“Took three for Ethel Rosenberg,” Fred said.
“That’s not what I mean.”
“You mean protocol?”
“I mean a woman. I don’t know.”
“This one’s no walk in the park,” Fred said.
“So I heard,” Jim Dolly said. “Hell hath no fury, right?”
“Angel dust,” Fred said.
“That’s what I heard,” Jim Dolly said. “That shit, they snap handcuffs on that shit. Pull out their own teeth.”
Or pick up a tree ax. “Probably as tall as her,” Fred said.
“Jesus,” Jim Dolly said. “And both of em?” He sounded kind of impressed.
“She took no prisoners.”
“Bet I know what went first. My old lady just called a lawyer.”
“I understand she’s born again,” Fred said.
“Bet he was too,” Jim Dolly said. He thought. “But still. I don’t know.”
Fred said, “We didn’t create the market.”
“Still,” Jim Dolly said. “A woman.”
“A human being,” Fred said. “That’s why we’re here. You want to put a doily on the backrest?”
“You’re not funny,” Jim Dolly said.
“I’m not trying to be.”
“I mean, even if I was for it.”
Fred looked at him. “You’re saying you’re against it?”
Jim Dolly wiped his mouth. “Sure I am. You didn’t know?”
Fred drank some coffee. “I guess we never discussed it.”
“So? I play the harmonica too. Does it matter?”
“I don’t know.” Fred drank some more coffee. “I guess not necessarily.”
“Bet your sweet ass it doesn’t. Matter of fact, it’s my angle.”
“That so?” Fred chain-lit another one.
“Think about it.” Jim Dolly frowned, fanned the air. He stood and looked for the men’s room, left Fred to think about it and pick up the bill.
The governor of Indiana left a ten-percent tip. Fred used the men’s room after Jim Dolly, then got a cup of coffee to go. Jim Dolly wanted to drive but Fred talked him out of this as well. The pint lay empty under the seat. They didn’t talk much. Fred glanced back when he could to check on the status of their cargo. The blanket was secure but the shape unmistakable. Suspended in its dark web, riderless, the road and the country falling away behind it through the back windows, into evening.
By dusk they were in Michigan City. It was too late to get into the facility but the deadline was first thing in the morning. Fred hadn’t been in a prison since his father was a guard. They found a motel with a bar and grill across the parking lot, got a room and unwound, each in his way. Fred pulled up the armchair, opened his briefcase and sat with notes and agenda spread out on the bedspread before him. Jim Dolly lay on the other double with the remote, jacket off, eyes closed, mouth open, drowning out the air conditioner.
At eleven he sat up abruptly and mechanically like something programmed for nocturnal activity. Thumped into the bathroom rubbing his neck, peed, ran water, came out smoothing his hair and reaching for his jacket.
“Think I’ll run across the way for a minute here,” Jim Dolly said, and breathed into his hand. “Grab a drink?” The question was a formality.
Fred stretched. “It’s been a long one. Think I’ll just catch the news.”
“Troublemaker.” Jim Dolly put on his jacket. “Don’t wait up.”
“Take it easy,” Fred said. “We’ve got a show to put on tomorrow.”
He watched the news. A movie came on then and he didn’t change the channel. The pillow was round and stiff, like sleeping on a football, but he didn’t wait up. A woman laughed and woke him. He lay there blinking, turned his head. Jim Dolly’s bed was empty but held the shape of his body as if he lay there invisible. Fred looked for a clock that wasn’t there. He’d taken off his watch. A car door slammed.
He was cold.
He looked in the bathroom, went to the window and parted the curtain like he didn’t want to be seen. The lights across the parking lot were still lit to the bass thump of country music. He turned off the air and stepped out of the room. The night was cool. The van had grown a skin of moisture, the windows frosted blind. Drone of defective neon and the streetlights like gallows. Nothing on the highway. He started for the bar and grill and then heard the woman laugh again.
He stopped and looked at the van. It moved.
The ice machine dumped ice under the stairs next to the office but Fred kept his eye on the van. It was swaying gently, side to side, like a kid’s ride outside a discount store, a rocket you drop a dime into. He went around behind it but did not try to see into the windows. The woman was making other sounds now. He heard Jim Dolly now.
“I can adjust the…” Jim Dolly said.
“Sure,” she gasped. “I can’t believe it.”
“I told you.”
“Shhhit”
“Put your leg through…break this sonofabitch in.”
The leaf springs started to squeak. Fred stood there till he heard a car coming down the road, and went back to the room as if he would be caught at something.
He drove to Kentucky alone. This time the trip was longer but went by faster. He pulled into a parking lot like any other except for the blue state flag. The state seal was a picture of two men embracing, one a frontiersman, the other in city clothes like a politician. Fred passed beneath them and walked in the front door, into X-rays, a metal detector, a visitors’ log passed back and forth under a bulletproof window. He was searched and questioned, then escorted to the superintendent’s office by an old corrections major who never said a word. The superintendent was waiting for him with the chief of maintenance. Everyone shook hands, and they asked Fred if he’d taken 71 down.
“42,” Fred said. “U.S. Highway. I like to see things.” He’d spent the night in Louisville.
“Lou-a-ville,” the chief of maintenance said…
“Is this the South?” Fred asked.
“Depends whose office you’re in,” the superintendent said, and led the way. He and the chief of maintenance carried walkie-talkies, and each an outsize gut like another occupational accessory.
Pale green corridors, guards in a glass bubble, monitors throwing gray light up in their faces. They looked up reluctantly, as if everything they needed was there on closed-circuit. Words exchanged, fishing trips and family. A door slammed open and slammed shut, led to other doors, stairs; a courtyard, a gate, the yard.
“We’re safe,” the superintendent assured him. “Try not to make eye contact.”
The sky was the same blue you saw from the freeway but now you were trapped under it. Walls, wire, towers, dark corners in broad daylight. Fred in the middle. He looked at the ground, red clay, heard the mild rubber of handball, the clank of weights. He smelled smoke and lit one. Moved past men knotted together by race, religion, age, affiliation unknown. Muscle and ink. Alone or in groups, they watched, and were watched in turn from above, the guards with small mirrors for eyes.
The chief of maintenance had tried to plant grass but it grew thinly and in patches.
“Rock’s just too close to the surface,” he said, breathless.
“Makes it harder to tunnel out,” the superintendent said. “You really should check out the raceway if you have time. Or Lake Barkley this time of year.”
“There’s always the caves,” the chief of maintenance said, “since you like to see things.”
“I’ll start here,” Fred said. “Where’s the death row yard?”
“You’re in it,” the chief of maintenance said. “Eye contact.”
“We’ve mainlined them into the general population,” the superintendent said. “Everyone here’s either CP or life and fifty. They’ve got nothing left to prove—haven’t had a single fatality on my watch.”
“They’d cut your throat soon as look at you,” the chief of maintenance muttered. (And they looked.) “There’s always somethin
g to prove.”
“A couple-three stabbings, fights—schoolyard stuff,” the superintendent said. “But we’re not taking any chances. No one knows you’re here.”
“They know,” Fred said. “They know everything,” and they came to a black stone building, six-sided, like a mausoleum with a forty-foot chimney.
“Well that’s a good thing,” Fred said, looking up.
“We don’t want to flush it into the sewer system,” the chief of maintenance said, “but I guess you know all about all that.” They went in.
Black-stone cool. In the center a squat metal capsule like a submersible, built for depths where light won’t reach and alien fragile creatures live out their lives in crushing dark. Rust eating through the paint. Two oval windows slanted like eyes, insectile, an oval door with a wheel lock and six toggles. It was open six inches or so and the chief of maintenance grabbed the wheel. The door screamed open the rest of the way and Fred stepped inside.
“These damn things,” he said, as if wearily familiar.
A steel chair bolted to the floor, a lead bucket beneath it. Fred sat, produced a notepad and pencil.
“You sure you want to do that?” the superintendent said.
“Got to check it for comfort,” Fred said, and wrote something down.
“Well?” the superintendent said.
“A rubber pad would help.”
The chief of maintenance pointed to the bucket. “We fill it up with sulfuric acid, eighteen percent solution. Then we drop in the briquettes.”
There was a trip tray under the seat. Their voices had a metal edge.
“I’ve designed a gas generator,” Fred said. Cylindrical vessel containing hydrocyanic acid, boiled by an electrically heated water jacket, the catalog said.
“A nitrogen burst system to clean the pipes afterwards—how do you clean up?”
“Ammonia and bleach,” the chief of maintenance said. “Coveralls, gas masks.”
“Gas masks?” Fred said. “You’re lucky to be alive. You should be breathing oxygen.”
The chief of maintenance looked at the superintendent. “It’s not like we do one a week,” he said. The superintendent hadn’t done one at all.
“Glad to hear it,” Fred said, and he scribbled. “The air in the chamber should be preheated to prevent condensation on the walls. This will expedite cleanup. What about clothes?”
“The coveralls are rubberized,” the chief of maintenance said.
“I mean the body.”
“Well that’s a bit of a problem.”
“Don’t give them any. They can kill you as well.”
“You’re recommending I conduct an execution in the nude?” the superintendent said.
“Just the inmate,” Fred said, and tried a smile. But all they saw were bad teeth, and waited for him to hide them again.
“A pair of boxer shorts,” he said. “Shave the body hair for good measure.”
“I thought dignity was your watchword,” the superintendent said.
“It’s one of them,” Fred said, “but whoever built this thing didn’t have dignity much in mind. Or efficiency,” he said. “Or safety. In the end it’s about how they go, not what they wear. Clothes are clothes. This thing’s as bad for your health as it is for theirs.” He stood. “Let’s take a look at these seals.” He ran his hands around the edge of the doorway, the windows. “Gaskets are shot.”
“We coat them with Vaseline,” the chief of maintenance said.
“They should be replaced,” Fred said. Neoprene, Teflon, pickled asbestos. “As an added precaution the chamber should operate at a negative pressure.” He recommended two pounds per square inch.
He’d designed a vacuum pump.
“Anything else?” the superintendent asked.
Gas detectors, alarms, proper ventilation, emergency breathing apparatus, first aid… Damn things, he just hated them.
He tapped the hull with his knuckle and it rang.
“How much is this party getting to run me?” the superintendent said.
“Depends,” Fred said. “At this point I’m not sure what would be more cost effective: refurbishing the old unit or outright replacement.” He told them he had a fully designed model on the drafting board—a two-seater—but not that it would run them two hundred thousand dollars.
“Let’s go back to my office,” the superintendent said.
When they stepped out of the building a shriveled old man no taller than Fred stood waiting for them. He was thin and pale and shirtless, ribs and veins, and his hair was cut short except for a narrow ribbon of it that hung between his shoulder blades. Dark purplish growths erupted from his chest and face like overripe fruit. He was looking at Fred and Fred looked back and saw an old man who was still in his twenties.
“Are you Mr. Death?” the ancient boy said.
“My name’s Fred,” Fred said.
The superintendent raised his walkie-talkie but didn’t use it. “Stand down, William,” he said. “You know what’ll happen.”
The inmate stepped obediently back and to the side. “I won’t make any trouble, sir, you know me. I just wanted to ask Mr. Fred here something is all.”
“I’ll talk to him,” Fred said.
“That’s my call if you don’t mind,” the superintendent said, and he looked at this boy like a parent who understands he must treat each child differently. Then he looked at the other inmates. The chief of maintenance seemed to be shaking his head.
“All right,” he said then, “two minutes,” and made some kind of gesture to the guns above and behind them. The chief of maintenance stood back with a handkerchief over his mouth.
The superintendent wouldn’t let them shake hands.
“I hear you’re some kind of executioner,” the young man said. “Somebody in the yard called you that. No offense.”
“I’m surprised you hear anything at all since nobody knows I’m here,” Fred said. “I’m an engineer and a consultant. I design, build, and sell hardware. Some training. I don’t wear a hood, and I don’t push the button.”
“I thought it was a lever.”
“Doesn’t matter if it’s a daisy chain as long as it works,” Fred said. “My job is to make it easier for everyone. I didn’t create the market, but if that’s where you’re headed,” and he nodded slightly toward the black stone he’d just stepped from, “better for your sake I’m here.”
The young man considered this. “Be straight with me then,” he said, “I give what I get,” and he seemed for a moment to be looking somewhere else. “She left me on a swing in the playground—I just kept waiting for the next push… They took me in and raised me with their own, but he wouldn’t give me twelve dollars for a squirrel gun. I waited till they were asleep in their bed…”
“All right now,” the superintendent said. “What is it you need, son?”
“I just mean I’ll take what I got coming, sir. And if your gas don’t do me this monster will.” He waved his hand over his face and chest, the burgeoning sores. “Nigger give it to me in Fayetteville—unless you can get it from a woman. Anyway, no one bothers me now. Guess we’ll see what comes first.”
“Sounds like you’ve made peace with it to me,” Fred said.
“I didn’t say I wasn’t scared.”
“Then what can I tell you?”
“Well I’ve heard things, sir. About guys shaking, beating their heads against the pole, eyes bugged, foaming at the mouth like dogs…that don’t sound so easy to me.”
“Cyanide gas has to be breathed to do its job,” Fred said. “When inhaled it is instantly fatal. Don’t fight it and it won’t hurt.”
“So in other words you all couldn’t do it without me.”
“William,” the superintendent said, “that’s not a question.”
“I suppose you could put it that way,” Fred said.
The young man looked into the ground. “Can you give me a way to go?”
“That’s on you,” Fred said. “Do
n’t fight it. When you’re strapped in listen for the pellets dropping in the bucket beneath you.”
“I don’t know…”
“You’ll hear them dissolving.”
“Like Alka-Seltzer,” the chief of maintenance said without irony.
“When you hear that sound,” Fred said, “close your eyes and count to three.”
“Fast or slow?” the young man asked softly, and the superintendent said his name again.
“Count to three and take a deep breath,” Fred said, “and when you open your eyes you’ll be standing on the other shore. You can clear your lungs there and draw fresh air. Someone will call your name, your true name.” And the old boy stood intent as if listening for it now. “You can lay down your cross then, William,” Fred said. “Take up that crown and go home.”
The young man looked like he wanted to step forward, but wouldn’t cross the line the superintendent had drawn. He looked thoughtful. “Do you think I’ll get my push?”
“Show us how to die and you might teach us how to live,” Fred said. He put a hand in his pocket. “You should talk to your clergyman.”
The young man shrugged. “Chaplain Dan just says punks ain’t in the book.”
“Stand down now, son,” the superintendent said, and raised his walkie-talkie again. “Time to go on about your business. We’ve all got things to do.”
The young man was already backing up. “Yessir, sir. Sorry to hold you all up. Thanks very much for your time, Mr. Death fredsir.” He turned back into the yard and whatever life he had left there. He turned back and they could just hear him, speaking softly to himself, repeating a phrase like the lost child in the children’s story chanting there’s no place like home. But they couldn’t hear exactly what his version was, and then it was lost in the general murmur of the yard.
They walked back through the yard toward the gate. “So how many of these affairs have you sat in on, Mr. Death?” the superintendent asked.
“Fred,” Fred said. “I’ve never been invited.”
She said she liked to be scared so he took her to a double feature at the drive-in. In the first one five college kids rent a cabin in the deep woods. The virgin, an archaeology major, stumbles upon a manuscript bound in human flesh, its text inscribed in blood. She recites a passage and invokes a horde of evil spirits. The cabin is besieged, the students possessed one by one, transformed, impaled, beheaded, shot, burned, bludgeoned, dismembered, the archaeology major raped by sentient trees. Only the dropout survives—or does he?
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