First Thrills - Lee Child [20]
The jury agreed. Puff received the death penalty and a dank sixty-square-foot pen at Polunsky Unit in Huntsville.
And I started a new path.
It began with the parish priest, then the diocese’s vocations director, then the retreats, then five years in seminary. After I passed the psychological examination, barely, I was called to the Holy Order and ordained a transitional deacon. I took a vow of celibacy and obedience. Never again would I be Mary’s fornicating friar, her bishop that boinks.
Oh, Mary, why didn’t I leave you safe and warm in that kitchen?
Becoming a man of the cloth is supposed to cure the nightmares. It doesn’t. Sure, all the activities and services and confessions and consultations help pass the time, and I don’t pull that Smith & Wesson Model 60 out from under the bed as much anymore, but I still feel empty inside.
Except when I cook.
The weekly dinners started when I was in seminary, on a Monday night, the night he took Mary away from me. Every Monday I cooked that same dinner: French onion soup, cauliflower with oyster sauce, grilled Tuscan chops, stir- fry vegetables. Same portions, same ingredients, same order.
And for months I just threw it all out.
Then I invited a few members of the laity over, parishioners suffering from grief and loss. They invited others. It became a weekly ritual, I had to accept reservations. I was featured in the Dallas Morning News. People started driving in from all over Texas.
I never realized just how much victims enjoy a home-cooked meal.
“Just keep stirring my soup.”
It was Bishop Michael Neal who recommended that I take my meals on the road. “Your guests aren’t the only victims in need of spiritual nourishment,” he told me. “Those who commit crimes are victims, too. And they are in no less favor before the eyes of God.”
Sure, but where to start? Texas is a crime-infested state, and one of the biggest states at that. Like victims, there were evildoers everywhere. So I cut straight to the heart of darkness, where even angels don’t tread. At 400 and growing, Huntsville boasts the largest Death Row population in the country. What better place to start my capital nourishment than in the belly of capital punishment?
Contorno
Judd’s face is so swollen that he can barely breathe in the feces- infused stench of his concrete cell. He’s doubled-over, holding his gut. The guards always smacked their clubs right there, right where the bullet went clean through his kidney, right where they knew it hurt bad.
“Get up, Judd-Ass.”
Judd K. Perkins, a.k.a Puff, was counting the days: in exactly one year he would have his shot, his last hurrah, his gurney nap, his meal card punched.
Dead man walking, the Texas Death Row Shuffle.
Nobody cared; no relatives, no friends, certainly none of the inmates in Polunsky Unit who complained that the overweight old man always smelled like shit. It was a fair criticism. The south end of the 12 Building, Puff’s end, was often flooded and musty. Puff had molded several bricks using his feces and food scraps and stacked them in a damp corner of his cell, and every couple of weeks he harvested the ashen mushrooms that magically appeared.
Then the guards found dried spores in his pocket. Convinced he was carrying Mary Jane—marijuana hash—they beat him. Real bad.
“I told you to get up, Judd-Ass.”
As Puff held onto the bars, a lone Texas Department of Criminal Justice guard watched him, making sure the fat old man didn’t choke and check out before his time.
“The Lord forgives you,” Puff coughed, spitting up a chunk of blood.
“Shut up,” the guard said, “and gimme two.”
“Please, not my cookers!”
“Rules. Pass ’em through.”
Puff stood up. “I don’t jack the tray never and I don’t throw my shit at you like Ritchie and—”
“Should I make it three?”
Puff’s coughs melted to a whimper. He pushed two books through the tray slot.
“ ‘Martha Stewart Living Cookbook: the Original Classics,’ ” the guard read. “And what’s this? ‘Without Reservations: How to Make