The Weatherman

by Steve Thayer

  Les Angelbeck didn’t argue the point. He glanced at the Sony on the chair outside the cell. “I see you got a TV set there.”

  The Weatherman glared at the rectangular monster on the chair. “It was television that ruined the South. Television did more damage below the Mason-Dixon line than Sherman’s march to the sea.”

  “Yes, it’s pretty much made ghouls of us all.”The old police captain picked up the Bible. “Is this yours, Dixon?”

  “Yes, it has my name in it. I’ve been reading it. Ain’t that the damnedest thing? I’d always believed science and religion were incompatible. They’re not, you know?”

  “Yes, I know.”

  “Are you going to be there when . . . ?

  “No. Do you want me there?”

  “No, please don’t.”

  “Do you have any family left?”

  “No, there’s nobody. Thank God.”

  Les Angelbeck laid the Weatherman’s Bible on the bunk and looked about the sparse cage of steel and concrete. “Donny Redmond’s son won a basketball scholarship to Florida State. Isn’t that funny? Full circle.”

  “Seems a lot of people are returning to their roots these days.”

  “My daughter is trying to get me out there to California. She doesn’t think I can survive another Minnesota winter. Quite frankly, neither do I.”

  When the conversation died, the dying policeman and the condemned weatherman sat in stony silence. No coughing or wheezing even. It was the longest anybody could remember seeing the Marlboro Man go without a cigarette in his mouth. Down home a friend was defined as someone you could sit in silence with and not be embarrassed by the silence. That was the feeling Dixon Bell enjoyed as they shared their last hour in the isolation cell—though how in hell he could end up friends with the one man who had done the most to see that he was convicted of multiple murders was beyond explanation.

  “It was the fingerprint,” Les Angelbeck finally said.

  “It’s not mine,” answered Dixon Bell.

  The veteran of World War II, the veteran of a thousand criminal investigations, fought his way to his feet. The guard unlocked the door and slid it aside. Les Angelbeck clutched his heart in agony and glanced up at the dull but omnipresent light in the concrete ceiling. “There is one loose end I’d like tied up, if you would, Dixon. For my own peace of mind. What became of the letters in your diary, the letters from that Lisa woman?”

  “I really don’t know, Captain. They were tucked into the diary in the weather center. I have no reason to hide them from you now. As far as the trial goes, those letters wouldn’t have changed anything. I still believe somebody stole them to hurt me.”

  “Or to protect you?”

  The guard handed him his cane as he stepped outside. The cell door was closed, the electronic bolt shot locked with a bang.

  Dixon Bell stepped to the door and clutched the bars. “This ain’t television, Captain. All of the answers won’t be explained to you five minutes before the hour. This is a tragedy. You’re going to have to think about this one for the rest of your life, however short that may be.”

  The old cop turned on his cane and shook his head. “My heart may be failing me, Dixon, but it’s still telling me I got the right man, and I sincerely believe the only fair penalty for that man is death. Good-bye, Weatherman.”

  With seven days to go before the date of the execution Warden Oliver Johnson paid another visit to the Death House. An elderly janitor followed behind. Again the warden excused the guard. Johnson stood outside the cell, the old man over his right shoulder. “Your former employer, Channel 7 . . . their suit to broadcast or tape the execution was rejected in federal district court. The judge called the idea ‘ghoulish’ and their argument ‘asinine’—unusually harsh words from a federal bench. It’s doubtful there will be an appeal.”

  Dixon Bell stuck his hands through the cell door and rested his wrists on the crossbar. He was tired and weak. He was dropping weight fast. “Shoot, I was planning to use that air time to give the ninety-day winter forecast.” He looked at the janitor, then back at the warden. “Who’s our friend?”

  “Dixon, this is the man you wanted to meet, the man who has volunteered to throw the switch that will take your life. He agreed to see you. His name is Jesse.”

  Dixon Bell was shocked—poor choice of words, but that’s the way he felt. Old Jesse, everybody called him. He’d been at the trial. The Weatherman stood frozen in place, staring through the bars at this pathetic old man, this janitor he sometimes saw push a broom through the Seg Unit only to stop in front of his cell and stare out the window at the sky as if he were searching for a star. He checked with the sober face of Warden Johnson just to make sure it wasn’t a joke. “And you’re going to let him do this?”

  “I’m sorry. Nobody else came forward. It’ll be kept secret.”

  Dixon Bell turned his hostile gaze back on Old Jesse. “Will you be paid for this mad act?”

  “Yes, sir, I will.”

  “How much, may I ask?”

  “Five hundred and sixty-five dollars.”

  “And what are you going to do with the money?”

  The executioner was clearly uncomfortable with the question. He turned to the warden for help, but none was forthcoming. “Well,” he finally drawled, “I thought I might buy my great-grandson a new bicycle. Maybe one of those fancy Schwinns.”

  In an instant tears welled up in the eyes of Dixon Bell, but he didn’t know if they would be forced down his face by grief or laughter. He swallowed hard and put a hold on the tears. Damned if a smile didn’t cross his face. By God, he did not live in vain. They could nail him to their electric cross now. He knew the meaning of life. It was all for a Schwinn. “Don’t screw it up,” the Weatherman warned him. “There ain’t no need to torture me.”

  “I’ll do it right, Mr. Bell, just like the warden tells me.”

  “Thank you, Jesse. Thank you for seeing me.”

  “So what did he say to you?”

  “Who say what to me?”

  “The Weatherman. C’mon, Jess, everybody knows you were in there.” “Didn’t say nothin’. I just swept up a bit for him. Then he done thank me.” They were in the electric shop beside the Death House, Old Jesse and shop supervisor Dwayne Rossi. Old Jesse would be responsible for the actual death, but Rossi was in charge of the Death House equipment. The execution was less than a week away. Rossi held the death cap in his hand. “This whole headset works was shipped up here from Florida. I’ll be damned if I know if it’s put together right, but I’m supposed to inspect it.”

  “Looks right enough to me,” Old Jesse told him. “Wouldn’t for sure want that thing on my head.”

  “Oh, no, this ain’t right. Looky here, someone already stitched in the sponge.”

  “Ain’t that where it goes?”

  “Yeah, but it’s gotta be soaked in salt water. It can’t be stitched in until the night of the execution.” Rossi pulled on the sponge. A large chunk of it broke off in his hand. “Awful cheap-ass sponge for such an important job.” He accidentally tore off another piece. “Aw, Christ!”

  Old Jesse watched intently as the supervisor tried to put the sponge back together with about as much success as all the king’s men had with Humpty Dumpty. Rossi tossed the sponge bits to the floor in frustration. “We’ll have to get a

  new one, Jess. If I give you some money out of petty cash, can you pick up a new

  sponge tonight?”

  “What kinda sponge?”

  “I don’t know . . . a sponge is a sponge. Just make sure it’s big enough to fit over this wire mesh.”

  So on his way home that night Old Jesse stopped in at Walgreen and bought a new sponge for the death cap. Nobody explained to him the difference between a natural ocean sponge and a man-made synthetic sponge. Nobody explained the flammable difference.

  The Letters

  Andrea Labore came out of the bathroom, sat on the edge of the bed, and grabbed hold of the co
rner post. She slipped her hand under her bathrobe and pressed it firmly against her stomach. She breathed deep, still nauseous.

  At the foot of the bed the portable television set was glowing. The schlocky music began to play and Sky High News came on the air. Andrea had left work early, drove home sick under dark and threatening skies. Sitting in the anchor chair next to Stan Butts was Katherine Thompson-Jones, or Katie Tom-Jon in the newsroom where everybody had a nickname. She was young and beautiful and overeducated, a real brown-eyed beauty up from Missouri. She spoke with that perky twang in her voice that made her sound fresh and appealing. The photogs loved her. Now she was the fill-in anchor. For the most part Andrea ignored the bitch, gave her the cold shoulder.

  “Hundreds of peaceful protesters, thousands of letters from around the world, and too many phone calls to monitor have not changed the mind of Minnesota Governor Per Ellefson. The word is still ‘go’ for this week’s execution of convicted serial killer Dixon Graham Bell . . . a former meteorologist in the Twin Cities.”

  Andrea sighed. With smoke and mirrors they were now pretending he had never been employed by Channel 7. Watching the news at home was like putting in another thirty minutes of work. She muted the sound.

  Rick had left her a note and a flower on the pillow.

  Andrea

  Like I told you on the phone, this inmate at the Wisconsin state prison in Waupun is now claiming he murdered the Indian girl at Birkmose Park in Hudson. He matches the description the jogger gave that day. This could be the big break. It couldn’t have come too soon. I called Stacy in Washington. I’m driving over to Waupun tonight to see if he’ll talk with me. Be back tomorrow. Hope you’re feeling better. I love you.

  Rick

  Andrea folded the note in half and placed it on the night table along with the flower. Then she reached into her bathrobe pocket and pulled out another letter, a letter addressed to her at the newsroom. It was still unopened, but she knew who it was from. She ran her fingers over the state seal. She’d thought about ripping it into a hundred pieces unread and flushing it down the toilet along with her vomit. She thought about that again; then she opened the envelope and held the letter under the lamp light.

  Dear Andrea

  You won’t talk with me on the phone, you haven’t answered any of my letters, so let us make this letter the last letter I write you. I know how foolish it is at this point to write about my love and my hatred for you, but there are some things I want to say before we get on with our lives.

  Your scorn for me is unjustified. Though you’ve always pretended they don’t exist, I have two daughters. No man has more respect for women than a man with daughters of his own. You made the decision, Andrea. You had your precious choice. The truth is you valued your television career just as much as I valued my political career.

  Your marriage is a scandal. Did you marry out of spite? To spite me? You didn’t do him any favor. Do you know what everybody is saying? If it weren’t for that mask, you wouldn’t be good enough for him. You’re the one who should hide your face.

  If we had met at a different time you would now be Minnesota’s first lady.That may not sound like much from beneath the bright lights of your anchor desk, but ten years from now you’ll be just like every other woman who took a seat in that chair—forty, divorced and unemployed. What shallow lives you people lead.

  Goodbye, Andrea.

  Per

  Andrea Labore wiped an angry tear from her eye. She looked to her television set, where the young and effervescent Katie Tom-Jon was giggling at something the new weathergirl had said to her.

  Who could have charted such a life? From the swimming pools on the Iron Range to the Olympic pool at the University of Minnesota, she swam against the tide to make something of herself. She didn’t fail as a policewoman, she walked away. She’d faced a moment the average cop never has to face and she handled the situation with decisive and deadly force. Then she entered the most competitive business in America, where her police training came in handy and she rose to the top. Television was a cruel business, where women are forced out the door by the age of forty and men follow a decade later. A business where they chase ratings and gossip with as much zeal as they chase the news. Where they hand out awards like jellybeans. An exciting but unforgiving business where every year another graduating class of bimbos and bozos line up outside the door to get inside the door so that they can get their faces on television. The mistakes Andrea made along the way were as grandiose as her ambition. But for now the coveted anchor chair was hers.

  She had always attracted the wrong kind of men. And always they grew tired of her. Rick was different. He would always be there. In the end the man she chose to marry made up for his face with his heart. Now motherhood was less than nine months away. Who could have charted such a life?

  In a corner of the bedroom was a bookcase Rick had built for her. He was good with wood. It was something he could do alone. When they moved into the house he winced as she lined the shelves with the novels of Anne Tyler and Alice McDermott and the narcissistic autobiographies of network news stars, co-authored by real writers. He said to her, “Who else but TV reporters would have to have somebody else write their books for them?” Andrea stepped over to the bookcase and pulled an obscure novel from the shelf, that hardcover book where wives hide the letters their husbands must never see. She sat with it on the bed and tucked the governor’s lethal venom between the pages. Then she flipped a few pages and pulled out a different letter. A note really. Scribbled on school paper.

  My Dear Dixon

  About the date I owe you . . . isn’t there some other way I could repay you for the wonderful friend you’ve been? I didn’t mean for you to misunderstand my feelings for you.

  Andrea slipped the note back into the book and flipped a few more pages. The next letter she retrieved was yellow and brittle. It was torn at the folds, as if it had been opened and read a thousand times over the years. She held the letter with the tips of her fingers barely touching the frail paper.

  My Dear Dixon

  I read your letter and have thought about it ever since. I wish you wouldn’t refer to it as your “sad story,” because it is only “you” who has made it sad. You have asked me out so many times and each time I have tried to say no as sweetly as I can . . .

  Andrea read the entire missive. It sounded like a letter she’d been forced to write in high school—sadly, the kind of letter teenage boys force young women to write every year. Girls grow up so much faster than boys. They just don’t understand that.

  . . . Please take my advice and don’t think I don’t understand how you feel, but I'm sorry you don’t understand how I feel, that makes the answer NO!

  Love Lisa Beauregard

  Andrea Labore was a television reporter, not a criminal lawyer. She had to think fast that day in the weather center. Task force detectives would be there shortly. Some protective instinct kicked in, the need to help this man who felt he loved her. She reasoned that without the letters all they had on the Weatherman was circumstantial evidence—enough to convict, maybe, but hardly enough for the death penalty. She was half right.

  Andrea glanced over at Rick’s note on the night table. Her husband was trying to stop the execution every way he knew how. She could do no less. The purloined letter written by a southern belle so many years ago was carefully refolded once again and tucked neatly between the pages of a novel nobody would ever read. Andrea returned the book to the shelf, its place reserved in dust.

  She gathered pen and paper. She had a letter of her own to write. She put the flower to her nose. Then, in the ever-present glow of the television screen, the queen of the evening news knelt beside her bed. She folded her hands together and bowed her head as she had done every night as a child growing up on the Iron Range. And for the first time in years Andrea Labore whispered a prayer—a prayer for the three men who loved her.

  The Execution

  TIME: 23:51 DATE: 10/31 TEMPERATUR
E: 39º BAROMETER: 29.84 RAINFALL: .36 WIND: N 11

  Minnesota Governor Per Ellefson turned away from the digital weather station on his desk, the electronic gift that had been presented to him by a TV weatherman from the Channel 7 newsroom—a weatherman now nine minutes away from execution by electrocution. The governor walked to the window. Rain was falling on the Capitol grounds. No lightning. No thunder. Nothing so dramatic. Just a steady, dispiriting drizzle. November would dawn cold and rainy.

  The dim lights that were the city of St. Paul fused with the midnight weather, casting an unearthly aureole over the modest skyline. Trees were black and bare, the dying embers of autumn blown into soggy piles along the gutters. The statue of a proud and noble Viking stood guard at the Capitol steps, his back to his descendant. Per Ellefson pulled a letter from an envelope and leaned against the window. Raindrops streaked the glass.

  My Dear Governor

  I did not marry out of spite. As hard as it is for people to accept, I married for old fashioned reasons—love and respect. Now there’s life inside of me again, from the seed of a man whose face is as physically ugly as your face is beautiful. This life I am going to let live. But this is not an answer to your letters. This is a plea for mercy.

  I am asking you to spare the life of Dixon Bell. Unlike my husband, who is too often blinded by his righteousness and his wounds, I believe the Weatherman may indeed be guilty. The black hole of hatred in the soul of Dixon Bell may be so deep that he should never be allowed to walk among free people again. But such a gifted man has so much left to give us that it would be a crime to snuff out his knowledge of the heavens. Please commute his sentence to life in prison.