The priest whispered something to Reggie but it did him no good at all; his face seized up and his eyes closed; he continued to mutter madly. The guards moved in to secure the boy to the chair: one of them applied a slippery saline solution to his bare ankles, his wrists and the top of his head, where the electrodes were to be tightened—that would get all the electricity into him and prevent his skin from burning, although in Sam’s experience this didn’t always work out. Two others tightened and buckled the straps after the liquid had been sloshed on. Finally, they strapped the little leather beanie atop Reggie’s round, shaven head though they got it slightly skewed, so that it looked like a dunce cap.
Quickly, a little man emerged from behind the screen and checked all the electrodes a last time, the sure professional, making dead certain that all would work. He pointed to one problem area, and a guard bent to make an adjustment. Then the little man stepped back and disappeared.
Sam looked at his watch. It was 12:08 ., eight minutes late. The warden seemed to be choreographing things. He gave a nod, and the guards left the room, leaving him alone with Reggie. He gave another nod and apparently a microphone was switched on because he now spoke in a grave voice and his tones were amplified into the witness chamber.
“Reginald Gerard Fuller, the state of Arkansas, in full accordance with the laws thereof, finds you guilty of murder in the first degree and sentences you to death this sixth, uh, seventh, day of October 1957. Reggie Gerard Fuller, do you have any last words?”
It was silent, though the mike caught Reggie’s ragged breathing. Then he took a deep breath and spoke through sobs: “Sir, I apologize for wetting myself. Please don’t tell nobody I peed my pants. And I am sorry for Mr. George if I got pee on him as he always done treated me nice.”
He broke down, losing his words in a string of choking sobs. But then he breathed deeply, fighting the anguish. A dribble of snot ran out his nose, irritating his lips, but he could not do a thing. He looked out to the men behind the window. He took another deep breath: “And I miss my mama and my daddy and love them very much. I didn’t kill Shirelle. God bless all the people who was nice to me and I hope someday somebody be able to tell why this had to happen.”
“Are you done, Reggie?”
“Yes sir. I am ready for Jesus.”
“Jesus probably ain’t ready for him,” said a man next to Sam in the dark.
The warden leaned over him, unsnapping something in the top of the beanie, and a blank mask unfurled, sealing off Reggie’s features.
The warden left the chamber. Reggie sat still in the chair and for a second there was no change. Sam almost thought that—but no, the first charge hit him.
From his experiences, Sam knew it was a cliche of the movies that the lights dim in prison when an electrocution takes place: the chair and the prison lighting systems draw their power from separate generators. What happens is that witnesses involuntarily flinch, for to watch the cold extermination of a man, no matter how evil, is not an easy thing; and in memory, they recall the diminution of illumination and ascribe it to a power drain. But Sam didn’t flinch or look away and had no illusion of flickering lights; he watched the whole thing, because that was his duty. He represented Shirelle and he hoped that by witnessing he was in some way liberating her soul from the agony of her death.
Reggie stiffened against the restraining straps as two thousand volts hit him. The shot lasted over thirty seconds. A vein on his neck bulged. He fought like a bull. His hands seized up into fists which held so tight Sam thought they’d explode. He seemed to pivot in the chair, just a shade, as if he were daintily trying to sidestep his fate. A small wisp of smoke rose from his skull and another from one of his wrists. His head lolled forward, but then somehow picked itself up again. He coughed and a spasm of vomit, mostly liquid, spurted out from under the mask to cling in globules to his naked chest. Huge crescents of perspiration blossomed moonlike under his arms.
“Another,” said the warden into the phone.
The second surge bucked through Reggie but beat him down. He was limp by second 10, but the executioner held the circuit closed for another twenty, and by the small vibration of Reggie’s now limp fingers could Sam tell that he was riding the bolt still. But then it ceased.
The odor of electrification reached Sam when the warden, two guards and a doctor entered the chamber. It wasn’t the smell of burned meat or hair, but rather connected with Sam’s memories of Christmas, when he’d given various of his boys Lionel train sets and usually set them up and ran them for a bit, until the kids tired of them: but they had an odd, metallic odor to them, heavy and pungent at once.
Sam flashed back from Christmas: in the room the doctor took out a stethoscope and pressed its cup to Reggie’s chest, bare because the buttons had been ripped off his shirt. He stood and shook his head. The four retreated so that the executioner could hit Reggie again. It took five charges before the heart finally stopped beating.
“That boy just didn’t want to die,” said somebody.
The last official document in the file was the certificate of execution, meant to close the file out, mark it as justice delivered. Sam stared at it numbly.
Reggie, boy, why did you do it?
It was one of the great mysteries of the human heart, why one person will up and kill another. Sometimes it’s money, sometimes sex, sometimes anger, sometimes simple meanness. Sam had studied it for most of his life and didn’t know, not really. In this one, it seemed so simple: He figured Reggie must have picked the girl up after the church meeting and asked her for a kiss. She gave him the kiss. A young buck, a kiss, maybe he’d had a bit to drink at an Oklahoma Nigra crib, though no evidence as such was ever produced, and off he went. The more she fought, the more he wanted it. Finally, he did it and once he did it he was afraid she’d tell. So he drove her out Route 71 and smashed her over the head with a rock, just not noticing she was ripping at his shirt while he was smashing her. That simple. Usually when a Negro killed a Negro in those days, nobody much cared. Under usual circumstances he would have gotten away with it. It just happened to be Earl’s last case and that made it important to white people like himself, nothing else.
The remaining documents in the file were the letters crazy Mrs. Fuller had written him until her death. They arrived, sometimes three and four a week, as the woman fought so desperately for her son’s life before a brain aneurysm killed her. He had stopped reading them quite early and evidently a forgotten secretary along the line—he could never remember his secretaries’ names—had just taken to dumping them unopened in the file. Fool woman! What was the point? If she were here and he could remember her name, he’d yell at her, like he did all his secretaries, which is why he had so damned many of them over the years! Most hardly lasted a year.
Sam looked at the letters. Now they seemed strange to him. He was on his knees in his basement looking through an old file. Why? He couldn’t remember. Goddamn, it was happening again!
He looked at the file name. Parker. Parker. Oh, yes, the girl, Reggie, now it came back. Earl’s last case.
All the letters from Reggie’s mama, on their pink stationery. But why was one of them on blue stationery? Hmmmm? He plucked it from the stack, saw that it was in different handwriting. He had no memory of ever seeing it before. The date was September 5, 1957.