“You hang tough,” said the other one.
Fate Harkryder nodded.
By the time he was led handcuffed from the courtroom, his brothers were already gone. Spencer wondered if he had ever seen them again. Whatever happened to the Harkryder brothers, anyhow?
Fate Harkryder had twenty years’ experience in not letting his feelings show. He sat impassively in the blue padded chair, studying the man in the green necktie who sat across from him. He was a stocky fellow in his early forties, with unruly dark hair and a tendency to perspire. He was smiling uncertainly, and creasing the corners of his paperwork. Fate was trying to decide why the man was nervous. Some people felt uneasy in the company of a convicted murderer, but since this man was a state psychologist who often studied prisoners, his current subject didn’t think the anxiety stemmed from that particular source. Race was not a factor, either. Fate decided that the man must be uneasy because he was talking to someone who would be dead in a few days’ time. Death is considered bad taste in polite society. People do not care to be reminded of it. Now that Fate had an execution date, even some of the guards had stopped looking directly at him, as if they were embarrassed by the presence of someone so close to the abyss.
The psychologist managed a tentative smile as he pushed his glasses farther back along the bridge of his nose. “Now, Mr. Harkryder,” he said, “my name is Dr. Ritter. I don’t wish to alarm you in any way. I just wanted to have a talk with you to see if there are any concerns you’d like to voice.”
“Concerns?” Fate blinked at him. He had found that playing dumb was an asset in prison life. It gave you more time to evaluate your opponent, and sometimes it caused him to underestimate you, which was even more useful.
“Yes. As you know, your-er-your execution is scheduled for later this month, and barring any unforeseen developments, it will take place at that time. I wondered if you’d like to express your feelings.”
“I’m innocent, sir.”
The psychologist looked away. “I know nothing whatever about the details of your case, Mr. Harkryder. I find it easier to counsel prisoners if I am not apprised of what they have done. My only concern is your peace of mind at this point in time.”
“Well, sir, they’re going to kill me. How do you think I feel?”
Ritter was ready for that one. “There are many possibilities, Mr. Harkryder. You might feel relief that your long stay in prison is at an end. You might embrace the opportunity to atone for your misdeeds. You might take solace in religion and look forward to peace and joy beyond this life.”
“Or I might think that this life is all there is, and I’ve been cheated out of it by a state that framed me for a murder I didn’t commit.”
“I had hoped you might be beyond that,” sighed the psychologist. “I realize that death is a very difficult thing to accept. That’s why we tend to concentrate on the little rituals that precede it as a way of distracting ourselves from the prospect of the death itself. Would you like to discuss some of those items?”
“Like what?”
“Well, to begin with a trivial one-why don’t you tell me what you’d like as a last meal?”
Fate Harkryder shrugged. “I haven’t given it much thought,” he said. He had, of course. Back in Building Two, discussions of his last meal had been going on for weeks. After a while he began to notice that the suggestions from the other men tended to fit a pattern. They urged him to ask for steak and a milk shake; country-style steak, french fries, and strawberry shortcake with double whipped cream; a large pizza and a banana split. It was all comfort food-the dream menus of teenage boys, or of men whose last memories of happiness stretched that far back in their lives. It was food rich in grease, salt, and sugar, proposed by men who had lived for years on a bland, starchy diet that never quite filled them up.
Other suggestions were a poor man’s idea of a high-class meal. The farm boy who had suggested a pound of shrimp, a pound of lobster, and a pound of prime rib had never tasted any of those things. Fate had no better ideas about what he should ask for on the night of his execution, and he was by no means sure that he could swallow a single mouthful of whatever was brought to him, but at least he prided himself on knowing why his comrades suggested the menus they did. After twenty years in confinement, he thought he might be as much of a psychologist as the perspiring man who sat across from him now.
“No thoughts on a last meal,” Dr. Ritter was saying. He made a notation on his legal pad. “Let’s leave that then, shall we? You have plenty of time to consider that option. Now, is there anyone you would like to see in the coming days? Anyone you would wish us to contact?”
A hooker,he thought. Names of various shapely movie stars ran though Fate Harkryder’s mind, but he no longer felt in a playful mood. Besides, he was sure that the fat man had heard such feeble efforts at wit before, and was probably expecting them. He probably had his chuckle and his pat answer ready in his froggy throat. Fate decided that the conversation was beginning to bore him. He shook his head. “No one.”
“A relative, perhaps? Is your mother still living?”
“She died when I was eight.”
“Your father, then?”
“Lung cancer. Ten years back.”
“I see. I believe you have brothers, though. Perhaps you’d like a visit from them?”
Fate Harkryder almost smiled. “Perhaps I would,” he said. “Why don’t you see if they’d like to come and say good-bye?”
“I can certainly do that,” said Ritter smoothly. “Now let’s talk about you for a moment. Are you experiencing any symptoms of undue anxiety? Loss of appetite, trouble sleeping?”
“Undueanxiety?” The prisoner stared at him. “The state of Tennessee is going to strap me into a chair and shoot electricity through my body until I burn to death from the inside out. Just what anxiety would you call undue?”
“You would do well to remain hopeful. You might possibly get a stay of execution,” said the psychologist, ignoring the emotional outburst. “Meanwhile, we would hope that you can stay as calm and upbeat as possible under the circumstances. I can recommend sleeping tablets-in carefully controlled doses, of course-and perhaps some sort of tranquilizer for daytime use, if you feel that would help.”
Fate Harkryder shook his head. “Keep the drugs,” he said. “If I only have a few more days to spend being alive, I don’t want to miss any of it. I intend to go down fighting.”
Ritter’s frown told him that he had misunderstood.
“Legally, I mean,” said Fate. “Appeals. Motions filed in every court we can think of. Messages to the governor.”
“I see. Meanwhile, if you’d like, we can discuss the incident that put you here. Would you like to tell me your side of it?”
“I don’t believe I would.”
The psychologist shrugged. “Some men find it easier to go to their deaths having made their peace with this world. Is there any bit of unfinished business that troubles you?”
“Not anything you can put right,” said the condemned man.
Burgess Gaither
THE ESCAPE
They’ll not hang a woman, folks kept saying, over and over like rain on a roof. You’ll not hang, Frankie. I was a young girl, a proper married woman, the mother of an innocent babe. I was no madwoman crazed for blood, nor no town whore robbing a young blade and adding killing to the slate of her sins. You’ll not hang. And I carried myself meek and mild every time the court met, with my hair combed smooth, and my dress as clean and fitten as I could get it. “She’s a pretty little thing!” the men would say when I passed by. “She don’t look like no Jezebel.” And I would keep my head down low and pretend not to hear them, for it was all a game, and if I could not tell the truth flat out to that court full of strangers and be done with it, why then I must play their game and take care to win.