Death Row Breakout Read Online Free Page A

to sleep. He sensed it would be wrong to announce his arrival with tears.
    He sat for a while, and then stretched out on the thin mattress, using the County Jail blanket for a pillow. He closed his eyes, doubting he would be able to sleep, but soon enough he fell into it, as much to escape the misery in his heart as to rest.
    Late in the afternoon the deputy outside the tank called out: ‘Johnson, cell eleven, property slip and jumper.” It was echoed louder inside the tank by the trusty in the first cell: “JOHNSON, CELL ELEVEN, PROPERTY SLIP AND JUMPER.” The Trusty came down the runway to make sure Booker had the news, and when Booker was at the gate, wearing the denim jumper and with the property envelope in hand, the Trusty called to the officer out front: “Johnson, on deck!”
    “Comin’ open!” yelled the jailer.
    The cell gate began to vibrate, and then kicked open.
    “Step out, cell eleven.”
    Booker stepped out; the cell gate shook and slammed behind him. He walked to the front. The deputy opened the tank gate, checked his property slip and said, “Attorney room.”
    “How do I get there?”
    “Follow the yellow line,” he pointed to several lines on the floor, red, blue, yellow, green. Each one led through the maze of jail to a different destination: visiting room, infirmary, bathroom, attorney room. All went down the same corridor; then one turned a corner and the others continued. Booker would never have found his way without the painted yellow line. As he passed walls of bars, behind which were other tanks, he saw that the jail was segregated three ways; white, black and Mexican, which was considered a separate race in the southwestern United States.
    At the end of the yellow line was a grille gate and the sign: Attorney Room. Beyond the gate was a large room with long tables and benches on both sides and a partition down the length of the table that came chin high to the men seated on the benches. A deputy stood, arms-folded, at the end of each table, making sure nothing was passed across. The noise was the hum of insistent and desperate voices, for here were sweating men in wrinkled blue denim talking to lawyers, bondsmen and probation officers.
    A deputy unlocked the gate from inside. “Name?”
    “Johnson.”
    The deputy looked through a batch of forms on his desk. He found the right one. “You want to see Reverend Wilson?”
    Reverend Wilson! What was he doing here?
    “Do you?”
    “See him? Yes. Sure.”
    “Sign this!” the deputy shoved the form across the desk and Booker signed. It took him a few seconds of scanning the room before he saw the Reverend’s black suit, white hair and chocolate face. “You sit directly across from him. No touching. No passing of anything. If he wants to give you a document, let the deputy examine it. Okay, go on.”
    Walking down the row, Booker knew something was wrong with his mother. That was his only connection with Reverend Wilson. As he had the thought, he felt suddenly weak and had to hold onto the edge of the table as he sat down. He expected the worst, and when he heard the truth, terrible as it was, he felt relieved. She’d had a heart attack but would be okay.
    As Reverend Wilson expanded on the details, Booker’s gratitude metamorphosed into fury. Ned from the Texaco Station had gone by Booker’s to tell his mother. She called about visiting hours and rode the streetcar downtown. When she got there, the deputies told her that she was too late. Visiting hours were until 3:00, but they stopped letting people in at 2:30. “She told me they were rude to her,” Reverend Wilson said. “When she was leaving, she had the chest pains.”
    “But she gonna be all right, right?”
    “The doctors say so. It’s in the Lord’s hands. You pray for forgiveness for causin’ this misery.”
    Pray for forgiveness! Forgiveness for what? For borrowing the car? No way. He was so angry that Reverend Wilson’s words failed to register. He couldn’t