“Yes. I do.” He turned to Delacroix and gave him a nod.
Del closed his eyes as if to pray, but for a moment said nothing. A frown creased his forehead and I had a sense of him reaching far back in his mind, as a man may search a small attic room for an object which hasn’t been used (or needed) for a long, long time. I glanced at the clock again and almost said something—would have, if Brutal hadn’t twitched my sleeve and shaken his head.
Then Del began, speaking softly but quickly in that Cajun which was as round and soft and sensual as a young woman’s breast: “Marie! Je vous salue, Marie, oui, pleine de grâce; le Seigneur est avec vous; vous êtes bénie entre toutes les femmes, et mon cher Jésus, le fruit de vos entrailles, est béni.” He was crying again, but I don’t think he knew it. “Sainte Marie, Ô ma mère, Mère de Dieu, priez pour moi, priez pour nous, pauv’ pécheurs, maint’ant et à l’heure… l’heure de nôtre mort. L’heure de mon mort.” He took a deep, shuddering breath. “Ainsi soit-il.”
Lightning spilled through the room’s one window in a brief blue-white glare as Delacroix got to his feet. Everyone jumped and cringed except for Del himself; he still seemed lost in the old prayer. He reached out with one hand, not looking to see where it went. Brutal took it and squeezed it briefly. Delacroix looked at him and smiled a little. “Nous voyons—” he began, then stopped. With a conscious effort, he switched back to English. “We can go now, Boss Howell, Boss Edgecombe. I’m right wit God.”
“That’s good,” I said, wondering how right with God Del was going to feel twenty minutes from now, when he stood on the other side of the electricity. I hoped his last prayer had been heard, and that Mother Mary was praying for him with all her heart and soul, because Eduard Delacroix, rapist and murderer, right then needed all the praying he could get his hands on. Outside, thunder bashed across the sky again. “Come on, Del. Not far now.”
“Fine, boss, dat fine. Because I ain’t ascairt no more.” So he said, but I saw in his eyes that—Our Father or no Our Father, Hail Mary or no Hail Mary—he lied. By the time they cross the rest of the green carpet and duck through the little door, almost all of them are scared.
“Stop at the bottom, Del,” I told him in a low voice as he went through, but it was advice I needn’t have given him. He stopped at the foot of the stairs, all right, stopped cold, and what did it was the sight of Percy Wetmore standing there on the platform, with the sponge-bucket by one foot and the phone that went to the governor just visible beyond his right hip.
“Non,” Del said in a low, horrified voice. “Non, non, not him!”
“Walk on,” Brutal said. “You just keep your eyes on me and Paul. Forget he’s there at all.”
“But—”
People had turned to look at us, but by moving my body a bit, I could still grip Delacroix’s left elbow without being seen. “Steady,” I said in a voice only Del—and perhaps Brutal—could hear. “The only thing most of these people will remember about you is how you go out, so give them something good.”
The loudest crack of thunder yet broke overhead at that moment, loud enough to make the storage room’s tin roof vibrate. Percy jumped as if someone had goosed him, and Del gave a small, contemptuous snort of laughter. “It get much louder dan dat, he gonna piddle in his pants again,” he said, and then squared his shoulders—not that he had much to square. “Come on. Let’s get it over.”
We walked to the platform. Delacroix ran a nervous eye over the witnesses—about twenty-five of them this time—as we went, but Brutal, Dean, and I kept our own eyes trained on the chair. All looked in order to me. I raised one thumb and a questioning eyebrow to Percy, who gave a little one-sided grimace, as if to say What do you mean, is everything all right? Of course it is.
I hoped he was right.
Brutal and I reached automatically for Delacroix’s elbows as he stepped up onto the platform. It’s only eight or so inches up from the floor, but you’d be surprised how many of them, even the toughest of tough babies, need help to make that last step up of their lives.
Del did okay, though. He stood in front of the chair for a moment (resolutely not looking at Percy), then actually spoke to it, as if introducing himself: “C’est moi,” he said. Percy reached for him, but Delacroix turned around on his own and sat down. I knelt on what was now his left side, and Brutal knelt on his right. I guarded my crotch and my throat in the manner I have already described, then swung the clamp in so that its open jaws encircled the skinny white flesh just above the Cajun’s ankle. Thunder bellowed and I jumped. Sweat ran in my eye, stinging. Mouseville, I kept thinking for some reason. Mouseville, and how it cost a dime to get in. Two cents for the kiddies, who would look at Mr. Jingles through his ivy-glass windows.
The clamp was balky, wouldn’t shut. I could hear Del breathing in great dry pulls of air, lungs that would be charred bags less than four minutes from now laboring to keep up with his fear-driven heart. The fact that he had killed half a dozen people seemed at that moment the least important thing about him. I’m not trying to say anything about right and wrong here, but only to tell how it was.
Dean knelt next to me and whispered, “What’s wrong, Paul?”
“I can’t—” I began, and then the clamp closed with an audible snapping sound. It must have also pinched a fold of Delacroix’s skin in its jaws, because he flinched and made a little hissing noise. “Sorry,” I said.
“It okay, boss,” Del said. “It only gonna hurt for a minute.”
Brutal’s side had the clamp with the electrode in it, which always took a little longer, and so we stood up, all three of us, at almost exactly the same time. Dean reached for the wrist-clamp on Del’s left, and Percy went to the one on his right. I was ready to move forward if Percy should need help, but he did better with his wrist-clamp than I’d done with my ankle-clamp. I could see Del trembling all over now, as if a low current were already passing through him. I could smell his sweat, too. It was sour and strong and reminded me of weak pickle juice.
Dean nodded to Percy. Percy turned back over his shoulder—I could see a place just under the angle of his jaw where he’d cut himself shaving that day—and said in a low, firm voice: “Roll on one!”
There was a hum, sort of like the sound an old refrigerator makes when it kicks on, and the hanging lights in the storage room brightened. There were a few low gasps and murmurs from the audience. Del jerked in the chair, his hands gripping the ends of the oak arms hard enough to turn the knuckles white. His eyes rolled rapidly from side to side in their sockets, and his dry breathing quickened even more. He was almost panting now.
“Steady,” Brutal murmured. “Steady, Del, you’re doing just fine. Hang on, you’re doing just fine.”
Hey you guys! I thought. Come and see what Mr. Jingles can do! And overhead, the thunder banged again.
Percy stepped grandly around to the front of the electric chair. This was his big moment, he was at center stage, all eyes were on him. All, that was, but for one set. Delacroix saw who it was and looked down at his lap instead. I would have bet you a dollar to a doughnut that Percy would flub his lines when he actually had to say them for an audience, but he reeled them off without a hitch, in an eerily calm voice.
“Eduard Delacroix, you have been condemned to die in the electric chair, sentence passed by a jury of your peers and imposed by a judge of good standing in this state, God save the people of this state. Do you have anything to say before sentence is carried out?”