistic if they tell you the truth."

  "About what?"

  "It's all mind control. And we have no choice but to be obedient because what if this is the one time that really--"

  "Shay," I said, "did you talk to the warden or not?"

  "He talked to me. He told me my last appeal was denied by the Supreme Court," Shay said. "My execution date is May twenty-third."

  I knew that before he was moved to this tier, Shay had been on death row for eleven years; it wasn't like he hadn't seen this coming. And yet, that date was only two and a half months away.

  "I guess they don't want to come in and say hey, we're taking you to get your death warrant read out loud. I mean, it's easier to just pretend you're going to the infirmary, so that I wouldn't freak out. I bet they talked about how they'd come and get me. I bet they had a meeting."

  I wondered what I would prefer, if it were my death that was being announced like a future train departing from a platform. Would I want the truth from an officer? Or would I consider it a kindness to be spared knowing the inevitable, even for those four minutes of transit?

  I knew what the answer was for me.

  I wondered why, considering that I'd only known Shay Bourne for two weeks, there was a lump in my throat at the thought of his execution. "I'm really sorry."

  "Yeah," he said. "Yeah."

  "Po-lice," Joey called out, and a moment later, CO Smythe walked in, followed by CO Whitaker. He helped Whitaker transport Crash to the shower cell--the investigation into our bacchanal tap water had yielded nothing conclusive, apparently, except some mold in the pipes, and we were now allowed personal hygiene hours again. But afterward, instead of leaving I-tier, Smythe doubled back down the catwalk to stand in front of Shay's cell.

  "Listen," Smythe said. "Last week, you said something to me."

  "Did I?"

  "You told me to look inside." He hesitated. "My daughter's been sick. Really sick. Yesterday, the doctors told my wife and me to say good-bye. It made me want to explode. So I grabbed this stuffed bear in her crib, one we'd brought from home to make going to the hospital easier for her--and I ripped it wide open. It was filled with peanut shells, and we never thought to look there." Smythe shook his head. "My baby's not dying; she was never even sick. She's just allergic," he said. "How did you know?"

  "I didn't--"

  "It doesn't matter." Smythe dug in his pocket for a small square of tinfoil, unwrapping it to reveal a thick brownie. "I brought this in from home. My wife, she makes them. She wanted you to have it."

  "John, you can't give him contraband," Whitaker said, glancing over his shoulder at the control booth.

  "It's not contraband. It's just me ... sharing a little bit of my lunch."

  My mouth started to water. Brownies were not on our canteen forms. The closest we came was chocolate cake, offered once a year as part of a Christmas package that also included a stocking full of candy and two oranges.

  Smythe passed the brownie through the trap in the cell door. He met Shay's gaze and nodded, then left the tier with CO Whitaker.

  "Hey, Death Row," Calloway said, "I'll give you three cigarettes for half of that."

  "I'll trade you a whole pack of coffee," Joey countered.

  "He ain't going to waste it on you," Calloway said. "I'll give you coffee and four cigarettes."

  Texas and Pogie joined in. They would trade Shay a CD player. A Playboy magazine. A roll of tape.

  "A teener," Calloway announced. "Final offer."

  The Brotherhood made a killing on running the methamphetamine trade at the New Hampshire state prison; for Calloway to solicit his own personal stash, he must have truly wanted that chocolate.

  As far as I knew, Shay hadn't even had a cup of coffee since coming to I-tier. I had no idea if he smoked or got high. "No," Shay said. "No to all of you."

  A few minutes passed.

  "For God's sake, I can still smell it," Calloway said.

  Let me tell you, I am not exaggerating when I say that we were forced to inhale that scent--that glorious scent--for hours. At three in the morning, when I woke up as per my usual insomnia, the scent of chocolate was so strong that the brownie might as well have been sitting in my cell instead of Shay's. "Why don't you just eat the damn thing," I murmured.

  "Because," Shay replied, as wide awake as I, "then there wouldn't be anything to look forward to."

  Maggie

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  There were many reasons I loved Oliver, but first and foremost was that my mother couldn't stand him. He's a mess, she said every time she came to visit. He's destructive. Maggie, she said, if you got rid of him, you could find Someone.

  Someone was a doctor, like the anesthesiologist from Dartmouth-Hitchcock they'd set me up with once, who asked me if I thought laws against downloading child porn were an infringement on civil rights. Or the son of the cantor, who actually had been in a monogamous gay relationship for five years but hadn't told his parents yet. Someone was the younger partner in the accounting firm that did my father's taxes, who asked me on our first and only date if I'd always been a big girl.

  On the other hand, Oliver knew just what I needed, and when I needed it. Which is why, the minute I stepped on the scale that morning, he hopped out from underneath the bed, where he was diligently severing the cord of my alarm clock with his teeth, and settled himself squarely on top of my feet so that I couldn't see the digital readout.

  "Nicely done," I said, stepping off, trying not to notice the numbers that flashed red before they disappear