The sight of him on the gurney pulled her in a moment from her visionary hysteria of prayer. She was at once entirely immersed in the effort to present her face to him, to telegraph her love, his only comfort. Tears streamed down her cheeks as she strained forward, and she had to fight off firework images of his smile at the kitchen doorway, his clunky footsteps on the stair, his hands on her shoulders: she was afraid these thoughts would kill her before she showed him what she had to show him-that his wife was there. “Frank,” she said again, crying.
Harlan Flowers reached out quickly and wrapped his big hand around hers. Bonnie squeezed it hard, held on to it for all she was worth.
“Frank Beachum, you have been found guilty of murder by the state of Missouri and sentenced to death by lethal injection.” Luther made his eyes grip the words on the page, each one, one by one, so that his voice would not falter as he read. Let’s just get this over with, he was thinking. And he asked: “Have you anything to say?”
Luther swallowed and looked over the top of the warrant at the face on the gurney. Frank’s head was tilted all the way back as he tried to look at the window behind his head, to see his wife’s face. Luther did not think he would speak. He did not think that he was thinking cogently enough, that there was any thought left in him that could be made into speech.
But there was. “I love you, Bonnie!” Frank cried out. “I’ve always loved you!”
Luther saw Bonnie Beachum reach her hand out to press it against the glass. She mouthed the words back at her husband: “I love you.”
Luther swallowed again, harder this time. He folded the warrant and slipped it back into his pocket. He looked up at the clock. There were twenty seconds until twelve-oh-one.
For those twenty seconds, Arnold McCardle stood still, looking through the one-way glass, waiting for Luther Plunkitt to turn to him and give the nod that would begin it. None of the people in the death chamber was moving. It looked to Arnold like a tableau: Luther at the foot of the gurney, Frank with his head stretching back, his Adam’s apple throbbing, the guard and Zach Platt standing rigid in their opposite corners. Arnold did not breathe. Even the phlegmatic fat man felt the band of tension tightening round his throat now, and he wished old Luther would just do it, just give the nod, twenty seconds early or not.
But then the red second hand reached the top of the dial, and Arnold’s big body inflated with a breath as he waited for Luther to turn. And another second passed and another-and the tableau remained all but frozen: Luther looking down, Frank stretching back; Platt in his corner, glancing nervously at the clock now, the guard in his opposite corner lifting one eyebrow.
“Come on, come on,” Arnold murmured softly.
The second hand coursed down the first arc of the new minute. Arnold shifted his eyes toward the executioners. The husky Frack stood facing him with his hand poised steadily above the silver button on the machine; the stooped, insectile little Frick was the closer, with his back half turned to him, and his body nearly bouncing on his toes, his arm nearly thrumming as he held his thumb in place.
Arnold looked out through the glass again and was shocked to see the clock’s second hand rising up the high side of the minute, continuing on around. And still Luther didn’t turn, didn’t turn, and it was all frozen in there, and no one was breathing at all anymore.
And then Luther turned.
… a man is the creature who can say “No,” he thought, and then he came to himself.
The Superintendent of Osage State Correctional Facility was dismayed to find his attention had wandered. He came to himself as if he had been standing there fast asleep, dreaming. He did not know where his mind had gone to, what he had been thinking about. But when he raised his head, he saw that the second hand had gone a full minute round the dial and was now edging down again toward twelve-oh-two and thirty seconds, then on.
It was a matter of pride, that’s all. These things didn’t have to be exact: they had all day to do the execution legally. But everything had been going smoothly, and everyone had been waiting on him, and he had meant to give the nod at precisely twelve-oh-one and he had-what? — drifted off at the crucial instant, drifted away on some line of reasoning or fantasy-he did not know, he could not remember what. He felt the whole machine, of which he was a central part, holding fire, standing still, because his cog had forgotten to turn. He was downright aggravated with himself.
It was only twelve-oh-two and thirty-seven seconds when Luther remembered to do his job. But as far as the Superintendent of Osage Prison was concerned, that was ninety-seven seconds too goddamned late.
He turned and nodded deeply to the mirror.
But by that time, the black phone was ringing.
Forever after, Reuben Skycock could raise a pretty good laugh when he described how quickly, how gracefully the pachydermous Arnold McCardle could move when he had a mind to. Because Luther nodded and the phone rang almost together, and McCardle not only snapped the handset off its cradle with one hand but stretched enormously across the little storeroom with the other and shoved the nervous Frick away from the machine. Frack was faster and jumped back from the button the instant he heard the bell, throwing his hands into the air as if he had been placed under arrest.
Arnold McCardle listened at the black phone for a long moment, and said, “I read you.” Then, without replacing the receiver, he reached over to press the button on the intercom.
“We got a governor’s stay,” he said evenly. “We’re gonna stand down.”
“Stand down! We’re standing down!” shouted Zachary Platt, throwing his hands up, his palms out, as if to hold them all physically from the edge of a cliff.
For a moment, Luther Plunkitt did not react, only stood where he was and smiled blandly. Then, slowly, he lifted his thumb and ran it over the smile, wiping an imperceptible drop of spittle from his lips.
What was strange, he told me later-one thing that was strange-was how long that moment lasted to him. It seemed to him that so much happened, and it seemed to him that he had time to see it all. He saw Zachary Platt shoving his palms at him, stepping out of his corner urgently, babbling, “Governor’s stay, the governor, a stay, we gay a gay, stay …” He saw Frank Beachum’s head snap forward, his entire body shudder violently beneath the sheet; Frank’s head keeled to one side as his neck went slack; he shut his eyes tight, and convulsed. Then he let out a harsh sob and began weeping, the tears squeezing out from under his lashes, running sideways over his nose, into his mouth.
And still, the moment went on. Luther looked up, looked at the witness window. He saw Bonnie there. She was coming to her feet. Driving off the bench to her feet. She hurled herself against the glass. Luther heard the dull thud as she hit. He saw her palms going white as they pressed against it, the side of her face flattening, the glass fogging with her breath as, even through the soundproofing, Luther heard her scream out, “Frank! Frank!” Then he saw her crumble. Her knees buckled and she sank down, falling over to the side. The black preacher who’d been sitting next to her was on his feet now too, catching her in his arms, drawing her back to the bench.
Luther turned his head until he faced the mirrored window to his right. His eyes passed over the clock as he turned and it was only twelve-oh-two thirty-eight. Then he saw his own reflection, the marbly gray eyes deep in the putty face, the meaningless smile.
And all that was strange, he told me. But there was something even stranger still.