* * *
Bonnie Beachum jerked straight on her bench, trembling, as the blind came up. There was the stark white room in front of her. And there was her husband, his face above the sheet. He was upside down to her, craning his neck back, rolling his eyes back, searching desperately for a sight of her face through the window. She leaned toward the thick glass between them. Her voice shook as she whispered, “Frank.”
The sight of him on the gurney pulled her in a moment from her visionary hysteria of prayer. She was at once entirely immersed in the effort to present her face to him, to telegraph her love, his only comfort. Tears streamed down her cheeks as she strained forward, and she had to fight off firework images of his smile at the kitchen doorway, his clunky footsteps on the stair, his hands on her shoulders: she was afraid these thoughts would kill her before she showed him what she had to show him—that his wife was there. “Frank,” she said again, crying.
Harlan Flowers reached out quickly and wrapped his big hand around hers. Bonnie squeezed it hard, held on to it for all she was worth.
“Frank Beachum, you have been found guilty of murder by the state of Missouri and sentenced to death by lethal injection.” Luther made his eyes grip the words on the page, each one, one by one, so that his voice would not falter as he read. Let’s just get this over with, he was thinking. And he asked: “Have you anything to say?”
Luther swallowed and looked over the top of the warrant at the face on the gurney. Frank’s head was tilted all the way back as he tried to look at the window behind his head, to see his wife’s face. Luther did not think he would speak. He did not think that he was thinking cogently enough, that there was any thought left in him that could be made into speech.
But there was. “I love you, Bonnie!” Frank cried out. “I’ve always loved you!”
Luther saw Bonnie Beachum reach her hand out to press it against the glass. She mouthed the words back at her husband: “I love you.”
Luther swallowed again, harder this time. He folded the warrant and slipped it back into his pocket. He looked up at the clock. There were twenty seconds until twelve-oh-one.
For those twenty seconds, Arnold McCardle stood still, looking through the one-way glass, waiting for Luther Plunkitt to turn to him and give the nod that would begin it. None of the people in the death chamber was moving. It looked to Arnold like a tableau: Luther at the foot of the gurney, Frank with his head stretching back, his Adam’s apple throbbing, the guard and Zach Platt standing rigid in their opposite corners. Arnold did not breathe. Even the phlegmatic fat man felt the band of tension tightening round his throat now, and he wished old Luther would just do it, just give the nod, twenty seconds early or not.
But then the red second hand reached the top of the dial, and Arnold’s big body inflated with a breath as he waited for Luther to turn. And another second passed and another—and the tableau remained all but frozen: Luther looking down, Frank stretching back; Platt in his corner, glancing nervously at the clock now, the guard in his opposite corner lifting one eyebrow.
“Come on, come on,” Arnold murmured softly.
The second hand coursed down the first arc of the new minute. Arnold shifted his eyes toward the executioners. The husky Frack stood facing him with his hand poised steadily above the silver button on the machine; the stooped, insectile little Frick was the closer, with his back half turned to him, and his body nearly bouncing on his toes, his arm nearly thrumming as he held his thumb in place.
Arnold looked out through the glass again and was shocked to see the clock’s second hand rising up the high side of the minute, continuing on around. And still Luther didn’t turn, didn’t turn, and it was all frozen in there, and no one was breathing at all anymore.
And then Luther turned.
… a man is the creature who can say “No,” he thought, and then he came to himself.
The Superintendent of Osage State Correctional Facility was dismayed to find his attention had wandered. He came to himself as if he had been standing there fast asleep, dreaming. He did not know where his mind had gone to, what he had been thinking about. But when he raised his head, he saw that the second hand had gone a full minute round the dial and was now edging down again toward twelve-oh-two and thirty seconds, then on.
It was a matter of pride, that’s all. These things didn’t have to be exact: they had all day to do the execution legally. But everything had been going smoothly, and everyone had been waiting on him, and he had meant to give the nod at precisely twelve-oh-one and he had—what?—drifted off at the crucial instant, drifted away on some line of reasoning or fantasy—he did not know, he could not remember what. He felt the whole machine, of which he was a central part, holding fire, standing still, because his cog had forgotten to turn. He was downright aggravated with himself.
It was only twelve-oh-two and thirty-seven seconds when Luther remembered to do his job. But as far as the Superintendent of Osage Prison was concerned, that was ninety-seven seconds too goddamned late.
He turned and nodded deeply to the mirror.
But by that time, the black phone was ringing.
Forever after, Reuben Skycock could raise a pretty good laugh when he described how quickly, how gracefully the pachydermous Arnold McCardle could move when he had a mind to. Because Luther nodded and the phone rang almost together, and McCardle not only snapped the handset off its cradle with one hand but stretched enormously across the little storeroom with the other and shoved the nervous Frick away from the machine. Frack was faster and jumped back from the button the instant he heard the bell, throwing his hands into the air as if he had been placed under arrest.
Arnold McCardle listened at the black phone for a long moment, and said, “I read you.” Then, without replacing the receiver, he reached over to press the button on the intercom.
“We got a governor’s stay,” he said evenly. “We’re gonna stand down.”
“Stand down! We’re standing down!” shouted Zachary Platt, throwing his hands up, his palms out, as if to hold them all physically from the edge of a cliff.
For a moment, Luther Plunkitt did not react, only stood where he was and smiled blandly. Then, slowly, he lifted his thumb and ran it over the smile, wiping an imperceptible drop of spittle from his lips.
What was strange, he told me later—one thing that was strange—was how long that moment lasted to him. It seemed to him that so much happened, and it seemed to him that he had time to see it all. He saw Zachary Platt shoving his palms at him, stepping out of his corner urgently, babbling, “Governor’s stay, the governor, a stay, we gay a gay, stay …” He saw Frank Beachum’s head snap forward, his entire body shudder violently beneath the sheet; Frank’s head keeled to one side as his neck went slack; he shut his eyes tight, and convulsed. Then he let out a harsh sob and began weeping, the tears squeezing out from under his lashes, running sideways over his nose, into his mouth.
And still, the moment went on. Luther looked up, looked at the witness window. He saw Bonnie there. She was coming to her feet. Driving off the bench to her feet. She hurled herself against the glass. Luther heard the dull thud as she hit. He saw her palms going white as they pressed against it, the side of her face flattening, the glass fogging with her breath as, even through the soundproofing, Luther heard her scream out, “Frank! Frank!” Then he saw her crumble. Her knees buckled and she sank down, falling over to the side. The black preacher who’d been sitting next to her was on his feet now too, catching her in his arms, drawing her back to the bench.
Luther turned his head until he faced the mirrored window to his right. His eyes passed over the clock as he turned and it was only twelve-oh-two thirty-eight. Then he saw his own reflection, the marbly gray eyes deep in the putty face, the meaningless smile.
And all that was strange, he told me. But there was something even stranger still.
The thing that was truly weird as far as Luther was concerned, was this sense he had, this very clear sense, that he wa
s not alone in his own mind at that moment. He did not believe in telepathy or ESP or any of that garbage. And yet he had to admit he felt just then as if someone else was with him inside his own head. He felt he could communicate with that other person, no matter the distance between them, merely by thinking.
So he nodded, smiling blandly, and he thought, without really knowing why: Okay, Everett. Okay.
And aloud, he said, with an easy drawl, “I guess we’ll be standing down.”
EPILOGUE
The last time I saw Frank Beachum was that December. It was cold: it was bone-ass cold, I remember. Even the memory of the summer’s heat was gone. It had been snowing off and on for about a week and the streets were a mess, the curb covered in massive drifts, the corners flooding with slush.
I was in a black mood; a black, black mood indeed. I had just gone another fifteen rounds with Barbara’s lawyer and could not get her to explain to me how I was supposed to pay for the sins of all mankind and still make my rent next month. The lawyer didn’t seem to give a damn, and Barbara, who had been reasonable enough at first, seemed now to be floating in the current of the attorney’s bitterness and greed and going along with whatever she said. It was becoming clear that this was not going to be an amicable divorce.
It was getting close to Christmas, I guess, because I remember I went to the mall at Union Station that day to pick up a present for Davy. The snow was coming down again, hard, and my poor reconstructed Tempo was practically drowning in the slush that was kicking up into its engine.
The mall was packed. I had to park at the farthest end of the lot, which didn’t improve my mood any. I pulled my raincoat up around my ears, and hunched down into it as I walked through the insidious chill and the tumbling snow. The station, with its long, gable-peaked Romanesque front and its tall, thin double-towered clock minaret was supposed to look merry, I suppose. Lights and wreaths and multicolored Christmas tinsel hanging from it. And children bouncing around a carousel with its pastel horses spinning in one corner of the parking lot, and jolly carols droning out of its organ above the wet hiss of traffic.
My hands jammed in my pocket, my head down to keep the snow off my glasses, I crossed the wide lot to the entrance. There were children there too, a choir of little girls, singing carols, their mouths like O’s, their cheeks scarlet. And a little beyond them, stood a rather disheveled-looking Santa Claus—a black guy in a colorless overcoat, with a red elf’s cap dripping down the side of his face.
As I got close, I heard him calling to the passersby, holding a can out to them, turning with them as they walked on, ignoring him.
“Gimme some charity,” he was saying. “Gimme some charity here on toast. It’s for children or something. It’s an official charity. Gimme some of that charity. You got money. You got money on toast. Give some of that money to charity.”
“Hey, wait a minute,” I said.
As I strode toward him through the snow I caught the whiff of piss and wine on the arctic air. I felt the low simmer of my rage boil over. I reached the guy and shoved his shoulder with the heel of my palm.
“Hey,” I said, “what is this? You’re not Santa Claus, you’re the Pussy Man. What the hell d’you think you’re doing?”
Startled, staggering, he swung around to me. His droopy, unshaven face brightened. “Steve!” he said. “Newspaper man. You got money. You got money on toast. Gimme some of that money, Steve!”
“What the fuck’s wrong with you?” I said. I pointed at the choir. “Little kids are here, you got Christmastime going on, what the fuck’s your problem, man. Collecting for charity, my ass. Pretending to be Santa Claus. Jesus.”
“Come on, Steve,” he said, more plaintively. “Gimme some money. You got money on toast. Gimme some of that money.”
I shoved a finger into the smelly gray cloth of his coat. “Listen, asshole,” I said. “I’m going into the shops. If you’re still fucking out here when I come back, I’m calling a cop, you got it?”
“Come on, Steve.”
“I’m calling a cop, asshole, I mean it. Pretending to be Santa Claus. What’s the matter with you? Jesus.”
I stomped away from him and pushed into the mall, muttering, “Christ. Nothing’s sacred around this fucking place.”
More jolly music greeted me as I came inside, as I marched angrily over the brick path, under the tinsel-strung network of catwalks and metal supports. I shouldered my way through the holiday crowds, shoppers with unbuttoned coats, bags dangling from their hands, boxes piled up against their chests. I made my way past the little jewelry stands and headed for the store that sold paraphernalia from the Walt Disney movies. Davy liked his Walt Disney movies. I shoved the glass door open and stomped in.
This girl was standing right inside, this chipmunk in a light blue Walt Disney uniform. You know how the old Greek heroes were the sons of women who mated with gods? Well, this kid was the daughter of some dame who’d spent the night with Mickey Mouse. The second I walked in, her whole pimply person went on like a light bulb. Her buck teeth gleamed, her eyes went saucer-sized.
“Good afternoon to you, sir! How are you today!” she screamed.
“What?” I said.
“Are you having a nice day!”
“I’m having a great day,” I said. “I’m having the best day of my whole life. Now could you give me a stuffed dalmatian please.”
“Oh, would you like one of our dalmatians? We have Pongo and Perdita and Lucky and …”
“The big one. Gimme the biggest one. What is that, fifteen hundred dollars?”
She chortled pleasantly. “Oh no, sir. Nowhere near as much as that.”
She bounded merrily to a group of yellow bins at the back of the room. There was an enormous television back there—nine televisions pushed together to make one picture. The Seven Dwarfs were marching across the conjoined screens singing hi-ho, hi-ho. A bouncing ball was picking out the words at the bottom.
The squirrelly girl ran her happy finger over the flounder bin and the Pinocchio bin until she came to the dalmatian bin. She plucked out a big one and carried it merrily over to her merry cash register.
“And how would you like to pay for that, sir?” she sang.
“In blood seems appropriate,” I said. “But a credit card’ll have to do.”
She took my card and placed it into her machine. She was actually humming the dwarf song to herself. “This is going to make someone’s eyes light up on Christmas morning,” she said.
I grinned nastily. “Christmas afternoon,” I said. “My ex won’t let me come by until lunchtime.”
Her curly head bobbed up for only a second. I saw her wide eyes go flat.
“She threw me out cause I boffed some other bimbo and she’s still pissed about it,” I said.
Minnie sucked in air through her nose and put her head down, scribbled quickly on the credit card slip.
“It could’ve been worse,” I told her. “I could’ve lost my job cause it was the boss’s wife I was putting it to. Luckily, I scored big just before they could can me, so we worked it out. In fact, I got myself a chunky little book contract out of it and, with any luck, I may win a Pulitzer and get a one-way ticket out of this hole and back to the big time. So what do you think—you wanna sleep with me?”
Chirpy stuck my dalmatian in a shopping bag with a decidedly pert little thrust. She handed it to me across the counter.
“I don’t think anyone would really want to sleep with you, sir,” she said.
I laughed. “You wouldn’t think so, sister, but you’d be dead wrong. Merry Christmas.”
I walked out of the shop feeling a little better anyway. I lit a cigarette as I strolled along the brick path and sucked on it, smiling. I was still smiling as I pushed out of the mall into the cold.
And he was still there. The Pussy Man. The little girls was still singing their songs, their red faces upraised to the falling snow, their eyes sidling over uncomfortably now and then to where the beggar was calling
out for money on toast. I was angry all over again.
I charged up to him as he swung his can along the arc of a passing shopper. I pushed at his shoulder.
“All right,” I said, “that’s it. I’ve had it. I’m calling a cop. I told you, ya stupid …”
I heard a voice behind me, calling, “Da-deee! Come on!” I turned toward the sound instinctively and, looking across the lot, I saw Frank Beachum. It had been about a month since I’d seen him, since we’d finished the interviews for the book I was doing. We had started them while he was still in prison, and then went on for a few more weeks after his release. There hadn’t been that much for him to tell me actually, since I had come to the story so late and was planning to write about only that part of it. And he was not a very articulate man and his feelings had been understandably muddled there at the end. No matter how many times I asked him, he could never really describe what he was thinking, feeling, especially at the very last of it, on the gurney. He didn’t remember much of that, he told me. “I just saw what was going on, that’s all,” he told me. “And it was real scary, believe me.” So that was something right there I had to guess at.
After a while, I realized there was nothing more I could get out of him. But I went back a few times, all the same. Just to keep it going, I guess. We’d sit around some bar and have a beer together. I’d ask him about Bonnie, and he would tell me she was off medication and was getting better and I’d say that was good and then we’d sit there nodding stupidly at each other. We just didn’t have much to say really, he and I. We didn’t have very much in common. He fixed cars, I drove them. That was a good joke once, I guess, but it didn’t get us very far.
I knew he was planning to leave St. Louis soon. He’d gotten a lot of job offers after the story broke, and he’d accepted one at a garage in Washington, somewhere outside Seattle. He wanted to wait until Bonnie was out of the psychiatrist’s care and he was hoping the state would settle some money on him too before he left. I thought it would be some time before the state made up its mind about that, but I was pretty sure it was going to be a nice big settlement. The judge on the case was Evan Walters, a very upright Christian gentleman with a very upright Christian wife and three very upright Christian children. For the last two months, I’d been going to the same hookers he went to, and I knew it, and he knew I knew it, and it was going to be a nice big settlement, I felt sure.
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