AHMM, July-August 2007

by Dell Magazine Authors

  This is just some of what a conscientious hangman needs to know. Prison guards do not; and for the hangee, ignorance is bliss. When the warders had got their charge bedded down for the night, they settled themselves, less comfortable than him in their upright wooden chairs, to assess the situation. The senior man was now a good deal less composed than before. His partner reflected that he'd been up and down like this since that never clearly explained injury nearly a year ago.

  "Reprieve? Fat chance. They never let you off for killing a police officer. If it hadn't been for that, he'd have got away with manslaughter, no question. Especially as he was only there by accident."

  "All that violence on a peace march. It doesn't make sense."

  "Nothing has made sense since the war, if you ask me."

  The second warder wasn't going to ask him. Not about that, at any rate. “That stuff he came out with in court. Do you reckon he will try to top himself?"

  The other laughed knowingly. “Not on your nelly. Half of them say that just to create an impression. It's never happened yet."

  "There's always a first time. Hermann the German got away with it at Nuremberg."

  "Yes, well, his guards must have been asleep on the job. Yanks! Anyway, Goering had plenty of friends in high places."

  "I read in Titbits once that he hid his capsule inside the cavity of an old scar on his belly until the night before."

  They both glanced across to the apparently sleeping prisoner. “Titbits,” scoffed the senior warder, “that's a right scholarly journal, I don't think. Still, it wouldn't do any harm to check him over in the shower tomorrow morning. You can look up his backside, since you're such an expert on cavities."

  "That gives me something to look forward to. But it's our arses on the line if anything were to go wrong."

  "All right, you've made your point, and I agree, we can't be too careful. But where would sonny boy over there get himself a cyanide capsule? Think about it. You can't just walk into Boots and buy them like a packet of Dispirin. It might happen in one of your magazine stories, but not in real life."

  The other still considered raising the possibility of somebody importing a poison, but decided against it. He didn't want to push the senior man over the edge. As it turned out, this was never an issue. The whole time he was there, the prisoner did not have a single visitor.

  "Don't you have anyone at all, son?"

  "Like it came out in court, my mother and father were killed in the Blitz, and if they had any relations I've never seen them. Everybody reckoned it was a miracle I wasn't blown up as well. The priest was sure it meant God had spared me for some higher purpose."

  That was right enough in a way, thought the second warder, gallows in mind.

  "Our chaplain's C of E, of course, but he takes on all comers. If you really want a proper priest, I could send word to the governor."

  The prisoner said politely that he didn't want any kind of priest, proper or otherwise. Can't be much of a Catholic, the senior warder decided, but then neither could his parents have been, what with them only having the one child. This theological musing led him to another question.

  "Not thinking of trying anything silly, are you, son?"

  "How do you mean?"

  "That business in court about doing yourself in."

  "I only meant I might be taken before the day. You never know."

  True enough, both warders thought, for different reasons. But neither pursued the point, either with him or each other.

  "Mind you,” the senior warder said neutrally, “you didn't do yourself any favors coming out with that remark about Joe Bernstein and Harry Goldberg. What with all that's happened in the world, there's no profit to be had from taking that line anymore."

  I wouldn't be too sure, the second warder thought.

  "I wasn't taking any line. Joe Bernstein and Harry Goldberg were two lads in our class. Nobody liked them. They had more pocket money than we did and made a lot more out of a kind of school newspaper they ran. They once made fun of me in a thing they wrote, said it would be the first and last time I'd ever be in the papers for anything."

  Words mean what they say but do not always say what they mean. “The rest of the world thinks he's a suicidal anti-Semite, and only us two know different."

  "Though he wasn't on oath when he said any of that."

  He was a model prisoner. Too much so, for their liking. They were almost glad of the one time he gave them a scare, staying too long in the lavatory, but when they charged in he just looked embarrassed and said he was having trouble going. You'll not have that problem on the day, the second warder thought. He didn't take advantage of the drink or tobacco rations. He never asked for a newspaper, or to visit the library. He declined to play any of their games, though did ask to use the pack of cards, with which he played a variety of patience neither of them knew. When he wasn't doing this, or enduring his exercise periods, he seemed content to lie on his bed, not ever making use of the bandage for his eyes.

  Apart from the cards, the only thing he asked for was chocolate. “Slam Bars, those are my favorite.” This was a bit of a poser, chocolate still being in short supply. But the senior warder spared him a few from his own precious rations, though the other one never did, and when he mentioned the prisoner's sweet tooth to the governor, the latter said he'd see what he could do.

  Even though they should have been used to him after three weeks, the two warders were still impressed when on his last night on earth their prisoner said he didn't want anything special for the traditional last breakfast, just one more Slam Bar would do, turned in early, and went to sleep almost at once.

  "Rummest cove we've ever had in here, that's for certain."

  "If anything is."

  "Might have been different if the person being beaten up had testified."

  "Never testified because never found. Wouldn't have done any good. He killed a constable who right or wrong was only doing his job."

  "That's what that lot at Nuremberg said."

  * * * *

  Had things gone to plan, the hangman and his assistant would have arrived the next morning at 7:56 precisely, on the customary signal given by the sheriff. Instead, they were already on their way home, cheated of a fee. Inside the cell, one warder was copiously using the lavatory. The other was stolidly fending off icily polite questions from the governor while trying to avoid getting elbowed by the chaplain flapping around the bed on which lay the prisoner, dead as the proverbial doornail. There was no rigor mortis to speak of. It had been a warm night outside, the cell was stuffy, and he was in the regulation heavy pyjamas. According to the medical officer, for whom this was a very different kind of body from his usual ones, it was a simple case of myocarditis, brought on by the heat of the night and the stress of the occasion, especially a stress that he gathered had been so tightly compressed. No, he told the board of enquiry, there was no trace of any pills or poison in his system, and there was nothing untoward about the state of the bed.

  If cell walls could talk, they would not have agreed. At about two in the morning, one of the warders, saying he would have his later, which he never did, had passed to the other a mug of tea from the thermos flask he always brought in, though this was the first time its contents had ever been laced with laxative. When the latter was on the second or third of his sudden dashes to and protracted stays on the bowl, thinking about nothing or nobody else, the other crossed over to the bed, took the chosen object from his pocket, and with it choked the prisoner who, deceptively or not, lay there looking as though butter wouldn't melt in his mouth.

  It was the least the warder could do. He, too, had been on that peace demonstration, wearing a balaclava over his face, something not out of place on a bitter January morning, lots of other marchers were wearing them, though not for the same reason. As a servant of the crown he was not allowed to have public opinions. He had received several good whacks from the constable's truncheon, including the one on the head, which still b
othered him.

  Since the right questions weren't asked, the right answers weren't given. There was some resentment, within and without the prison, that the culprit had escaped the hangman, but since he was dead anyway, this soon evaporated. The home secretary's office announced that no last-minute reprieve had been contemplated. This was not true, but it was thought expedient to say so, to damp down public curiosity and nip in the bud any possible rumors and newspaper headlines about Fate Taking A Strange Twist.

  Both warders stayed on the death cell rosters, it was not a responsibility for which there was much competition, until the hangman was put out of a job in 1965. Nothing much changed between them or inside them, except that even after chocolate rationing stopped in 1954, neither of them seemed to bring in Slam Bars to go with their tea anymore.

  Copyright (c) 2007 Barry Baldwin

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  INCIDENT AT LONELY ROCKS by Kristine Kathryn Rusch

  Winter on the Oregon beaches was unlike winter anywhere else. Winter on the beach meant fifty-degree temperatures and the occasional rain. The surf was high, but the beaches were empty—tourists spent their vacation dollars on Maui or the Virgin Islands, or even Las Vegas in December.

  But Oscar loved the beach. And he loved the fact that his route took him there every single week.

  Mondays were his beach days. He drove from the warehouse, which was on a side road exactly between Seavy Village and Anchor Bay, and headed north. His first stop was always at the Lonely Rocks Wayside, and he'd always think it was incredibly well named.

  Not once had he ever seen a car parked there, not once had he watched a tourist walk along the beach. When he arrived, there was only him, the crumbling parking lot, and thePOTSportable toilet, which was as close to the highway as he could get it.

  He would pull up alongside the toilet, get out his scrubber and bucket, then put on his gloves. He'd keep the ignition on—he had to; the hose wouldn't work without it—and then he'd get out. He'd open the toilet's door, stick the hose through the hole, and let the machine suck the waste into the large container at the back of his truck.

  He also had another portable toilet strapped into the back in case he had to switch one out or he got called to a new job. Usually that toilet remained there for most of the week.

  Then, when he finished vacuuming out the waste, he scrubbed the interior and added new chemicals in the portable toilet's storage container. He had become a fast cleaner, and a precise one. His motto was simple: He wanted moms and grandmoms to comfortably use his toilets.

  He particularly liked the Lonely Rocks Wayside. It had been built in the 1950s as a large turnout where tourists could watch the waves. Over the years, it had had slight upgrades: The parking lot was now asphalt instead of flattened dirt, a guardrail had been placed along the cliffside, and state-produced signs told idiots not to climb over the side.POTSgot the wayside's first and only portable toilet contract in 1991, and Oscar had been servicing Lonely Rocks ever since.

  Oscar figured it was the highway warning signs that kept the casual tourist away. In addition to the BEWARE SUNKEN GRADE signs that dotted every mile of the old road (it wasn't Highway 101 anymore; the state had gotten terrified of the erosion this high up and had moved the highway two miles inland, away from the ocean), there were DO NOT WALK signs posted along the shoulder and CAUTION: UNSTABLE GROUND signs even closer to the wayside itself.

  Most out-of-state tourists didn't know Oregon terminology, so the “sunken grade” signs wouldn't bother them. Sunken grade meant the same thing that the unstable ground sign meant with a slight twist: Sunken grade would most easily be translated as “sinking road."

  He was a native Oregonian, which was why he always stopped his heavy truck on a turnout on the east side of the highway, just before the sunken grade signs started. Then he'd walk the length—again on the east side, away from the ocean—and inspect the road, just to make sure it was sturdy enough for the one-ton-plus he would drive across it.

  So far, he'd been lucky. But a few times, he had come across crumbled asphalt on the far end of the wayside about a hundred yards past his delivery spot. Then he'd turn around and go the ten miles out of his way on the highway, heading to the next wayside. He'd call the deteriorating road into both the State Police and the Oregon Department of Transportation, figuring that he would be the first to discover it, even if the slide had happened in a storm three or four days before.

  In the winter, hardly anyone used this road. In the summer, he mostly saw folks he called “environmental tourists,” people with PROTECT THE EARTH bumper stickers or bikes or camping gear on the back of their car. The SUVs or the families whose kids had iPods hardly came here.

  This morning, the road had seemed stable. There hadn't been serious storms or high surf in the past week, so he gave the road only a cursory inspection. Then he drove up alongside the portable toilet and started his ritual.

  He put the truck in park and left it idling. He set the emergency brake and got out. He paused, mostly because he couldn't help it, and took a big sniff of the fresh ocean air. A touch of salt and a bit of brine all mixed with the chill that suggested the water itself. He loved it.

  Just like he loved the view: the Lonely Rocks, all five of them, standing (that's how the brochures described them) in the surf, looking forever like people in a semicircle with their backs to each other. He would've named it the Angry Rocks—he could almost imagine their fronts, the scowling faces, the crossed arms—but he supposed people would want something more dramatic with a name like that, instead of one of those silent stand-offs his ex-wife used to give him in the last few years of their marriage.

  Then he squared his shoulders and headed to the portable toilet.POTStoilets were a light green. The company got its start renting toilets to logging companies, and for some reason, some designer thought it would best to have the toilets blend into the scenery.

  Here, the light green looked slightly out of place. The trees along this cliff face were scraggly, wind-raved pine, with needles so dark they almost looked black. Against the asphalt, the green seemed festive, and more than once, he'd found one of those see-through Oregon Ducks stickers pasted onto the door. If the company hadn't minded, he would've left the sticker on—he understood team spirit; it had taken him through that glorious season when the football team he'd played for couldn't do anything wrong—but he had to follow regs. Nothing but the company logo on the outside (a big P with a toilet-bowl-shaped O, a T behind that in a way that kinda looked like a toilet, and an S that seemed to brace the entire mess up) and a spotless, pine-fresh interior.

  This toilet looked relatively new. It had the new curved door handle that informed someone outside whether the toilet was occupied or not, and it didn't have a lot of scratches or polished-off graffiti marks.

  He walked around the toilet first, making sure nothing had happened to the outside. He braced a hand on the side of the toilet and accidentally shoved it, which made it rock.

  Something banged inside.

  In fact, it banged so hard, he nearly toppled over. Weight had shifted.

  Someone had planted something inside his portable toilet.

  Then his breath caught. Had he interrupted a customer? A hiker maybe? Someone frightened by the required beep-beep-beep of the truck as it backed up?

  He could just imagine some scrawny hiker in his Birkenstocks, huddled inside, waiting for civilization to go away.

  "Hey!” he said. “C'mon out. It's okay."

  He almost banged on the reinforced plastic wall, then thought the better of it. That would probably scare Mr. Birkenstock even more.

  So he went around front and stopped as he peered at the door. It wasn't latched from the inside. The little red sign that changed as the handle latched read VACANT.

  He felt a little relief at that. Never once, in all his years as aPOTScustomer service representative had he ever tried to clean a toilet with someone in it.

  Although that didn
't explain the weight shift. He might have to amend his record to never cleaning a toilet with someone obviously in it. There was no way to tell this thing was occupied. The parking lot was empty, there was no backpack or camping gear outside (not that there was a place to camp anywhere near Lonely Rocks, although there was a great hiking trail—if you didn't mind that it could crumble out beneath you at any minute), and the door wasn't latched.

  He couldn't be blamed for making this kind of mistake.

  "Hey!” he said again. “My name's Rollston. I service these toilets. No need to be scared of me. Are you okay?"

  No one answered. And he had the odd feeling that no one would.

  Then he frowned. Kids. Kids were the only downside of this job. Not little kids, who actually loved outdoor toilets, seeing them as an exotic novelty. Not even the local high school crowd, which mostly found the toilets gross, if they thought of them at all.

  No, the kids that bothered him were the college kids. Old enough to come to the coast unsupervised for the weekend, but young enough to forget that the word “responsibility” applied even here.

  Those kids would get drunk, build fires on the beaches, and toddle up to the nearest portable toilet to get rid of the excess beer. Then they'd get the bright idea in their head that they needed to mess with the toilet somehow. Sometimes that messing was just a team sticker. But most often, it manifested in the urge to turn the toilet turtle.

  Oscar never understood why. Did the kids think there was a hole underneath it? The toilet just had a receptacle under the seat, a receptacle filled with chemicals to dissolve the waste and get rid of the smell. The things were designed so that they could be turned on their side and not spill (too much) unless they were overfull—and he never let his get overfull. So the irritation was just that he had to right the toilet before he could clean it.