“All true,” I said breathlessly.
“You cannot drive, man,” said Neil.
“Gotta try,” I said.
“You’ll kill yourself.”
“Innocent. Guy’s innocent. Gonna kill him, Neil-o,” I said. “Gotta. Gotta.”
“Ev, listen …” said Neil. He moved toward me. The other guy reached for my arm, but I swung it out of his way.
“Else I’m nothing,” I said. “Else I’m just nothing.”
I turned my back on them. I was at the door in two strides. I grabbed the brass handle and yanked it open. The door’s edge smacked into my forehead.
“Ow, shit!” I commented, reeling backwards, clutching my face.
“Ev!” Neil shouted.
But I didn’t let him get me. I charged at the door again, holding my forehead with one hand, grabbing the handle with the other.
I felt the blood, viscous and warm, seep down from my brow and between my fingers, as I staggered across the threshold and out into the night.
PART NINE
1
Four guards escorted the gurney to the door of the Deathwatch cell. Luther Plunkitt led them. When he reached the door, he paused and gestured to them to wait. The guards stood where they were, two on each side of the gurney. They were heavy men and each carried a black plastic riot shield strapped to his arm, each had a long rubber truncheon dangling from his belt. The men were called the Strap-down Team. They were there to get Beachum dressed; get him onto the gurney and belt him down; and roll him back into the death chamber.
The lead guard was carrying a brown paper package. Tilting his head at the door, Luther tapped the guard on the chest with one knuckle. Then he nodded at the Deathwatch guard and the door was opened. Luther went in and the guard with the package followed him. The other three waited outside with the gurney.
Beachum was sitting on the edge of his cot, his head hung down. Reverend Flowers was on the chair beside him, leaning toward him, hanging over him, murmuring steadily in a low, mournful voice.
“You gotta put your hand in God’s hand,” the reverend was saying. “God is with you, look to Jesus and you can face this thing. He will walk with you, He will walk with you to glory …”He murmured without thinking, the words burbling up from a tarry anguish inside him, a mindless litany with which he nearly succeeded in hypnotizing himself.
Beachum’s hands kept coming up to his face to wipe his dry lips, kept dropping back between his legs again, coming up again. He stared at the floor, shaking his head. “1 swear to God I didn’t do anything, Harlan,” he kept repeating. “Nothing. I swear it. You gotta tell them. Jesus. My Bonnie. Gail My little girl. I didn’t even do anything.”
Long minutes ago, they had both passed the point of reason.
Now the door snapped open, and Beachum made a small, terrified noise; bolted upright as if a jolt of current had gone through him. His eyes darted back and forth between the clock and the door as Luther Plunkitt came in. Eleven, only eleven, it wasn’t time yet, he thought wildly. There was still an hour-a whole hour-left to go.
With a brief nod at Benson, Luther approached the cage. His step was firm, his expression was set in that meaningless smile of his. He was determined, he knew his duty and his mind had entered a zone in which there was only action. It was something he could count on himself to do at times like this: in battle, under pressure, in charge. For the next hour or so, he would be nothing more than the things he had to say, the things he had to do. He would become his job, and he would do his job.
He moved close to the bars. He saw Beachum get to his feet, the reverend beside him get to his feet. He spoke the words he had to speak in the tone of compassionate necessity that he deemed to be the voice of the state of Missouri.
“Frank. I’m gonna ask the reverend here to leave for a few moments, so that you can change your clothes and take care of some things. Then he’ll be able to come back in.”
And he nodded at the reverend, smiling blandly. But he registered, in some sequestered part of his brain, the prisoner’s terror-bright eyes, his mouth working like an insect’s mouth: the dull, scared, weirdly acquiescent countenance of every dead man he had ever seen. And he was dimly aware of the low boil of dread bubbling in his own unillumined recesses. But he ignored it, as he knew well how to do.
The cage bars slid back. Flowers clasped Beachum by the shoulder. “I’ll be right outside, Frank. I’ll come back as soon as they let me.” The words came out of him steadily, but he hardly knew what he was saying.
Beachum spun on him, like a blind man, spun toward the sound of his voice. The condemned man’s eyes were so bright, so full of desperate pleading that it seemed he was trying to hold Flowers to the spot by the sheer strength of his stare alone. Flowers could not wait to get out of there, just for a minute, just to breathe for a minute. Hating himself, he was still glad of the necessity to tear himself from Beachum’s gaze and step out of the cage.
He walked quickly to the door, had to force himself to pause there and look back with a reassuring smile. Then the door was opened and he stepped through.
Coming out of the cell was like surfacing from his own grave: his relief was that great. And yet the moment he entered the hall, he saw the gurney, with its heavy leather straps; its suffocating presence; and the Strap-down guards with their stances relaxed, professional and implacable. So he could not sag or gasp in the freer air of the hall. Reverend Flowers made himself walk past these men with all the grave dignity he could muster.
He went down the hallway to the barred checkpoint and was allowed through into the medical section. There he asked for admittance to a men’s room and was shown the way by a nurse.
It wasn’t until he stood before the urinal that he could let the tension stream out of him. He leaned his head against the cinderblock wall, his dick in his fingers, his piss draining. He closed his eyes and breathed through his open mouth. “Lord, Lord, Lord,” he whispered. “Why do you let us do this to each other?”
In the cage, the Strap-down guard dropped his package on the table. To Beachum, it seemed to make a loud noise when it fell-whap-and he started. He leaned away from the package in almost mystic horror of it, staring at the smooth brown paper as if the parcel might suddenly explode.
The warden was talking to him. It was just a sound to Frank, an inexorable mutter, like the hum and motion of the clock, nudging him to the next step in the proceedings. He hadn’t done anything, and yet it just would not stop.
“Frank,” the warden said, “we’ve brought you a change of clothes, like I told you we were going to. I’m gonna ask you now to put those clothes on, including the special underpants that are provided for hygienic reasons. This is required and I have to ask you if you’re going to give me any problems about this.”
The sense of the words seemed to come to Frank moments after they were spoken, like a translation spoken over earphones. When the meaning did reach him, so many possible answers, possible reactions played themselves out in his mind that it seemed a single second couldn’t hold them alclass="underline" it was the condensed time of dreams. He saw himself rebelling, screaming, hurling himself at the guard, maybe killing the guard, maybe forcing the guards to strip him naked by sheer force, maybe even breaking past them and running into the night to find Bonnie, to run off with Bonnie hand in hand … And at the same time, just as in a dream, he felt too weak even to move, even to speak, his muscles limp with fear, his will withered and yellow. Yet even now, before he had decided what he would do, before he felt he had the strength, he was coming forward, he was reaching for the package. It was just a change of clothes, that’s all; it wasn’t the thing yet, the thing itself.