A long pause. The woman answered, her voice troubled. “The talk was strange.”
“Strange?”
“You know, like in full sentences. Almost like an adult.”
“What did he say?” asked the man, disbelief in his voice.
“He told me no more diapers and from now on he changes his own clothes. I’m supposed to throw out the baby powder and baby oil. He says they stink. The smell makes him sick to his stomach.”
“He didn’t.”
“I am not kidding! He told me … That’s right. He told me if I wanted to change something to go and buy a doll.”
Andy’s father laughed, the strain in his voice making it crack. “Marnie, no more super migraine pills for you.” He laughed again. “Go buy a doll,” he repeated, “How many of those pills did you take?”
A long pause, then she said quietly, “I might have taken my medication twice. But he just doesn’t talk. He walks! He went in the bathroom and took a shower, for god’s sake!”
“Go buy a doll,” the man laughed, the laugh changing by slow degrees into sobs. The man cried and for some reason Andy felt his heart ache. Afterward the man and the woman talked.
“This one was really bad. They had to run the charges twice. After we hit him with the twenty-five hundred volts, we gave him the low tension one. You know, the five hundred volts to interrupt his heartbeat. God, sparks, smoke, and stink all over the place. The doc checks Stokes’s heartbeat and he says it’s still beating. Can you believe that? Stokes ate amps for seventy seconds and he was still alive. So, we do it all again.”
He talked, calmed down, talked some more, and Andy seemed to know that this was a familiar ritual his parents went through every time a prisoner was executed. The name Stokes seemed familiar, too. Killed his girlfriend’s entire family. Mother, father, younger sister, younger brother, uncle, and the girlfriend, too. Had a strange laugh. Used to cry all night about how sorry he was. In the dream, though, where the man took the flower from the little boy, Stokes wasn’t the man. That was someone else.
Andy’s daddy talked awhile about Ricky Stokes, his family, his childhood, his life and execution. Then he shared his own dark thoughts from the night before. Taking the .32 revolver he had locked up in the kitchen, about eating a bullet. Then they talked about a vacation, seeing his parents, maybe getting a new job. And what would pay as well? Besides, it’s tough starting over again at fifty, and so on. Captain Wilson should be retiring soon and the warden promotes from inside. As yard captain he’d be off the Row.
Soon Andy’s strange behavior was forgotten. Later, when Daddy looked into his room, his eyes were red. He smiled at his boy and said, “Say, Andy. Mommy told me you talk. Say something for Daddy. Say something for Daddy.”
Andy looked at his daddy and couldn’t understand how he could have forgotten his name. It was Gary. Gary Rain. “Yes, Daddy.” Andy nodded and could not protest in time before his father swept him up in his arms, hugged him, and kissed his cheek. “We are so lucky, son. So lucky.”
Andy hesitated for a moment, then as a flood of emotion covered him, he put his arms around his father’s neck and hugged him. “I love you, Daddy.”
There were days of adjusting, days of learning, trying to sort out the joys and the horrors of being five and a half years old. Once his parents had put the Stokes execution behind them, the feeling of this new beginning filled Andy with resolve. Stokes was dead. Andy Rain was alive. Somehow Rick’s death made his own life new. He’d work hard at school when he could go, sports, enjoy all of life, do the things he’d never been allowed to enjoy—
Five and a half.
Five and a half years, but nothing before that night; the night he awakened wearing that filthy diaper.
Still, it’s my turn.
My turn. He would frown at this feeling, this it’s-my-turn passion, that would devil him, drive him to have a childhood. He would push away the feeling, secure in the heart of his home within the bosom of his parents’ love. This is my life now, he would think to himself. Everything is perfect. He couldn’t understand what it was that used to fill him with fear and he let the fear fall away.
Then Uncle Herman showed up.
Andy’s mommy and daddy talked about it. Argued about it.
Mommy’s brother, Herman Jenner, had had a rough life. When he was young he’d gotten mixed up in “something shady” and ever since he just didn’t seem to be able to get a break, especially after those hoods at that one bar attacked him, putting him in the hospital. It was rare that he could get work doing whatever it was that he did, and when he did get work, it just never seemed to last out the week. His wife and two daughters had left him years before amid a cloud of dark rumors. He was the family embarrassment to both the Rains and the Jenners. Whenever he visited he would sit in the kitchen, his left hand around a cup of coffee, the handle pointed away from him, complaining about the breaks he never got or bragging about the fights he had been in.
A few days after the Stokes execution, Uncle Herman moved in for an indefinite stay and Gary Rain received a promotion. He was no longer running death row. Captain Wilson had taken early retirement due to illness and Lt. Rain was made acting yard captain. In celebration Andy’s parents were invited to dinner by the Drapers. Mr. Draper’s name was John, he was a mystery writer who was a former police detective, and Mrs. Draper was the prison psychiatrist. Her name was Ellen, and she was very young and very beautiful. John Draper looked at Andy with a strange expression. No baby sitters were available on such short notice, which left Mommy’s brother the only one available.
Uncle Herman was charged with making sure Andy ate his dinner, washed, brushed his teeth, and went to bed on time. In a low voice, his sister made Uncle Herman promise not to drink anything. After Andy’s parents left, the first thing Uncle Herman did was to turn on the TV to the football game. The second thing he did was go to his room and return with a pint bottle of whisky. Problems began with the dinner.
“I don’t want to sit in the high chair. I sit at the table.”
“Like hell,” said Uncle Herman as he grabbed the boy beneath his armpits and dropped him none too gently into the wooden chair. “You sit where I tell you to sit.” Without fastening the safety belt, he swung the wooden tray down with a bang. “Here, kid.” Uncle Herman dropped a bowl of unappetizing green slime in front of Andy. Next to it he placed a white plastic spoon. “Eat it.”
“What is it?” asked Andy.
Uncle Herman’s eyebrows went up in surprise. “Don’t worry about what it is. That’s what I put in front of you. Eat it.”
Andy sniffed at the soupy stuff and wrinkled his nose. “That’s creamed spinach.”
“You’re right.”
The boy shook his head. “I can’t eat this stuff. It’ll make me sick.”
“Oh, you’ll eat it. Marnie said you might start working your mouth. God knows why she was so damned happy about it. You be careful unless you want me to slap it off.” Uncle Herman opened the refrigerator door, took out a can of beer, and walked into the living room.
The boy could feel his skin tingle. It was back there somewhere. Hands hitting. Somehow he knew what it was like to be beaten, to be helpless under the control of the powerful.
He looked down at the bowl. He wouldn’t eat the slime. He couldn’t eat it. He looked to the cabinet door beneath the kitchen sink. Behind it was the garbage pail. He could climb down from the chair, empty the bowl into the garbage, and make it back into the highchair before Uncle Herman came back for another beer.