The Weatherman

by Steve Thayer

  Warden Johnson continued his spiel as they left the cell hall and marched down the main hallway. “We are adopting the basic method of execution used in the states of Florida and Louisiana for years, though we think we’ve improved on it to make it less routine and more humane. A lot of thought has gone into this. No detail has been overlooked. Several officials from Florida and Louisiana have been hired as consultants.”

  Redd Battlemore, a veteran reporter from the Pioneer Press, muttered to Rick, “Think of it, Minnesota, we’re going to be just like Florida and Louisiana.”

  They stopped at an exit door. “We’ll be going across the prison yard now to Industry. That’s where the actual Death House is being built. It’s ninety percent complete,” he said, almost apologetically. “I’ll remind you again that prison construction is the most expensive construction there is. If taxpayers want to lock up criminals and throw away the key . . . please let them know the dollar cost. It’s billions.”

  Stillwater was an old-style fortress prison built circa 1910. It housed one-thousand four-hundred prisoners. Seven guard towers surrounded the high brick walls. As they walked out of the drab building and into the welcome April sunshine, Rick Beanblossom peeled through his reporter’s notebook, jotting notes.

  The prison yard had a blacktop running track and a baseball diamond with a weed-littered outfield. Inmates were taking advantage of the spring weather. Ten days earlier it had snowed. Today the temperature was nearing 80°. The inmates jogged around the track, oblivious to the visitors. Several of them stopped to shake hands with Warden Johnson in genuine respect. Rick watched as one inmate after another handed the warden a letter or a legal form, or asked him to look into something for them. He seemed to say yes to every request. The tour group worked their way across the yard to the Industry buildings.

  The warden leaned into the masked newsman and pointed. “Do you see that little fat guy waddling around the track? He’s been here since 1967.” Rick watched the balding old man in the dirty T-shirt and sweat pants work his way around the blacktop.

  “He’s a drifter,” the warden said. “They don’t even know how many women he killed around the country. At the last parole hearing we just said, ‘We’ll talk to you again in ten years.’”

  “What prisoner has been locked up at Stillwater the longest?”

  “We have one who came here in 1952. He’s been here ever since. And we’ve got an old janitor who did twenty-five years before joining the custodial staff. Say, before I forget, I have a copy of your book in my office. I’d appreciate it if you’d sign it before you leave.”

  “I’d be happy to.”

  “How’s it selling?”

  “Well, it didn’t make the New York Timesbest-seller list. But the reviews were good, and my publisher wants a second book.”

  It stood unmarked, like something out of a Nazi death camp. This Death House had been constructed beneath the prison’s west wall, which ran along Stagecoach Trail. It was right behind the electric shop and next door to the wood shop. The new red-brick exterior and the spotless white trim seemed oddly out of place beneath the rustic bricks of the fortress wall. Rick remembered riding his bicycle up Stagecoach Trail when he was a boy. He’d always had a strange feeling about this place, always stopping his bike to stare at the long, imposing walls with the barbed wire and the guard towers.

  The press left the sunshine behind and crowded into the Death House. They stood before a prison cell that was smaller than anything they’d seen in the main complex.

  Warden Johnson continued. “When, and if, the governor signs the prisoner’s death warrant, the commissioner of corrections will then set an execution date in consultation with the trial judge. Approximately three weeks before that date the condemned man will be brought here to the Death House and housed in this isolation cell. He will not be allowed out of this cell until he walks to the chair. This is to prepare him mentally and physically for execution. It is in this cell the prisoner will be served his last meal, three hours before the execution. We’re told most condemned men request a favorite meal from their childhood. Something Mom used to make. This one particular prisoner may be fond of southern cuisine, so the cook is studying southern recipes.”

  Rick Beanblossom stepped into the tiny cell, bone bare. He’d seen better cages at the zoo. He carefully studied the bare necessities as the warden talked on.

  “After the meal, about two hours before the execution, the prisoner’s head will be shaved and a conducting gel will be rubbed into his skull. His eyebrows will also be shaved. Hair is a poor conductor of electricity and it burns. The last thing anybody wants in the death chamber is a fire. He will then be dressed in all-cotton clothes.”

  A guard joined them from the death chamber and handed the warden what appeared to be a medieval torture device. Warden Johnson held the metal and chains up for display. “When the prisoner walks to the chair he will be wearing these special four-point handcuff restraints. They are specifically made for escorting death row prisoners on their last walk. As you can see, they have large screws on the top. If a struggle were to ensue, the guards could simply turn these screws, instantly breaking the prisoner’s wrists.”The handcuffs were passed among the group.

  Then they proceeded down a short corridor. The warden stopped in front of a small room. The door was open. It resembled a sound booth from the Sky High newsroom. “This,” said Warden Johnson, “is the executioner’s room. The steel door is locked and secured from the inside. Only the executioner can open it. He will be wearing a hood during the execution. All of this is for his security. In here are the voltmeter, the ammeter, and the switchboard. As you can see, there are actually two switches, a red one and a green one. When the yellow light above the switch goes out and the green light comes on, the executioner throws the green switch. This throws power into the circuit breaker box. Then when the other yellow light goes off and the red light comes on, the executioner throws the red switch. The red switch is the power out of the circuit breaker box. Out of the box and into the condemned man.”

  “Who’s the executioner?” asked a field producer from CNN.

  “We hope we can get a volunteer from the prison staff. If not, we’ll go outside the prison system. If necessary we’ll recruit from outside of the state. Nobody outside my office will ever know the identity of the executioner.”

  The gathered press looked skeptical. Rick brushed by the warden and into the executioner’s booth. He scribbled more notes. “Warden, how much of NSP’s electricity will you actually use to kill the man?”

  “As a matter of fact, Mr. Beanblossom, the prison’s own generator will take over from Northern States Power just prior to the execution, causing all of the lights in the prison to dim. When it’s over the lights’ll dim again, as power is returned to the utility.”

  “That doesn’t answer my question.”

  “We will use a fluctuating cycle two minutes in length. The initial jolt of electricity will be two thousand volts. Brain death will be instantaneous. The voltage is then dropped to one thousand volts, then to five hundred volts, this to prevent the burning of the body. Then back to a thousand volts, and ending with another two thousand volts to complete a one-minute cycle. Then the procedure is repeated. It’s all over in two minutes and all of this is done automatically. The executioner only needs to throw the two switches. The executioner can override the automatic cycle on a simple hand signal from me, should anything go wrong.”

  After everybody had peeked into the executioner’s booth, Warden Johnson led them through another steel door and into the death chamber. What they had all come to see: the chair.

  Big and fat and made of oak, it had glossy finish and sat on a black rubber mat. The dark grains running through the chair were buffed to a shine. On the top of the back brace was a wood headrest. Adjustable. A leather strap dangled from the headrest like a noose. Holes were drilled into the heavy arms and legs. Other straps had yet to be attached. The chamber the chair sat in w
as unfinished, cluttered, and dusty. Workers, none of them inmates, flitted about.

  “As you people reported with your usual overkill, the inmates in our furnituremanufacturing building did refuse to build the chair. In retrospect, I regret giving the order. It was a mistake. The chair was constructed by an out-of-state private contractor after several other prisons refused to build it. Now, the chair itself is not electrified.” Warden Johnson stepped up to the chair and explained. “The electrical current will run into the prisoner’s head and out his right leg. Let me show you.” He lifted a metal helmet that looked like it matched the handcuffs. “This is the headset that will be strapped onto the prisoner and connected to the executioner’s booth. As you can see, this ‘death cap,’ as it is sometimes called, is lined with copper. The wire mesh inside will be covered with a natural ocean sponge that has been soaked in a saline solution. This damp sponge under the headset will sit directly on top the prisoner’s head. It is used to convey the two thousand volts of electricity into his skull. Everything is designed to conduct electricity quickly and smoothly. Anything that is not a good conductor of electricity or is highly flammable, such as hair and synthetic fibers, is removed beforehand.”

  Someone asked, “Who hooks him up?”

  “A special squad of guards will strap him into the chair. A certified electrician will connect the electrodes to his right leg and to the headset. On a signal from me the electrician will then throw that switch behind the chair. That’s the switch for our generator. It also triggers the lights inside the executioner’s booth.”

  While Warden Johnson stepped forward to explain coming features, Rick Beanblossom walked up and plopped himself in the electric chair.

  The warden didn’t see him and continued. “A telephone connected directly to Governor Ellefson’s office will be installed on that wall. And that, ladies and gentlemen, pretty much concludes today’s tour.” Warden Johnson turned back to the chair, now occupied. “Mr. Beanblossom, what the hell are you doing?”

  The man in the mask ignored him, lifted the death cap from the floor, and placed it atop his head. He sat dead still in the electric chair in a Lincolnesque pose.

  Then Rick Beanblossom began singing a jingle he remembered from a television commercial when he was a boy: “Electricity is penny cheap from NSP to you.”

  Nobody laughed.

  If it was the most bizarre sight Warden Oliver J. Johnson had ever seen in his years at Stillwater, he wasn’t admitting it. “By the way,” he told the reporters, savoring the thought of it, “all of you must undergo a full rectal exam before you will be allowed to leave.”

  The Row

  When the tours passed through, Dixon Bell, inmate number 137389, crawled into his cell—out of sight, but never out of mind. For the past two years, as his appeals dragged on, he had been incarcerated at the Minnesota Correctional Facility in Stillwater. Rick Beanblossom’s hometown. A mirror image of Vicksburg.Through the looking glass. The town was set on the west side of the river instead of the east. High bluffs. Rolling hills. Thick woods. Even an old restored courthouse high on a hill. The prison was just off Highway 95 heading south out of town, with a terrific view of the St. Croix Valley.

  But life behind those high walls was monotonous. Dixon Bell found it difficult to keep his mind occupied. Sleep was his only lover now, and he crawled into bed and eagerly waited for her sweet embrace. His thick hair had thinned and gone mostly gray. He had dropped thirty pounds. Again he took to watching television. He learned through TV news that the Death House was nearing completion. It was almost six months behind schedule and a million dollars over budget. Death penalty opponents were still trying to have the funds cut off.

  Once in a while he would put pen to paper and answer some of the letters that were delivered to his cell every day during the 3:30 lockup. All of his letters, both incoming and outgoing, were photocopied and reviewed by authorities. The letters were from all over the world, letters of support and letters of hate. Some of the letters enraged him so much he felt like strangling the writer. Others moved him to tears.

  Stillwater shattered almost every myth Dixon Bell held about prison life. In mates didn’t have to put on uniforms. They were allowed to wear their own clothes at all times. A simple V was cut into the heels of their shoes so they could be tracked if they escaped.

  The uniformed guards were totally unarmed. In his two years at Stillwater he had yet to see a weapon. Most of the guards were young and relatively friendly. They could retire at age fifty-five, and most of them did. The guards that didn’t like being among the inmates bid for the tower jobs. There were even women guards— women guards at a men-only prison. One of Dixon Bell’s favorites was a young woman named Carol. When she first began her duties at Stillwater, she wouldn’t tell him her last name, so he just called her Carol the Guard. Like others in the prison, she slowly warmed up to him.

  The prison’s educational system was equivalent to that of a community college. Literacy programs were given top priority. A four-year-degree program was offered through the University of Minnesota. Inmates went to school or went to work. The Industry Division turned out a line of farm equipment tops in the Midwest. Stillwater’s rate of recidivism was one of the lowest in the country. Most inmates got a decent education and never came back. When Per Ellefson became governor, he was so impressed with prison’s overall record he reappointed Oliver Johnson warden despite loud complaints from the right wing of his party. In political circles Johnson was known as a bleeding-heart liberal. They would have had him canned a long time ago for coddling prisoners except that his programs worked. The inmates loved their warden. Dixon Bell respected him. The warden, however, intensely disliked the Weatherman. Dixon Bell once asked him about it.

  “I began here as a guard in the laundry room when I was twenty-one years old,” Johnson said. “Just me and thirty-eight inmates. I earned my college degree in this prison, the same degree program offered to the inmates. I helped make Stillwater a model for the country. My greatest fear has always been that a man like you would come along . . . a criminal so beguiling he could convince an entire community he was good, where as he was evil . . . a monster so vile the laws would have to be changed to deal with him. You shined a spotlight on us. Prisons don’t operate well under the spotlight.”

  “Did it ever occur to you that I might be an innocent man?” “No. You killed every one of those women, Dixon. If I didn’t believe that with all of my heart, I’d tell the governor to take his electric chair and shove it up his ass. But I’ll walk you to the chair. Just so that we can be done with you, and I can get back to running a correctional facility. As far as I’m concerned you’re just a cold wind blowing through the system.”

  Since there had been no death penalty in Minnesota, there had been no death row, so when Dixon Bell first arrived at Stillwater he was locked in the Segregation Unit. After several months Warden Johnson allowed him to join the general prison population. He was even assigned a teaching position and moved to the educational wing, Cell Hall A-East. When the media reported this move, there was a general brouhaha because the Weatherman wasn’t rotting away on death row. Once again accused of coddling prisoners, Warden Johnson had no choice but to return his most notorious inmate to the Segregation Unit. That’s what the warden meant about the spotlight.

  The Weatherman’s cell was six feet by ten feet. It was eight feet high. The bunk was attached to the wall. There was an aluminum toilet. He had a foot locker. He was allowed a small metal desk with a metal chair. In the corner was a portable Sony TV. The walls were painted light blue. The bars on the door were brown and yellow. The whole prison was done in the depressing shades of autumn: brown and gold.

  Much like at the county jail, they were locked in their cells only from 10:00 P.M. until 6:15 A.M. Then three times a day they were locked up for about twenty minutes while the guards counted bodies. If nobody was missing, the doors were unlocked and they were again free to roam.

  In the day
room outside the cells, metal tables and chairs were bolted to the floor. An RCA with a twenty-six inch-screen was bolted to the wall. Every time some law-and-order bozo toured the prison he left screaming to the media, “They got color television sets!”

  Tall windows climbed three stories to the ceiling. But these windows were screened and barred, and the Weatherman could not always see the sun and the moon. The Seg Unit had its own exercise yard. Dixon Bell was allowed outside two hours a day. Right now tulips were in bloom around the foundation. The birds were up from the South. Ice was out on the St. Croix River. In Minnesota the rainy season was under way. He took in every last minute of fresh air, no matter how threatening the sky. Even so, he felt he was losing his sense of the weather. He had been too long removed from the elements.

  After the brouhaha over the Weatherman’s not being locked up on death row, and to show they weren’t being coddled, whenever the media or the politicians came to inspect the progress of Death House facilities, the guards would hang an ominous black sign over the Seg Unit that read, DEATH ROW. The inmates would scurry back into their cells and the guards would bolt the doors. All television sets would be turned off.The guards would stand at attention and put on their mean and ugly faces. Inmates would wear their most hardened scowls. A couple of them would grunt and groan; a few had developed comically horrifying screams. The tour group would then peek in, looking either very pleased or very scared. As soon as they departed, the cell doors were unlocked, and with a hearty laugh the inmates would go back to doing whatever it was they were doing before being so rudely interrupted.