“Kalb,” the warden said, “you know Doc Upton here; I believe he’s seen you a few times over the years. He’s here to give you a quick physical—”
“To make sure I’m healthy enough to hang?” Roger Kalb asked wryly. His voice was level and even, not shaky at all. Good, Martin thought. The calmer he was, the easier it would be to hang him.
“No, it’s just for our records here,” said the warden. “This other gentleman,” he nodded toward Martin, “is the executioner who will carry out the procedure. He’s here to weigh you and take some body measurements in order to make sure that ever’thing gets done properly.”
“Suppose I don’t want to be weighed and measured like a damned side of beef?” Kalb challenged, locking his jaw in defiance and staring at Martin.
“In that case,” Martin addressed him quietly, “I’ll just have to do some visual estimating. If I guess correctly, when you drop, the noose will break your neck and rupture your spinal cord, causing instant unconsciousness and immediate death. Painless death. On the other hand, if I guess wrong, the rope might just strangle you to death. Slowly. You could end up bouncing around, kicking and gagging, for a full minute, maybe even a bit longer.” Martin stepped up close to the condemned man. “Tell me, Mr. Kalb, why did you elect hanging instead of lethal injection?”
Kalb locked eyes with Martin, but did not answer.
“Tell me, please. I need to know,” Martin said.
“Be... because I... I’m afraid of needles,” Kalb replied, almost in a whisper.
“I’ll vouch for that,” Doc Upton interjected. “I recollect we had to have two guards hold him still one time when I gave him a flu shot.”
Martin and Kalb still had their eyes fixed on each other.
“Believe me when I tell you, Mr. Kalb,” Martin finally broke the silence, “that you’ll be doing yourself a very big favor by cooperating with me.” He put a gentle hand on Kalb’s shoulder. “Help me send you into eternity the easy way.”
Roger Kalb submitted to Martin’s calm, reassuring tone. Doc Upton made a cursory check of his heart, pulse, throat, ears, eyes, and blood pressure, announcing for the latter, “One-twenty-six over eighty-two.”
“Hell, I’d give one of my big toes to have that kind of blood pressure,” Warden Lawson announced cheerfully.
“I’ll leave it to you in my will,” Roger Kalb told him, resuming his wry tone.
When it was Martin’s turn, he used a tape to measure Kalb’s upper back and the inside of one leg from his groin to the ankle. With educated hands, he felt the man’s muscle tone in his calves and upper arms. Lastly, he measured Kalb’s midsection where most of his excess fat lay. When he finished, he turned to Lawson and said, “I’ll need to weigh him without all the chains.”
“No can do,” the warden declared unequivocally. “Strict regulations require cuffs, belly chain, and shackles on all condemned men outside their cell. No exceptions.”
Martin drew the warden aside. “I’ve got to know his exact weight,” he whispered. “Otherwise, the drop could tear his head completely off”
The warden’s eyes widened like two big marbles. “You mean, tear all the way off?”
“All the way off, yes.”
“That’d make quite a mess, wouldn’t it?”
“You cannot imagine the mess. Both body and head would drop to the floor, blood gushing out of the body, the head rolling around like a soccer ball—”
“All right! Okay! I get the picture!” Lawson pondered the problem, scratching his chin in contemplation. “How ’bout we weigh him with the hardware on, then weigh the hardware after we get it off him? Then figure the difference.”
Martin agreed to that plan, deciding that the warden wasn’t as big a clod as he’d thought.
When all the preliminaries were done, including testing the gallows tree and rope with two hundred pounds of dirt in four gunny sacks tied to a wooden plank, Martin returned to his car on the prison staff lot and sat for a moment behind the steering wheel staring at his hands. To his surprise, they had that same feeling in them that he remembered from the old days when he’d been a practicing executioner, traveling from state to state across the width and breadth of the nation — New Hampshire to Delaware to Iowa to Kansas to Washington — anywhere he was needed, hanging men, and occasionally women, on a regular enough schedule to earn a very good income at it.
The feeling in his hands — the palms and undersides of his fingers — was like a mild wave of electricity. It usually started shortly after he had examined the condemned person — felt that person — moved his hands over the living body, squeezing for muscle tone to determine whether the person was likely to go down kicking and twisting with spasms, instead of hanging nicely like a rolled-up rug.
There had been a time when Martin wondered whether his touching of a person so definitely close to death might somehow be drawing something of that person’s life into his own. Like some kind of human osmosis. Rather than troubling him, it eventually got to the point where Martin looked forward to it. And now, at the moment when it had returned after so many, many dormant years, he found it to be surprisingly pleasant.
That evening, as Martin and Barbara went into the dining room at the lodge, a nice-looking young man about Barbara’s age passed them and smiled at Barbara.
“Hello, there. Nice to see you again so soon.”
“Oh, hello. Did you find your room key?” Barbara returned his smile and Martin thought he saw her heave slightly.
“Yes, thanks. I’d left it in the gift shop. Have a nice dinner.”
When they were seated at their table, Martin asked, “Who was that?”
“Oh, just somebody I met at the luncheon buffet. He was all alone too, so we shared a table. It was nice,” she added pointedly, “not to be all alone all day again.”
“Did he tell you his name?”
“Brad something,” Barbara shrugged. “I don’t remember.”
“Did he mention what he was doing here?”
“Well, I guess he’s just staying here, Martin, like we are just staying here,” she replied peevishly. “Why all the questions, for goodness’ sake?”
“No reason,” Martin conceded. “It’s just that this is the off season for a lodge up here. I was only wondering what he was doing here this time of year.”
“Well, if you must know, he works for a travel magazine, selling advertising.”
“Oh. Well, that sounds like interesting work.”
“I guess anything would be interesting compared to making ropes,” she observed snidely.
Barbara seemed to have forgotten all about the vacation trip Martin had promised her. She sulked for the rest of the evening, then went to bed with a headache.
Martin arrived at the prison shortly after six the next morning, as usual using the staff parking lot at the rear of the complex. The visitors lot in front, he saw in passing, was already crowded with private cars and media vehicles. Warden Lawson’s personally selected cadre of officers met Martin as he exited his car, and escorted him back to the old tag shop where the gallows now stood. Warden Lawson was already there, sitting on one of a dozen folding chairs set up for witnesses in a roped-off area. He was eating glazed donuts out of a greasy white bag and drinking coffee from a metal mug.