“I think she would understand, Mr. Ziegler,” I said finally. The words tasted like ashes in my mouth-how did I know whether she would? — but it was all I could come up with for him. “I think she would understand.”
The old man just let his breath out with a harsh pah. “So angry,” he murmured to the floor. “Things happen in this life. We can’t control everything, Michelle.”
I started to speak again, but I don’t think he was listening anymore. So I said nothing and, after another moment, I left.
PART SEVEN
1
Suddenly, the Death House was full of life. Men hurried up and down the halls outside the prisoner’s cell. They walked in and out of the execution chamber. The chamber-where the gurney stood-was crowded with men. So was the storage room adjoining. In the storage room, Arnold McCardle-who could crowd a room single-handed-was testing the phones. There were four of them on a shelf against the room’s back wall. Each was a different color and each had a Dyma-tape label stuck to its base. The red phone was an outside line, the white phone went to the Corrections Department and the tan phone went to the communications room. The black phone was the open line to the governor’s office. At the end of the shelf was an intercom that would connect to a radio set in the death chamber.
Arnold briskly lifted the handset of each phone, puffing his fat cheeks as if playing a tuba and whispering a little tuba tune as well. The usual sparkle of humor was gone from his eyes, however. They were focused and clear, all his attention on the task at hand. He spoke into each phone for a few moments, checking the line, then hung up and moved on to the next.
Behind him, Reuben Skycock was at the delivery module of the lethal injection machine: a metal cabinet on the supply room wall. The door to the cabinet was open exposing the three syringes inside. Each syringe was wedged into a metal holder, each fed down into a tube that ran through a hole in the cinderblock wall and into the execution chamber. Reuben was testing the manual delivery system now: the third backup system in case both the electrical delivery and battery backup went down. That had never happened at Osage but Reuben went about his job with silent intensity nonetheless. He pulled out the metal pins that held the plungers in place. He glanced from the machine to a stopwatch as the plungers sank slowly into the syringes. Each time he pulled the metal pin, there was a loud sound: chunk. Each time the chunk came, Arnold glanced back at Reuben over his shoulder, holding a handset to his ear, puffing out a tuba tune on his fat cheeks.
Pat Flaherty was next to Reuben, standing at the one-way window. He was squirting Windex on the glass and wiping it off with a paper towel. He’d done that yesterday too. The glass was spotless and so was the mirror on the other side.
You could see clearly through the glass into the execution chamber. There, two members of the Strap-down Team were refastening the straps on the gurney. To their right, was the window of the witness room. The blinds here had been temporarily lifted and two other guards could be seen through it. They were setting out the plastic benches where the witnesses would sit. Two benches went on the floor just in front of the window, the other two went behind these on a raised wooden platform.
In front of the gurney, Luther Plunkitt was talking to Haggerty, who would be stationed outside the chamber door. Luther was gesturing calmly with one hand, keeping the other in his pocket. He was smiling blandly. “You want to double-check personally at the door,” he was saying. “Make sure the covering sheet is in place before he comes into the room so the witnesses won’t have to see the straps.” Luther’s eyes were marbly and expressionless. He was thinking about Frank Beachum, imagining his face looking up as he was strapped down onto the gurney. Innocent, he was thinking.
He gave the guard an encouraging slap on the shoulder and turned to other business.
2
Frank Beachum was eating his last meal. Steak, fries. A large paper tumbler full of beer. He sat at his table and ate quickly. He could hear the increasing number of footsteps in the hall outside. He glanced up at the clock.
It was after seven. He had less than five hours to live. He went on eating. The steak was thick and rare but stringy at the center, tough. The fries were undercooked. He couldn’t taste any of it and chewed dully, gazing dully at his plate. Only the beer, when he drank, was a comfort to him. Not cold, but cool enough and foamy. The taste seemed to take him back to Sal’s Tavern in Dogtown. He used to stop at Sal’s sometimes for a quick one after work. When the beer touched his lips, the dark wood of Sal’s bar, the colors of the bottles on the shelves, the smell of smoke and the sound of country music surrounded him in a visceral rush, faint but definite. He found this comforting. He didn’t want the beer to end.
His thoughts, otherwise, were a jumble. Brief passages of memory interrupted by fear. The chill and ceaseless tremor of terror in his chest demanded attention. Whenever his mind wandered, the fear drew him back to himself. It forced him to glance up at the clock again, and the minute hand moving deeper and deeper past the hour made his throat grow narrow. Then he would look down at his food and eat and images would come into his mind, and memories. Then the terror would rouse him again like an alarm.
So he ate, and he thought of his mother. Hacking cigarette smoke at the kitchen table back home. Frank supposed she knew this was happening to him. She had sent him a postcard after his conviction, but he hadn’t heard from her since. He did not expect he would hear from her now … He glanced up at the clock.
He ate again. He thought of his father. Storming out the door into the Michigan snow. He would’ve liked to’ve known whatever happened to the man. He ached to know. He tried to imagine … Then the terror gripped him, and he glanced up at the clock.
He returned to his food, swallowing hard. And now, he thought about me. The reporter who had sat across the bars from him. My words floated through his mind. I don’t give a rat’s ass about Jesus Christ. About justice in this life or the next. About right and wrong. After I’d left, Frank had told Bonnie that he would rather be here in this cage than outside living like that, like me. Vaguely he sensed, in his heart now, that this was a lie. He glanced up at the clock.
He had envied me. He went on eating. The french fries were soft and tasteless in his mouth. That was the truth of it he knew: He had envied me-my freedom, my indifference, my life. No black, glassy eye of God was watching me, no ceaseless eye. No other world of perfect justice overhung me. That other world, God’s high unknowable country, it sometimes seemed as real to Frank, as present in the cell as this one … He glanced up at the clock. Seven-twenty. It moved so fast. He shuddered.
When he tried to swallow now, he found his mouth was dry. He lifted his paper tumbler to his lips and as he stared across the rim of it, the cinderblocks on the far wall blurred, the clock blurred. Yes, he thought. He had envied me. He had wished that he were I. Because I was out there, sure, and he was in here. Because I would be alive tomorrow, and he wouldn’t. Sure. And because I did not care.