NINE
MINUTES
I’d
never attended an execution before. Well, at least not a legal one. My husband
sat to my left. A reporter for Rolling Stone was on my right.
The
reporter, Leslie Cowan, fidgeted nervously, and I looked over at her. I’m
pretty sure this was her first execution of any kind. Rolling
Stone had an upcoming issue dedicated to celebrity bikers.
They thought it would be interesting to include a real biker story in that issue.
The story of a girl who’d been abducted by a motorcycle gang in 1975.
That girl was me.
The remnants of Leslie’s accident three weeks
before were still visible. The stitches had been removed from her forehead, but
there was a thin red line where the cut had been. Her eyes weren’t quite as
raccoonish as before, but it was apparent she’d recently suffered two severe
black eyes. The swelling of her nose had almost gone down completely, and she’d
been to a dental surgeon to replace her broken teeth.
When we’d first
started the interview, she’d told me she wanted me to be completely honest
about my experience with the man who was about to be executed. I’d spent the
last three months with her and held almost nothing back about my relationship
with him. Today was supposed to be culmination of the interview, a chance for
her to truly understand the real side of that experience. To see the unpleasant
alongside the rest.
Of course, a man’s
death should be more than just unpleasant.
I knew as well as he
did that he deserved what he was getting. It was strange. I thought knowing it
and believing it would make it a little easier, but it didn’t. I thought I
would get through his execution unscathed emotionally. But I was only fooling
myself.
Just because I hadn’t
been with him for almost fifteen years did not mean I didn’t have feelings for
him. He was my first love. He was a true love. In fact, he was the biological
father of my firstborn, though she would never meet him. He wanted it that way.
And deep down, so did I.
The curtain opened. I was no longer aware of anyone else
in the small viewing room around me. I stared through a large glass window at
an empty gurney. I’d read up on what to expect at an execution. He was supposed
to be strapped to the gurney when the curtain opened, wasn’t he? I’m sure that
was procedure. But he was never one for following rules. I wondered how he’d
managed to convince law enforcement to forego this important detail.
With a jolt, I
realized someone had entered the sterile-looking room. It was him, along with
two officers, the warden and a physician. No priest or pastor. He didn’t want
one.
Him.
His name was Jason
William Talbot. Such a normal-sounding name. It’s funny. I’d known him almost
twenty-five years and it wasn’t until his arrest fifteen years earlier that I
learned his real middle and last name. That is, if it was his real name. I’m
still not certain.
He was always Grizz
to me. Short for Grizzly, a nickname he’d earned due to his massive size and
brutal behavior. Grizz was a huge and imposing man. Ruggedly handsome. Tattoos
from neck to toe covered his enormous body. His large hands could crush a
windpipe without effort. I knew this from experience. I’d personally witnessed
what those hands could do. I couldn’t keep my eyes off them now.
He had no family.
Just me. And I was not his family.
I immediately sense
when he spotted me. I looked up from his hands into his mesmerizing bright
green eyes. I tried to assess whether those eyes held and emotion, but I
couldn’t tell. It’d been too long. He’d always been good at hiding his
feelings. I used to be able to read him. Not today, though.
As he looked at me,
he lifted his handcuffed hands and used the fingers of his right hand to
encircle the ring finger on his left hand. He then looked down to my hands, but
couldn’t see them. They were in my lap and blocked by the person seated in
front of me.
Would I give him that
last consolation? I didn’t want to hurt my husband. But considering I was the
reason for Grizz’s impending death, I felt the stirrings of an old, old
obligation to comfort him in those last moments. At the same time, I felt and
uncomfortable thrill in having some control over him. In having the ability to
be in charge of something, to be decision-maker, the empowered one.
For once.
Perhaps I was the
empowered one all along.
I felt my husband’s
hand on my left thigh, just above my knee. He gently squeezed. A memory almost
twenty-five years old rushed over me of another hand squeezing my leg. A
harder, crueler hand. I turned to look at my husband, and even though he was
looking straight ahead, he was aware of glance. He gave me an almost
imperceptible nod. He’d decided for me. I was okay with that.
I removed my wide wedding band and lifted my hand so
Grizz could see it. He smiled ever so slightly. Then he looked at my husband,
nodded once and said,
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Meet Beth Flynn
Beth Flynn is a fiction writer who lives and
works in Sapphire,
North Carolina, deep within the southern
Blue Ridge Mountains.
Raised in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, Beth and her husband, have spent the last
16 years in Sapphire, where they own a construction company. They
have been married 30 years and have two daughters (the youngest in high
school) and two dogs. In her spare time, Beth enjoys writing, reading,
gardening, church and motorcycles, especially taking rides on the back of
her husband’s Harley. She is a four-year breast cancer survivor.
Very interesting concept, especially reading it today with the news out of Waco.
ReplyDeleteThis is a MUST read!!!! A book that says with you forever!
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