Andrew Klavan - True Crime

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.”

To which Frank Beachum answered: “I don’t want to die, Harlan.” And he began to cry. He buried his face in his hands and shook. Tears dripped out between his fingers. “Don’t let em kill me, man. I didn’t do anything. I swear to God, I don’t want to die.”

The Reverend Flowers put his arm around the crying man. He rested his cheek against his damp hair. He closed his eyes and prayed to God to give Beachum strength and comfort and peace. He wished he were stronger himself, more able in himself to do the job he was supposed to do.

And he wished this night were over. He hated himself for it, but God knew the truth, and he wished this night were done.

As for me, I was getting drunk. Right about that time, right about ten-twenty. My butt was planted solid as a tree trunk on a barstool in Gordon’s and I was knocking those beauties down as if Prohibition were about to come back in style. It didn’t take much to start me floating. I’d hardly had anything to eat all day. Midway through my fourth double whisky, I was feeling the tavern swing to and fro under me like the pendulum of a grandfather clock.

Gordon’s was a restaurant-bar on a tree-shaded corner of Euclid Avenue. The faded brickface under the green awning outside, the warm wooden interior hung with lanterns and a large selection of fashionable beers had made the place a regular hangout with young city suits and the women they hoped to love. It was often crowded, and sometimes the dart and reek of the sexual hunt could get distracting to a man with his mind on liquor. But on a summer Monday, it was quiet enough, with a soft murmur of conversation drifting out of the dining room, and the bar empty except for me and a guy watching the Cardinals on the TV hung above the bar’s far end.

“Neil!” I called. I rapped the bottom of my glass against the oakwood. “Neil-o! Neil-o-rama!”

Neil was the owner but a bartender by nature, and he was tending bar tonight. A lean, pale man with a thin, aesthetic face behind round wire-rimmed spectacles, he looked like Jean-Paul Sartre a little, only with a ponytail and a flowered shirt. He left his post under the TV and snagged a bottle of Johnnie Walker as he came toward me.

“You hear that ice clink, man, and you gotta come running. For mercy’s sake,” I said.

He tipped the bottle over my glass, poured out a generous helping. “You’re working at it tonight, Ev,” he said in his quiet, even voice. “I hope you left your car at home.”

“Hey,” I said. I lifted the glass, swirling it under my nose. “I am the greatest driver on the continent.”

“Uh-oh.”

“On any continent.”

“I’m talking to a dead guy,” said Neil. “Would you leave me your stamp collection?”

I drank and set the glass down. Laid a finger on the rim of the empty pretzel bowl. “Madder music and more munchies,” I said. And I drank again.

He swept the empty bowl away and replaced it with a full one. I grabbed a handful of pretzels.

“Haven’t eaten hardly all day,” I said.

Neil glanced longingly at the ballgame. Then, resigned, he leaned against the bar and did his best to concentrate on me.

“Too busy, that’s why,” I told him. “Too busy ruining my wife-my life, I mean. My wife and my life. And my job.”

“All in one day? You are a busy guy.”

“A tragedy should take place within the walls of a single city on a single day,” I told him. “Aristotle said that.”

“Yeah, he’s always in here saying that. Kooky old Aristotle, we call him. Crazy A.”

“Life imitates art.”

“Yeah. Does a pretty good Sophie Tucker too.”

“Right,” I said. I had no idea what either of us was saying but I nodded profoundly. Then I lit a cigarette. Then I drank some more scotch. “Did you hear the ice clink?” “Nope.”