Rene

“Hunter,” a guard shoved mail through my cell bars.

No one knows I’m here, I thought, as I glanced at the unfamiliar name and return address on the envelope.

Yesterday morning, I had been in the county jail and attended court for a pretrial hearing.

“Need to push back the trial date,” my lead attorney stated bluntly, he knew he was in for an argument.

My death sentence had been overturned a year ago, and I had been in the county jail the entire time awaiting trial. Locked inside 23 hours a day with no chance to go outside to breathe fresh air or soak in the sun during the one hour out of cell time each day, I felt myself turning gray, fading away, so I felt rebellious about the prospect of more jail time.

“How much more time?” I bit off each word.

“September.”

“That’s five more months,” I exclaimed. “I’l1 lose another summer.”

“If we want a good result,” my attorney argued, “you need to let me prepare properly for trial.”

“No.” I shook my head. “I’m not waiving time.”

“If you don’t want to go back to death row,” my attorney rasped harshly, “you need to listen to me.”

“No, you listen to me,” I shot back. “I’l1 waive time if the judge agrees to sign an order sending me back to San Quentin. Transport me back here when you’re ready for trial.”

“Penal Code 4005 allows pretrial detainees to be housed in state prison for the safety and security of the jail,” my attorney said thoughtfully. ‘But you’ll be housed in the hole not on death row.”

“Get me back to the Q, I’ll take care of my housing.”

The judge signed the order, I waived time, and the next morning at 5am I was on my way back to San Quentin. Not enough time to let anyone out in the unbarred world know I was gone from the jail.

When I hit San Quentin, I was warehoused right back on death row. Although my property was still in storage until I attended classification committee, my buddies hooked me up with a radio, coffee, and some food. Now, just a few hours later, a letter was coming through my cell bars.

The letter was from Rene who was taking a college class and writing a paper about Dave Mason, a friend of mine, who had waived his federal appeal and allowed his execution to go forward. Rene had read an essay I’d written about Dave and how an embrace of death could be attractive to a condemned prisoner, and she had some questions. Pretty much I try to answer every letter that comes to me since the goal is communication. Besides, Dave was dead, so nothing I said could hurt him. I borrowed some paper, pen, answered every question, and tossed my words out into the world and never expected to hear from Rene again.

Rene wrote back, thanked me, asked more questions, and I wrote again. Letters led to phone calls. Rene spoke in a quick, animated voice that at first I had trouble following. At most I caught one word out of every three or so and had to keep asking her to slow down, and then she’d burst out laughing in an infectious, mischievous way and that made her even harder to understand, but I always left the phone call smiling and looking forward to the next one. We did not exchange photos and Rene was not my girlfriend; my girlfriend was Lynn, a librarian on the San Francisco peninsula who I saw nearly every weekend.

This was an exciting time for me. Not only had my death sentence been overturned, No Quarter, my first novel-length manuscript had been optioned by a Los Angeles movie producer. A screenplay had been written, and if the film was made a publisher had agreed to release my book. While I waited to go back to court, I started work on my second novel, Just Jail.

September came and went and I did not return to the jail for trial while my attorney sought more time to prepare, and I was on death row for another entire year hanging with my hoodlum friends, soaking up sunshine, seeing Lynn on weekends, and I finished Just Jail and mailed it to my literary agency.

The week I returned to the county jail, Lynn broke up with me with really no explanation and moved to Oregon. Breakups are tough, one just before a death penalty trial was kind of brutal.

I phoned Rene from the county jail and let her know about Lynn. Rene was really angry with Lynn, and oddly I found myself defending Lynn, saying relationships are challenging enough and one with someone who had spent nearly two decades on death row is probably impossible.

I started phoning Rene everyday before trial, and she sent me a photo of herself for the very first time. Blonde, dancing green eyes, she was gorgeous. She was my lifeline, she kept me going over the next six months through pretrial motions and trial. The jury came back with life without possibility of parole, and I was sentenced and sent back to death row to await transfer.

Rene flew to San Francisco and then on to San Quentin to see me. When I saw her, I realized the photo had only revealed her surface beauty. Rene gathered light, sparkling like a deeply faceted diamond. Hugging me, she said fiercely with a piercing look in her clear eyes, “Don’t ever settle! You settled with Lynn, and don’t settle with me. You are someone who deserves to be loved and be in love. Don’t you dare settle!”

From that moment on, Rene was no longer my good friend; she was simply mine. I wrote to Rene everyday. When I transferred to Salinas Valley Prison, she travelled every other weekend to see me.

Insightful, she would describe in eerily accurate detail aspects of Dave’s personality, someone I’d known for years but she had never met but simply studied. Athletic, she kick boxed, and also had a background in dance. While we waited in line in the visiting room to buy lunch, I’d take her hand and spin her around and around and she’d happily giggle.

But my best memories are when we sat closely together, and I could feel her heartbeat, her every breath, we would whisper for hours inside an intimate bubble filled with good intentions and love. Time would fly by, and I felt strong, confident simply because I was near her.

The option ran out on my movie deal without any filming, the book was dead as well, and my literary agency let my agreement lapse without renewal. I was writing for only a few dollars a month for a street sheet sold by the homeless on the New York subway. Rene asked me why I continued to write for almost nothing when she would take care of anything that I needed. I told her I had a commitment to the project, the editors published everything I sent them and placed great artwork with my stories. I loved the paper. Rene said okay in a dubious tone and I could tell she wished I wouldn’t write anymore.

After a couple years, I transferred to Pleasant Valley Prison, the street sheet folded, so I enrolled in the college program and Rene generously bought my textbooks. I wrote scores of college papers on my way to my two year degree, but no longer for publication.

I had an appeal going in California Appellate Court asserting prosecutorial misconduct, the same issue that had led to my first retrial, and the three-judge panel had asked for additional briefings, so I had hopes I might soon be returning to court and maybe a life with Rene outside of prison.

Rene lived in a townhouse and almost all the residents had several decades before converted their garages into dens. The city said the conversions were illegal and threatened litigation if they weren’t converted back into garages. Since she had to have construction done anyway, Rene decided to have a new kitchen installed along with other renovations. Months and then a year went by without a visit from Rene, as she essentially babysat her house as the construction workers came and went and the work went on and on.

My appeal was denied. One of the three judges wrote that clearly misconduct had taken place, but deemed the misconduct harmless. Harmless error: the judicial eraser that wipes away misdeeds.

“Honey,” Rene said to me on the phone, “with all the work going on here your letters are just in the way and I have to keep moving them from room to room. Is it okay if I throw them away?”

“Sure,” I said uneasily.

Soon after, I phoned, Rene accepted the call and told me to wait for a minute. She was gone for five minutes before she finally clicked back, a substantial amount of time in a call limited to just fifteen minutes, so I was alarmed, and asked, “What was that all about?”

“None of your business,” she snapped.

“Okay,” I said neutrally, face turning red.

“I was just ordering pants,” she explained casually.

“Couldn’t you have just called them back?”

“I didn’t want to,” she said curtly.

This seemed crazy to me, Rene was the woman who used to panic if my call was even a few minutes late, and then would anxiously ask, “When can you call again?” Her casual off-hand attitude stunned me, and I felt like a seventh grade boy wanting to yell at an indifferent girl, “Why don’t you love me?!”

But I didn’t yell, I just felt humbled and sad. I missed her so much, seemed like eons since her last visit. There are only a few things I know for sure, and one thing I had known for years was that Rene was my bliss, but now she seemed to be slipping away.

Out of the blue, Angel wrote me and urged me to start writing again for a blog, MINUTES BEFORE SIX, after my seven year absence from the engaging arena of written ideas.

“What do you think about me writing again?” I asked Rene on the phone.

“NO,” she said sharply.

“This isn’t like the newspapers and magazines I wrote for before when I had to deal with editors. I’d be able to write anything I want. I think it’s good opportunity.”

“I don’t want you writing.”

“It’s not just essays,” I argued. “I spent almost a year of my life writing my novel, No Quarter, about San Quentin’s death row. I could have it digitized and placed on iBooks, give it a chance to be read.”

“I don’t want you to do it,” she cut me off.

After thinking it over for a couple of weeks, I told Rene I was going ahead with the writing project. In response, Rene told me she wanted my four box writing file with all my articles, essays, manuscripts out of her townhouse right away and demanded 120 dollars to ship it. I sent 275 stamps and she sent it on to my lawyer.

While I started writing for MINUTES BEFORE SIX, my birthday and Christmas passed by without cards from Rene.

I didn’t phone for a while to give her space and hoped she’d come around and support my writing.

When I finally phoned, she said she’d found MINUTES BEFORE SIX on the internet, and she’d read several of my new stories.

I felt great, thought maybe she was coming around. After all, anger doesn’t kill off relationships as thoroughly as apathy.

“I read First Week. I don’t like it when you write about me,” she complained bitterly and my hope ended.

“I’m just trying to write about my experiences,” I tried to explain, “and you are a major part of them.”

“I don’t like it. Stop!”

Silence reigned for a few heartbeats before I asked, “Do you want me to call again?”

After a long pause, Rene in a very soft almost inaudible voice said, “Yes.”

Weeks went by as I wrote new stories, edited No Quarter, and simply dealt with the day-to-day drama of maximum-security prison.

When I phoned Rene accepted the call and said in a distant matter-of-fact voice, “I didn’t think your call would ring through. I didn’t transfer any money into the long distance account.”
I almost asked, “Why not?” But I knew why not, she didn’t want to hear from me anymore.

Rene seemed brittle, all surface, no longer the deeply thoughtful woman I had come to know and adore. So we filled the fifteen minutes by simply chatting like a couple of friendly acquaintances about her family, and I didn’t mention anything about my latest writing.

At the end of the call, I said almost involuntarily, “I love you.”

Rene was quiet but then simply said good-bye.

The phone call and our relationship was over

-The End-