Soul of a Whore and Purvis (14 page)

I'd have to say you kind of did.

[
Monitor sounds a flat reading: beeeeeeeee.
]

You pressed the goddamn button, didn't you?

Seven minutes! You said seven minutes!

But often Phase One stops the heart, and then—

They gyp you!…Bring this woman back—

Dose her up with speed or something! [
To
WILL
] You!

…Hostage Taker, this is the very thing

That brought us here. The Reverend Jenks is powered

To deal with demons and restore the sick,

I've seen him do it with a word, a breath,

Two years I've dogged his steps, I've watched him work—

Deafness, stammering, cancer, withered limbs—

I've seen him pinch their one last mustard seed

Of faith and scatter it into blossoms—

Blindness, palsy, lunatic torments—

And I believe this man can raise the dead.

…Leave it alone, Will. Let this run its course

And you and me go get a drink at Mursky's.

Country-western, and scotch in plastic cups.

…We've done a bunch of these.

Right around two hundred.

My garment? Something just went out of me—”

He stood in a crowd pressing from all sides

But knew a particular touch had drawn his power,

Sensed a healing had gone out from him…

All I have is a knack for crossing paths

With people just about to heal themselves.

A gift for sticking in my head and smiling

Just when someone's gonna snap the picture.

I've never healed one person of one thing

In all my lying life.

If I had, I'd feel it, wouldn't I?

Wouldn't it jump a little in my blood?

You ever walk the rows at Joe Byrd Hill?

How many rows have we ourselves laid out?

I bet you'd hike a half a mile of graves

Fed by our work, Will Blaine, yours and mine,

And then you'd come to a couple of plywood boards

Hiding the hungry place that waits for this one.

We don't want to die and go in there.

They claw down with a green-and-yellow John Deere

Backhoe and scoop a darkness under the grass,

Takes six or seven seconds to produce

The only thing on earth that lasts forever.

God in Heaven, we beg you to widen your eyes.

Look here at this woman put to death

By bureaucrats. See her. Remember her.

You made this woman's life—remember that.

Make her now, again. GOD, GIVE HER BREATH.

I lived my life in Hell. But now it's simpler.

Talking in my mother's voice.

We don't have mediums, but we do have demons?

From where? You take it as it comes from where?

No mediums. No ha'nts. No clanky chains.

Men and women; devils; angels; God.

Hell is full of sadness. Full of truth,

Full of clarity. Hell is beautiful.

Why
?

There's something about your style that pisses me off.

I'm all through pimping you, Jenks—you're on your own!

Culminates. Warden, blow the whistle!

Beloved William Jennings Bryan Jenks:

You've come to failure, and today you die.

Beloved, my most interesting project,

My signature, my sunny revelation:

Count your heartbeats. Today you die.

Your breath stops. Your sight blackens, then burns

With visions since your birth, and you'll be met

At every turning with the leering truth:

Not one prayer you've uttered ever prized

The slimmest chink in you, not one escaped

The maze. They suffocated in their coffins.

The start to finish of your life's design

Tributes nothingness. And now the dark.

People are tripping over it left and right.

This is blasphemy. This thing's a scandal. [
VOICES
ad lib…
]

Quiet!—I'm sorry.—Goddamn you!—I'm sorry.

Here is the information we've got for you.

This evening, shortly after five p.m., an as-yet-unidentified prisoner overcame and stabbed to death a guard in the Walls Unit, who remains nameless until notification of family. Thereafter this prisoner gained access to the execution chamber in this corner of the unit, right behind me, and…

You have the statement. You have the statement…

[
VOICES
ad lib…
]

Now, Mrs. Blaine has asked to say a word, wife of William Blaine, who supervised our Teams in the unit there—She's the wife of Will Blaine, a very special employee of, a very…

The wife of Will Blaine, the widow, the wife, the widow…President of the Texas Citizens for Victims' Rights, Marsha Hollings Blaine.

VOICES
ad lib…

Today is a Day of Judgment on us all!

[
VOICES
ad lib…
]

Look at you all!—like wasps on watermelon!

[
VOICES
ad lib…
]

Rahr! Rahr! Rahr!—like
curs
on
carrion
.

I LOST MY HUSBAND IN THAT PLACE TODAY.

…Maybe he's in a better place. Who knows?

…Some people go around with this idea

The Milky Way is just some big machine,

And we're being eaten alive by this machine,

Trodden down and gutted out and gobbled

And scattered out along beside the road

To fertilize the ditch, and that's our fate:

And I say, God above, let it be so!

Let there be no Resurrection Day!

[
VOICES
ad lib…
]

LET THERE BE NO RESURRECTION DAY!

If Bill Jenks thinks that he can raise the dead—

Let him raise himself! WE'RE WAITING, BILL.

Let him raise
someone
, and then I'd say

That he was onto something—wouldn't you?

[
Of the cross
] Look here, look where someone's set up the means

Of execution in the gory Bible days.

Here they hung them after they'd been scourged.

You know what scourging was? They whipped the skin

Until it ripped, and then they whipped the muscles

Underneath, until their whips licked bone.

And then they hammered what was left up here,

And broke the legs of what was left, so that,

Without support, it slowly suffocated.

And that's the boy the power of whose blood

You plead, an executed criminal…

[
VOICES
ad lib…
]

LET MY HUSBAND ROT IN THE GROUND UNTIL HE'S MUSH,

Let him rot in the ground till he's gravy,

Until he clarifies like honey in the heat

And dribbles into dirt that doesn't feel

A thing or think a thought.

May the dirt I called my husband never wake,

May that dirt stay dead until the whole

Universe collapses into cinders,

May the weight of general emptiness

Strive and grind against itself and work

The cinders down to black, stupefied darkness,

May he be dead until the final thought of God,

As long as his assassins stay dead, too.

…When Texas trips the lever of the blade,

And that blade dives down through a killer's neck,

And that neck pumps that evil blood six feet,

And that head goes rollin' into the world,

What drives that blood is the beautiful heart of Texas,

And staring out of that head are the eyes of Texas.

The dead face of the killer we have killed—

This is the face of liberty and justice.

This is the beautiful face of liberty and justice!