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The 12-fingered, 12-toed baby gurgled.
I sat in what I started calling the Media Hole (a partitioned hallway’s end, inhabited by several bleary-eyed reporters) and listened to the infant babble, gurgle, and slobber. I didn’t know it had 24 digits. I only knew I had a job to do and the baby was distracting me.
I stood up, discontected my flacid tail (an earpiece through which I listened to the the on-going death penalty trial), and walked down the hallway. I wasn’t going to say anything to the baby or the woman holding it. I just wanted to give them one of those movie-theatre “I’m trying to pay attention to this” ssshhh looks. Then I saw the child.
It was grasping a baby bottle with 12 fingers. It sat in the lap of the cop-killer’s sister.
I felt guilty as my mental abacus ticked off the number of digits. It was my only means of confirmation. I had heard the rumor that Wood’s baby had a few too-many fingers and toes. I had heard the security deputies calling the child “Rosemary’s Baby.” One walk down the hallway confirmed the rumor. And I felt guilty for stealing a glance at the hands.
The jury took three days to sentence the infant’s father (I later learned they share a first name) to death. The child wasn’t there when the verdict came down.
Sometimes kids are born with everything stacked against them. Not only is this child the infant son of a cop killer on his way to death row, he also will be confused as people ignore his angelic face and count his fingers.
I’m back from court now and back in the daily mix of the world’s cruelties. Court was cruel enough. Today I barely escaped going to Noble, Georgia where authorites found around 200 bodies in a patch of woods behind a crematorium. The owner-operator says the incinerator was broken.
Instead, I’m back at my desk researching South Carolina’s rules and regulations in the crematory industry.
A lot has happened in the last week or so. I haven’t written much here. I may go back and recount a lot of what I saw and heard, or I may just let it fade into that dark hole.
Regardless, I’m back and will resume my daily blogging. I hope my few and distinguished readers will come back and read my blather.
