It is dark outside when Willie hears the familiar tenor of Father Hannigan’s voice coming from somewhere down the hallway. He sits up. The sound of the priest’s voice fills him with the same warm relief he remembers feeling in the dark hours as a child when finally he heard the latching of the front door and the footsteps on the floorboards that told him that his father had come home. His father. Willie’s throat tightens at the thought. Their last embrace was the first of the lasts, and so far has been the worst. He looks toward the spot where they stood, holding each other. Father Hannigan had led his mother away; even so, Willie could hear her sobbing somewhere down the hallway, a terrible sound. He had kept his eyes open and fixed on a crack in the paint of the wall, as if staring at this would somehow keep him grounded, in control, the only bulwark against the sense he felt of grief and regret and longing so eviscerating that it threatened to break him down completely.
He takes a shaky breath and looks toward the cell door, waiting, listening to the murmur of their conversation crystallize into words as the sheriff and the priest approach. The two have been his most frequent visitors in the past eight months, though it is rare that Willie sees them together. Grazer he sees three or four brief times a day: once at each meal and occasionally once in between—a delivery of mail, a candy bar, and now and again, for no real reason at all, he’ll just appear, drape his armpits over the mid-rail, and drawl. Father Hannigan Willie sees once a week. He comes, and sometimes they talk, but mostly they spend the time playing the card games that the priest has taught him: gin rummy, piquet, cribbage, marjolet. It is the one time when Willie can forget everything that’s happening.
The sheriff swings the door open, but instead of gesturing the priest into the cell or stepping inside himself, he puts his hands on his hips and regards Willie from where he stands between the bars. “Well, bald Willie,” he says. “The good father brung you a final supper and reckons you ought to eat it proper.”
Willie looks from the sheriff to the priest behind him. Father Hannigan smiles at him and nods. “Good evening, Willie.”
Willie gives a single nod. His last supper, he thinks. His last embrace, his last sunset, and now his last supper.
“Well, come on, boy,” the sheriff says. “Up and at ’em. Let’s go, go, go!” He gestures Willie up from the cot with an impatient wave of his hand.
Willie follows the men back down the hallway. The three pass the doors of the other seven cells, all of them empty save Burl’s and that of one other man, who lies facedown on his cot, head in the crook of his elbow. This is the man Willie heard weeping earlier, but he doesn’t know his name, or what he’s in for. Burl is standing at his cell door, gripping the bars; Willie nods to him as they pass, and Burl nods in return.
At the end of the corridor, they pause as the sheriff opens a hand-cranked row of bars. On the other side is the bullpen, where normally deputies and guards gather to listen to the radio or play bourré; Willie can hear them from his cell. He’s passed through the room before, on his way to or from the courthouse during his trial. Tonight the room is empty. On the table where Willie has seen coffee mugs and playing cards is a large wicker basket. The room smells not of cigarettes and coffee, but of garlic, rosemary, grease. It smells like home. Hannigan goes to the table and pulls out a chair. “Sit, Willie,” he says. Willie sits, and Hannigan slides the basket in front of him. “Your supper.”