The Bazaar of Bad Dreams

‘Life can be good. It can be worth fighting for.’

‘Some lives, I’m sure. Not mine. But I admire the way you’ve fought for it, just the same. I appreciate your dedication. So I’m going to tell you what I wouldn’t say in court. And why I’ve refused to make any of the usual appeals … although I couldn’t stop you from making them for me.’

‘Appeals made without the appellant’s participation don’t swing much weight in this state’s courts. Or the higher ones.’

‘You’ve also been very good about visiting me, and I appreciate that too. Few people would show kindness to a convicted child murderer, but you have to me.’

Once again, Bradley could think of no reply. Hallas had already said more in the last ten minutes than in all their visits over the last thirty-four months.

‘I can’t pay you anything, but I can tell you why I killed that child. You won’t believe me, but I’ll tell you, anyway. If you want to hear.’

Hallas peered through the holes in the scratched Plexiglas and smiled.

‘You do, don’t you? Because you’re troubled by certain things. The prosecution wasn’t, but you are.’

‘Well … certain questions have occurred, yes.’

‘But I did it. I had a forty-five revolver and I emptied it into that boy. There were plenty of witnesses, and surely you know that the appeals process would simply have dragged out the inevitable for another three years – or four, or six – even if I had participated fully. The questions you have pale before the bald fact of premeditated murder. Isn’t that so?’

‘We could have argued diminished mental capacity.’ Bradley leaned forward. ‘And that’s still possible. It’s not too late, even now. Not quite.’

‘The insanity defense is rarely successful after the fact, Mr Bradley.’

He won’t call me Len, Bradley thought. Not even after all this time. He’ll go to his death calling me Mr Bradley.

‘Rarely isn’t the same as never, George.’

‘No, but I’m not crazy now and I wasn’t crazy then. I was never more sane. Are you sure you want to hear the testimony I wouldn’t give in court? If you don’t, that’s fine, but it’s all I have to give.’

‘Of course I want to hear,’ Bradley said. He picked up his pen, but ended up not making a single note. He only listened, hypnotized, as George Hallas spoke in his soft mid-South accent.

2

My mother, who was healthy all her short life, died of a pulmonary embolism six hours after I was born. This was in 1969. It must have been a genetic defect, because she was only twenty-two. My father was eight years older. He was a good man and a good dad. He was a mining engineer, and worked mostly in the Southwest until I was eight.

A housekeeper traveled around with us. Her name was Nona McCarthy, and I called her Mama Nonie. She was black. I suppose he slept with her, although when I slipped into her bed – which I did on many mornings – she was always alone. It didn’t matter to me, one way or the other. I didn’t know what black had to do with anything. She was good to me, she made my lunches and read me the usual bedtime stories when my father wasn’t home to do it, and that was all that mattered to me. It wasn’t the usual setup, I suppose I knew that much, but I was happy enough.

In 1977 we moved east to Talbot, Alabama, not far from Birmingham. That’s an army town, Fort John Huie, but also coal country. My father was hired to reopen the Good Luck mines – One, Two, and Three – and bring them up to environmental specifications, which meant breaking ground on new holes and designing a disposal system that would keep the waste from polluting the local streams.

We lived in a nice little suburban neighborhood, in a house the Good Luck Company provided. Mama Nonie liked it because my father turned the garage into a two-room apartment for her. It kept the gossip down to a dull roar, I suppose. I helped him with the renovations on weekends, handing him boards and such. That was a good time for us. I was able to go to the same school for two years, which was long enough to make friends and get some stability.

One of my friends was the girl next door. In a TV show or a magazine, we would have ended up sharing our first kiss in a treehouse, falling in love, and then going to the junior prom together when we finally made it to high school. But that was never going to happen to me and Marlee Jacobs.

Daddy never led me to believe we’d be staying in Talbot. He said there was nothing meaner than encouraging false hopes in a child. Oh, I might go to Mary Day Grammar School through the fifth grade, might even through the sixth, but eventually his Good Luck would run out and we’d be moving on. Maybe back to Texas or New Mexico; maybe up to West Virginia or Kentucky. I accepted this, and so did Mama Nonie. My dad was the boss, he was a good boss, and he loved us. Just my opinion, but I don’t think you can do much better than that.