of range. Still, from that distance I could see sets of ninety-degree angles
traced out in yellow lines and the tiny white numbers that fit perfectly
inside of them. I could barely make out the huge dumpster that loomed
outside of the lines, far from the neat white numbers and closer to the
weeds that crawled out from the forest behind the lot. The duct tape atop
its green plastic lid read definitively, “TRASH.”
Jerry told the sister that he didn’t have anyone to come visit him.
When they assigned him a day to die, he said it was a lot like receiving a
speeding ticket in the mail. I suppose it makes sense that it would have
that cold bureaucratic feel to it. After all, somewhere along the line, lost
forever in hundreds of lines of legal formalities and court procedures,
his life had been reduced to payment for some crime. He said it’s the
waiting and waiting that really kills a person. Waiting and no one’s going
to come, waiting and you’re going to die; you’re going to be killed. He
couldn’t stand to just sit there and wait, he told her. So he asked for some
supplies, and on account of his good behavior they were provided for
him: invisible string and beads of a few different shapes and sizes. That’s
how Jerry began making Rosaries.
He made a special one at first, one that he would keep to pray on,
to calm himself down. I imagined him sitting in some clinical white cell
all by himself, rosary in hand; saying Hail Mary’s and Our Fathers like
a mantra, his hands gently gliding over the beads. Sister told us that he
mailed her the rest, asked her to do whatever she liked with them. It was
then that she took out a small beige bag and pa