Morton giveth, and Morton taketh away.
Tell Jasmine not to take less than sixty thousand for the homestead.
Tell Dolores I forgive her.
Tell the people of Wantoda, Kansas, that I've made them famous.
Tell Ernie's parents that if they never did anything else in their lives, they can still be proud because they made Ernie.
Tell Heather not to let Alan play with anything sharp.
All of these were worth saying, and none of them were enough.
"Jimmy?" the warden said.
Blackburn tried to shrug, but the leather straps were tight.
"Green Lantern isn't what it used to be," he said.
The warden frowned, then stepped away. The chaplain appeared over Blackburn then, and Blackburn made a noise in his throat as if he were bringing up phlegm. The chaplain stepped away too.
Blackburn felt something cold in his arm, and he raised his head to look at the clear tube lying across his chest. It was full of a colorless liquid. He knew that the liquid was a saline solution, with no poison in it. They would keep this going for a while, so he wouldn't know when the drugs started. The drugs would be sodium thiopental, pancuronium bromide, and potassium chloride. He didn't know what those words meant, exactly, but he had taken pride in learning them. He wasn't sure why. Maybe it was something like learning the words "Colt Python," which also didn't mean anything, by themselves. They only meant something when applied to steel and lead. Just as drugs only meant something when they slid into your body.
He became aware of a dull pressure in his bladder and bowels, and smiled. They would wish they could kill him twice.
He turned his head to the right and saw a glass panel in the far wall. The glare from the ceiling light kept him from seeing the faces of the witnesses behind that panel, but he saw their shapes. They were like ghosts. He stared at them for several minutes to make sure they were uncomfortable. Then he looked up at the ceiling light. This was taking too long.
The ceiling light was a single bright bulb. Blackburn guessed that it was at least two hundred watts. He stared at it, playing a game to see how long he could look without blinking. Then one of the men in the room appeared over him again, blocking his view.
"You're in my light," Blackburn said.
The man stepped away, and the sun was bright in Jimmy's eyes. His black fiberglass rod and Zebco 404 reel gleamed.
"Well, come on if you're coming," Dad said.
Jimmy hurried down the bank, almost falling. Dad took the lid off the Folger's coffee can, reached in, and pulled out a wriggling red worm.
"You do it like this," Dad said, holding the hook of his own rod and reel in his right hand. "You thread it on, head to ass or ass to head. You don't jab it through sideways, 'cause then the fish just bites off what he wants."
Jimmy stood close and watched. The worm bunched up on the hook as Dad pushed it on. The free end flailed.
"Does it hurt it?" Jimmy asked.
"Worms ain't got nerves." Dad took his hands away from the hook. It dangled before Jimmy's face, no longer metal, but hook-shaped flesh. "Now do yours," Dad said.
Jimmy laid his rod on the flat mud beside the water and sat down. He dug into the dirt in the coffee can and pulled up a worm, slimy and strong. It almost slipped away. He clutched the worm in his right hand and picked up the brass hook at the end of his line with his left.
He couldn't get the hook into the worm the way Dad had done. The worm's ass or head or whatever wouldn't stay still long enough for him to push the point of the barb into the hole. He jabbed in desperation and stuck himself in the thumb.
"Ow!" he yelled, dropping both worm and hook.
Dad picked them up and squatted beside him. "I'll show you one more time," he said, "and if you don't get it right after that, we're leaving. Give me your hands."
Jimmy held out his hands, and Dad placed the worm in his left and the hook in his right. Then Dad guided Jimmy's fingers.
"Like this," Dad said. "It ain't hard."
The worm slid onto the hook as slick and easy as macaroni onto a toothpick.
In that instant, Jimmy became dizzy with a joy he had never before experienced. He didn't know what had caused it, but he didn't want it to stop, so he tried to memorize everything: the warmth of the sun on his crew-cut scalp; the coolness of the mud beneath him; Dad's rough fingers wrapped around his; and the smell of earth and blood from the worm on the hook.
