“Ha, ha,” he said, “you think I’m going to volunteer for that? What’s the matter with you? Ha, ha. Fat chance, you hear me? Big fat chance.” He put his ear to the door to see if he could hear the warden. Nothing. It was probably too thick. He might be out there and he might not. Still, he felt better about his position now that he realized he could save himself from electrocution by the simple expedient of not sitting down in the chair. And if they had decided to starve him — that would be ironic, he thought, starved to death with the kitchen just on the other side of the metal door — he would take his shoe off and pound it against the door. Someone would hear that. A trusty. Or Mona, if the unwritten law had not taken care of her and she was still alive, raiding the icebox. Someone would hear him. God would hear him.
“Dear God,” Feldman prayed, “dear Jesus and Buddha, Jehovah and Love, Mind, Spirit, Soul and Guts, dear Yin, dear Yang, Allah, Father, Son and Holy Ghost, Jupiter, Zeus, Thou and Almighty Dollar — blast and cream them, wreck their plans, rip them for Feldman.”
What in the name of all that’s holy am I praying about?
Calmly he thought of his fears. Tonight he had feared death by freezing and death by falling. He had feared death by frying and death by being left alone. And each he had hoped to forestalclass="underline" by refusing to sit, by ripping his buttons, by pounding his shoe. But those deaths, far-fetched as those salvations, had not happened. They had not happened because the warden had not meant them to. They were not the Warden’s Deaths, who could have him shot or beaten or run over, who could have him thrown into machinery or dropped from walls. They were his own, Feldman’s Deaths. Feldman’s death was Feldman’s doing. His imagination was the murderer, and the deadly plans and bloody businesses and the doom schemas had been all his own, everything his own. Him the killer, the assassin in trees, him the waylayer.
It was true: he wanted his death. He wanted his death because it was coming to him and he wanted everything that was coming to him.
He turned again, went down the stairs, entered the room and rushed to the platform, scrambling onto it awkwardly. Maybe it was converted to AC and maybe it wasn’t, but it was turned on all right. He picked up the leather strap and flung it aside so that he could sit down. He sat well back in the chair, excited by the idea of the two or three thousand volts that would course up his ass. “All right,” he told the warden, “we both get what we want.”
Nothing happened.
“Tch tch,” he said. “I don’t do anything right.” Of course, he thought, he had to be strapped in. He reached around and grabbed the great leather strap and fastened it to the metal buckle attached to the other side of the chair. He pulled it tight. He could hardly breathe. He slipped his fists and wrists through the leather loops on the arms of the chair. Still nothing happened, and he realized that he was not making the proper contact. A curved metal band like a leg shackle was connected to the right front leg of the chair, and Feldman kicked off his shoe and tried to push his foot through it. Restrained as he was by the leather strap across his chest, he could not get the correct leverage. He pulled his hands out of the loops, undid the buckle at his side and forced his feet into the hoop. It was like stepping into a boot. Then he refastened the chest restraint and put his wrists back through the loops. They needed adjustment, but he could only tighten one. He chose the right, since it was to his right leg that the electrode was attached and the probability was that that side would take the initial jolt. He imagined his loose left arm, involuntarily escaped from its bond, waving in electric death.
He was ready. Now he would die. Last words? Nah. He wondered if there would be time enough to know what it was like. He hoped so, or what was he doing in the damn chair? Here goes, he thought, the big one. “It is finished.” He giggled and leaned his head far back into the headrest at the top of the chair, his neck scraping against the metal plates.
He lived.
This too, he thought. I’m a lousy conductor.
He undid all the straps, rose and stretched. His foot was still in the leg manacle. I didn’t know, he thought. I supposed it was turned on. What he had felt about his death was perhaps all he would ever feel. If that was so, then now, in a way, he didn’t have to die. Ever.
It is finished, he thought. But he was very sleepy. He got his foot out of the hoop, found his shoe, sat back down in the chair and made himself comfortable. Soon he was dead to the world.
13
A Warden’s Assembly was called. Feldman filed into the hall with the others and sat down.
Maintenance trusties unfolded the Gothic sidings and fitted them into place along the walls. Seen from close up in the still lighted auditorium, they had the cartoony aspect of painted flats in old burlesque skits. Scalloped apertures, cut into the cardboard and covered with sheets of colored cellophane that might have been torn from lollipops, were aligned with the auditorium windows. Bits of sequins embedded in the siding gave a quartzy effect to the granite blocks. Here and there little painted gargoyles frowned down from the moldings. They had the faces of the bad men. Everything had a livid cast, quickening the eye as though it were perceiving under strobe light.
The workmen finished and the warden entered from the back of the auditorium. The first to see him began to applaud. Those up front, without even turning, clapped lustily. One man stood, then another, and soon everyone was on his feet. There were shouts of “Bravo! Bravo!” “Hurrah” called a man near Feldman and was immediately echoed by one next to him, who seemed peeved that he had not thought of it first. “Hurray for the warden,” another invented, and “Three cheers for Warden Fisher,” yelled someone else. “Two-four-six-eight,” a voice rose triumphantly, “who do we appreciate?” And the thunderous answer. “Fisher! Fisher!”
The warden climbed the steps leading to the stage and looked out calmly over the cheering men. The applause was brutal. He smiled and glanced down shyly and they screamed. He raised his hand, and the men cheered louder. Piercing whistles shrieked through the room like the announcement of bombs. Again the warden looked up and raised his hand, but the applause raced on. A trusty fitted a collar microphone around his neck, and the warden raised both hands and faced the men. “Civilization is forms,” he said. “It’s also doing what you’re told. It’s knowing when enough is enough.”
The men began to shush each other. Some in the rear pounded each other’s shoulders, admonishing silence. “Shut up, you guys,” someone near Feldman said. “Warden Fisher wants to speak.” “That’s right,” another added, “we won’t hear him if you’re not quiet.” Feldman’s neighbor nudged him and pointed to a convict down the row who was still applauding. “Some guys ruin it for all the others,” he whispered. A man pointedly stifled a cough.
“‘The Parable of the Shoo-in,’” the warden announced. A few around the auditorium began to applaud again, but they were effectively squelched by those next to them.
“A guy had worked for a large corporation for seven years,” the warden said. “He’d had the whole bit: the interview in college in his senior year, the junior-executive training, the tour of the plant in Milwaukee, the couple of moves to branch offices around the country. The works. The guy was a quick study, very diligent, and his superiors were duly impressed. He made it apparent almost at once that he had what it takes. Some of his suggestions saved his company thousands of dollars, and he came up with some fresh new ideas for promotions and campaigns that were substantively reflected in the annual profits.