When I land at Houston Intercontinental Airport, Dwight, Roger’s brother-in- law, is there as promised; he welcomes me with a bear hug and a big smile. On the way up to Livingston, 50 miles northeast of Houston, dazed and not really in the mood to speak much, I’m relieved to notice that he is no big talker himself, he’s perfectly happy to drive while listening to the gospel radio station.

I stay at the Hampton Inn (great hotel, wonderful people, so kind and helpful), and after I had a two-day rest, the hotel reception lady drives me to the Polunsky Unit. She drops by a convenience store to get some quarters that will allow me to buy food for Roger from the vending machines at the prison.

The security at Polunsky is tight, they make me take off my coat, sweater, shoes, I’m allowed to take only 20 dollars in quarters, two paper handkerchiefs, and a comb in a see-through plastic bag. Outside the entrance building I meet a friendly woman who walks with me to the visitor’s area, about 100 meters from the entrance; two GP inmates (general population, prisoners that are not on death row) are tending the rose bushes and greet us, smiling. The woman shows me where the death row buildings are, to the far left, I can see the small horizontal openings they call windows. It’s still very early; only a few visitors are already there in the visitor’s room, waiting for their inmate. Irene, the Salvation Army lady, is there like every morning. She will spend the entire day there, visiting inmates who have nobody, no family, and no friends. She has spent every day of every week there for many years. We chat a bit. An elderly German gentleman tells me he’s been visiting death row inmates in California and Arizona for a whole month already. I am overcome by a deep sense of unreality, this has got to be the strangest place on earth, that mixture of friendliness, these visitors feel almost like family, the lady officer in charge of the visitors’ area is very kind and helpful, and yet this is a house of death…

The death row inmates begin to trickle in, finally Roger is here… a bit sleepy still, and cold, so cold, he has put on all the clothes he has, but very soon he smiles, and then it’s like the sun is breaking through, the walls, the glass partition that separates visitors from prisoners, everything melts away. We pick up the phones on each side of the glass wall and press the other hand on the glass, that’s how we greet each other.

He looks good; the twenty pounds he lost in the last few weeks leave no mark on his face. He tells me he’s lost muscle tissue mostly. He hasn’t been able to exercise for at least four months; first he had an arm injury from pulling a muscle while exercising, and then six weeks of lockdown (See [Polunsky][16]). [16]: polunsky_unit.html (Polunsky Unit) Because of his diabetes, Roger must always eat candy bars after physical exertion to make his sugar level go up, and because of the lockdown he can’t buy any, and the food they get Is barely enough to keep them alive. After a few weeks of lockdown, most inmates begin to let some of the “meals” pass them by, they simply can’t bear to eat another peanut butter sandwich…Occasionally they also get a potato still covered with mud, raw from the fields within the complex… they eat it, happy to have something else for a change…

There is an execution scheduled for today, the last of a horrifying long list these last weeks. It’s “Blockier”… he sits a couple of booths to Roger’s right. I can’t see him but I see his wife. They leave a while later for a last contact visit.

During the first two days of our visit (twice four hours), bit by bit, the full extent of the horror of the past six weeks becomes clear. The lockdown that had just ended a couple of days before I arrive and during which no visits were allowed, has resumed the day before yesterday (two new cell phones have been found, one in the GP and one on DR, death row, only DR is punished). On the day before the first visit, there was a shakedown, again, the third in the last couple of weeks. During a shakedown, all the cells are emptied, all the personal possessions of the inmate are controlled, and many things get confiscated or destroyed, in defiance of the law. The inmates had to wait six hours in their underwear in the freezing cold while their cells and what was left over of their personal property after the other shakedowns were being ransacked.

The whole time I was in Texas, the outside temperature was between 22 and 26 degrees C, but on DR they turn the air-conditioning to the coldest temperature possible. Roger saw some ice forming on a wall… And during the night, when the outside temp drops to just above the freezing point, the inmates lie under their too thin and too small blanket, rolled into as tight a ball as possible to conserve some body heat, and in the morning they wait as long as they can before getting up, because when they do, all the warmth will be gone. There is no way to replace that heat, no bodily exercise, no warm food, no warm drink, nothing.

During the shakedowns, Roger’s radio has been confiscated, his thermal underwear as well, his glasses have been broken, his type writer has been taken apart and put back together again, but he won’t know if it still works until he’s been able to buy new ribbons.

The encyclopedia he’s had for ten to fifteen years has been torn apart. It means that very soon it will be confiscated as well (inmates are not allowed to possess a torn book…). I tell him I will send him a new one; it’s done, ordered from amazon.com yesterday. He’s glad, because he loves reading that, learning about all kinds of things. We discover that we’re both fact freaks, I blow him away by knowing things about America he didn’t know, and in turn he amazes me by knowing so much about Erich Fromm, Carl Jung as well as about history and geography.

He was able to pick up the sound of four different TV stations on his radio, which he greatly enjoyed listening mostly to the news and quiz shows, which he wins hands down he knows all the answers. He hopes to be able to order a new radio soon; he really misses listening to the news. As I watch CNN in my hotel room when I’m not resting, I tell him some of the news; he wants to know what Obama is doing, the people he’s choosing for his transition team and for the future cabinet. We’re happy to hear the new Attorney General, Eric Holder, is a man who is clearly against the death penalty.

On the second day, Friday, he’s hoping the lockdown will be over by next Monday, because they had an almost “normal” meal the night before. We have a very animated conversation, lots of laughter. Suddenly Roger points to the wooden board on his side of the glass partition, he shows me some names carved in the soft wood, probably with the lip of a soda can… Blackie and his wife’s name… We realize we’re sitting where they had been sitting yesterday… A while later, the German man stops by for a little chat and tells us he has been to the execution vigil in Huntsville the night before… yes, Blackie has been killed, no stay… (a “stay” is a 30-day reprieve from execution during which some last appeals can be filed).

When I arrive on Monday morning for the last two hours of our visit, Roger is not doing well…they found a new way to make their lives miserable during the week-end. Not only the lockdown is not over, this morning early they have begun to weld all the holes in the cells. At first, I think it means there will be less water flooding the cells… but no… there are many holes in the walls between the cells, and the inmates talk to each other through them, sometimes they give each other small things, a scrap of food, a tea bag, things like that. Now they will be even more isolated, only able to speak through the small opening in the cell doors.

During our visit today, the holes of his cell are being welded, which means that Roger had to choose between having his mattress full of soot and messed up beyond repair, or putting it on the floor and risking it becoming wet if there is rain… he decides that would be the lesser evil. His cell has been taking water for the last six months each time it’s raining. It means that all his meagre belongings, stowed under his bunk, get wet and mouldy. He spends a good part of each day trying to dry things up with his towel. After I leave that last morning, I see some puddles on the pavement, there was a brief rain shower during our visit.

Because the whole complex has been very poorly built on wetlands, every time there are major changes in the terrain, heavy rains followed by a long dry period, for example, the grounds shift and the buildings crack all over. Roger estimates that at least 50% of the cells take water, that’s why he decided not to ask for another cell. Also, he likes his neighbours, and it’s a relatively quiet section of DR.

As nothing is done to repair the building, the inmates have found a very ingenious way to try and fix at least the worst of the holes through which the rain seeps in: they save up the tiny soap bars they’re given each week, shave them into thin slivers, add a little bit of hot water, melt them into a paste with which they fill the holes; the whole thing dries up and makes a solid, almost cement-like buffer. During the shakedowns, all of it has been systematically taken apart… One day, during another shakedown, Roger had just washed his sheets, some officer walked all over the sheets with his muddy boots.

Roger also tells me they have no hot water anymore. They’re told the pipes burst because of the cold weather during the night…

I tell him it’s impossible, it was cold but not even freezing, pipes won’t burst that easily. So, who knows what the real reason is, it could be simply just another way to drive them crazy. Now they have to wash their things in cold water (and take an icy cold shower, whenever they are allowed one, which is only once or twice a week at the moment) and who knows when they’ll have hot water again...

In between all that, there are many moments of laughter, pure joy, happiness, we forget about everything around us. Sometimes Roger laughs so much he can hardly speak… what a beautiful sound that is! His eyes twinkle and he makes fun of me. I ask him news about Gary and Jack, two of his friends on death row he writes about sometimes. Gary is blind and totally destitute, and Roger helps him any way he can. Jack is almost seventy, has been on death row since 1978. Jack is losing it, he says, he’s becoming a bit paranoid…and he’s expecting to hear a date soon (it means that all possibilities for appeals have been exhausted, and he will hear when his execution is to take place, usually it will be within 90 days).

Gary messed up, says Roger, and he tells me a story that is actually terrible but he laughs so much, because of the insanity of it all. Gary in now on Level III for three months. Level III is solitary confinement, which means no visits, no exercise in a cage, no radio, no mail, less food. The guys there are also “enjoying” an even more inhuman treatment than usual; they’re allowed to wear only underwear and a thin blanket in the freezing cold. Normally, when the inmates have a buddy on Level III, they save some food for him and have the GP inmates who distribute the food hide the stuff in their high grey socks and give it to him. But now it’s impossible. Is no food there, but the controls are so thorough, nothing will escape the officers’ attention. Roger talks a lot about the times he was working as manager in the Italian restaurant before his arrest, all the things he was baking, about growing up with a mom and grandma always busy cooking and baking. We agree that snake doesn’t taste good; it’s rubbery, fat, tasteless (a guy wanted to sell rattlesnake to the restaurant, so Roger had to try it, and I ate a few bites of sand adder in the Sahara).

We talk about so many things, and on the last day, perhaps because we’re both a bit down, he because of the latest bullying, me because I have to leave, and no doubt because we have to say goodbye, we go into a different mode. The conversation deepens and we give each other strength and hope. When all this is over, when he’s free, it’s going to be amazing. There is gratitude, faith, and the certainty of God’s love. His face is radiant. “It’s doable,” he says, and “don’t worry about me, I’ll be fine.” It breaks my heart… His courage, his spirit, his indestructible faith have never seemed so extraordinary.

To have to leave him behind is one of the hardest, most painful things ever… but I also leave with sunshine in my whole being, his laughter resonates in my heart, his smiles make all the clouds go away. All those precious moments will stay with me. I will spend the coming days, and weeks I suppose, trying to make sense of all the emotions. I can honestly say that I never before experienced such a variety of conflicting emotions in such a short period of time. Deep happiness, an almost childlike joy, surprise, anxiety, frustration, freedom, strength, weakness, doubt, disbelief, sadness, anger, love, outrage, puzzlement, hope, near despair, trust, light, darkness, gratitude, all- surpassing faith.

An hour later Dwight picks me up at the hotel and we drive down to Houston, to his and his wife Michelle’s place. In the poorer areas of Houston, like in Livingston, the scars of hurricane Ike are visible, so many broken trees, branches lying everywhere, scarred houses, one roof apparently in one piece, but sitting askew, as if it has been lifted by the wind and then fell back on the house, but in the wrong position.

Anthony Haughton, Roger’s attorney, comes to Michelle’s place later on Monday to meet me. We have talked on the phone often and exchanged quite a few emails in the last six months, so it’s wonderful to finally meet in person. I tell him a few of the things that are happening up there in the Unit. He says we must alert human rights organizations and do something about it. He is an extraordinary person, so gentle and kind, so full of faith and trust, and yet so strong, determined, a real “street fighter.” He reminds me of Roger in a way.

My last two days at Michelle’s home in Houston are spent mostly lying down and praying. I’m still trying to process all the things I’ve experienced in the past week… The flight back is perfect, I feel better and better. Just before arriving in Amsterdam I witness a magnificent sunrise above the clouds, and a few words of a text Pierre (Pradervand, co-author of Roger’s book) sent me a few days before I left come to my mind: “All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well” (Julian of Norwich, 14th century).

* Garance Jaquet *

Garance Jaquet