Wrong Thing by Barry Graham Page B

much they could do about it.
    Now the lawyer was asking him what he wanted for his last meal, what he wanted done with his body, and who he wanted to invite to watch him die.
    Jesus thought about it. He wasn’t close to anyone in his family except for his niece Vanjii, who was his sister’s daughter. He couldn’t even say he was all that close to Vanjii either, but she still wrote to him regularly, and visited him sometimes. She was the only one who did. He wrote to her and invited her to come but told her he would understand if she didn’t want to. She wrote back right away, telling him she would come if she could, but that her car would never get her from New Mexico to Arizona, that she didn’t have enough money to rent a car, and that her license was suspended. He told her not to worry, that he would put her on his witness list so that she could attend if she was able to. He was allowed five other witnesses, but he couldn’t think of anyone to invite. His lawyer and an investigator both offered to attend, and he thanked them and agreed.
    A week before the day, a letter came from Vanjii. She said she had a new boyfriend, and he had offered to drive her to Arizona.

    Silent night? Not ever, not around here, thought the Kid. It was midnight and he was in his bed, Vanjii asleep beside him. As usual, there had been the intermittent barking of dogs outside. Now there was a quarrel between a woman and a man. The man’s voice was so low the Kid couldn’t make out what he was saying, but he didn’t have the same problem with the woman. “You piece of fucking shit . . . Yeah, you are, that’s exactly what you are . . . You fucking take me for every dime I got, and you don’t fucking care . . . You’re gonna just do what you want . . . Yeah, well, fuck you, fuck you, fuck you . . . I don’t even want you in my house . . . That’s it, motherfucker, walk away, just walk away . . . ” The Kid pressed his face into Vanjii’s hair, grateful. He marveled at her ability to sleep through anything. He hoped to get some sleep himself before the morning, when they would get on the road to Arizona. He had never been there before, but he’d been told that the drive would take at least eight hours. On the floor of his bedroom, Vanjii’s bag was packed and waiting.

    They had given Jesus a mild sedative before they’d strapped him to the gurney. When they tried to put the catheters in his arm, they couldn’t find a vein. So they dissected his arm. This procedure, which is called “cutting down,” took about a half-hour. When it was done, the arm wasn’t recognizable as an arm, but there were veins, and catheters stuck in them. They bound what remained so he wouldn’t bleed to death. Then they wheeled the gurney, with Jesus strapped to it, into the execution room and left him there for twenty minutes.
    He raised his head and looked around. To his right there was a big window, but it was covered with a curtain. He wondered whether the witnesses were already there, whether Vanjii was standing on the other side of the glass. He couldn’t hear anything, but he knew the glass was soundproof.
    He started to cry. Rather, he thought he was crying, but he wasn’t sure. There were whimpering sounds coming out of his mouth, and he could feel snot coming out of his nose, and he knew he was going to piss in the diaper he was wearing. But his eyes didn’t feel wet at all. All of last night he had imagined this, what it would be like, how it would feel, getting ready for it. But now it wasn’t like anything he had imagined, and he wanted his mother to come and protect him. He tried to think about the man he had killed, tried to wonder whether the man had felt like this, but it was so long ago that he only vaguely remembered it.
    They came back to the room and told him there had been no last-minute stay of execution. His nose and mouth were covered in