“Sweet home Alabama,” said Earl, nodding. “Lived here a long time. Had a family here. But I’m from Georgia, son. I’m a Georgia peach, see? Not no Alabama boy.”
“Okay.”
“But I got sent to this here prison ’cause of what I done in Alabama.”
“Sure you did. Not that much difference, though. Georgia, Alabama. Kissing cousins. Not like they were taking your ass up to New York or Massachusetts. Foreign countries up there for shit sure.”
“’Cause of what I done,” said Earl breathlessly, still rubbing at his belly. “Can’t stand Jews, coloreds, and Catholics. Don’t much care for Presbyterians neither.”
The nurse looked at him and said in an amused tone, “Presbyterians? What the hell they ever done to you, Earl? That’s like hating the Amish.”
“Squealed like hogs getting butchered, swear to God they did. Jews and coloreds mostly.” He shrugged and absently wiped sweat from his brow using his sheet. “Hell, truth is, I never killed me no Presbyterian. They just don’t stand out, see, but I woulda if I got the chance.” His smile deepened, reaching all the way to his eyes. And in that look it was easy to see that despite age and illness Earl Fontaine was a killer. Was still a killer. Would always be a killer until the day he died, which couldn’t come soon enough for lawful-minded citizens.
The nurse unlocked a drawer on his cart and took out some meds. “Now, why’d you want to go and do something like that? Them folks done nothing to you, I bet.”
Earl coughed up some phlegm and spit it into his cup. He said grimly, “They was breathing. That was good enough for me.”
“Guess that’s why you’re in here all right. But you got to set it right with God, Earl. They’re all God’s children. Got to set it right. You’ll be seeing him soon.”
Earl laughed till he choked. Then he calmed and his features seemed to clear.
“I got people coming to see me.”
“That’s nice, Earl,” said the nurse as he administered a painkiller to the inmate in the next bed. “Family?”
“No. I done killed my family.”
“Why’d you do that? Were they Jews or Presbyterians or coloreds?”
“Folks coming to see me,” said Earl. “I ain’t done yet, see?”
“Uh-huh.” The nurse checked the monitor of the other inmate. “Good to make use of any time you got left, old man. Clock she is a-ticking, all right, for all of us.”
“Coming to see me today,” said Earl. “Marked it on the wall here, look.”
He pointed to the concrete wall where he had used his fingernail to chip off the paint. “They said six days and they’d be coming to see me. Got me six marks on there. Good with numbers. Mind still working and all.”
“Well, you sure tell ’em hello for me,” said the nurse as he moved away with his cart.
Later, Earl stared at the doorway to the ward, where two men had appeared. They were dressed in dark suits and white shirts and their black shoes were polished. One wore black-framed glasses. The other looked like he’d barely graduated from high school. They were both holding Bibles and sporting gentle, reverential expressions. They appeared respectable, peaceful, and law-abiding. They were actually none of those things.
Earl caught their eye. “Coming to see me,” he mumbled, his senses suddenly as clear as they had ever been. Once more he had a purpose in life. It would be right before he died, but it was still a purpose.
“Killed my family,” he said. But that wasn’t entirely accurate. He had murdered his wife and buried her body in the basement of their home. They hadn’t found it until years later. That was why he was here and had been sentenced to death. He could have found a better hiding place, he supposed, but it had not been a priority. He was busy killing others.
The federal government had let the state of Alabama try, convict, and sentence him to death for her murder. He had had a scheduled visit to Alabama’s death chamber at the Holman Correctional Facility in Atmore. Since 2002, the state of Alabama officially killed you by lethal injection. But some death penalty proponents were advocating the return of “Old Sparky” to administer final justice by electrocution to those on death row.
None of that troubled Earl. His appeal had carried on for so long that he’d never be executed now. It was because of his cancer. Ironically enough, the law said an inmate had to be in good health in order to be put to death. Yet they’d only saved him from a quick, painless demise so that nature could substitute a longer, far more painful one in the form of lung cancer that had spread all over him. Some would call that sweet justice. He just called it shitty luck.
He waved over the two men in suits.
He had killed his wife, to be sure. And he’d killed many others, though exactly how many he didn’t remember. Jews, coloreds, maybe some Catholics. Maybe he’d killed a Presbyterian too. Hell, he didn’t know. Wasn’t like they carried ID proclaiming their faith. Anybody who got in his way was someone who needed killing. And he had allowed as many people to get in his way as was humanly possible.
Now he was chained to a wall and was dying. But still, he had something left to do.
More precisely, he had one more person to kill.