Last Meal
by Tony Klein
Jim was in the boss’s office and watched our elusive prison library mouse run along the green rubber baseboard and into one of the sticky traps. He pulled out a chair, reached under the table, picked up the trap with the mouse attached, and put it in a bucket. He brought the bucket and the mouse back to the legal department to show us.
The poor gray mouse was really stuck. All four feet and its whole belly were deep in the sticky stuff on the trap that looked like a little pup tent with both sides open. He had almost made it across. His head was over the finish line at the far side of the trap and then the little mouse stopped abruptly and forever.
We all looked down into the bucket and saw a fuzzy little head sticking out one end of the trap. Its neck twisted around as it looked up at us with desperate black eyes, whiskers twitching. Its tail was stuck flat in the shape of a question mark.
I eased the bucket away from Jim and placed it on the floor around the corner where we would be hidden behind a tall shelf of law books, in case a guard or curious snitching inmate looked over and saw us crowded around something with our full attention. If the boss got hold of our little treasure, he’d probably kill it on the spot or throw it out to suffer and die alone in the cold.
After talking about it, we decided we couldn’t just let it suffer. It probably wasn’t in any pain now, but it would eventually starve to death. If we threw it in the trash like that it would be carried alive to the giant trash crusher behind the prison kitchen and remain there, cold and in the dark until enough trash accumulated and the inmate who works there pushed the button to start the crushing process. That’s no way to die. Too many of our fellow inmates had died better deaths than that and this mouse was a lot more innocent than any of us.
All work in the prison law library stopped.
“Let’s name him Bob,” I said. Jim looked at me like I was nuts.
“Why would you name a dead mouse?” he asked. “Why would you name any mouse?” But it was the first animal we’d seen in eight years except for birds on the recreation yard, before the warden decided to hang plastic owls around that keep everything away
“I don’t know,” I said. “What should we do with it?”
Jim had been raised on a farm. “We’ll have to kill it quickly. Then we can throw it away.” He said it like it was no big deal.
“Well, should we give it something to eat? You know, sort of like a last meal. Something nice. And some water.” I went to my coat pocket where there was an open bag of corn chips. I broke one in half and lowered it into the bucket with in reach of Bob’s tiny mouth. He was scared and shaking and breathing fast. Jim returned quietly to his desk.
Bubba went and got a coffee jar lid and put some water in it from the bathroom. He dipped the eraser end of a pencil into it and lowered a few drops of water down to Bob. I wondered if he’d be able to pee with his underside stuck to the sticky trap like it was, so I said “That’s enough” to Bubba. He looked up at me and set the pencil and coffee lid on the table.
The library closed for lunch, so I slid Bob under the table that was against the wall in the corner. I looked to make sure the chip was still close to his head, and then slowly slid the bucket back against the wall. No guards would see him if they came in.
*
We all left the prison library building, pulled up our coat
collars against the cold wind, and returned to our cell
houses for count. When count cleared we filed out to lunch.
When they released us to go back to work, we rushed across
the yard and took the sidewalk that led to the library
building. The boss hadn’t unlocked the library yet, so we
stood outside in the cold.
“Hey, Tony did
ya work out during lunch?” Jim asked me.
“Yeah,” I answered. “I lifted a thousand pounds a thousand
times and ran a marathon. What did you do?”
Jim smiled. “Smartass.” Jim was always trying to prove he
was better than me, so it was fun to mess with him when he
did stupid stuff, which I guess made me just as bad. He
recently messed up a guy’s case because he missed a court
deadline. As inmate law clerks working in the prison law
library, our job was to help our fellow prisoners who
refused to give up their fight against the justice system,
even after they’d been convicted. We helped them find that
rare, tiny loophole that would get their case in front of a
judge just one more time. We weren’t lawyers and couldn’t
represent anyone, but we gave them all the ammunition they
needed and often carried them through the process.
We also helped angry convicts sue the prison system for
what they considered to be violations of their civil
rights. “What happened
with that guy in the hole who missed his deadline?” I asked
him, goading him further.
“I filed an
extension and we’re waiting to hear back,” Jim snarled.
“That idiot tried to sue the warden for five million bucks
because a couple of guards broke his crock pot during a
cell search. I told him it was a waste of time but he got
all pissed about his civil rights and cried about
destruction of private property. He doesn’t know what he’s
talking about. These guys get a hold of a twenty-year-old
law book and suddenly everybody’s a jailhouse lawyer.” Jim
was getting worked up, so I joined him.
“Yeah,” I said indignantly, “makes our job harder when they
think they know what they’re doing. When a guy two cells
down tells him he needs to sue the prison staff because his
Salisbury steak was cold. Then they screw up all the
paperwork and ask us for help. We take one look at it and
it’s hilarious. I mean, not only is it all wrong, but it’s
just stupid to begin with.”
“True,” Bubba said, “and then ya gotta help em at least a
little because you know those freaks are gonna get outta
the hole some day and come out here into general
population, lookin’ for ya.
“Nah, you can’t
worry about that, man.” Jim said. “Those morons are
self-destructive. Seems like they spend most of their time
in the hole. They don’t know any better. Suing the state
for cold food. Nobody ever wins those cases. They’re a
bunch of whiners.”
I glanced at Bubba.
“When I was growing up,” Jim continued, “we didn’t even
have a bathroom in the house. Had to walk to the shed out
back. Rain or snow, didn’t matter. You had to go you had to
go, you hear me?” We nodded and gave each other eye-rolling
glances when Jim looked away.
There was no talk of Bob the mouse. A nice little
distraction from our daily routine. I felt sorry for the
little guy. He was probably the only one stuck here who was
truly innocent. We certainly weren’t qualified to decide
his fate.
I regretted getting Jim started on his rant and felt
glad when I saw
the boss coming to let us in.
We went past the work stations in the main library and on
to the law clerks’ area in the back, separated from the
main library by a half-brick, half-glass wall with a door.
I slid Bob’s bucket out from under the table and thought he
looked comfortable. There were still some corn chip crumbs
and small pieces around his head. He looked at me and I
smiled. I left him there and went to my desk. We were going
to have to so something with him by the end of the day.
Bubba looked around and snuck over, pulled a chair next to
the bucket, and took a wad of toilet paper from his pocket.
He looked up and saw me watching. He looked over at Jim and
saw that his back was turned, so he unwrapped a small piece
of cheese and lowered it down into the bucket. He sat and
watched for a minute and went to his desk.
Immediately, T-Bone was in the chair lowering into the
bucket a pencil with a dab of peanut butter stuck to the
end. He held it there for a while. Jim looked over and
shook his head.
Tim went by, put a piece of bread crust in the bucket, and
kept moving. Bubba gave Bob a little more water from the
coffee jar led, then went to his work area.
I worked for about an hour and went over and sat next to
Bob. He just lay there breathing. Maybe he’d had too much
to eat. At least he had a proper last meal.
It was three o’clock. Half an hour and we’d be leaving for
the day. We couldn’t leave Bob there alive all night. He
wasn’t in a position where he could properly relieve
himself and probably needed to pretty bad about now.
Someone would have to kill him in the next twenty minutes.
Jim looked over with questioning eyebrows. I returned a
just perceptible nod. He went out to the main library and
when he returned holding a folded newspaper, the rest of us
were standing around the bucket looking down at the fragile
condemned creature.
Jim opened the paper and laid it on the floor. He reached
down, lifted the mousetrap and placed it on the paper. He
paused. Bubba left. Tim looked away. I watched in horror.
Here we are in prison. Many of us will be stuck
here for the rest of our lives. Who are
we to serve this mouse his last meal and oversee his
execution? What had he done wrong? His only mistake was
getting caught. But you could say that about some of us,
too.
I tried to think of Bob as just a mouse, but here, for a
little while, he’d been on death row like some of those
guys in the hole, trapped and bored and awaiting their
inevitable fate. Some of them I know have had two or three
last meals already. They were granted a stay of execution
just before they were scheduled to die. To me, that would
be worse than actually going through with it. Just do it
and get it over with. Why prolong the terrible anticipation
longer than necessary?
Jim positioned his right foot with the heel of his boot on
the paper beside the mouse’s head and quickly shifted his
weight forward. He cleaned up the mess and wiped his boot
and we left for the day. Back to our cells.
Copyright
2010 by Tony Klein