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  In my next letter I ask him if anyone ever comes to see him, and he says, no, there is no one. So I ask how I might go about visiting him.

  CHAPTER

  2

  Pat’s return letter brims with excitement and he explains that he must put me on his visitor list so the prison can do a security check. I am to send my birth date and social security number. He tells me that he went back and forth in his mind about which category of visitor to put me in — friend or spiritual adviser — but he has decided on spiritual adviser. I have no idea what difference the category will make. I later learn that a spiritual adviser may remain with the condemned man in the death house after 6:00 P.M., when relatives and friends must leave. The spiritual adviser is allowed to witness the execution.

  Nothing happens for months, and then I receive a letter from a Catholic priest who serves as chaplain at the prison. He says he has to interview me before I can become Pat’s spiritual adviser. I drive to Angola for the interview.

  It is July 1982. I set out around nine in the morning. My interview is set for the early afternoon. I have a poor sense of direction, so I have carefully written down the route to the prison, which is at the end of a circuitous road, about three hours from New Orleans.

  It feels good to get out of the steamy housing project onto the open road, to see sky and towering clouds and the blue, wide waters of Lake Pontchartrain.

  Highway 66, which dead-ends at the gates of the prison, snakes through the Tunica hills, a refreshing change of terrain in pancake-flat Louisiana. It is cooler and greener in the hills, and some of the branches of the trees arch across the road and bathe it in shadow.

  I think of the thousands of men who have been transported down this road since 1901, when this 18,000-acre prison was established. About 4,600 men are locked up here now, half of them, practically speaking, serving life sentences. “Wide-stripes,” they used to call the lifers.

  Louisiana deals out harsh sentences. In 1977, when the death penalty was reinstated by the state legislature, the life-imprisonment statute was reformulated, effectively eliminating probation, parole, or suspension of sentence for first- and second-degree murder. An eighteen-year-old first-time offender convicted of distributing heroin faces a life sentence without possibility of probation or parole; and the habitual-offender law, aimed at reducing “career criminals,” imposes a life sentence on offenders even for nonviolent crimes.

  About five miles from the prison I see a hand-painted sign nailed to a tree: “Do not despair. You will soon be there.” I make a sharp S-curve in the road and see a clearing, an open sky, and the Louisiana State Penitentiary — Angola. I drive up to the front gate. Several armed, blue-uniformed guards occupy a small, glassed-in office and one of them comes to the car and I show him the letter from the chaplain. They inspect my car — trunk, glove compartment, seats — put a visitor’s sign on my dashboard, and direct me to the administration building about a quarter of a mile inside the prison grounds.

  There are red and yellow zinnias all along the road, and the grass is neatly trimmed. Mottled black-and-white cattle browse in a field of green. I see a column of inmates, most of them black, marching out to soybean and vegetable fields, their hoes over their shoulders. Behind and in front of the marching men, guards on horseback with rifles watch their charges. In antebellum days three cotton plantations occupied these 18,000 acres, worked by slaves from Angola in Africa. The name Angola stuck. Since its beginnings in 1901, abuse, corruption, rage, and reform have studded its history.

  In 1951 eight inmates, known as the “Heel-string Gang,” inaugurated the first reform at Angola by slitting their Achilles tendons with razor blades rather than go to the “long line” in the fields, where they were systematically beaten or shot by guards. The Shreveport Times and the New Orleans Times-Picayune carried the heel-slashing story, and the ensuing publicity brought a gubernatorial investigative commission to the prison and the first rudimentary reforms. But as recently as 1975 it took a federal court to prod state officials to enact needed reforms of Louisiana penal institutions. Before then, at Angola, men were still being kept in the “Red Hat,” a disciplinary cell block made of tiny concrete cells (including a cement bunk) with only a slit of a window near the ceiling. After prisoners were moved out, prison authorities converted the facility into a dog kennel.1

  I wait in the front foyer of the administration building for the chaplain. Soon he comes in from one of the offices along the side wing of the building. He is an elderly man. His face is kind. His voice seems tired. Why, he asks, do I want to become Sonnier’s spiritual adviser? I say I want to visit him because he has no one else and visiting prisoners is a Christian work of mercy.

  The chaplain says that “these people,” I must remember, are the “scum of the earth,” and that I must be very, very careful because they are all con men and will try to take advantage of me every way they can. “You can’t trust them,” he says emphatically. “Your job is to help this fellow save his soul by receiving the sacraments of the church before he dies,” he says.

  He is strictly an old-school, pre-Vatican Catholic, and he shows me a pamphlet on sexual purity and modesty of dress that he distributes to the prisoners. Later I will be the source of such stress to this man that the warden will tell me, “That old man is going to have a heart attack because of you.” Later, the chaplain will try to bar me and other women from serving as spiritual advisers to death-row inmates.

  But for now, on this July afternoon, we chat pleasantly. As I am leaving he urges me to wear my habit when I visit the inmates. It’s the modesty thing, I think, but, no, it isn’t that. “The inmates know,” he says, “that the Pope has requested nuns to wear the habit, and for you to flout authority will only encourage them to do the same.” Which amazes me. I have serious doubts that Angola inmates know — or care — what dress code the Pope recommends for nuns.

  I have not had one of these “habit” conversations in a long while. There had been much discussion when we had changed to ordinary clothes back in 1968. Seeing us dress like regular people had been upsetting for many Catholics, who said that when they saw us in our long, flowing robes, dressed like “angels,” it had made them think of God.

  Actually, for me, discarding the habit probably increased my life expectancy. As a student teacher my veil had caught on fire from a candle during a prayer service and I had almost gone up in smoke before my wide-eyed class. I tend to move quickly, and more than once my long black veil, flowing behind me, had caught on a door knob and stopped me dead in my tracks. The garb had covered us completely — except for face and hands — and once, when a member of my community, Sister Alice Macmurdo, was in a fabric shop she felt small tugs at her veil and turned to face an embarrassed woman who had mistaken her for a bolt of material.

  But this dear old priest will not like these stories. I thank him for his time and his advice and on the drive home I take some of his wariness of prisoners to heart. I could never call inmates “scum,” but I know I’m inexperienced and he’s right — I do need to be on guard against being conned. Until today I have never been inside a prison, except for a brief foray into the Orleans Parish Jail in the late sixties during the days of the “singing nuns” (“Dominique-nique, nique” — that crowd). I could plunk out a few chords on my guitar and another Sister and I had gone once or twice to entertain the prisoners. When I suggested “If I Had a Hammer” for our opening number, the inmates sang it with great relish, and, as the song progressed, made up spirited verses of their own: “If I had a crowbar; If I had a switchblade …” The guards rolled their eyes.

  And I think again of the sliver of fear I felt when I first saw the photo of Patrick Sonnier, the cruel slant of the eyebrows. What will he be like in person? My heart tightens. How did I get involved in this bizarre affair? Where is this going to take me?

  Early in September I receive approval from prison authorities to become Elmo Patrick Sonnier’s spiritual adviser. I set a date for our first
visit: September 15, 1982.

  Along with the letter of approval, I receive the Louisiana Department of Corrections regulations for visitors. The most alarming rule is that by entering the corrections facility, you are subject to “searches of your property, automobile, and person” including “pat-down searches, inspection by dogs, and strip searches of your body, including your body cavities.”

  Maybe I’m an exception since I’m a nun. But I can’t be sure. I have heard ugly stories of strip searches of visitors in Georgia. But I remind myself that I have been in other scary situations. Shootouts in the neighborhood, for instance. I am learning to face things as they come, not stepping out ahead of grace, as one of the spiritual maxims of my community counsels.

  On September 15 I drive to Angola for my first visit with Pat. The summer heat has not yet lifted, though some of the trees along the highway are looking dry and yellow. I have a thermos of coffee. I have my approval papers and a picture ID.

  I arrive at the prison at about 10:00 A.M. There are mostly women guards inside the visitor center, and they seem friendly, respectful. There are several bouquets of plastic flowers on the wall, probably their warming touch. A sign on a trash can catches my attention. It says, “It will be grateful if you throw your butts in the butt can.”

  I show the guards my ID and letter of approval. One of the women searches my billfold (no purses are allowed) and the pockets of my suit. She does a few quick pats of my front and sides. Not bad. I breathe easier. I notice my fingertips are cold.

  Death row is located in a building near the prison entrance. I walk past the guard’s station and wait outside the gate of the fenced-in yard surrounding the death-row building. A woman guard in a nearby watchtower opens the gate electronically from a control switch. I hear a loud click. I walk through and the gate clangs shut behind me. There are flowers along the sidewalk leading to the building, and a small pond with ducks swimming. It looks like a quiet little park.

  Inside the building I am accompanied by a guard through a series of gates down a hallway. “Woman on the tier,” he yells, warning prisoners to steer clear of the hallway. Gate one, clang, gate two, clang, gate three. Metal on metal, it is all green and cement and bars. And it is stiflingly hot. Too many blocked-off spaces. No way for the air to circulate. I see a green metal door with a barred window and above it red block letters: “Death Row.”

  The guard is unlocking a door to my right. I am to go inside. “Wait here. They’ll get your man for you,” he says, then closes the door and locks me in the room.

  I look around. I feel a tight band of ice around my stomach. In the room are six visiting booths the size of telephone booths constructed of heavy plywood painted stark white. A heavy mesh screen separates visitors from inmates. On the visitor side is a loud, whirring fan. There are plastic chairs stacked in a corner and several large tin cans painted red which serve as trash cans. I am the only one in the room. The place gives me the creeps.

  The reality of this waiting place for death is difficult to grasp. It’s not a ward in a hospital where sick people wait to die. People here wait to be taken out of their cells and killed. This is the United States of America and these are government officials in charge and there’s a law sanctioning and upholding what is going on here, so it all must be legitimate and just, or so one compartment of my brain tells me, the part that studied civics in high school, the part that wants to trust that my country would never violate the human rights of its citizens.

  The red block letters say “Death Row.”

  My stomach can read the letters better than my brain.

  I pace slowly back and forth in the room and keep trying to take deep breaths, to settle down. I am allowed two hours for my visit. That seems like a very long time. I’m doubly tense. One, I am locked behind four — I count them — doors in this strange, unreal place. Two, I’m about to meet and talk to someone who killed two people. Letters are one thing, but just the two of us like this talking for two hours?

  I hear him before I see him. I can hear the rattle of chains on his legs scraping across the floor and I can hear his voice. He is laughing and teasing the guard. I detect a Cajun accent.

  “Hi, Pat, I made it,” I say.

  “Am I glad to see you, Sister,” he says.

  He is freshly shaven and his black hair is combed into a wave in the front. A handsome face, open, smiling. Not the face I had seen in the photo. He has on a clean blue denim shirt and jeans. His hands are cuffed to a wide brown leather belt at his waist. He has brought me a gift: a picture frame made out of intricately folded cigarette packages. “I made it for you,” he says, and he explains that the biggest challenge had been collecting enough of the wrappers from the others on the tier. He is bright and talkative and tells me of some recent letters from college students whom I have referred to him.

  “I was always a loner growing up. I’ve never had so many friends,” he says, and he tells in detail what each pen pal has said and how he has responded. He keeps a checklist: “letters received — letters answered” and the date next to each.

  He smokes one cigarette after another and he has to lean his head far down to reach the cigarette because his hands are cuffed to the belt. He is obviously very happy to have someone to talk to. Contact with someone in the outside world goes a long way in this place, where, as I soon learn, mail is rare and visits rarer.

  As we talk I find myself looking at his hands — clean, shapely hands, moving expressively despite the handcuffs as he talks. These hands that made the nice picture frame for me also held a rifle that killed. The fingernails are bitten down to the quick.

  He tells again of receiving the first letter from me and how the name Helen had made him think at first it was from his ex-“old lady,” and he wanted to have nothing to do with her because she was the one who had told the sheriff where to find him, warning that he was dangerous and heavily armed, and the scowl is there and he stares past me as he talks. He can’t believe his good fortune, he says, that I have come into his life out of the blue like this, and he thanks me profusely for making the long drive to come and see him.

  The way he was teasing the guard and the way he thanks me and is talking to me now — I can tell he likes to please people.

  He hasn’t done well with women, he admits — lived with several but always “busted up.” He has a little girl, Star, eleven years old, but she is with foster parents and her mother is in Texas and he says that his child was born when he was serving time in Angola for stealing a truck, and the first time he laid eyes on her was the day he got out of prison because he went right to where his “first old lady” was living and there was the child, playing in the front yard, and he had swooped her into his arms and said, “I’m your daddy,” and her mother had appeared at the front door with a shotgun because she thought someone was trying to kidnap the child and and he had called out to her, “It’s me. I’m back. I want to see my kid.” But the first thing he had done when he stepped out of the gates at Angola was to get a case of beer, and by the time the Greyhound bus had pulled into St. Martinville he was pretty “tanked” and he and the woman had “gotten into it” that night and he smashed up some furniture and she threw him out and he had gone to his mother’s.

  He never has been one to share his feelings, he says, because when he was a kid growing up his mother and father used to fight a lot and they separated when he was six and his sister was three and Eddie was just a baby. His mother went on welfare because his daddy never did come through with child support and the welfare check would run out and they’d be hungry and he and Eddie would hunt deer and rabbit. He chuckles remembering how his mother would help them with the rabbit hunt and it was always her job to put the dead rabbits in a sack and to “finish them off with a stick if they weren’t dead yet. “And we’d be stalking along and behind us we’d hear whack, whack, whack — Mama beating the hell out of those rabbits.”

  I cringe, but he tells the incident nonchalantly. I am thinking of th
e clobbered rabbits. He is thinking of the food.

  Once, he says, he and Eddie couldn’t find a deer so they shot a neighbor’s cow and skinned it and brought it home. “Mama knew this was no more a deer than the man in the moon, but she didn’t say nothing ‘cause we were all so hungry. She fixed us up a good roast that night and you could smell it cooking all through the house.”

  They often hunted at night. “Isn’t it against the law to hunt at night?” I ask. “Yeah,” he says, “but we didn’t worry about that.”

  As kids they moved from mother to father and back again, he says, and by the time he was fourteen he had changed schools seven or eight times. He got only as far as eighth grade, dropped out when he was fifteen, forged his mother’s signature on an application form, and went to work as a roustabout on the oil rigs. Later, he got his license and drove eighteen-wheelers and he had liked that best. From the age of nine, he says, he was on probation with juvenile authorities for burglaries, disturbing the peace, trespassing. “Mama couldn’t do anything with me and she’d have Daddy come get me out of trouble.”

  His daddy was a sharecropper and one of the best things he got from him, he says, is his love of work. At the age of seven he picked cotton, potatoes, and peppers alongside his father, and as he got older, when it was harvesting time for the sugar cane, “there I’d be walking to school and see those open fields and I’d drop my books on the side of the road and head out into the fields.” He hopes that maybe some day he can “hand back the chair” and work in the fields here, driving one of the tractors.

  He stands up and I try to adjust my view of him because it is hard to see through the heavy mesh screen and he tells me to look down sometimes. “This screen can really do a number on your eyes.”