Texas - Several times a month, a modest ritual unfolds beneath the stately pines of the Captain Joe Byrd Cemetery. A somber black hearse pulls up in the early morning light. A handful of pallbearers wearing white uniforms steps forward. They tug a gray, cloth-covered plywood casket from the vehicle, carry it past several empty graves and set it atop a yawning hole dug several days earlier. Birds chirp in the trees.
Cars zip past on a nearby thoroughfare.
No one says much of anything. On this particular morning, there's not much to say. The pallbearers, who are also gravediggers and groundskeepers, don't know the deceased. Yet they're here because it's their job to bury one of their own - a fellow inmate in the Texas prison system. The Rev. Ken Houston, who conducts the brief service, doesn't know the deceased either, except through scant paperwork.