I Am an Executioner (14 page)

She wiped her face, looking like she is the man now. “Take me then tomorrow.”

“Okay, Margaret,” I was panting, out of my breaths. I wanted to run to her, but I tripped myself to the floor, paining my shins. “Damn it everything, Margaret. Okay. Tomorrow. But after that, then no more waiting. You must give to me everything.”

Please don’t think me a rude man! I only tries to be like my papa. He was the big strong truth-telling man, whereas I did many bad things. I am not tall like I put it in the computer ad for enticing Margaret, also the picture was some twenty years back. Many other things I did it wrong all the time in my life. Always the womenfolks bring it out from me.

Anyhow, now I had promised to Margaret. Anyhow, maybe all of it would work to the best. And next day, it seemed Margaret had forgot all my bum behaviors; whole of morning she was easygoing to me. She cleaned her hair and put on the nice frock like the normal wife who is leaving the household. “Do you like to take the fried chicken’s egg?” I asked to her, and she nodded me, so I fried up the egg. I asked, “Why not you take some milk to drink?” and she did it. I feeled I was caring her almost like she was sitting in the death row; it tickled me warmly! We boarded the bus and sat side by side in the bench, thigh of me touching thigh of her. Bus was full of everyday peoples and Margaret and me looked like the normal boring married couple off for the workday, how it pleased me. We offed from the bus, and Margaret waited herself outside the prison, a dirty place in the edge-skirt of the city. I told, “I will go inside making sure everything is possible now for the visit.”

Then she smiled me. A real smile! I thought, yes, this whole thing is rolling like coconuts. After all the mistakes, my rude advancements and so on, finally, some progresses was being made in my wifely relations with my wife. “I am sorry my mood yesterday,” I said, and gave her the tender strokings in her cheekbones, and she offered no protests. Despite strangeness of it all, I thought things was going again in my direction.

I stepped inside of the prison, stopping straightaway in Warden’s office.

“Warden, sir,” I said. Warden was distracted with reading the gambling numbers in the newspaper. “Hey, Warden.”

“What is it, man?” Warden yelled.

I tried to simulate the smiling casualness. “It looks our little madam has a last-day visitor.”

News of someone’s arrival made Warden to put down the newspaper. “Damn it. Where is the visitor? Why you didn’t tell me? Where was he scheduled? You didn’t clean the hallways. Damn it, fellow.” He began straightening his shirts and combing his hairs.

“Hey, not to worry,” I told. I myself had been nervous, but now Warden was the nervouser one. “No worries, sir. She is outside still. It is a next-of-kin, auntie, or somesuch. A country lady only, no one to worry. I made her wait on the outside. She came from faroff and didn’t call, just now only she arrived. I will go and bring her.”

Warden continued flustering inside as I went out and brought my wife inward. She followed me slowly, staring very strongly left and right, and I saw that when Warden seed her, his whole face went still.

Warden stepped me aside. “Madam,” he said, acting like some different person and not at all Warden. “Madam, don’t be frightened, a gentle woman as yourself must feel very strange in this rough prison. But come this way. You will see we have taken very good care of our charge. You will be perfectly safe with me.”

He jutted his elbow for Margaret to hook herself there (it did not happen). Simply they began walking to the cellroom. I followed them behind, but Warden turned backward: “You wait here in the front office, man.”

What could I to do? I watched them both disappearing round the corner toward the girl’s cellroom. I jangled back and forth.
I could not bring myself to sit my bottom. I wondered myself: What if that girl reveals something about my previous behaviors? Well, that is not a worry, I reminded me, as that girl never talked to no one nothing.

I tried to listen what was going on in the cellblocks, but I could not hear it. I fretted, what if Margaret tells to Warden she is my wife? Then maybe my job is quite finished.

I peeked my face around the corner to see their doings, but I could not eye-catch it. Margaret had bended down somewise, with Warden standing off. What was happening? What words thereby were they saying? Oh, God.

Finally they turned their heads, and I removed my head backward. I satted myself in the office and feigned the perfect indifferentness as their footsteps approached me.

Warden arrived first. His face showed no anger, and only normal Warden facial expressions, and so I knowed it, everything was okay. I had a big relax. But then Margaret came, and moment I seed her, I feared I had made the big-time mistake. Her eyes was brimmed red like tears had been dropping there, and she would not look my face in the eye. Was all progresses I had this point made to my wifely relations with my wife hereby abolished? I could not say it.

“Just one moment, madam, I must give you some paper-works,” Warden told. He went behind me, and Margaret only stood there with a look in her face like she is in the weird dream, and I could not tell who it was inside her head.

Then Warden called to me, so I went backward.

Warden whispered, “Ask her some gratuities, man.”

“Hey, Warden, I cannot do that. You are the one who taked her there, maybe it’s better you to ask.”

Then Warden clapped me my cranium. Boy, it hurt! “I don’t ask you like a question, man.”

So I had to go back, very sheeplike, to my own wife Margaret. Without looking her face, I told to her, “Excuse me, madam.”

Now only Margaret looked her face to me. Her far-looking eyes finally focused there. I edged my glance to see her: her expressions was wide like a girl’s face, but tired like a woman’s. She looked very new. Is you still the same Margaret, I felt to ask of her, but I could not ask it. I could feel Warden’s eyes also staring me. Very quietly, I said, “Madam, can you please give us some gratuities? For we the caretakers of the prisoner? For the food we gaved her? For the waxy painless rope?”

In her expression, it taked her a moment to understand. Finally, she reached her purse and dropped some sad coins toward my hand. I looked down at it as I did not want to see her anymore. What was her thoughts of me? I feared to know it.

Later in that same day, Warden took me to the side. “You done all your preparations for the hanging?” he asked.

“Yes, Warden.”

“Go back and undo it. We not going to have no hanging for that girl.”

I looked to Warden with my face like a question, but I feared I knowed his meaning.

“Ministry says we have to kill her the other way,” Warden told.

That day was very difficult one. I called the Ministry peons and spent many hours driving the truck through the bad countryside roads to search out appropriate stones. I removed the gallows and rearranged all of the execution room.

And that night Margaret wouldn’t touch to me, spite of my best efforts. Even though I keeped to her my honest word and never did to her like I did to my first wife, even I asked her and poked her: “What you had promised me? Don’t you remember it?”

“Yell, then,” she yelled me. “Beat me. Go on! Kill me, even. And when they find you for murder, you can execute yourself.”

“What foolish talk,” I answered her. “No one can execute his own self solo. How can anyone do it proper?”

But even she kicked me and scratched me like Catty, I would not go this time for sofa-sleeping. Even she taked her blanket and sleeped on the floor, I would stay in the bed that was mine.

And next day, I waked before morning. I stepped careful over floorsleeping Margaret and pressed my white smart collarshirt and blue shortpants. I wore the belt and the white socks. It was my execution day uniform. I polished the black shoe and wore them and went for the prison. I felt anxious to my stomach about Margaret, but so much thoughts filled my bubble: Was all the big stones in place? Was the chambers clean in case of dignitary visits? Was prisoner properly attired and so on?

Prisoner was not properly attired. I had to hold her tightly while Warden pulled over her the dark frock. The little girl had finally understanded the natures of her situation, and now she snarled like tigers. No traces of the soft girl was left; she showed the teeth this time. As I bounded up the hands, she spat and called me filthy dirty bugger, and such names. I looked to Warden’s face, but to my great relax Warden considered it as a normal prisoner namecalling, and not a truefact accusation.

“What, little madam?” I asked to her, in my nicest voice available. “What you was thinking? That you can go on sitting your cellroom for eternally? What you think you was doing here? Who you think I am to you? I was your kindly friend, and I never did lie to you.”

One or two cracks was necessary from the billy club, and then she calmed herself. What a shame. I don’t never like for it to be like this. But finally that girl came the quiet way. Now only the fear was in her eyes, the blood was gone her cheeks. Even she made some accident inside the frock, according to the smell in my nostril.

Before we came to the execution chamber, I had to do one thing. I took my black hood and pulled it down my face. There is only three holes in the hood, for eye, for eye, for mouth. It looks so solemn and scaredy, I think so. I put it on my face in
case one or two name officials or families should be there in the viewing gallery.

This case, of course no name persons or families would be there, only the same jobless people as comes to all the executions. The sentences was changed only in the last moments, so no big crowds would come and crowd me. We walked toward the chamber. In that girl’s ears, I whispered some things that was in my mind. I said, “You are quiet now, that is good, little girl.” I said, “Don’t be scared, but this is a different way we are doing it. Sometimes we do it plain and sometimes different. Ministry says you and your family has did very bad things. Your papa is a bad man. Is it so?” She didn’t answer me nothing. I looked to her face to see if she was still angered or scaredy. I could not catch it. Her eyes was weird and gave no plain indications. She would not look my face or respond my finger pokes. I began to wonder myself: Is life gotten too confusing for the little girls in our good country in these days?

We arrived in the executioning platform and stationed there. Warden came up then in his shirt-tie, and in some special big-man voice read out the law sentences. I didn’t always ear-mind it, with all the big words,
forsooth
and
therewithal
and so on, and
it is so ordered
. I was thinking of that girl. But so what if Warden was talking there some foolish nonsense in his big pretend voice, it meant one thing only, it meant the blinky green light and one thing to be done and one person only to do it. The beats came faster from my heart and my mouth came dry. A previous time in this moment the advocate had came running in the execution chamber holding new sentences and grabbed Warden, saying judge had granted their big appeals; then and there we halted the executioning. But this time even I waited it to happen, it did not happen. I was not especial disappointed, except it meant a hard work for me and a hard final end to my friend, so it goes every time, so what does it matter?

For the record, Warden asked the prisoner had she any last
words? At first the girl speaked nothing, and Warden walked off and left me to the work. But after a moment, the girl had some last words to speak of. She cried out her filthy curses. And then she stopped her cursing and was quiet.

Oh well, I said to my mind. I did her my best and only thanks she has to give is filthy wordnames, so what can I to do? I pre-parated. This time, there was no readynoose to place over the girl’s neck. I saw that the stones was in place, and the fulcrum lever. Then I looked up and saw one extra person was in the viewing gallery, one woman she sat there, guess who it was, my wife, Margaret. Why she came there? She was wearing same clothings like yesterday, her hair crazy. It made me heated to see her, but what could I to say? I could not tell to her anything without Warden would know she was a known-to-me and not a next-of-kin.

Margaret stared at me full in my face, my mask, my smart uniform. Her eyes deeped so strange, like she was sticking her look all the way inside me. It made me feel bad tickled. Who was I to her this moment? I wondered. Was I the fulltime stranger? Was I her husband or something so different? And then Margaret looked away from me to the prisoner’s face. Meantime, I slipped gently over that girl’s face the hood that was finally covering her eyes.

When she was in the jute-cloth darkness, then only I bent down and whispered into her ear. I had to bend low down for that small girl. Very quietly I whispered to her something, my mouth so close to her shelly ear that even through the cloth I feeled the warmth there. Very quietly I telled to her, taking as long as it is the telling of it taked.

What I telled her was too secret; I don’t want nobody ever to know. I put in her ears the words—like dewdrops, like dewdrops. I was the last one for her in the whole world, that moment.

As I talked, still that Margaret she sat there. Nothing she
could hear of what I said, but any case she looked like nothing more in the world was left for talking. I finished telling that thing to that prisoner’s ear, and before the girl could give answers, I pulled the lever of the floor, and she cried out and fell down to the bottom chamber.

I looked down, and she was moving and making some crying noises down there. I moved my hands to the fulcrum stick and strength-lifted one heavy stone over the end of the floor, and it hit her with a sound. Still she noised, as I levered the other stone on top of her. And then the other and the other.

The life of truth is its own reward, my papa always he told to me, before they disappeared him. Thereby, I am an honest executioner. I take good care and I don’t tell lies, minimum of possible. And each time I pushed down that rock, and it landed with the bad sound, I thought myself: Truth! And I thought, in that way, I do a good job. Until she stopped noising and was quiet, and buried she was under the rain of stonedrops, and there was no question she was smashed and dead.