CHAPTER 15
When Roscoe T Martin entered his first building on the grounds of Kilby Prison, he was ordered to strip down bare. The other men who’d arrived with him, making twelve in all, were given the same command. Upon losing their clothing, they put their hands instinctively to their genitals — cupping out of protection, covering out of dignity. They were marched to a tiled area and sprayed down with a hose of cold water, their hands forced away, every bit of them exposed. They were treated for all possible pests, then they were injected with a variety of needles.
“You’ll be healthier here than you’ve ever been, boys.”
Roscoe had always had good health, but he spent his first night in discomfort, waking every half hour to fits of dry coughs from the dust they’d sprinkled in his hair. He’d been issued a scratchy gray suit, and his bed was a thin mattress on a narrow, bottom bunk. Five other men were in the cell with him, and he hadn’t learned any of their names. Through the night, they took turns telling him to shut his goddamned mouth.
“Shove your goddamned face into your cot if you have to make that much noise.”
“Only thing I got going for me now is sleep, goddamn it.”
“That’s it. I’m gonna come down and smother it out of you myself.”
Roscoe didn’t respond to any of it. He coughed and he waited, a good part of him still expecting the admission of a mistake. George Haskin hadn’t been electrocuted by Roscoe’s lines, he’d simply died of a heart attack or some other malady with a quick onset. The jury had been swayed, the sentence suspended. He was home with Marie and Gerald and Wilson. They were working with Alabama Power to put in a meter for the power they were using. All was well.
He wouldn’t have to fight off his cellmates.
Morning was a subtle creeping of gray light, and a guard came right afterward.
“Eaton!” he called, and the man on the bunk over Roscoe heaved himself down to the floor. He was a short, thick man with muscle through his torso. The right half of his face looked as though it’d been boiled.
“You get used to the dust they throw at ya,” he said to Roscoe before heading to the cell door. “Once you been here awhile.” The skin of his right cheek didn’t move when he spoke, stretched and thick as leather. His voice didn’t match any of the ones Roscoe had heard through the night, and he saw the man’s words as the first decent thing the prison had offered him.
He nodded, trying to convey the gratitude he was feeling.
“Eaton!” the guard yelled again.
The man stepped to the gate.
“Rest of you stay put till we come for you,” the guard said, pulling the gate open, its hinges singing. Then he clanged it back closed. “You’ll be brought food soon. No fussin’ till then.”
One of Roscoe’s cellmates spat on the floor.
The guard gave him a half-lipped smile, wry and laden with threat. He didn’t say anything as he led Eaton away.
Roscoe stayed in his bunk as his cellmates rose from theirs. He was tired, and his cough had retreated, so he closed his eyes. He couldn’t have slept long, but he felt rested when he woke to the calling of his name.
“Did I miss the food?” he asked the remaining men.
“Nah,” one of them said.
“Martin!” the guard yelled. “Let’s go!”
It was a different guard from the first, and he spoke less, the gate the only noise as it swung open and then closed.
Standing outside the cell didn’t feel any freer than standing inside.
“Walk in front of me,” the guard said. “I’ll tell you when to turn.”
Roscoe followed the man’s curt instructions down the cell corridor, then into a hallway that looked more like a hospital’s, then to a door that opened into a small room with a single table and two chairs. A man was seated in one of the chairs already, facing the door. He wore a white shirt and a red-and-blue-striped tie. His shirtsleeves were rolled up. His hair was greased and slicked to the side, and his glasses were thick. Behind him, an unbarred window looked out the side of the building toward fields and a line of trees.
“Take a seat,” the man in the chair said.
The guard nudged Roscoe gently forward. He sat. Behind him, the door closed, and Roscoe looked over his shoulder to see that the guard was still there, guarding.
“Are you comfortable?” the white-shirted man asked.
“No.”
The man smiled. “First honest reply I’ve gotten today. Still, do you need anything? A glass of water? A cigarette?”
“Who are you?”
“I’m an interviewer. I’m going to take down your history. I’d like you to be as comfortable as possible.”
“I imagine you already have my history.”
“We have your court records, Mr. Martin, but we’re interested in more than that.” The man looked down at the file and papers in front of him, and his voice switched to recitation, clearly reading from a text. “ ‘The State of Alabama has adopted a new convict intake process, where convicts will receive a thorough study of their history, a mental and physical examination, a course of treatment to remove any remedial defects, assignment to the prison and employment for which the convict is best adapted, and a systematic course of reformatory treatment and training, in order that the prisoner may be restored to society, if possible, a self-respecting, upright, useful and productive citizen.’ ”
The man looked up.
“I’ll take a cigarette.” Roscoe had had few since Sheriff Eddings first came to the house, and the taste sat warm and thick on his tongue, the smoke clearing the last of the dust from his lungs.
The man watched him smoke for a moment. “Your name is Roscoe T Martin, is that right?”
“Does everyone come through here?”
“This is the central distributing prison, so yes.”
“Did a black man come through named Wilson Grice?”
The man looked at the folder again. “I didn’t conduct his interview.”
“Can you find out who did?”
“No.”
Roscoe took another drag.
“What does the T stand for?”
Roscoe shook his head. “Nothing. My father liked the look of the letter.”
The man wrote something in the folder. “Your parents. Can you tell me about your parents?”
“They’re dead.”
“And before that?”
“My father was a foreman at a coal mine.”
“You’re married?”
“Yes.”
“And does your wife have a vocation?”
“She was a schoolteacher.”
The man flipped a page. “Did she continue teaching once you moved to the farm?”
“No.”
The man flipped back. “How would you describe your profession at the time of your arrest?”
“I was an electrician.”
“You weren’t working for Alabama Power, though.”
“I was working for our farm.”
“Ah, yes, the farm you inherited from your wife’s father.” The man flipped again. “Is that right?”
“Yes.”
“Tell me about your childhood.”
“I’m sorry?”
“Your childhood?”
Roscoe thought immediately of his sisters, all of them — Anna, Margaret, and Catherine. He thought of the barn he’d shared with Catherine while Anna and Margaret died in the house, drowning in a room full of air. “Little to tell.”
The man in the tie looked disappointed, but he moved past it, scratching something down in the folder before asking his next question. “You had a Negro family working for you, the Grices?”
“Yes.”
“And Wilson Grice — who you were asking after earlier — he was your accomplice?”