Sally sees it all differently and says so on every possible occasion. While Simon files urgent appeal after urgent appeal, she uses what ever interview and talk show opportunities come her way as her bully pulpit, exposing the true realities behind the deceitful prosecutorial rhetoric, and continuing her assault on Christianity as the true culprit behind the crimes. She does her best to adhere to the cautionary guidelines laid down by Simon and her husband but never lets them get in the way of driving home a point with an imaginative flourish or two. Because she has become known for her reckless candor, interviewers and moderators often taunt her with questions meant to provoke another outrageous outburst. Both Simon and her husband have pointed out that letting fly with her unpopular opinions — she not only freely parades her atheism and her opposition to capital punishment and the conspiracy laws, she also vociferously champions all the liberal causes like civil rights, free speech, preservation of the wilderness, and prison reform, and rails against the inhumanity of corporate capitalism, the numbing banality of the networks, and the nation’s insane wars — has the negative effect of lessening the impact of her criticism of the Baxter case, reducing it in the public mind to eccentric leftwing soapbox oratory. Even her quoting of Adams and Jefferson is often taken as an insult to the nation and a calculated assault on its enduring values. She knows that, and knows too that these people are just using her as entertainment, turning her into a kind of sound-bite clown to fill the gaps between commercials, and she does her best to stay cool as her husband has instructed her, but restraint is not among her inborn virtues. In this she feels a certain empathy with Abner Baxter, whose thunderous grandstanding makes defending him such a nightmare.
In the end, the nightmare evolves into real-time horror. The preacher is accused of many crimes but few in particular, so the only defense, finally, is against the law itself. The Supreme Court refuses to hear the case, but Simon does get it before the state Supreme Judicial Court. He gives it his best and the judge is sympathetic and takes note of Simon’s eloquence, but tells him the court cannot change the law. “You should run for congress, Mr. Price,” he says. That they are facing failure sinks in slowly. “Don’t get your hopes too high,” Simon said when they began all this, “we lose more than we win,” but they both were certain they would win. They were right, and the right would ultimately triumph. When the last appeal is exhausted, they cannot accept it, but press on. And then — suddenly, it seems — the governor denies clemency, all options are closed, and the day of extinguishing Abner Baxter’s life is upon them.
Organizations opposing the death penalty have been in touch with her, and they let her know that they will be holding a vigil outside the prison where the execution is taking place and ask her to join them. She and her husband fly out in a private plane, and her husband hires a limousine to drive them to the prison, where they meet up with Simon and his wife. Sally likes Simon’s wife immediately. Passionate and smart. That ends that. But she and Simon will be friends still, and in this tribe of barbarians, that’s something. Because he is a Congressman, her husband is interviewed by the hovering media. He says: “I am opposed to capital punishment. Period.” She is proud of him. She hears him say so to the young newscaster and she hears him say so on the transistor radio she has pressed to her ear. The network she is listening to has a reporter inside the prison who will witness the execution and describe it for his listeners. Abner Baxter is said to be remarkably serene, having stoically accepted his fate, his blistering attacks on the faithlessness and corruption of those who put him here giving way to a quiet contemplative time. He is said to be reading the Bible. And writing.
Words. Their inscription. The pathos of that.
Night has fallen. They light candles as the hour draws near. They are not many. And they are not alone. A large parking lot has filled with cars and pickups, and tailgate parties are underway. Kegs of beer. Portable barbecue pits. A few musical instruments, blown or strummed randomly like an orchestra warming up. Someone is practicing a drumroll. They have rigged up a P.A. system to broadcast the reports from within and she can put away her transistor radio. They’re making a lot of noise. It’s like New Year’s Eve in Times Square. “It’s awful,” she says to her husband, “to think that we might be alone in the universe and that this is what we are.” Curious tourist-types gather, some joining the beer party, some coming over to their little group and accepting a candle, others approaching a larger mass of people, many of whom are now pulling on Brunist tunics. She has heard reports that they would be here. There are scores of them, and more arriving by the minute. What the occasional execution will do for a faltering movement. They also bring out candles. Abner releases a final statement, quoting Paul, which is read over the P.A. system by the reporter on the inside: “I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith.” The Brunists groan and kneel to pray. There is some keening, but they are largely subdued in their mourning. They are witnesses to a martyrdom. The making of a saint. They can all write a book.
She spies the blond curls. The Evangelist. No surprise there. It is no doubt he who has gathered the Brunists here tonight. The surprise is that Young Abner Baxter is with him. Well, a surprise, and not a surprise. When Junior got the news of his release, he didn’t thank them, just stared at them for a moment, then walked away, and she knew then that if the same circumstances as that day in the ditch should arise again, she’d once more be a target. Sally finds herself grinding her cigarette out underfoot and walking over to them. Is she feeling suicidal or what? The crowds around Darren stand and part. She hears hissing sounds. The Antichrist approacheth. Junior’s hair is growing back. His moustache. He wears a headband, also white, hiding his scars. Menacingly expressionless. As are most here. Darren wears an expression of sorrowful bliss. Like he’s high on something. A madman’s smile. Eerie by candlelight. “I’m sorry about your father, Abner,” she says. “We did everything we could.” No response, not even a blink. She feels like the only moving thing in a fixed tableau. “I’m sorry, too, about Billy Don,” she says, turning her gaze on Darren. He is wearing the dodecagonal medal Billy Don told her about, the one he stole from Clara Collins. It glitters in the night like something burning on his chest. His spectacles reflect the flickering candles like glowing half-dollars. She has not seen him up close or talked to him since that day on the mine hill, but Billy Don helped her to imagine him in his private ways, and she probably knows him better than he knows himself. Not probably; surely. “I miss him.”