It was the least the warder could do. He, too, had been on that peace demonstration, wearing a balaclava over his face, something not out of place on a bitter January morning, lots of other marchers were wearing them, though not for the same reason. As a servant of the crown he was not allowed to have public opinions. He had received several good whacks from the constable’s truncheon, including the one on the head, which still bothered him.
Since the right questions weren’t asked, the right answers weren’t given. There was some resentment, within and without the prison, that the culprit had escaped the hangman, but since he was dead anyway, this soon evaporated. The home secretary’s office announced that no last-minute reprieve had been contemplated. This was not true, but it was thought expedient to say so, to damp down public curiosity and nip in the bud any possible rumors and newspaper headlines about Fate Taking A Strange Twist.
Both warders stayed on the death cell rosters, it was not a responsibility for which there was much competition, until the hangman was put out of a job in 1965. Nothing much changed between them or inside them, except that even after chocolate rationing stopped in 1954, neither of them seemed to bring in Slam Bars to go with their tea anymore.
Incident at Lonely Rocks
by Kristine Kathryn Rusch
Winter on the Oregon beaches was unlike winter anywhere else. Winter on the beach meant fifty-degree temperatures and the occasional rain. The surf was high, but the beaches were empty — tourists spent their vacation dollars on Maui or the Virgin Islands, or even Las Vegas in December.
But Oscar loved the beach. And he loved the fact that his route took him there every single week.
Mondays were his beach days. He drove from the warehouse, which was on a side road exactly between Seavy Village and Anchor Bay, and headed north. His first stop was always at the Lonely Rocks Wayside, and he’d always think it was incredibly well named.
Not once had he ever seen a car parked there, not once had he watched a tourist walk along the beach. When he arrived, there was only him, the crumbling parking lot, and the POTS portable toilet, which was as close to the highway as he could get it.
He would pull up alongside the toilet, get out his scrubber and bucket, then put on his gloves. He’d keep the ignition on — he had to; the hose wouldn’t work without it — and then he’d get out. He’d open the toilet’s door, stick the hose through the hole, and let the machine suck the waste into the large container at the back of his truck.
He also had another portable toilet strapped into the back in case he had to switch one out or he got called to a new job. Usually that toilet remained there for most of the week.
Then, when he finished vacuuming out the waste, he scrubbed the interior and added new chemicals in the portable toilet’s storage container. He had become a fast cleaner, and a precise one. His motto was simple: He wanted moms and grandmoms to comfortably use his toilets.
He particularly liked the Lonely Rocks Wayside. It had been built in the 1950s as a large turnout where tourists could watch the waves. Over the years, it had had slight upgrades: The parking lot was now asphalt instead of flattened dirt, a guardrail had been placed along the cliffside, and state-produced signs told idiots not to climb over the side. POTS got the wayside’s first and only portable toilet contract in 1991, and Oscar had been servicing Lonely Rocks ever since.
Oscar figured it was the highway warning signs that kept the casual tourist away. In addition to the BEWARE SUNKEN GRADE signs that dotted every mile of the old road (it wasn’t Highway 101 anymore; the state had gotten terrified of the erosion this high up and had moved the highway two miles inland, away from the ocean), there were DO NOT WALK signs posted along the shoulder and CAUTION: UNSTABLE GROUND signs even closer to the wayside itself.
Most out-of-state tourists didn’t know Oregon terminology, so the “sunken grade” signs wouldn’t bother them. Sunken grade meant the same thing that the unstable ground sign meant with a slight twist: Sunken grade would most easily be translated as “sinking road.”
He was a native Oregonian, which was why he always stopped his heavy truck on a turnout on the east side of the highway, just before the sunken grade signs started. Then he’d walk the length — again on the east side, away from the ocean — and inspect the road, just to make sure it was sturdy enough for the one-ton-plus he would drive across it.
So far, he’d been lucky. But a few times, he had come across crumbled asphalt on the far end of the wayside about a hundred yards past his delivery spot. Then he’d turn around and go the ten miles out of his way on the highway, heading to the next wayside. He’d call the deteriorating road into both the State Police and the Oregon Department of Transportation, figuring that he would be the first to discover it, even if the slide had happened in a storm three or four days before.
In the winter, hardly anyone used this road. In the summer, he mostly saw folks he called “environmental tourists,” people with PROTECT THE EARTH bumper stickers or bikes or camping gear on the back of their car. The SUVs or the families whose kids had iPods hardly came here.
This morning, the road had seemed stable. There hadn’t been serious storms or high surf in the past week, so he gave the road only a cursory inspection. Then he drove up alongside the portable toilet and started his ritual.
He put the truck in park and left it idling. He set the emergency brake and got out. He paused, mostly because he couldn’t help it, and took a big sniff of the fresh ocean air. A touch of salt and a bit of brine all mixed with the chill that suggested the water itself. He loved it.
Just like he loved the view: the Lonely Rocks, all five of them, standing (that’s how the brochures described them) in the surf, looking forever like people in a semicircle with their backs to each other. He would’ve named it the Angry Rocks — he could almost imagine their fronts, the scowling faces, the crossed arms — but he supposed people would want something more dramatic with a name like that, instead of one of those silent stand-offs his ex-wife used to give him in the last few years of their marriage.
Then he squared his shoulders and headed to the portable toilet. POTS toilets were a light green. The company got its start renting toilets to logging companies, and for some reason, some designer thought it would best to have the toilets blend into the scenery.
Here, the light green looked slightly out of place. The trees along this cliff face were scraggly, wind-raved pine, with needles so dark they almost looked black. Against the asphalt, the green seemed festive, and more than once, he’d found one of those see-through Oregon Ducks stickers pasted onto the door. If the company hadn’t minded, he would’ve left the sticker on — he understood team spirit; it had taken him through that glorious season when the football team he’d played for couldn’t do anything wrong — but he had to follow regs. Nothing but the company logo on the outside (a big P with a toilet-bowl-shaped O, a T behind that in a way that kinda looked like a toilet, and an S that seemed to brace the entire mess up) and a spotless, pine-fresh interior.
This toilet looked relatively new. It had the new curved door handle that informed someone outside whether the toilet was occupied or not, and it didn’t have a lot of scratches or polished-off graffiti marks.
He walked around the toilet first, making sure nothing had happened to the outside. He braced a hand on the side of the toilet and accidentally shoved it, which made it rock.
Something banged inside.
In fact, it banged so hard, he nearly toppled over. Weight had shifted.