by Steve Thayer
And through his tears Rick Beanblossom was sure he could see the tortured soul of the Weatherman as he left his smoldering body below and sailed up above the clouds, where the sun shines all the time and spirits dance where the wind doesn’t blow.
* * *
“What’s in it?” said the Queen.
“I haven’t opened it yet,” said the White Rabbit, “but it appears to be a letter, written by a prisoner to—to somebody.”
—Lewis Carroll
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
The Epilogue
Dear Su St. Germain
I have received many letters since my ordeal began, but yours was the most touching of them all. So touching it breaks my heart that I cannot help you. I am not the man you are looking for. I’m very sorry.
I left Vietnam just before Christmas 1974. To the best of my knowledge I was not replaced due to the American withdrawal. Because of the sensitive nature of our work and our importance to the war machine our records were classified.
I would like to believe that it was a weatherman who sprinted you to freedom. There is no greater thrill in meteorology than sharing our knowledge of the heavens with children. I’m sure he’d be very proud of you. But, Su, the decisions made in war that take lives and make lives are made in split seconds. More often they come from the heart and the gut instead of the brain. Though that day at the air base is precious to you, to him it may have been just another crazy afternoon in an insane war. I think the best thank-you to that soldier is for you to live a good life.
Funny as it may seem, the longer I sit here in this house of death watching television the more sane I feel. It’s the world outside that’s going mad. Tonight that world is cold and rainy. My cell is freezing. In an hour they will shave my head. Then I’ll take the long walk, down to the death chamber where they will strap me into their new electric chair. It is under these conditions that I put these last rambling thoughts to paper and send them off to a woman whose life was touched by a weatherman.
There is talk about a last-minute reprieve from the governor. A life behind bars. The political prisoner locked in his cell turning out one great essay after another. Then in my senior years millions of admirers finally win my release. I walk out the prison doors. The TV cameras surround me. I proclaim my innocence one last time. I live out the rest of my life sipping rum and Coke on the Gulf Coast while young people come to pay homage. Of course, it is only a dream. There will be no commuting my sentence to life in prison. This governor doesn’t have the mettle for it. The state is going to kill me.
I always saw myself dying on a beautiful autumn day with the sun setting over the land of ten-thousand lakes. Ten thousand leaves of ten thousand colors would be falling over me as they lay my body down. But this year the leaves fell before I did, and outside it is raining. I will die in the cold drizzle of November.
My other dream is of home. If I could walk out of this prison tomorrow free and innocent, I’d run home to Vicksburg. I’d run home in a minute. I’d take a job at the local TV station and I’d tell the folks how hot and humid it’s going to get, or I’d warn them about thunderheads piling miles high in the Delta sky. I’d buy one of those antebellum mansions over the river and I’d fix it up real nice, turn it into a bed and breakfast where Yankees could discover for themselves they don’t need shots to visit the South. And on those suffering hot and humid, lazy Mississippi days I’d sit out on the front porch, suck the sugar from the ice of my mint julep and watch the muddy river roll by. Friends and neighbors would stop up. We’d talk about nothing in particular, mostly the weather. More serious topics would be banned. Once in a while I’d politely correct their sweet ignorance.
“Do you miss it up there in Milwaukee, Dixon?”
“Minnesota. I lived in Minnesota. Yes, I miss it.”
Will you do something for me, Su? Will you pray for me? Will you get down
on your knees, close your eyes and talk to God about me? Tell him of the good I did. Ask him to forgive the bad. He never put a more tortured soul on this earth.
I have asked that my remains be cremated. Finish what the state began. I want them to take my ashes down to St. Paul and spread them over the Mississippi, that mean, unappeasing river. The river will take me home.
Falling temps tomorrow. Increasing winds. Snow flurries. Long winter ahead. Carol the guard is yelling at me. I hear doors opening. Death squad coming.
Live a good life, Little Girl.
Dixon Bell
Rick Beanblossom took the photocopy of the Weatherman’s last letter and rolled the pages into a scroll. He held the letter in his scarred hands as if it had been found in a cave off the Dead Sea. So much love, so much hatred in such a gifted man.
The man without a face stood beneath a stone cross where St. Paul’s Summit Avenue came to an abrupt end at a park on Mississippi River Boulevard. Winter was in the wind. A cold front was sweeping across the land. The setting sun was hidden behind a mountain of black and white clouds up from the end of the earth. Below him the mighty river went on its mean, unappeasing way, while over its steep banks of naked trees on the west side the skyscrapers of Minneapolis stood like icicles in the colorless twilight. A flashing white light caught his eye. It was the warning light atop the IDS Tower, where from the newsroom below, Dixon Bell had foretold of the coming storm.
The outcry over the botched electrocution was deafening. Up and down the state editorial pages raged with indignation. TV news hired sketch artists to re-create the fiery last minutes in the Death House. Out of a sense of honor and principle Warden Oliver J. Johnson submitted his resignation to the governor. Democrats wanted the governor’s resignation too. Others called for a special session of the legislature to abolish the death penalty. Instead, Per Ellefson issued a moratorium on executions, even though no one else in Minnesota had been sentenced to death.
A preliminary investigation into the execution of Dixon Graham Bell has uncovered two human errors and a mechanical failure. The failure of maintenance personnel to line the headset with an appropriate sponge. The mechanical failure of the automatic electrical cycle. And the failure of the volunteer executioner to override the electrical cycle. Despite these failures the prisoner died during the first application of current. All breathing and muscular activity was involuntary, a motion undertaken by the prisoner’s nervous system after his death. However, all executions are suspended pending the results of an independent investigation.
Arthur Svenson
Spokesman for Per Ellefson Office of the Governor of the State of Minnesota
But Rick Beanblossom knew in his heart the malfunction was at the beginning of the process, when the state said it would kill killers to show that killing people is wrong.
In a ghostly tree above him sat a bird’s nest, but the birds were gone. Barges were pushing downstream before the river froze. Behind him Summit Avenue ran east like a decorated ribbon through the charmed neighborhoods of old St. Paul, while out before him Minneapolis and its snowy white suburbs were pushing farther and farther west, the Los Angelization of a dying prairie. The memorial cross towering over him was dedicated to the men who sacrificed their lives in World War II. “Greater love hath no man than this,” read the inscription. But the veteran of Vietnam wondered if the war was really how they would be remembered, or would they more likely go down in history as the generation that brought the world television?
* * *
"What have you done for me lately?"
“That’s my line. How goes the writing life?”
“My publisher wants a book about the case, incorporating his diary. I meet with the editors tomorrow.”
“Who’d want to read a book about a TV weatherman?”
“I think a lot of people would, if it’s done right.”
“And in this book you would of course argue his innocence?” “Not necessarily.”
“There was a woman strangled in a parking ramp in Des Moines last night. . . during a thunder
storm . . . A coincidence, I’m sure.”
“I saw that on the wire. I’ll check it out. I could use your help on the book.” “I’m afraid I can’t do that. Winter is coming on. I’m leaving the state. Retiring for good this time, to where it’s sunny and warm.”
“My God, I don’t know what to say. I wouldn’t have had a career without you.”
“No, you would have had a career, it just wouldn’t have been as colorful. You’re on your own now. Good-bye, Masked Man.”
And here may well end the story of the Weatherman, but for a note he had slipped to Rick Beanblossom in the Stillwater prison the last time they talked.
Those news instincts of yours were no match for a woman’s intuition. Or the gut feeling of an old cop. You see, Andrea was right about me all along, as was Angelbeck. But you? When you pulled that cotton mask over your face you also pulled the wool over your eyes. I believe that the monster that lay inside of me for so many years lies inside of you. It lies in all men. Your obsessive love for Andrea was no different than mine. When she at first said no to you, you chose to take your own life. I chose to take the lives of others. Nothing but boiling temperatures await me. I will roast in hell for what I’ve done. If I remember right, you have sources there. Check with them once in a while, just to see how I’m doing.
Perhaps in the end each of them had found what they were looking for; maybe they were only looking for one another. Rick Beanblossom found a pretty face. Andrea Labore found a good man. Les Angelbeck found his last case. Dixon Bell found death.
The November sun sank into the prairie. Barometric pressure began falling, ever so slightly. The black and white clouds were melting together the way a pure stream melts into a polluted river. An arctic wind set him to shivering. The man in the mask checked his watch. If he left now, he could get home in time to watch his wife read the six o’clock news. He’d catch the forecast, grab a bite to eat, and then go to bed. Rick needed the rest. He would be a father soon. He had another book to write. Tomorrow he would board a plane for New York. He stuffed Dixon Bell’s last letter into his coat pocket and took a long last look at the polar sky over the Sky High newsroom. Life in Minnesota would go on, but the quality had slipped away with the autumn wind, as if the Weatherman had taken it with him.
The temperature dropped below the freezing point. Snow flurries circled the black leather nose on his blue cotton face. The north wind chilled him to the bone. Rick Beanblossom took a deep breath.
Yes, it would be a good day to fly.
If the weather holds.
THE ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
To research The Weatherman took a job in the newsroom at WCCO-TV in Minneapolis. I worked there for three years. Special thanks are owed to the people at WCCO who took the time to teach me television news, especially John Lindsay,Trish Van Pilsum, Julie Kramer, Peter Molenda, Bill Enderson, Dale Dobesh, Pat Kessler, Darcy Pohland, Bill Kruskop, and Sandra Lindquist.
To my friends Paul Moore, at WCCO, and Judy Nelsen, formerly at KARETV, for their critiques along the way.
To my friends in Vicksburg, Mississippi, Gordon Cotton, curator of the Old Court House Museum, and Cliff and Bettye Whitney, resident owners of the Corners Bed & Breakfast Mansion.
To Frank W. Wood, commissioner of the Minnesota Department of Corrections, Retired Commissioner Orville B. Pung, and Warden Robert A. Erickson for their tour of and information on the Stillwater Correctional Facility.
To Deputy Rick Horst for his tour of and information on the Ramsey County Adult Detention Center.
To Amnesty International USA for their wealth of material on capital punishment.
And to Dr. Ronald J. Glasser, former Major, United States Army Medical Corps, now in private practice in Minneapolis. Author of 365 Days.
I began writing The Weathermanin the summer of 1988. It was completed in February of 1993. A special thank-you to author and historian Albert Eisele, Viking Penguin editor Al Silverman, and Washington, D.C., attorney Robert B. Barnett, who made publication possible.
S.T.
Table of Contents
THE WEATHERMAN
THE DEDICATION
The Prologue
BOOK ONE: INTO THE STORM
The Tornado
The Marine
The Kidnapping
The Rain
The Star
The Colors
The Freeze
The Ice
The Victim
The Thaw
The Affair
The Heat
The Morgue
The Fall
The Child
The Hangover
The Penalty
The Fog
The Diary
The Fingerprint
BOOK TWO: TWO YEARS INTO THE STORM
The Arrest
The Visit
The Defense
The Epiphany
The Source
The Trial
The Sex
The Suspects
The Escape
The Flood
The Cross
The Twins
The Testimony
The Autopsy
BOOK THREE: FIVE YEARS INTO THE STORM
The Tour
The Row
The Confederate
The Warrant
The Ritual
The Letters
The Execution
The Epilogue
THE ACKNOWLEDGMENTS