“Fuck your religion!” yelled an irate Polo, attempting to defend his stance in a one-sided debate with another inmate, Bob Cook, a professed Christian, though he never read the Bible. Not once. He never attempted to read it either. He possessed an NIV version that sat quietly on top of his rusted cell’s table, collecting dust. “All He was, was the original MGM magician – no better than David Copperfield!”
Polo was a celebrated and outspoken atheist and verbally strong-armed the one-sided debate about religion. Of course, Bob wouldn’t have anyone disrespecting his faith, his Jesus, whom he felt was God’s son, although he never totally understood the ‘how’ aspects within his beliefs. Bob was a typical, middle-aged, white Southerner with traditional Texan pride. He was short and round in stature, built in the mold of Barney Rubble from the Flintstones with hair as white as cotton and alopecia taking over the center of his head. He was a goodhearted guy and my neighbor for about three years. When you are held within the close quarters of Texas Death Row, in solitary cells 24 hours a day, you learn a lot about your neighbors. You get a better understanding of who they are.
I knew Bob well, perhaps better than anyone on the planet. He had a genuinely cuddly personality, always attentive to the needs of others more than his own. He was not one to argue and would often display dumbness when others were attempting to explain something asinine, just so the talker could get whatever it was they wanted to say off their chest.
He didn’t have much and lived on about 20 bucks a month. To put things in perspective, he didn’t have shit, but what he had – anyone who wanted it, could have. That was one of his flaws – he was too kind and an easy target to be taken advantage of. He was guilty of the crime that landed him on death row, though it could be contested that his crime did not fit the criteria for a death sentence. Nonetheless, he was riddled with remorse, often saying, “I’m going to hell.”
When I asked him why, he said the chaplain told him that the Bible said, “Thou shall not kill.” Texas death row chaplains carry no sway with me ever since one told me that my being executed was God’s will. I calmly told him, “Bullshit.”
I then took out my Bible and read several scriptures to Bob, leaning on my studies from when I was enrolled in theology classes. One reason why he never read the Bible was because he couldn’t. He was illiterate. I read to him about forgiveness, faith and salvation, which he appreciated, and in time he gained hope that he might have a chance to get to heaven.
Of course, ‘perfection’ has never been a Christian strong suit, Rome wasn’t built in a day and some dogs refuse to let go of old tricks. So when Bob had enough of Polo’s Christian diatribes, he declared “May Jesus Christ forgive me now for what I’m about to say. Fuck you, Polo!” and with that, he walked away from his cell’s door, steaming mad, and went to sit on his bunk.
Polo began to laugh at Bob’s parting cussing. His handsome and smooth caramel colored facial skin was shining like polished armor due to his overuse of commissary bought baby oil that he used daily. He liked the smell that reminded him of when he was a baby and being smothered with the loving hugs of his mother as he was held between her tender arms and her comfy bosom. He was thirty-two, and had been incarcerated more than he had been in the free world. He was arrested at the age of 15, held in the county jail until he was 17, and then sent to death row. He would be executed/murdered before the USSC’s decision to ban all executions of juvenile offenders. Like most youngsters who grew up around environmental dogma, he was rough around the edges, not cordial and trusted no one. He spoke in waves which often confused the listener as well as himself to some degree, because his ideologies were a perplexing mixed bag of black power, black militant-ism, Malcolm X-ism, Islamic beliefs that he adopted from others, and the scratch your head in utter disbelief performances he often acted out as he mimicked Bill Cosby’s Fat Albert show character with the line, “Hey, hey, hey, it’s Fat Albert!”
I often psychoanalyze people, trying to understand why they do the things they do. Polo, perhaps, still felt as if he was fifteen-years-old and living in a thirty-two-year-old body. Maturity never found an outlet within his mind in which to become liberated. His actions and attitude were a reflection of the way he thought – childlike. What else could you expect?
Polo stood alone in the middle of the section’s day room. No one stood at their cell’s door that he could argue with. Since arriving in the Polunsky Unit in 2000, group recreation, work programs, televisions, and any form of physical contact have been banned from the all-male branch of Texas Death Row. So he began the redundant activity that we all do when we find ourselves alone in the day room with no one to talk to – walking in circles. Consciously or unconsciously we lower our heads as if in shame and count in our minds the steps we take to make a full circle. One… two… three… four… five… It actually takes seventeen strides to complete a full circle in the dayroom. I watched Polo from a distance as I sat in my cell, counting along with him. It would be the last time I was to see Polo in the flesh – alive.
Texas death row inmates are housed in a building called Twelve Building. It’s encased inside electrical razor wired fencing. On some mornings you can see the dead carcass of a stray cat or dog that didn’t get the memo about not touching the fence. Did these creatures not see one of the several bright yellow postings that warn, ‘Electrical Shocking Fence. DO NOT TOUCH’? Mayhap the animals were illiterate too.
There are six pods within Twelve Building, each lettered either A, B, C, D, E or F. Within each pod are six sections, also lettered A, B, C, D, E or F. Each of the six sections can hold fourteen cells for fourteen inmates. Each man is alone, twenty four hours a day.
Inmates communicate by yelling loudly at the guy they are trying to have a civil conversation with. Though in a normal setting, yelling to obtain a civil conversation is indeed madness in nature. Ninety percent of the cells leak when it rains, some more than others. Black mold has run amuck within every cell on death row. The building was cheaply designed and constructed, and the infrastructure is weak and crumbling. Fighting spiders, mosquitoes and other critters is a daily chore.
The failures of the infrastructure are so timely and repetitive that one can’t help but assume there is a conspiracy going on, because nothing works as it should here. Every year during the summer, the water is going to get cut off for a day or two straight. There won’t be fresh water to drink, no water to shower with and no water to flush the accumulated shit and piss that will idly stew. And let me tell you, once the sun’s rays bake this concrete building’s back wall, the structure becomes an oven, causing any religion you thought you had to get temporarily thrown out the window due to the foul odor. If anyone asks us if we are comfortable or okay at that point – they are often greeted with the same aggravated, “Muther fucker, what do you think?”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR. Charles “Chucky” Mamou is living on Death Row in Texas. His last appeal has been denied and he maintains his innocence.
He can be contacted at:
Charles Mamou #999333
Polunsky Unit 12-CD-53
3872 South FM 350
Livingston, TX 77351
More than happy to oblige my ‘peers’, the Judge took all of sixty seconds to pronounce my fate. I already knew the sentence would be death, just as I had known the verdict would be guilty. “May God have mercy on your soul,” he concluded, before banging his gavel in an authoritatively dismissive manner, almost god-like himself.
Dammit! This heat! Sweat pours. The prison uniform I’m in is soaked. Sweat drops into my eyes, stinging me further. I squint and try to collect myself, so I can focus on the task at hand.
On July 19, 2018, my last appeal was denied. Not on the merits of actual guilt, for my case on appeal has never been argued orally. In fact, a recent study by the Houston Law Review cited my case and others for the opprobrious “rubber stamping” policy that Harris County and the southern appellate courts use.
June 29, 1999. I was brought to Harris County from Louisiana to face capital murder charges after I refused the 20 year plea deal offered by Detective Bob King, an acting agent of the DA. Why would I accept a plea deal when I wasn’t guilty and the police had suspects in custody they wanted me to testify against for the plea deal? Above all, I wasn’t a lying ass snitch, testifying to ‘whatever’ to avoid getting charged – unlike others.
…August 17, 2018. I have walked and counted eighty-eight full circles while contemplating my situation, which seems so surreal. Sometimes I wish it was as easy as John McClane made it seem as he stood bare foot, bleeding, bruised and scarred on top of Nakatomi Plaza screaming, “Yippee ki-yay, muther fuckers!” The good guys stood triumphantly for justice and made sure it rang loud and true.
One evening we all got together and headed out to Lover’s Lane, a secluded area on the countryside popular for its fishing. Cloudless skies enriched our spirits while songbirds chirped at our arrival. Uncle Kenny went off to search for snakes, believing they hung out in good fishing spots. My brother, Ray, was tasked to keep near my mom to unhook and rebait her rod. Grandma tended to my cousin, Teeka, and I as we settled around the creek with our poles.
I was grinning before Grandma even touched down, thinking, ‘That’s what her mean self gets.’
Then, out from beneath the steel counter crawled an adorable, yet furtive, tot. She wore a teddy bear t-shirt, fluffed trousers, and her plaits were fastened with assorted hair bows. She whirled around to study me with cinnamon eyes that held me in their gaze. A subtle smile crept along her face before I watched her struggle to climb onto the seat, defiant of her pintsized stature. There was a fearlessness, a result of her naïveté, which left me feeling intimidated. I searched my thoughts for an explanation, but they only gave way to guilt. Her confusion was marked by an arched brow as the discomforting silence increased. She then rocked on her haunches, squared her shoulders and declared, “Hi. I’m Caleiyah, and you’re my granddaddy.”
As I began to reflect, the silence became revealing. I noticed things I would’ve missed under other circumstances. My senses adapted with a sense of urgency. I knew the van’s muffler had to be busted because it made a hissing and popping noise every 45 seconds or whenever we slowed down and sped up again. I noticed when the driver loudly belched twice and gave a hearty laugh. Then he gave a doughy chuckle while he lifted his butt off the seat and released a silent fart that was ferociously smelly. Whatever he ate must’ve had a lot of onions in it. His partner gave him a displeased sideways look before he cracked his window, allowing the funk to exit.
They took my chains and handcuffs off without a care of me attacking them. The guards seemed comfortable around the convicted, as if they’d accepted the idea that they were simply ‘inmates’ too, except they were getting paid to be there. Or their ease could’ve been due to the guard towers that held gunmen inside with their rifles aimed at me, ready to shoot with any sign of a snafu that I might cause.
He would go on to ask me a bunch of questions that he fed into his computer. Questions like, “With a name like Mamou, what, you Muslim?” pronouncing the ‘s’ like a swarm of ‘z’s, in an effort to insult the religion.
As a kid my father’s father used to pick me up every Saturday morning to go get a haircut from the ‘brutal barber’, Mr. Plumbar. He had a reputation of using a straight razor on little boys’ heads, then slapping alcohol across the cuts he had made when he was done. Young boys feared getting a haircut from him, and older fathers and grandfathers brought their young boys to him to prove that their sons were brave.
My neighbors and I have one very large thing in common. In the name of security, prison officials have stripped us of every ounce of our dignity. In spite of that bond – we all know better than to get too close to one another. Each one of is here to be executed. We may not have execution dates – yet – but the possibility looms large with every court ruling, every denied appeal and every date set for one of our neighbors.
ABOUT THE WRITER. Travis Runnels, is a published author, and is currently working on his second novel. He lives on Death Row.