“Whew!” the stunner cried, feeling the quiver in the tong’s handles.
“Anyone for bacon?” said the electrician, not without a hint of distaste, Board liked to believe.
-4-
Mucus and blood sprayed from the pig’s nostrils, spattering the floor. Its eyes went shut, its front legs stiff, and after only several beats, the stunner released the grip of his pliers. The pig thumped heavily onto its side, but its hind legs went on twitching violently.
“God damn,” panted the stunner, “that was a lot of juice! Normally we’re supposed to stun ‘em for about seven seconds. That was more like four. Of course…when we need to hurry, sometimes I only give ‘em two…”
“Give me a hand,” said his partner, and after cutting the rope from around the electric chair’s leg with an awful-looking knife, they hefted the animal into the big metal tub. “Can you see into this?” Board was asked.
The camera’s tripod was moved closer, the camera’s view angled down. It was jittery, uneven camera-work that for a cinematic release would have required a cut and edit.
“Okay,” said the man with the knife, and then he punched it into the stunned animal’s throat, and tugged the blade along its neck. Jetting blood pinged against the metal, and the back hooves skittered across it as well. The metallic sound was like a screeching protest.
John Board lowered his eyes from the television’s folded wings, but he knew that Warden File went right on watching until the tub began to fill with blood, as if to swallow the dying animal from view.
The film came to an end. Now Board looked up, and File was nodding. “Hm. Nice work,” he said, but Board didn’t know if he meant the film or the butchery. He rose from his chair and went to the television on the wall of the guards’ break room. The end of Board’s film canister protruded from an opening in the tail of the great beetle affixed to the wall. File gripped the canister’s end, pulled it free, and wiped it with a hand towel before setting it down.
The picture had come out crystal clear, and even in color. There was no shaded circle around the edges of the frame, as with the old still cameras Board had used only a couple of years ago. And the sound, mimicked by the mounted insect, had been as crisp as when he had witnessed the event—the shrieks of the pig just as piercing. Technology had come so far.
“Well, that will go down to the kitchen and show up on breakfast plates tomorrow,” File noted, as if to placate Board. “So…do you think you need to do another pig or two? Or do you…”
“No,” Board said. “I get the idea. Piece of cake.”
“Well, don’t get too cocky about it. There’s no viewfinder. I’ve seen camera angles botched before.”
“I’ll be fine, sir. I have my background.”
“So you do.” File lit up a cigar. Apparently his parasitic second skull didn’t mind the inhalations. “So, that’s easy enough work, isn’t it? An execution or two a week…no more sweating in the furniture shop.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And when your three years are up, you’ll have your freedom…and you can continue your employment with us but this time on the payroll,” the warden reminded him.
“Yes, sir.”
“Of course, the main test still awaits. Do you think you can watch a man die in that room?”
I sure can, thought Board. Those two slaughterhouse men, for starts. “Yes, sir.”
“Of course you can.” File narrowed his eyes appraisingly, “You killed a man once, yourself.”
“Yes, sir.”
The next morning, there was indeed a thin strip of ham on his breakfast plate. Board gave it to the man beside him, who accepted it enthusiastically. He had vowed never to eat pork again.
Later that day, they had library time. When not reading fiction, Board liked to flip through art books, and in one he returned to a painting he remembered seeing some months earlier. It was one of the still lifes of Joachim Beuckelaer, a Flemish painter who had died in 1574. It showed a slaughtered pig, suspended and spread open like some horrible kite that might take to air. In the background, some wine was being fetched. The accompanying text pointed out that the artist had often mixed Biblical scenes and symbolism with market scenes, for the contrast between concerns of the spirit and of the flesh. This picture of the spread-open pig was said to symbolize the crucifixion of Christ, with the wine in the background representing the Eucharist.
“Take ye, and eat,” Board said softly to the open book. “This is my body.”
That night, in his lower bunk while his cell mate alternated between snoring and passing gas above him, Board dreamed he was again in his family’s Chicago apartment. He was in the attic, bottled up with giddying summer heat. Afraid to go downstairs, but at last he willed himself. He descended the creaking steps, entered the murk of the living room with its drawn shades and curtains. And there, hanging from its neck by the very same rope it had been led in with, dangled the four-month-old pig. Flies crawled over its body, in and out of its blood-crusted snout. And yet as small as they were, the flies had wings that flickered and glowed brightly. Their wings were miniature TV screens…but one would have had to group them all together and assemble the puzzle of the image they conveyed, to see it in its entirety.
-5-
In Unit 8, word had it that some were mocking gang leader Henry Plough behind his back for taking on a “yellow kid” as his bunkmate. Board found it somewhat ironic that it was the Chinese man’s color and not his sex that these mockers found worthy of their contempt. But word also had it that Plough was not going to discard the kid because of the controversy. To bend to the opinions of others might be a sign of weakness. And besides that—though Plough was never openly affectionate to the young man in view of others—Board suspected that Plough was simply too fond of the man to trade him in for another new “fish”.
More prison gossip had begun to spread: this, that John Board had been recruited as the cameraman who would record executions so that these films could be entered into computers and thus accessed by the Bugs from their home world. Board had had his sentence radically reduced as a result of this arrangement. Board was sorry to hear this rumor bounce back to him, though he knew it had been inevitable.
One prisoner came up to him in the outdoors exercise yard, in the center of the prison, and spat at him, “Heard you sucked off the warden to get your term cut down, Bones.” (Board had never been a bulky man, and had grown even leaner in prison.)
He ignored the man, turned away. But a few days later, in the Unit 8 rec room, one prisoner said loudly to a friend, “Hey, there’s the ghoul. Bones, you gonna to be filming Old Sparky, there, eh? When do you get your guard uniform?”
“Fucking traitor,” said the other man. “You got no shame, huh?”
A guard came over and tapped this second man on the knee with his truncheon. “Shut your cake hole.” But Board thought that the guard’s intervention on his behalf just made things look all the worse.
Board was counting the days to the fifteenth of June. The day of the first execution he would film for the Guests. Only nine more days. Eight…
One day after Board and his cell mate, Mike Rake, had been locked in for the night, Rake sat down next to Board on his lower bunk and whispered, “Bones, keep your eyes peeled. Today Tommy Bench told me he saw Abe Jug hand Linterna two packs of cigarettes…”
Abraham Jug was the man who had attempted to rape Board in the showers almost two years ago, when Board was himself a “fish” or new inmate waiting to be broken in. Board had stabbed Jug in the eye with the end of his toothbrush, causing the orb to be dislodged from its socket, hanging on his cheek. It had had to be removed altogether in the prison infirmary. And Linterna, of course, was one of Unit 8's incarcerated Assassins.
“That doesn’t sound good,” Rake went on.
“No,” Board admitted, looking down at his overly-worn shoes, “it doesn’t.”
“Now that you’re in with the warden, Bones, I’d try to get switched to
another unit if I were you.”
Board looked up at the man’s face. “I’m not in with the warden, Mike.”
“I didn’t mean it that way…it’s not like you’re a snitch or anything. But what I’m saying is, people are looking at you harder, now. And maybe the ones who have a grudge against you will want to act on it, because your term has been reduced…and they have less time to get to you.”
“I appreciate your concern, Mike. Thanks for the information.”
Rake glanced at the thick black bars that caged them in, then whispered, “Just don’t tell anyone you heard it from me…”
The next day, in the cafeteria, the twenty-year-old Chinese man with whom Board had once bunked gave him a smile when they were lined up for their chow. Board just nodded almost imperceptibly in return. He had made enough enemies without adding Henry Plough to the list. The Chinese man looked away quickly, as if embarrassed or a little bit hurt. Board felt somewhat guilty, but he was finding that guilt was a luxury one could not afford in prison.
Seven more days. Six.
-6-
Five more days. Four.
It was overcast, the air in the open courtyard misted with an imminent drizzle. Too cool for June; Board almost wished he had his winter pea coat on, hugged his arms as he strolled around the edges of the courtyard where it was hemmed in by towering brick walls. A football, missed by the prisoner who leapt to catch it, thudded against the wall a few feet in front of Board. For a moment he stared down at it as if befuddled, then slowly knelt to pick it up.
“Right here, vulture!” the one who’d missed it snarled, as if he thought Board might walk away with the thing. He started advancing with his shoulders squared menacingly.
Board tossed it to him underhand, continued on his walk around and around the perimeter.
After his second lap around the exercise yard, Board realized he was being followed at a discreet distance, though not discreet enough. The man was balding, as thickly set as a stevedore, and his sleeves were halfway rolled up despite the chill, revealing that his arms were black with tattoos. Board knew only his first name—Harry, nicknamed Hairy as if to spoof his naked dome. Board also knew that he was one of Henry Plough’s gang.
So someone had seen him nod at the Chinese inmate, or seen that man smile at him, after all.
Trying not to appear obvious, Board sought out Plough in the center of the courtyard. He sat playing chess with another of his gang. The young Chinese man sat somewhat behind Plough. If Plough wanted to punish Board, why wasn’t he punishing his bunkmate, too? Did he think Board was flirting but his “yellow kid” was innocent? Or did he hope to make an example of Board in front of the youth, to dissuade him from ever smiling at another man again?
Board stopped walking, leaned back against the wall with crossed arms, and looked directly at the man called Hairy as he approached. Nonchalantly, not once making eye contact with Board, Hairy stopped walking along the inner perimeter, as well—cut diagonally toward the center of the courtyard to take a seat not far from Plough…who did not look up at him.
Board kept leaning against the bricks, calm on the exterior but his heart still walking rapidly in his chest and fighting the urge to break into a mad dash. If Plough wanted him, Plough would get him; somehow he had an arrangement with some of the guards. They looked the other way when he had an inmate beaten, or when booze and other contraband was smuggled in.
He would have to appeal to Warden File directly, insist that he needed to be removed to another unit. He’d even agree to be housed on death row, where in a few days more he’d begin performing his duties. He’d be almost as safe there as he would be in solitary, and even that was looking preferable to remaining in Unit 8.
Just as in the Unit 8 rec room, a bell sounded when their two-hour exercise period was over; time to return to their cells. Board was relieved. He worked his way into the line that was forming at the arched doorway on the southern side of the huge square. Another unit would disgorge its inmates into the courtyard as soon as this group had been removed.
A commotion ahead in the line drew Board’s attention, and he craned his neck to see. Two men spilled out of the queue, their bodies tangled, one gripping the other in a headlock. Board recognized them as two of the unit’s five Assassins. Why two comrades should have come to violence he had no idea, but they could kill each other for all he cared. In fact, he’d be that much better off if they did, though he didn’t think they’d have the opportunity. Already, several guards were rushing toward them, raising their batons for use.
There was another shuffling of feet behind Board, his instincts telling him to whirl toward it. When he was half turned, he saw that other men in the line behind him had parted to let the Assassin named Linterna through. And when he had spun three quarters of the way around, Board saw the feral grin on the Assassin’s face, the handmade knife he held in his fist.
Board tried to spin back in the other direction, though the men ahead of him didn’t seem in a hurry to let him through. He shoved one of them with force, but it slowed him down. He felt rather than saw or heard Linterna rushing up behind him.
But the knife didn’t crunch into his lower back as he expected. Instead, peripherally he saw a figure lunge to the ground as though he’d flung himself there. When Board looked over his shoulder, he saw that Linterna lay on his face on the ground, jolting with spasms as if electrocuted. The handle of a carpenter’s awl jutted up from the back of his neck, its ice pick-like spike obviously buried to the hilt in his spine.
Board then looked at the men in back of him in the line. His eyes directly met those of the man they called Hairy. And Hairy nodded at him meaningfully.
The guards had hold of the two Assassins who had been scuffling, were pulling them apart without too much resistance, but now other guards came running to see to this wounded Assassin, who lay scrabbling at the ground in agonized convulsions.
Board then looked for Henry Plough in the line, finally found him up toward the front. Plough was not looking Board’s way, but the Chinese youth darted him a quick glance. No smile, but Board now understood what had happened. He nodded his thanks to his former cellmate, who he was sure had heard about the danger Board was in…who he was sure had asked Plough to keep a watchful eye over him.
The Assassin named Linterna died in the infirmary that night.
Board never spoke to Plough directly, though he did manage to pass his gratitude along through one of his boys. Still, Board didn’t press his luck by speaking with his former cellmate again, for the remainder of his incarceration.
And for the three years that remained of his sentence—no matter what they thought of his new employment—no one ever made an attempt to attack John Board again.
-7-
There’d been a change in plan. In the eleventh hour, the first man whose execution Board would record had insisted on being hung instead of electrocuted.
When Warden File had told Board this, he had only been able to gape at the man a moment or two before stammering, “But…I haven’t tested the camera…with hanging…”
“It’s a pain in the ass, but that’s what he wants, and he has that option, so that’s what we’re going to do. It doesn’t really matter that you tested with electrocution. You positioned the camera perfectly, you got everything nicely in the shot. All you have to do is adjust for this positioning instead…”
“But,” Board started. He didn’t go on.
“We don’t have time for a pig at this point.” The warden sighed. “I don’t know why the change, except maybe he heard stories about bleeding eyes and such. I’m sure he thinks this will be quicker, or cleaner. In any case, this is his option—so be it. Now, before the execution we’ll test the trapdoor by dropping a sandbag a dozen times. That’s the procedure. The camera won’t record inorganic subjects, so it won’t do to film the sandbag tests, but at least you can watch and gauge your distance before they bring the prisoner out…”
This prisoner’
s name was Charles Zipper and he was a repeat sex offender who had been sentenced to death for two convictions of child rape, with a girl of six and another of nine years. Besides the prison chaplain, Warden File would be in attendance during his execution, as would the parents of both children and the prisoner’s wife, who File told Board was still supportive of her husband. She claimed that her husband was a sensitive and intelligent man—a piano instructor—who had suffered a miserable childhood, physically abused by his father and even more so by his mother. One time his father had slapped him across the face because his son had given him an impulsive kiss on the cheek. Men didn’t kiss each other, the father had yelled. Another time his mother had beaten him severely for having an erection while he was curled up behind her in bed for a nap. File wore a faint smile as he related these stories to Board, as if he found them pathetically amusing. Board asked the warden if Zipper had murdered or harmed the girls after he’d raped them, and File said he hadn’t. Zipper’s attempts to have his sentence commuted to life imprisonment had been denied, despite a psychiatrist’s protest that Zipper was sick and incapable of resisting his impulses.
Wearing the cheap suit he’d had on at the time he was first brought to the prison, Board had set up his camera squarely facing the gallows. He tried not to look directly at any of the people who filed silently into the brick-walled, windowless chamber to take their seats in three rows of folding metal chairs, the legs of which made painful scraping sounds across the concrete floor. The prisoner’s wife sat in the front row, the families of his victims in the last, separated by a row occupied by several newspaper reporters—already scribbling madly as if producing spirit writing. File would also sit up front, as would a prison physician who would check for vital signs after the fact and pronounce Zipper dead. Board heard sniffling—he was sure from the soon-to-be widow.
The prisoner was escorted into the chamber, the high ceiling of which echoed with the sound of the door being closed again. His hands were bound in front of him to a restraining strap he wore around his waist. To Board the man looked thin, weak, half-starved though he knew he wasn’t. Zipper was allowed to go to his wife, who embraced him for almost a minute, whispering tearfully to him, until they were urged apart. Only now, after that intimacy was over, did Board thumb the button on the end of his plunger, to indicate to the camera that it should begin shooting. He saw tears in Zipper’s eyes but the man’s face was otherwise stunned immobile as he was walked up the steps of the scaffold by a guard who held his elbow.
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