Lights Out

She walked through the crowd. She saw a priest, a nun, a Buddhist monk; a woman in business dress, a leathery man wearing nothing but cutoffs, a baby in a stroller; a cameraman, a soundman, a reporter fixing her lipstick. She didn’t see Eddie Nye.

That didn’t mean he wasn’t coming. She glanced in her bag, saw the red fragment of the Monarch. Maybe Eddie and Willie Boggs had had long discussions in the library. Maybe he would want to be here.

The sun was setting, but the air was still warm. In the middle distance, the prison rose like a castle in the kind of bloody fairy tales that have been dropped from the anthologies, its stone walls reddened by the last rays of the sun. A breeze stirred, raising dust off the field. When a vendor came by pushing a cart, Karen ordered a diet soda, just to wet her throat.

“I’ve got beer too,” said the vendor. “And wine coolers.”

“No, thanks.”

The leathery man bought a can of beer with change dug from the pockets of his cutoffs and sat down cross-legged to drink. Night fell. Lights shone on the walls of the prison, as though a son et lumiere show was in the offing. A few more people arrived, none of them Eddie. The reporter interviewed the nun and a man with a bottle sticking out of his pants, then went into the TV truck with her crew. Karen could see them passing around cartons of food.

She found herself standing next to the woman with the sign. The woman had a milk-white face, bony arms, hair as black as her dress.

“They don’t interview me anymore,” she said.

“Did they use to?”

“Every time. Now they say they want a fresh point of view. Just when it’s most vital that I bear witness.”

“Aren’t you bearing witness anyway?”

“It’s hardly the same if the camera’s not running.” The woman, who had been gazing at the prison, glanced at Karen. “Everyone knows that.”

“What’s special about this time?”

“Willie Boggs.”

“I don’t know much about him.”

“Willie Boggs is a great man,” the woman said. “I’ve written him hundreds of letters. I mean that literally. Hundreds. He’s a wonderful human being, and now they’re going to murder him, when they should be setting him free at last. He could do so much good, out here in the world.”

“Did he ever write back?” Karen asked.

The woman closed her eyes. “Once,” she said. “He wrote me a beautiful letter.” Her eyes opened. “He writes like an angel, you know. If he’d written a book, it would have been published. I guarantee.”

“What did he say?”

“Say?”

“In his letter.”

The woman reached into the pocket of her dress, pulled out an envelope. “I’ll let you read it, if you want.”

“Not enough light,” said Karen.

The woman had a pencil flash. She stood close to Karen, aiming its beam. Karen could smell her breath. She read:

Dear Luanne:

Thanks for your letters. It is good to get letters in here as you can imagine-or maybe you can not. Of course it is not always easy to anser every one. My time for such activities is limited and most of it I spend on my case, as I am sure you understand.

Sincerely,

W. Boggs

“Very sensible,” Karen said, handing back the letter.

Luanne shone the pencil flash in her eyes. “But doesn’t he write beautifully?” she said.

Karen shielded her eyes. “He writes well,” she said, “based on this sample.” But she’d noticed the single spelling mistake in the letter, like the flaw that had made him kill the liquor-store clerk, or be present at the killing, or drive the getaway car for the killer.

Luanne snapped off the light, said, “He’s a great man,” and moved away, holding up her sign.

Three or four more people appeared; but not Eddie. The vendor returned, sold another beer to the man in cutoffs, a hot dog to the nun, coffee to the TV crew, another diet soda to Karen. The air was dusty and her throat dry.

The reporter approached her.

“Are you going to be here till the end?”

“When’s that?”

“Midnight,” the reporter said. “They always do it at midnight, for some reason.”

“Like Cinderella.”

“That’s good,” said the reporter. “You’re articulate. We need someone for a short interview after it’s over.”

“Try Luanne,” Karen said.

As midnight approached, the priest led most of the vigilants in prayer, while the Buddhist monk and a few others went off by themselves to chant. Karen participated in neither ceremony.

The distance to the prison, so brightly lit in the night, seemed to have shrunk, and it kept shrinking all the way to midnight, the prison seeming to come closer and closer. “Give us a miracle,” said a man, raising his arms to the sky like Moses in a painting.

After that there was silence. Plenty of lumiere, Karen thought, but no son.

Midnight brought son. “No, no,” someone screamed at the prison walls. The baby in the stroller awoke and started to wail. The man in cutoffs hurled a beer can in the direction of the stone walls and yelled, “You fucking no-good faggot butchers.”

“I beg of you,” the priest said to him.

The reporter said, “Remember to edit that out.”

The woman in business dress began to cry.