Eric Bogosian Reads a Second Excerpt from “LIVE! From Texas Death Row!” by Christopher Best
Eric Bogosian reads a second excerpt from Christopher Best's “LIVE! From Texas Death Row!”, first-place winner for essay writing in PEN's 2005 Prison Writing Contest, at the 2009 event Breakout: Voices from Inside. Read the excerpt below.
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Down the run, Barney wants to talk about his French girlfriend. He met her through the penpal service of the French Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty.… Barney reads me a portion of her latest letter: “We’re all afraid of Bush. We know that—just like Hitler—we’re going to be at war all the time.”
“Come on, Barn,” I interupted him. “What’s the deal with the French?”
“They take everything personally.” he answered. “They don’t see current events in terms of politics. They don’t even see politics in terms of politics. They don’t see the death penalty, or war in terms of public policy. Instead, they turn everything inward. They ask themselves, ‘What does so-and-so or this-and-that mean to me?’”
“And Marie told you this?” I asked.
“Not really, in so many words, but I figured it out.… Hey, that’s why she’s French. That’s why the French are French.” There you have it: 800 years of French attitude explained in five minutes by Barney on Texas death row.
[…]
When the Abu Ghraib story broke, Bush said, “That’s not how we do things in America.” A few years ago, before I came to the underbelly, I’d agree. Then I came to the Texas pen. I never thought about any of this stuff when I was free. Like most Americans, I was too busy to take our institutions personally.
I never took notice of the 1996 TV images, when Governor Bush was running things, of the training tape made in Brazoria County … of the naked inmates forced to lie on the ground while attack dogs were set loose on them. The guards … told the prisoners to crawl on their knees while they kicked them and prodded them with electrical batons. Bush never said a word.
I’ve seen plenty … and heard … horror stories. Not only do we do Abu Ghraib things in America, it is standard operational procedure.… Shortly after the war on terror began, and after ordering the bombing of Afghanistan, President Bush wrote to his father: “I feel no burden of the office.” I take it to mean he does not take war nor anything else personally. Facing death every day in Texas prisons, I have to take war personally. Do any of us have a choice?
[…]
Death-row inmate Harvey … tells me about his fatherless home, where his mom worked two convenience-store jobs, mostly to support her boyfriend’s drug habit. She was hardly ever at home: her boyfriend rarely left. Home was a clapboard shack in Houston’s fifth ward. Harvey hated school because he didn’t fit in and he didn’t have the cool clothes other kids wore.
It all changed for him when he fell in with a certain group, a certain gang.… Harvey says they truly cared about him. They took him cruising in a convertible. They stole a gold chain for him. People started looking at Harvey in a different way. They respected him. His new friends bought him some fly clothes and colors. They gave him spending money. For the first time in his life Harvey belonged to something, to someone.
After a year of riding with them, Harvey was pulled aside to “kick it” with the gang’s leader. He told Harvey, “You been with us a good while, man.… We ain’t never asked you to do one thing. We take care of you, though, am I right? Yeah, well, now we need you to take care of us. It's your turn, Harvey. You gotta do one thing, that's all.” He gave Harvey a gun. They both played with it for a while, doing the macho ritual to each other. Then Harvey was told who to shoot, where, and when, “Unless you want out.” The leader put the gun to his own head and laughed. Then he put it to Harvey’s head.
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