“Never thought I’d see one of those,” Chip said as he pointed to the noose in the tree. He had walked up behind Grant, but Grant had been so heavy in thought that he hadn’t heard him. “Never thought I’d have to do this,” Chip said.
“Do what?” Grant asked.
“I’m the one who is going to shoo the horse. I’m the executioner,” Chip said.
They didn’t say anything for a while. Then Grant said, “Well, get used to it. That’s how things are out here. You hurt a child, you get to ride Chip’s horse.” Saying that helped Grant feel more sure of what they were about to do.
“Yep,” Chip said. He drew in a deep breath. “Yep.”
Grant was hungry; his appetite was slowly returning. He had thrown up last night and not wanted to eat dinner, and now he was starving.
He went into the Grange and the ladies were cooking breakfast. It smelled great. He poured a cup of coffee, amazed that they still had coffee out there. They only made a little each day now. Grant hoped coffee was on someone’s FCard list. There. He was back to thinking about things like FCards. He was back to normal.
He ate a huge breakfast. Biscuits, canned fruit, and deer sausage. Delicious. As he was finishing up, Pastor Pete came in with a Bible in his hand.
“You, uh, officiating?” Grant asked him. Grant didn’t know what word to use for overseeing a hanging. “Officiating” seemed to work.
Pastor Pete nodded. He never thought he’d be doing this.
People started coming into the Grange. A small, very quiet, crowd was gathering outside near the tree. There were not nearly as many people as had been to the trial. Most people didn’t want to see this. Good for them. They were still humans. Not animals.
Grant went outside. As the judge of the trial, he felt obligated to watch. People expected him to. Besides, if he couldn’t watch the sentences he allowed to be handed down, how could people trust him to do the right thing?
Josie was first. She had on the same borrowed “Princess” t-shirt and sweat pants from the trial. She was cuffed with her hands behind her back, and her ankles were cuffed because she had been kicking the guards that morning. She was being carried by four jail guards. Pastor Pete asked her if she wanted to pray. She kept screaming. He tried to pray for her but she was screaming too loudly. He kept praying despite her. When he was done, the guards cut the zip ties on her legs and hoisted her onto the horse.
A volunteer held onto the bridle so the horse wouldn’t move.
Chip asked Josie if she wanted a blindfold. More screaming. He shrugged, realizing it would be too hard to put a blindfold on her, anyway.
Chip got on a ladder and put the noose around her neck. All of a sudden, she stopped screaming. She finally realized that it was going to happen. She looked around and started saying in a soft voice, “I’m sorry Crystal. I’m sorry…”
Chip got down from the ladder and someone handed him a horse whip. He smacked the horse’s hind end. The horse lurched forward, and Josie instantly fell off the horse. There was a “snap” sound. The crowd winced. Josie swung on the rope. No one said a word. A few were crying.
Without missing a beat, Chip and the guards got Josie down. They were careful and respectful. It didn’t seem odd at all for them to be reverent and respectful of a woman they had hanged. Everyone felt sorry for her at one level or another. She had thrown her life away, but hurt little Crystal in the process.
Grant realized he needed to appear to be emotionless and businesslike. It was actually easier to do so than he’d thought. In the past day he’d gotten over some of the shock of hanging people.
“Bring in the next prisoner,” he said.
Frankie was handcuffed, but walking on his own power. He was very deliberate in his steps, as they were the last steps he’d ever take. And he was fine with that. He wasn’t going to give the people in the crowd any satisfaction. He’d just get it over with.
Pastor Pete asked him if he had any last words. Frankie just said, “Nope.”
Pete asked if he could pray for Frankie. “Whatever,” Frankie said. Pete prayed softly. He wasn’t making a speech out of this or giving a sermon. This was a prayer he was making on Frankie’s behalf.
Chip asked Frankie, “Do you want a blindfold?”
“No,” Frankie said. He paused. “I want to look you assholes in the eye when you do this.”
“OK, then,” Chip said and smiled.
The guards put Frankie on the horse. Chip went back up on the ladder and put the noose around Frankie’s neck, came back down and nonchalantly smacked the horse.
Two seconds later, Franklin Jeremiah Richardson went to hell.
Chapter 156
Community Affairs
(June 7)
As Frankie swung lifeless on the noose, Ken Dolphson snapped a picture for the newspaper. Right at that moment, Grant knew that the picture would become something big. Iconic and symbolic of a small community taking matters into its own hands and operating without any outside government. It would be hope to Patriots and a threat to Loyalists. Grant didn’t know how, but he knew that the picture of a man hanging at Pierce Point would become famous.
The impact of the hangings made for a very solemn day at Pierce Point. Some cried. No one talked much. They were deep in thought. Most people were relieved that the thieving tweaker child molesters were dead. No one felt sorry for Frankie. Some questioned whether Josie needed to die, and then wondered whether it was “sexist” to think that a woman should not be hanged. Somehow, seeing a woman swinging on a rope seemed odd. For most people, that image was more jarring and unsettling than that of a man.
When people started talking again, many were quietly describing why they thought justice had been done. They talked about why the trial was fair and how good it was that Pierce Point had its own courts. And the constables. People were thanking the Team for their heroism in getting these people.
Then something amazing happened. The rhetoric between the “cabin people” and the “full timers” seemed to go down a notch. The two camps were still divided, but people weren’t arguing with each other. The gung-ho full-timers weren’t talking so tough now that two human beings had just died. The ivory tower cabin people weren’t talking about abstract things like legitimate laws; most of them realized that Frankie and Josie deserved to die, as jarring as watching them actually die was.
One group that seemed deeply affected by the hangings were the ten-percenter scumbags who were planning on committing crimes if they could get away with it. Some of them had already committed petty crimes and now realized what would happen to them if they got caught. They didn’t like this hanging or jail or court thing one bit. They hated Grant. He was a threat to them and what they wanted to do. They now had confirmed enemies: Grant, Rich, and the Team.
The ten-percenter scumbags weren’t all poor people. A sizable portion were middle class and even some cabin people. They were anyone who thought it was OK to get something for nothing. They were looking out for number one; themselves. That line of thinking wasn’t limited to poor people.
The ten-percenter scumbags were joined by another group that hated the hangings: the handful of Loyalists out at Pierce Point. The Loyalists weren’t motivated to commit crimes, necessarily; they just wanted “their guys” back in charge. They knew that Grant’s success with the court, and now the hangings, meant Grant, Rich, and the Team—the teabaggers—were in charge out there. The Patriots weren’t running the place like dictators, which would have made the Loyalists’ job of ousting them much easier. No, the Patriots had been smart in the way they did it. They had garnered the support of the people. They were fair. They followed the Constitution. All of these things were gimmicks, according to the Loyalists. To the Loyalists, “fairness” and the “Constitution” were just words that people said to get whatever they wanted, so they assumed the Patriots must be using those terms as a gimmick. The Loyalists were projecting: accusing their opponents of thinking the way they actually did.