Artwork: Eyes in the Storm by Will Jacques

Stories
Holly Day

Jailed and condemned to death for attempted murder in Massachusetts State Prison
James Allen asked for all of his secrets to be bound
in a book of his own skin, asked that this book
be passed onto the man he’d tried to kill. Since he couldn’t read or write himself
he asked a prison guard to sit with him in his cell every night and write down
all of the stories Allen didn’t want forgotten. It took a long time

because it wasn’t just a confession, like the purpose originally stated,
but all of the things he could remember about his childhood, like the way the wash smelled
drying on the line in the sun, his mother’s hands quick and efficient as she struggled
with the little wooden clothespins, one tucked into the corner of her mouth
the same way his dad dangled the stub of a cigarette
as he watched from his chair on the porch.

As the days passed and the last day grew closer, the book grew thicker
with pages full of rough, uncomfortable love stories and so many unnecessary fights
a summer spent riding the rails all the way to California and back to Boston again,
coming home one year to find his parents gone, the old house abandoned,
new railroad tracks glistening where the back yard had been,
he could ride right past his house now on the train
and then even the house was gone.

It would be nice to think that Allen could have stayed alive until all of his stories were told
but prison doesn’t work that way. The night before they took him, Allen finally confessed
to attacking John Fenno, the man who’d sent him to prison, he just needed some money
a few bucks, he didn’t have much to live for anyway. On the last page, he thanked his guards
for their friendship, called out by name the one who wrote down his stories
and thanked him specifically for his time, and patience, and good company.
There are those that say the guard wrote in that last bit on his own.

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