“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.”