“I could shoot it and hit what I shot at,” Emmett said, “but I never pulled the trigger in anger, or in fear. It was a useless damn gadget and I knew that the day I bought it.”
Edward looked at the pistol. He looked at his pages. He picked up his first page, read the opening scene. Sweat dropped from his forehead onto the paper.
Scene One
(The execution chamber of Sing Sing prison. Six WITNESSES sit on folding chairs facing the empty electric chair. EXECUTIONER stands near large-handled switch that will activate electric current.
WARDEN and PRIEST enter with THOMAS MAGINN, the prisoner. Two GUARDS, escorting MAGINN, seat him in electric chair, strap him into it, apply one electrode to calf of his right leg, another to cover his forehead and shaved temples.
DR. GILES FITZROY enters, walking ahead of stretcher wheeled in by another guard, and upon which lies the pale corpse of EDWARD DAUGHERTY. GILES motions to GUARD where to put stretcher: GUARD tips stretcher on its end so that DAUGHERTY corpse stands upright, facing the electric chair.)
GILES (TO WARDEN): Is the condemned ready?
WARDEN (TO PRIEST): Is he ready, Father?
PRIEST: Frankly, I don’t think he has a prayer.
WARDEN: Are you ready, Mr. Maginn?
(MAGINN breaks into hysterical laughter, which continues as he speaks.)
MAGINN: My father collected dead horses for pig food. My mother was a one-armed bitch who took in washing for cowboys. My sister was a whore at age six. My kid brother tortured cats with hatpins. My uncle gouged eyes for a dime. My family was saintly in the extreme.
(His laughter subsides somewhat.)
I’m a lucky man, the first in my family to be executed for his intelligence. The world will mark today as the day they uselessly martyred a beloved hero, and it will await my resurrection. There’s no doubt I’m the smartest man on the North American continent, given to humility at all hours, ready to play the fool for any woman with pubic hair. I also admire them shorn.
(MAGINN’s laughter is gone, his face saddens gradually. He weeps, then cries openly.)
The worth of my being is proportionate to the weight of my written work. The essence of all power in this life is defiance, malfeasance, the pox, the smile, the dollar, and comprehension of the nature of time, which is running short. In sum, I’m as unprepared for death as I was for life. But let’s get on with it.
(MAGINN is now sobbing, breathing with difficulty.)
Red pig blood, orange sunset and evening star, pale-yellow pig shit, lime-green urine, blue sky and meadow, indigo clouds, violet pussy, white horses, whiteness whitening the white white. .
(He stops sobbing, laughs hysterically.)
WARDEN (TO GILES): The condemned is ready.
GILES: Are you ready, Mr. Daugherty?
DAUGHERTY: I am.
GILES: Let it be noted for the record that the eyes of the dead Daugherty have been sewn open to enable him to witness the execution of his murderer, the fugitive whoremonger, the unrequited narcissist. Now, let us proceed. (He waves his hand to executioner, who pulls switch, sending current into maginn, who stiffens. Steam rises from his skull and from his leg. giles, checking his pocket watch, waves to executioner, who turns switch off. giles examines maginn with stethoscope and holds thermometer against his leg.)
GILES: Let it be noted that auscultation indicates the condemned still has a pulse, and the temperature of the skin is one hundred eighty degrees. All skin contacts show notable burn marks. How are you feeling, Mr. Maginn?
MAGINN: Tip-top.
GILES: Then let us continue.
(He gestures again to EXECUTIONER, who pulls switch, with same reaction from MAGINN. Not steam but smoke rises from burned flesh. GILES times this jolt with his watch, waves to EXECUTIONER, who turns off current. GILES examines MAGINN.)
GILES: The condemned heart still beats. Temperature at contact points now two hundred fourteen degrees, nicely above boiling point. Crepitation noted throughout. Anterior epithelial cells of the cornea have desquamated from the action of heat. Sclera of left eye bulges at its left corneal junction. Scalp and skin of neck have a dull, purplish hue, with blisters on temples, cheeks, and eyelids. Epidermis at flexure of knee joint has been torn away. How are you feeling, Mr. Maginn?
MAGINN (Weakly): Violet piss, golden pigs.
GILES: Then let us continue.
(He waves hand again to EXECUTIONER, etc.)
Edward stopped reading. He ordered the pages of the play and walked downstairs to the kitchen, the heat no longer tolerable. He pumped water, wet his face, hair, arms. He walked, dripping, to the front porch, sat in his father’s rocking chair, and stared at the corner of the porch. The flood this spring had tilted it another fraction of an inch eastward: fittingly askew.
He stared up the empty street and saw his young self walking off it forever (oh yes) and out of this city into worlds no boy, no man on this block, except his father, could even have imagined. Now he was back, solitary Main Streeter: no visitors, curtains drawn, answering no rings of the bell, no knocks, reading no mail, food delivered by Drislane’s.
The oaks and the elms are in full leaf, the honeysuckle bush his mother planted in 1859, when the house was new, when Main Street and Edward were new, is a tree now, yielding berries, and the robins are eating them. Nobody hates these leaves, these berries, these robins, the way people hate Edward. Neither will Edward love any of them for their overrated glory, their vaunted beatitude. You think such mindless things deserve love? Love is what you feel during yesterday’s lightning storms. And then here come the dogs.
He saw two boys with sticks running down from Broadway, chasing a dog that was leaving them behind, that ran into the horse-shoe court between Joe Farrell’s and Edward’s houses, across Francis Phelan’s backyard, and was gone.
“You won’t catch him now, boys,” Edward said, and the boys stopped and looked at him. “And there’s gardens back there. You wouldn’t want to run through them.”
“He bit me,” one boy said.
“Did he draw blood?”
The boy, in short pants, looked at his bare leg. Edward could see a line of blood from calf to ankle.
“Yeah, he got me,” the boy said.
“You should go see Doc McArdle,” Edward said. “You know where he lives?”
“Doc McArdle is dead,” the boy said.
“Is he?”
“His horse kicked him in the head.”
The boy bent his leg to look at the wound, spat on it, and rubbed up the trickle of blood with two fingers. He snapped the spit and blood off the fingers, pulled a leaf off an oak tree and wiped the wound.