“Who’s sniffing the eggs this morning?” asked one.
“I don’t know, I haven’t been reading the papers.” He yawned when he answered.
“Don’t you remember?” urged another, “it’s the guy who smothered the woman in the house trailer. Down in the Valley by Salinas.”
“Yeah. Soldier’s wife; he was raping her and...”
Like dogs hearing the plate rattle, they turned in unison toward the Army lieutenant; but just then more fuzz came in to march us to the observation room. We went in a column of twos with a guard beside each one, everyone unconsciously in step as if following a cadence call. I caught myself listening for measured mournful drum rolls.
The observation room was built right around the gas chamber, with rising tiers of benches for extras in case business was brisk. The chamber itself was hexagonal; the three walls in our room were of plate glass with a waist-high brass rail around the outside like the rail in an old-time saloon. The other three walls were steel plate, with a heavy door, rivet-studded, in the center one, and a small observation window in each of the others.
Inside the chamber were just these two massive chairs, probably oak, facing the rear walls side-by-side; their backs were high enough to come to the nape of the neck of anyone sitting in them. Under each was like a bucket that I knew contained hydrochloric acid. At a signal the executioner would drop sodium cyanide pellets into a chute; the pellets would roll down into the bucket; hydrocyanic acid gas would form; and the cat in the chair would be wasted.
The politician type, who had this rich fruity baritone like Burl Ives, asked why they had two chairs.
“That’s in case there’s a double-header, dad,” I said.
“You’re kidding.” But by his voice the idea pleased him. Then he wheezed plaintively: “I don’t see why they turn the chairs away — we can’t even watch his face while it’s happening to him.”
He was a true rank genuine creep, right out from under a rock with the slime barely dry on his scales; but I wouldn’t have wanted his dreams. I think he was one of those guys who tastes the big draught many times before he swallows it.
We milled around like cattle around the chute, when they smell the blood from inside and know they’re somehow involved; then we heard sounds and saw the door in the back of the chamber swing open. A uniformed guard appeared to stand at attention, followed by a priest dressed all in black like Zorro, with his face hanging down to his belly button. He must have been a new man, because he had trouble maintaining his cooclass="underline" just standing there beside the guard he dropped his little black book on the floor like three times in a row.
The Army cat said to me, as if he’d wig out unless he broke the silence: “They... have it arranged like a stage play, don’t they?”
“But no encores,” said Victor hollowly.
Another guard showed up in the doorway and they walked in the condemned man. He was like sort of a shock. You expect a stud to act like a murderer: I mean, cringe at the sight of the chair because he knows this is it, there’s finally no place to go, no appeal to make, or else bound in there full of cheap bravado and go-to-hell. But he just seemed mildly interested, nothing more.
He wore a white shirt with the sleeves rolled up, suntans that looked Army issue, and no tie. Under thirty, brown crewcut hair — the terrible thing is that I cannot even remember the features on his face, man. The closest I could come to a description would be that he resembled the Army cat right there beside me with his nose to the glass.
The one thing I’ll never forget is that stud’s hands. He’d been on Death Row all these months, and here his hands were still red and chapped and knobby, as if he’d still been out picking turnips in the San Joaquin Valley. Then I realized: I was thinking of him in the past tense.
Two fuzz began strapping him down in the chair. A broad leather strap across the chest, narrower belts on the arms and legs. God they were careful about strapping him in. I mean they wanted to make sure he was comfortable. And all the time he was talking with them. Not that we could hear it, but I suppose it went that’s fine, fellows, no, that strap isn’t too tight, gee, I hope I’m not making you late for lunch.
That’s what bugged me, he was so damned apologetic! While they were fastening him down over that little bucket of oblivion, that poor dead lonely son of a bitch twisted around to look over his shoulder at us, and he smiled. I mean if he’d had an arm free he might have waved! One of the fuzz, who had white hair and these sad gentle eyes like he was wearing a hair shirt, patted him on the head on the way out. No personal animosity, son, just doing my job.
After that the tempo increased, like your heart beat when you’re on a black street at three a.m. and the echo of your own footsteps begins to sound like someone following you. The warden was at one observation window, the priest and the doctor at the other. The blackrobe made the sign of the cross, having a last go at the condemned, but he was digging only Ben Casey. Here was this M.D. cat who’d taken the Hippocratean Oath to preserve life, waving his arms around like a tv director to show that stud the easiest way to die.
Hold your breath, then breathe deeply: you won’t feel a thing. Of course hydrocyanic acid gas melts your guts into a red-hot soup and burns out every fibre in the lining of your lungs, but you won’t be really feeling it as you jerk around: that’ll just be raw nerve endings.
Like they should have called his the Hypocritical Oath.
So there we were, three yards and half an inch of plate glass apart, with us staring at him and him by just turning his head able to stare right back: but there were a million light years between the two sides of the glass. He didn’t turn. He was shrived and strapped in and briefed on how to die, and he was ready for the fumes. I found out afterwards that he had even willed his body to medical research.
I did a quick take around.
Victor was sweating profusely, his eyes glued to the window.
The politician was pop-eyed, nose pressed flat and belly indented by the brass rail, pudgy fingers like plump garlic sausages smearing the glass on either side of his head. A look on his face, already, like that of a stud making it with a chick.
The reporters seemed ashamed, as if someone had caught them peeking over the transom into the ladies’ john.
The Army cat just looked sick.
Only the fuzz were unchanged, expending no more emotion on this than on their targets after rapid-fire exercises at the range.
On no face was there hatred.
Suddenly, for the first time in my life, I was part of it. I wanted to yell out STOP! We were about to gas this stud and none of us wanted him to die! We’ve created this society and we’re all responsible for what it does, but none of us as individuals is willing to take that responsibility. We’re like that Nazi cat at Nuremberg who said that everything would have been all right if they’d only given him more ovens.
The warden signalled. I heard gas whoosh up around the chair.
The condemned man didn’t move. He was following doctor’s orders. Then he took the huge gulping breath the M.D. had pantomimed. All of a sudden he threw this tremendous convulsion, his body straining up against the straps, his head slewed around so I could see his eyes were tight shut and his lips were pulled back from his teeth. Then he started panting like a baby in an oxygen tent, swiftly and shallowly. Only it wasn’t oxygen his lungs were trying to work on.