Steve Earle: A Death in Texas

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5:05 Reverend Brazzil answers his cell phone. It’s Father Walsh, who’s over at the Walls with Jon and wants the phone number, the one that Jon passed me through the . . . oh my God. I can’t find it. I was sure that I transferred the slip from my other jeans into my wallet when I changed clothes, but it’s simply not there. Dan runs to the motel and checks my room, but it’s hopeless. Reverend Brazzil relays the bad news to Father Walsh. I feel awful.

5:30 We arrive at the visitors’ center across the street from the Walls unit. Karen Sebung accompanies me as far as the waiting area, where we witnesses are searched, then Dona and Pam are escorted to another room by a female officer. When they return, a large man enters the room and introduces himself as an officer of the prison’s internal affairs division. If we should feel faint, he says, medical attention is available. He also warns us that anyone who in any way attempts to disrupt the "process," as he calls it, will be removed from the witness area immediately. Nothing about my body is working right. My feet and hands are cold and the side of my neck is numb.

5:55 The corrections officer returns. "Follow me, please." We walk across the street and through the front door of the old Gothic prison administration building. We turn left as soon as we enter and find ourselves in the waiting area of the governor’s office, where we are asked to wait once again. There are two reporters there. The other three members of the press pool, along with the victims’ family members, have already been escorted to the witness area, which is divided by a cinder block wall. The two sets of witnesses will never come in contact with each other.

6:00 We’re led through a visiting area similar to the one at Ellis, then out into the bright evening sun for a moment and turn left down a short sidewalk. Another left and we enter a small brick building built into the side of the perimeter wall. We enter the tiny room in single file. Father Walsh appears from somewhere inside the death chamber to join us. The reporters enter last, and the door is locked behind us. I can hear the reporters scratching on their notepads with their pencils. There is only room for three of us—Dona, me, and Pam—in the front row. Dona grabs my left hand and squeezes it hard. She already has tears in her eyes.

Jon is strapped to a hospital gurney with heavy leather restraints across his chest, hips, thighs, ankles, and wrists.

His arms are wrapped in Ace bandages and extended at his sides on boards. At either wrist, clear plastic tubes protrude from the wrappings, snaking back under the gurney and disappearing through a plastic tube set in a bright blue cinder block wall. I think I see movement behind the one-way glass mirror on the opposite wall—the executioner getting into position. Jon is smiling at us, his great neck twisted uncomfortably sideways. A microphone suspended from the ceiling hangs a few inches above his head. The speaker above our heads crackles to life and Jon speaks, craning his head around to see the victims’ witnesses in the room next door.

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