Then there was blackness sometimes, a low mewl of petition, almost restful, and yet terrifying, because she was aware of the time passing even then. But she was aware of it also in her interior visions. And sometimes, with a stagnant, deathly clarity, she saw the clock, the real clock on the wall. Eleven. Eleven-twenty. Eleven twenty-seven. And then she began praying again-if prayer is what it was-and she was borne away to that country, which is not our country, that world, which is not our world, where love and innocence are arguments in favor of a better life.
When Tim Weiss, one of Frank’s lawyers, walked into the waiting room at eleven thirty-one, the sight of her stopped him in his tracks, turned him cold and made his mouth go dry. He had not seen her for six weeks, and the change in her struck him hard. She was haggard, emaciated, frenzied in her depths-he perceived all that in a second and went pale.
Weiss was only around my age, thirty-five or so, but he was bald with a frizzy fringe of silver hair, and his face looked as if it had been made for old age. The flesh saggy, the lips slack and damp, the eyes sad. He put an unsteady hand on Bonnie’s shoulder. She raised her eyes to him. He tried to swallow but couldn’t. “Unseeing,” was the word that came into his mind.
“How are you holding up, Bonnie?” Weiss said.
She looked away again and if she gave any answer, she did not give it to him.
Weiss was almost relieved when, at eleven thirty-five, the guard came in and told them it was time to go to the witness room outside the death chamber.
Then I walked across the deserted street. I climbed the stoop to Mrs. Russel’s door. There was the graffito-slashed mailbox again. The blue name carefully inscribed beneath the splash of brown paint. I pressed the buzzer. I stood, blinking and dull-witted. I heard an angry bass-line throbbing out of a radio far away. I pressed the buzzer again. I lifted my head. Though I couldn’t see her window from that position, I stared up along the grime-dark, night-dark bricks. I pressed the buzzer again and then I pressed it again, jabbing my thumb against the button. Again and again, breathing harder and harder. And then a sudden gush of rage coursed through me. I hit the door, hammered the frame once with the side of my swollen fist. The shock of pain went up my arm and up my neck. I cursed, angrier still. I kicked the bottom of the door, then I slammed the heel of my left hand against the edge of it. “Come on!” I growled. Then I kicked it again, hammered it with my hurt fist again, ignoring the pain, hammering it again and slugging it again with the heel of my left palm, kicking the base of it again and again, throwing my whole body into the blows now, my face contorted, my lips drawn back over my teeth, the shouts of frustration caught in my throat, bursting from my throat in choked gutturals as I hammered and slugged and kicked at the goddamned thing. The goddamned, fucking thing …
I collapsed against it. The anger sizzled out of me, dissipated in the warm night air. What was the use? I leaned against the door and my shoulders slumped, my legs went slack. I pressed my forehead against the wood of the frame. I felt the pressure of it against my wound, against the drying, sticky blood. I felt the uneven, splintery surface against my skin. I stayed there, breathing hard, and closed my eyes tight. I groaned. A single tear broke out from under my eyelid, touched my cheek and fell. I sobbed once-in frustration more than anything-and then just leaned there, slumped, my eyes closed, my body propped against the door.
I was finished, and I knew it.
Because there’s only so much a man can do. Isn’t there? Isn’t there a point where you have pushed it to the limit? With all the will in the world, with all the power of desperation inspiring you, isn’t there, anyway, an end to the thing, an end to anything? When you have done your best? When no one can accuse you? Accuse you? What the hell would they say? Hey, you still had twenty-five minutes? You should’ve found another lead? You should’ve found another suspect? I mean, it wasn’t even supposed to be my fucking story, man. It was supposed to be my fucking day off, all right? I mean, you don’t like my work, fucking fire me, you shithead! You scumbug! I don’t even know how I fucking got here, what I’m fucking doing here! It was all an accident! A woman in a car. Too fast. A bad curve.
With another strangled sob, I lifted my hand, thumped it once against the door and let it fall limply to my side again.
It was not supposed to be my fucking story.
“He that dwelleth in the secret place of the most High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty.”
The Reverend Flowers walked down the hall behind the gurney. He held the book open before him in his two hands but he could not read the words and spoke them by rote.
“I will say of the Lord, He is my refuge and my fortress: my God; in him will I trust. Surely he shall deliver thee from the snare of the fowler, and from the noisome pestilence. He shall cover thee with his feathers, and under his wings shalt thou trust: his truth shall be thy shield and buckler.”
The psalm, the rhythms of the psalm, no longer comforted him. They seemed to be consumed by the roiling sickness in his stomach which was no longer stilled. Not enough, he thought with swelling urgency as he read, as he walked behind the gurney. It’s not enough. And there was no time left. No time.
Ahead of him, the four Strap-down guards shuttled the gurney along, two on the front end, two pushing it from behind. They moved quickly, smoothly. Luther Plunkitt strode quickly ahead of them to the open door of the death chamber.
“Thou shalt not be afraid for the terror by night; nor for the arrow that flieth by day,” Flowers said. “Nor for the pestilence that walketh in darkness; nor for the destruction that wasteth at noonday. A thousand shall fall at thy side, and ten thousand at thy right hand; but it shall not come nigh thee.” It was not enough.
When he glanced up over the book, he could see Frank Beachum between the bodies of the guards. A sheet was pulled over Beachum’s body, covering the straps that held him down, covering him to the chin. Only his face was visible above it, the thin face stretched, it seemed, even thinner now, his cheeks sunken and gaunt, his eyes wide, white, bulging. His eyes darted back and forth as the gurney rolled to the doorway. They darted over the fluorescent lights in the ceiling, over the cinderblock walls, strained down to see the faces of the Strap-down guards and the minister walking behind them. When they met Flowers’s eyes, the minister felt the urgency in him flame into desperation and his voice rose higher.
“Only with thine eyes shalt thou behold and see the reward of the wicked. Because thou hast made the Lord, which is my refuge, even the most High, thy habitation.”
Warden Plunkitt stopped at the chamber doorway, positioned himself to the side of it to let the gurney pass. Smiling blandly, he nodded to one of the lead guards.
“Escort the padre to the witness room,” he said.
The guard peeled off and came back toward Flowers.
“There shall no evil befall thee …” Flowers called out wildly-and then his voice broke and he looked up. Looked up and saw the guard coming for him. The gurney was at the door now. It was over. His time was over. There was no more time and it was not enough. The knowledge seemed to erupt in him, cover him from within, blacken him within. He had failed-he had failed completely. Whatever his mission had been, his ministry in this place, it was not done, it was not accomplished. By his own fault, by his own grievous fault, he had not done enough. He stared with desperate penitence at the man strapped to the rolling table.
Before he knew what he was doing, his hand shot out. He clutched at the shape of Beachum’s foot beneath the sheet.