GANGSTER PRIDE

GANGSTER PRIDE

by Chaplain Rebecca Lewis

     I stood outside the hospital room and greeted the officers sitting outside at the door guarding the high profile patient.  There was a middle room to pass through before actually entering his room  I stepped just inside and paused.  It seemed surreal, me standing in the dark room looking through into the brighter room housing the most notorious gangster in America.  His bed was framed by the door and it was almost like looking at some painting. It was a small room on the upper floor, but his bed was aligned by a huge window.  He lay on the freshly starched white sheeted bed with the light from the window streaming like a spotlight into the room. No color.  Light, with no gold's, reds, or blues or greens.  Just various shades of grey.  Strangely it symbolized to me what his life had become as he lay there, his still breathing body a symbol of a life who had wrecked death and destruction on others.  He was no longer the swaggering, well dressed powerful man he had been years ago in his prime.  He had owned the streets.  A man who had once ordered the death of many, now had been silenced by the disease that had attacked his vocal chords. He could not order death around this time. Death was in charge.

     He lay in the stillness like a photo capturing time, his head turned, starring out, lost in his thoughts.  Weeks earlier he had arrogantly challenged the system housing him, blowing up to a chaplain from his own religious tradition.  Why was he kept segregated from the main population? he had challenged arrogantly.  He knew his only true power came from his influence and the validation he got from the minions and the masses sold out to his handouts and protection he gave them.  Without them, he was only a man.  When told it was for his own safety he, clothed in his baggy orange jump suit, a far cry from the designer suits once worn, blurted out viciously, 

"MY protection?  People need to be protected from me!"  

     Something in his manner must have scared that chaplain.  With no disrespect intended, he was a timid guy anyway and I always wondered how he survived working in a federal prison without being suckered and used up by the more acutely savvy cons.  He reported the incident, but he never visited him again. 

     Now the gangster was dying.  I entered the room in this moment of his true vulnerability, obviously an encounter set up by God. He turned his head slowly and looked at me.  There was no arrogance today.  I was meeting the real man.  His eyes were sad, distant, still lost in his thoughts. He didn't want to come back inside the room, wanting to stay in the freedom of his mind, probably able to move freely and be surrounded and loved by his family.  Yes even the bad guys have people who love them.  These things are the things that make for happiness.  Too late, perhaps he was realizing that.  But maybe not.  These guys have created their own reality. And their rationalizations have become truth to them, making admitting mortality alien to them. 

     I introduced myself as the duty chaplain.  The presence of God was what I had to offer.  I told him I was praying for him and his family and that I knew it must be hard on them not being able to be around him while he was so sick.  He nodded slightly and quietly thanked me.  I don't remember the prayer. Did I even say one?   

     I left, greeting once again the armed officers who were guarding the man.  Even in his fragile state he had enemies and friends that would have risked getting at their charge.  Their stress was reduced by the presence of God too, and they momentarily were able to smile as I joke with them on my way out.

     I've thought of that scene often over the years  Did I miss an opportunity to once again present Christ to this man?  All I know is I also keep hearing the echo of his arrogant words to the other chaplain, "My protection?  People need to be protected from me!", ringing in my ears.  These are not the words of a man who will have a death bed conversion.  I had prayed for direction when I entered the room.  What I had said was all I was suppose to say.  I only imagine if on this earth he didn't get things right with God, that his arrogance and posturing will not deter judgment.  I will always wonder.  I think I know.  But only in eternity are the results of a man's life tallied. 

DEAD WOMAN WALKING

Dead Woman Walking

by Rebecca Lewis

She was turning  tricks at age eleven.  She didn't have to hide it from her mother.  It was her mother that had turned her out.  It was a strange form of child abuse, and it had the same result most kids experience when a parent is the source of their pain.  They try to please them. Somehow they reason it's not the abusers fault, it must be theirs.  She brought in a lot of money.  It paid the bills.  It paid for the drugs.  She contributed to the family.  But she lost her childhood.  By her early twenties she had done it all and now had found a pseudo love with a local hit man.

     Then it all came tumbling down. Her mother died.  Emotional anger unreconciled, her mother became deified in her mind, the ugly betrayal of motherhood pushed into oblivion.  When in a fit of anger a male friend rips up the last picture of her mother, she concocts revenge against him.  In the dead of night she and her hit man boyfriend break into the offenders apartment to steal his beloved motorcycle he keeps inside.  The plans go wrong. They had miscalculated, thinking he was out for the night.  He wasn't.  A fight ensues.  The hit man takes a climbers pickax found in the corner of the bedroom and plants it in the man.  Leaving the man dead on the floor, her boyfriend exits the bedroom and the girl enters the room to steal valuables.  A sudden movement at the end of the bed under the covers startles her.  Motorcycle man's girlfriend had visited on the wrong night. The drugged out avenging girl engages her in a fight, while calling for her boyfriend  He enters and kills the girls with the pickax leaving it embedded in her chest. He again leaves the room, but motorcycle man's girlfriend begins to gurgle as the blood seeps into her mouth from her lungs.  The young dark haired prostitute takes the pickax and buries it again in her chest. The gurgling stops.  So does the life of the young eleven turned twenty something drugged out victim of a worthless mother.  She got the death penalty.

     But it doesn't end yet.  Throughout years of waiting for trial, the actual trial, the death sentence and the wait for the execution date, her life now free of drugs ad men, she was able to see clearly.  Some call it jailhouse religion, a bargaining chip for reprieve from the needle.  She served the Lord while on trial and while on death row.  She saved two of her fellow dead women walking cohorts from ending their own lives.  She testified to guards and did community service making dolls for abused children.  But she never asks for reprieve. Others were asking for her, even the judge that sentenced her.

     Her take on her situation?  She said she deserved the sentence of death.  It was just.  She'd take the reprieve if it came and be a witness for the rest of her life in prison if given the chance.  But she'd leave that up to God.  But her time came and the governor refused to commute her sentence to life.

     I didn't get involved in her last days.  I didn't write letters to add to the pile going to the Governor.  I had played a part in her early discipleship while she was locked up in the county jail, and I had visited her on death row.  I, like her, figured that was all in God's hands.

     She gave me one of her dolls when I saw her last on death row.  It had a full smile on it's face, just like she always did those days.  And it wasn't fake.  A day before the execution I called the chaplain there and told her to tell her I'd see her in heaven. I have no doubt I will.