“That’s right, Jethro. Day after tomorrow, you’ll be ridin’ that roller-coaster straight to hell!” Elroy Perkins shouted, raising his voice like an old-time evangelist preaching his last night at a dirtroad revival. “And it’ll be one hot ride.” Of course, Elroy was no evangelist. He was the kind of man who made sport of disabled children and prison rape victims, and had no idea what joy or happiness felt like. The closest Elroy could come was to experience a kind of perverted pleasure in response to the pain and suffering of others, and the most genuine smile he could muster always ended up looking like a sneer.
The object of Elroy’s tirade responded with a series of low moans and muffled sobs. Jethro curled up on his prison cot and tried to block out the taunts, but like all the other times, the ridicule seeped through the fingers that covered his ears and touched the fear deep within him. Elroy had his number.
“Jethro’s” real name was Gerald. He was from the red clay hill country of North Georgia. Twenty-six years old and a petty criminal since he was fourteen, Gerald had been housed in Section D of the Row for a little over seven years. His most recent incarceration was the result of an incident involving him and his two older cousins, Alvin and Earl. During a night of drinking and big talk, they had come upon a high school couple having a romantic interlude in the back seat of a Ford Taurus on Hollow Leg Ridge. With the boldness that only alcohol can provide, Gerald and his cousins robbed the couple. When the boy, Lester Johnson, an All-State tight end for the local high school had resisted, they killed him and raped his girlfriend, Wanda Jean, leaving her naked and delirious on a frigid October night. Gerald was the only one who received the death sentence, compliments of his cousins turning state’s evidence and the inadequacy of his court appointed attorney.
If the truth were known, Gerald was a follower, not a leader. He never initiated anything, but was always ready to go along for the ride, and more often than not, as evidenced by his numerous juvenile court appearances, he rarely knew where the ride was going. In fact, on the night in question, Gerald wet his pants at the sight of Wanda Jean being sexually assaulted by his cousins. He remained a virgin, although no one, especially the jury, believed him. Someone had to pay for the death of Lester and the rape of Wanda Jean, and Alvin and Earl decided to elect Gerald. Barely able to read and burdened with an unmistakable hillbilly accent, Gerald had been renamed Jethro by his twelve fellow boarders on Section D of death row at the State Prison. Day after tomorrow, he was going to take a final ride, as Elroy had so cruelly put it. And for once, he knew where the ride was going.
Elroy was Jethro’s chief tormenter on death row. Although Elroy was his birth name, he hated it. He wished his name was Elvis, like the King of Rock and Roll. Elroy saw himself as a ladies’ man and a general all-around bad boy. He often addressed other men not by their given name but by the term “Honcho,” or “Cacaos,” or “Chief.” And Elroy was more than a little proud of the crude tattoo scrawled the length of his left forearm. It read “Bad to the Bone,” and few who knew him would disagree.
He had previously served twelve years in prison for beating to death the man who had taken up with his former girlfriend. Three days after he was released from prison, he killed his ex-girlfriend and was sentenced to death. He had bragged before and after he killed her that “No woman leaves Elroy T. Perkins and lives to tell about it.” Of course, many had throughout Elroy’s life, starting with his mother, Eunice, when he was six years old.
There had been other assaults, physical and sexual, in Elroy’s past that he had not been charged with— usually due to intimidation and on occasion, dumb luck. Elroy’s Grandmother had raised him and had been heard to say on more than one occasion that Elroy himself was, more or less, an assault on the human race. Her words turned out to be prophetic. Elroy rarely passed on an opportunity to insult or harass anyone he came in contact with. When he wasn’t targeting other inmates or the occasional correctional officer for abuse, he lay on his cot and sulked. While the other inmates had backed off hassling Jethro, who on a good day was an easy target for ridicule and laughter, Elroy, instead, turned up the heat.
When a death row inmate was nearing his execution date, a strange kind of solidarity encompassed his death row compatriots. Even occasional words of encouragement could be heard coming from one cell or another in the long, hot nights leading up the designated man’s final walk. It was a reverent, unspoken tradition on death row— a kind of “don’t speak ill of the one who is about to be dead.” Of course, Elroy didn’t observe traditions— especially ones that deprived him of the simple pleasures found in tormenting the doomed and the damned.
Lost in his own thoughts, a middle-aged man with a slight paunch and graying temples turned from the small window he was looking through, and faced his night shift partner, Officer Ed Jenkins, who was clearly agitated.
“The boy’s carrying-on is unsettling the other men. Things are getting a little dicey. You think we ought to try to put a lid on that asshole Elroy and maybe calm the kid down? The Doc’s done given him all the ‘meds’ he’s gonna get until tomorrow.”
Popping a fresh stick of chewing gum in his mouth, he looked at Ed Jenkins and replied, “I’ll see what I can do.”
That’s really how it all started. Up until that moment, Cleve Jefferson, known by many as Bishop, was just another inmate waiting on death in Section D.
Although most men on any death row are usually low-keyed to the point of being docile, there are always one or two Elroys to contend with. Sometimes the troublemakers are mentally ill, but there are others like Elroy who are just plain mean. Of course, the former doesn’t necessarily exclude the latter. One could be both mean and crazy.
The only way to deal with a primitive like Elroy was to make clear to him that the pain you were going to cause him was substantially greater than the pleasure he was experiencing. For Elroy, it was the threat of having his one hour a day on the small, interior exercise yard taken from him. To make sure he got the point, Sergeant J.T. Jones added the possibility that his canteen privileges would be suspended for a month. The threat of no Cokes, candy, or Little Debby snack cakes drove Elroy pouting to his cot in the corner of his cell.
Elroy’s bullshit was contained in short order. Jethro’s fragile grasp on reality proved to be another matter. What Elroy had put in motion seemed to have taken on a life of its own as Jethro’s moans turned to wailing and left him curled up in a fetal position on the floor of his cell. Ed Jenkins was getting more than a little concerned. “What are we gonna do, Sarge?”
“I’m not sure, Ed,” J.T. Jones answered. “One thing I do know is that if we wake Major Dawson from his evening nap at Central Control, there will be hell to pay. I think I’ll take one more shot at trying to calm him down.”
J.T. Jones tried to talk to Jethro in his most soothing voice, but his crying intensified and brought curses and shouts for quiet from the other inmates who were trying to sleep.
“All right son,” J.T. said to himself as much as anyone else. “I guess I’ll go wake up the Major.”
As he walked down the corridor to his office, a voice called out to him from cell 11. “Sergeant Jones.”
J.T. stopped and walked back to Bishop’s cell.
A small, bald black man with long, gray sideburns looked at him intently. “I believe I could help the young man.”
“And how would you do that?” J.T. asked, picking something out of his ear.
“Me and him have been talking a lot during the last few days.
“I’ve been praying for him and I believe he might listen to me.”
“Thanks for your offer, Bishop, but I doubt Jethro would listen to anybody in his present state. And with what’s facing him day after tomorrow, I can’t say as I blame him. Anyway, you’re three cells down from him— not close enough to carry on much of a conversation.”
Bishop sat down on his cot and smiled.
“Sergeant, I can’t help you with the cell arrangements, but I can help you with Gerald.”
J.T. looked at Bishop for a moment, then shook his head and walked back to his office.
“Good God! You can’t be serious,” Ed exclaimed. “We could be fired!”
“Not if you keep your mouth shut,” J.T. replied, popping a fresh stick of gum in his mouth.
“If anything goes wrong, I’ll take the blame.”
“Damn straight you will!” Ed responded. “If the shit hits the fan, I’m deaf, dumb and blind.”
As J.T. unlocked Bishop’s cell door, he was amused that Bishop didn’t seem to be surprised by his actions. With his tattered Bible in hand, Bishop proceeded to the chair J.T. had placed next to the condemned man’s cell.
J.T. positioned himself where he could maintain a clear vision, while allowing Bishop and Jethro some measure of privacy. As Bishop pressed his face against the bars of Jethro’s cell door, J.T. clearly heard only one word during his thirty-minute vigil.
“Gerald.”
Even after all these years, J.T. was still amazed at the effect that one word had on the delirious young man. At the single utterance of his name, Jethro’s body relaxed and he grew silent. Bishop said nothing, but sat and waited. From his vantage point J.T. could see Jethro sit up within a few minutes of Bishop’s greeting and crawl on his hands and knees toward the small, black man with the long gray sideburns. What followed were whispers that sounded like praying. First Bishop, then Jethro. Then Bishop passed his Bible through the bars to the young prisoner and they clasped hands in silence, simply looking at each other for a time. Finally, Bishop smiled at Jethro, rose to his feet and walked back to the front of his cell. Once J.T. had locked the door behind him, Bishop turned and looked at him with quiet approval.
“Thank you, Sergeant Jones.”
Nodding his head, J.T. went to check on Jethro and found him curled up on his cot, his face pressed against Bishop’s Bible. Jethro looked up at the Sergeant for a brief moment, but said nothing and then closed his eyes.
Walking back to the office, Sergeant J.T. Jones experienced a strange sensation. He felt light-headed. Jethro’s look had unsettled him, and he had the strange feeling that on that particular night it was Bishop, and not him, who was in control of his domain. J.T. was grateful for the steaming cup of coffee Ed offered him.
Two days later, Jethro was executed.
Cleve Jefferson, who came to be known on death row as “Bishop,” never denied his guilt. He had been a small-time drug dealer who killed two rivals in a shoot-out. That act alone would not have put him on death row— even with the list of other crimes and drug related assaults on his rap sheet. Cleve’s ticket to death row came as a result of his accidentally shooting Maria Lopez, a single mother with two young children during the same shoot-out.
During his first two years on the row, he had been an angry young man, ranting against a racist justice system and filing endless appeals. Then one day, without explanation, Cleve Jefferson gradually became less belligerent and less talkative. As he began to withdraw, Doc Hansen assumed he was experiencing the kind of depression typical for death row inmates and offered him antidepressants, which he politely refused. Soon after, he quit talking altogether.
For six months, Cleve Jefferson said nothing. He slept, ate and sat on the edge of his cot, staring at the picture of Maria Lopez he had torn out of a newspaper. From time to time deep in the night, sobbing could be heard coming from his cell. Correctional officers on all three shifts pooled their money to see who would correctly guess the night Cleve Jefferson would take his life.
On New Year’s Day of his third year on death row, Cleve Jefferson began to talk again. Over the next two years, he collected and read a variety of religious and holy books, including the Bible, the Koran, the Ramayana, the Tao Te Ching, the Tibetan Book of the Dead and Black Elk Speaks. Although Cleve seemed to prefer the Bible or his “Grandmama’s Book” as he referred to it, he read and studied a wide variety of religious and wisdom traditions. He also began to share his readings and thoughts with anyone on the row who would listen. Most didn’t, but a few did. Those few seemed intrigued with what he had to say and began to refer to Cleve as “Bishop.” Over the years, everyone— officer and inmate alike— came to refer to him as Bishop as much out of habit as anything else. Most of the officers figured Cleve had gone a little crazy, but accepted that the men on death row coped with their predicament in different ways as best they could.
The only non-inmate who would talk with Cleve about spiritual matters was a good-natured young Chaplain who seemed to genuinely enjoy their conversations. His two favorite expressions to Bishop were “I go to three years of Seminary to become a Reverend and you go to death row and end up a Bishop” and “I’ll convert you to a Baptist yet.” Each time Chaplain Smith would utter either of those phrases, Bishop’s response was always the same— a smile and a chuckle. Bishop had been on death row for ten years when he thanked Sergeant J.T. Jones for letting him talk to Jethro. After that night, everything changed.
At first, their chats would only last ten or fifteen minutes, usually in the wee hours of the morning while the other inmates were asleep and Ed Jenkins was doing paperwork. Gradually, fifteen-minute chats evolved into one to two-hour conversations between two men, separated by prison bars, race and a lifetime of different experiences. Their conversations ranged from prison life to sports to religion or whatever else caught their fancy. J.T. would sit in a folding chair with his coffee cup and thermos and Bishop on the edge of his cot, finishing the last of the sweet potato pie J.T. had slipped him, compliments of Margie, J.T.’s wife of twenty years.
J.T. Jones was not a particularly sentimental man. He honored the obligatory birthdays and other holidays with friendly resolve. He wasn’t against such occasions any more than he was against going to the Methodist church with his wife on most Sunday mornings. Such traditions just didn’t hold much appeal for him. J.T. seemed to find more solace walking in the woods on the farm that had been his Daddy’s before it was his and his Granddaddy’s before that. Only the occasional bird in flight could hear him singing the hymns of his youth while he pole-fished from the banks of the old mill pond on the back side of his farm.
It wasn’t so much that J.T. Jones was a simple man, but more that his needs and wants were simple. He had driven the same pickup truck for the last twelve years and for the most part, lived his life from the inside out. He was a careful and practical man who was at the same time, curious in a quiet sort of a way. And when a situation called for it he was willing to go against convention and take a chance. It was a mix of the three— curiosity, inwardness and non-conformity that drew J.T. to Bishop.
J.T.’s practical and careful nature required that he first review the file and background of the man who had come to be known as Bishop. The conclusion had been clear. Cleve Jefferson had become Bishop through some sort of gradual transformation, which in itself was not that uncommon on death row. J.T. had witnessed a number of men experience genuine religious conversions when facing death. Getting one’s house in order, seeking some sense of forgiveness for the harm that one has done, and looking for hope in a better life beyond the grave— a fresh start so to speak— was understandable to J.T. What was different about Bishop in comparison to the others was that he didn’t seem to follow any particular tradition. He didn’t claim to be a Baptist, Methodist, Catholic, or Muslim. All J.T. ever heard him refer to himself as when he conversed with other inmates, was that he was one of “God’s boys.” In fact, every morning, seven days a week, when breakfast was served, Bishop always issued forth the same greeting to the residents of death row, Section D: “How are God’s boys this morning?”
The responses to his daily query were varied and ranged from silence to complimentary replies, and on occasion, expletive-laced retorts from inmates like Elroy. J.T. smiled as he recalled a particular breakfast exchange between Bishop and Elroy, who had awakened in a particularly foul mood.
“Damn God’s boys and damn you, you no-account Nigger!” snarled Elroy. “You were born a Nigger and you’ll die a Nigger. A Nigger is all you’ll ever be.”
After the course of profanities, which echoed from other inmates toward Elroy subsided, Bishop simply chuckled and responded in a clear, calm voice. “You’re more right than you know, Elroy. I was a Nigger just as you are. We’re all Niggers until we sit in the mercy seat. It’s only through the mercy seat that Niggers like you and me can become men in this world and children of God.”
Of course, Elroy didn’t agree with Bishop’s assessment and let him know in no uncertain terms before returning to his cot.
Eventually, the residents of Section D seemed to look forward to rather than tolerate Bishop’s early morning greeting. J.T. and the other officers began to sense a kind of respect and even affection on the part of the other inmates toward the old man.
Numerous helpings of sweet potato pie, cooked greens and homemade cornbread later, J.T. Jones finally got around to asking Bishop the questions he had been curious about for a long time.
Handing Bishop a fresh cup of coffee through the bars, J.T. paused before he spoke.
“Bishop, exactly what kind of religious man are you? You say you are one of God’s boys, but what does that mean? You got all these books about different religions and such, but you’ve never said what your religion is— only that you are one of God’s boys.” J.T. stopped talking and took a long sip of his coffee.
“That’s a pretty long question, Sergeant. Anything else?”
“Yeah, what’s the ‘mercy seat’?” J.T. asked, warming his hands on his coffee cup.
Bishop closed his eyes and sat quietly before answering. Finally, he spoke.
“I’ve read, prayed and meditated on the holy books of many faiths. The reason I keep coming back to the Bible is because it’s my Grandmama’s book. She called it the ‘Good Book.’ To me, it’s ‘Grandmama’s Book.’ You know, she raised me for the first eight years of my life, before she died of the consumption. Sitting on her front porch in the late afternoon after she had returned from working in the fields, we would drink mason jars filled with strong, sweet tea. Every afternoon, my Grandmama would read to me from the ‘Good Book’ and tell me stories about Jesus and the Holy Ghost. Sometimes her stories would lift me up beyond the clouds and other times they’d scare the pure hell out of me. She was a small woman with a big faith I didn’t understand at the time.” Bishop paused to take a sip of coffee.
“After all my praying, reading and studying, I can’t really say I know all that much ’bout anything. What I can say is that I love the Jesus my Grandmama taught me about. I guess you could say that I think of myself as a ‘Jesus Man’ who has a lot of friends and relatives from other faiths.
“Chaplain Smith, of course, doesn’t agree,” Bishop said, chuckling. “He says all my friends and relatives are going straight to hell.”
Bishop drank the last of his coffee and smiled. “I like him. He’s a young man with good intentions and a lot of back roads left to travel.”
J.T. refilled Bishop’s extend cup with coffee from his thermos. “Tell me about the ‘mercy seat.’”
Bishop closed his eyes once again and grew quiet. J.T. sipped his coffee in silence and waited.
“When I was dealing drugs, violence was a way of life— nothing special. Intimidation, beatings and sexual assaults, even murder— nothing special. And then the shooting— nothing new, except this time, I killed a single mother in the crossfire. Left two small children behind. I’d seen innocent people hurt— even killed, but never by my hand.
“From the time I saw her picture at the trial, I became affected in a way that’s hard to explain. It’s like I was haunted. I cut that dead woman’s picture out of the newspaper and carried it with me. At night, I’d dream that my Grandmama was looking at me, tears streaming from her eyes. During the day, I found myself either looking at the picture of the woman that I killed or thinking about her two children.
“When I arrived here on death row, I taped Maria Lopez’s picture on the wall at the end of my cot. Then I wrote my cousin, Angela, and asked her to send me my Grandmama’s Bible. Felt like I was going crazy, staring at that picture of Maria Lopez all day and dreaming about my Grandmama all night.
“When my Grandmama’s ‘Good Book’ came in the mail, things began to change. As I began to read and to pray, I stopped dreaming about her. Then I quit talking and ate very little.”
J.T. interjected, “We thought you were losing it— had you on 24 hour suicide watch.”
“All I was concerned about was the picture on my wall and the hot ball of pain that was filling up my insides. I felt like I couldn’t breathe ... felt like I was on fire. And then one night while I was looking at that photograph, that ball of fire exploded and buried me alive in its ashes.”
A thin bead of sweat broke out on Bishop’s forehead.
“I felt her suffering as she drew her last breath. I felt the sorrow of her children losing their mother. I felt the loss of her parents and friends. I even felt the pain of my own Mama abandoning me when I was a little boy. It was like I was responsible for everything bad that had happened to anybody and everybody. I couldn’t bear it. I was drowning in a sea of sorrow. After there were no tears left for me to cry, I began to pray to the Lord Almighty for forgiveness— for deliverance from who I was and what I had become.
“Then the big change happened.” Bishop grew quiet once more as his eyes filled with tears.
J.T. inquired softly, “What was the big change?”
In a choked voice, Bishop replied, “I finally got to sit in the ‘mercy seat.’ I was crying, praying, meditating and looking at that picture. I don’t know how long I had been at it. I had no sense of time— it was like I was outside of time. All I know is what happened next.
“As I looked at that picture, the face of Maria Lopez began to change. Her face began to change into the face of a person I had never seen before. But I knew who it was. It was in the eyes. Not like the pictures on those funeral parlor fans. Different, like peeling off the skin to see what it hid. I been mistaking the peeling for the fruit. Those eyes were the fruit— what’s behind the behind. It was Him.
“I wanted to look away, but I couldn’t. Kept looking at that picture for I don’t know how long. Then it changed back ... changed back to the face of the woman I killed. That picture was like a magnet. Couldn’t take my eyes off it. And then ... Oh Lord ... and then ... The picture spoke to me. Maria Lopez’s picture spoke to me.” Once again, Bishop fell silent, his head bowed.
“What did it say?” J.T. asked in a hushed tone.
Bishop looked at J.T. a long time before speaking. “She said, ‘I died so that you might live.’”
Neither man spoke for a long time, each lost in his own thoughts.
Finally, Bishop took a deep breath and dried his eyes with the back of his hand. “The mercy seat is about second chances— about being forgiven when forgiveness isn’t possible. Having your heart broken into a thousand pieces— then opened up and made new again.
“You got any of that coffee left?” Bishop queried with a weary smile.
Taking a swallow of the hot coffee, he continued, “If I’ve learned one thing from what I experienced, it’s that I don’t know much of anything. But— thank the Lord— I do know about the mercy seat.”
* * *
Bishop’s appeals finally ran out. He had plenty of letters of support, including one from J.T. and Chaplain Smith. They weren’t asking for the moon, just that his sentence be commuted to life without parole, but it was an election year and everyone knows that mercy takes a back seat on election years.
The morning Bishop was transferred to the deathwatch cell, J.T. came in even though it was his day off. He came in to say goodbye. It was the last time they sat together, he in his folding chair and Bishop on the edge of his cot.
Bishop looked at him and smiled. “J.T., I guess this is it. It’s all she wrote for this ol’ world.”
No inmate before or since ever called J.T. by his first name, but on that morning Bishop did and to J.T., it seemed only natural. All he could say in response was, “I guess so.”
He often wished his response had been more helpful, more encouraging, but that’s all J.T. said— “I guess so.”
Then Bishop had a final request for him, a special favor to ask.
He wanted J.T. to make a promise to him.
“Promise me something.”
“Promise you what?”
Reaching through the bars, Bishop gently placed his right hand on J.T.’s heart. “Promise me you’ll remember that you’re also one of God’s boys.”
J.T. couldn’t speak. All he could do was nod his head.
After Bishop’s death, J.T. received a package from Angela, Bishop’s cousin. She wrote in a short note that Bishop had wanted him to have his Grandmama’s ‘Good Book.’
Sitting on his front porch, he looked at the book in his lap and smelled the supper Margie was cooking.
Opening the front screen door, Margie peered out at her husband. “Honey, what you thinking about?”
“I’m thinking about this book— and that I’m grateful for you and the life I’ve had. But as grateful as I am, one thing is as certain as the sun setting over that grove of poplar trees— I miss my friend.”
Previously published in Morality Stories (Carolina Academic Press).