The Weatherman (51 page)

The Weatherman, bound like an animal, squinted at the strange faces melting into the lights. The most shameful feeling rained down on him. His mouth was parched, his tongue thick and leathery. “I’m thirsty,” he mumbled. “Can I have a drink of water?”

“No. I’m sorry.”

Dixon Bell tried to lubricate his mouth with saliva. He thought a second. “Dress warm,” he said, “it’s going to be a long, hard winter.” He felt faint with sorrow and closed his eyes. He opened them. “Y’all take care now.”

They took the microphone away.

The guards tilted his shaved head back at an uncomfortable angle. They shoved a mouthpiece between his teeth. “Bite down on this real hard.” They fastened a fat leather chin strap around his jaw, so taut it was almost choking him. His head was now locked firmly into the wooden headrest. That’s when the Weatherman spotted him.

He was standing in the back row, behind the chairs, his hands tucked into his jeans pockets under his sport coat. Maybe it was fate, perhaps it was the mask, but Rick Beanblossom’s blue cotton face was the only face he could see. He locked onto the Marine’s eyes and it all came together-a repeat of that moment in the elevator years ago, the day of the tornado, the day the Weatherman’s world began to spin out of control. But this time the man in the mask wouldn’t be riding up with him. This was the last thing Dixon Bell saw before they blinded him, the faceless face of Rick Beanblossom, his eyes filled with pity, rage, and just a touch of understanding. He had everything the Weatherman ever wanted. Everything but a face.

Then they evened that score.

The guards drew a black leather mask across his face and buckled it like a boot, fixed it so hard he was close to smothering. The mask was to keep his eyes from popping out of their sockets and to hide any violent facial contortion.

The new sponge Old Jesse purchased at Woolworth’s had been soaked in salt water and stitched into the headset, the death cap that would fry his brain. It was lowered onto the Weatherman’s bald head like a thorny crown. It felt cold and slimy. The saline solution dripped down around his ears and trickled down his back. Lastly, they plugged him in.

Never had Dixon Bell known such blackness. This was as dark as dark gets. The leather mask across his face felt rough and cold and smelled of a new shoe. The rubber in his mouth tasted of his football days at Vicksburg High School. Lisa crossed his mind-not the frumpy woman at the trial but the southern belle he had given his heart to so many seasons past. It was safe to cry now. He thought he heard some people mumbling as the first tears rolled over his cheeks and ran like sweat from beneath the mask.

Dixon Bell sat in the electric chair and waited. And waited.

What the hell are they doing?

Then it got so quiet he could hear the tears streaming down his face. In the final seconds of October he accepted his pathetic fate. But, God, it was so damned unfair.

The Weatherman choked on a sob and thought of

Andrea.

The clock struck midnight.

When Rick Beanblossom arrived at the prison on the night of the execution a crowd was gathered outside. Two crowds. On the east side of Stagecoach Trail, on the lawn beneath the prison wall, hundreds of somber and peaceful protesters held candles under their umbrellas. They were all represented-Amnesty International
USA
, the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty, and the Ecumenical Religious Task Force on Criminal Justice-but most of the candle holders didn’t belong to any organization.

“We live in Stillwater … and we don’t think this is right … We just wanted to be here. That’s all.”

They sang chorus after chorus of “We Shall Overcome.” They did a haunting rendition of “Amazing Grace.” The temperature was slowly dropping and their warm breath became visible, rolling out before them as their mellifluous voices wafted over the walls and through the prison grounds.

The west side of Stagecoach Trail, across the street from the prison wall, was a different story. Death penalty cheerleaders outnumbered the candle holders almost two to one. Some waved angry torches that flickered and died

in the cold, soaking rain. Some repeatedly flicked their Bic lighters. Others carried signs that read stuff like,
ASK

NOT
FOR
WHOM
THE
BELL
TOLLS
, IT
TOLLS
FOR
BELL
...
THANK
GOD
IT’S
FRYDAY
...
BUCKLE
UP,
BELL
,
IT’S
THE
LAW
... and
DON’T
MESS
WITH
MINNESOTA
.

“Hey, this is a hometown crowd. We’ve been waiting for this in Minnesota for a long time. Just wanted to be here.”

The sheriff’s department formed a line between the two crowds. News photographers paraded back and forth, their klieg lights brightening the dark, rainy night. A hawker was peddling souvenir electric-chair pins. Cars, windshield wipers flapping, had to run a gauntlet of state troopers before being allowed to park. Satellite trucks and news vans lined the parking lot, thick black cables snaking over the sidewalks and onto the grass. It was just past 10:00 P.M. TV reporters were doing their live stand-ups.

“Stan, I’ve been to a few of these in Florida when I was working for a Tampa station, and this is a good turnout, even by Florida standards. As you can see behind me here …”

Rick Beanblossom stood above the media circus; stood on the steps of the main building and watched the rain falling over the dark valley. His valley. God’s country. The wind and rain had stripped the trees of their natural beauty. Fallen leaves lay decaying in wet piles. Despite the news event of the year there was a strange and eerie stillness over this valley named holy cross. Rick closed his eyes.

The Wisconsin inmate at the state prison in Waupun told Rick Beanblossom a harrowing story, about how he had dressed to kill, then went out and brutally murdered an Indian girl that beautiful autumn morning in the park overlooking the town of Hudson. The problem was he had told a similar story once before. Just prior to the highly publicized execution of an Alabama man, he confessed to that killing in frightening detail. Alabama authorities thought he sounded pretty convincing, but it didn’t stop the execution. Minnesota authorities simply shrugged their collective shoulders. Dixon Bell was never charged with the Hudson murder. Any confession to the killing was irrelevant.

Rick shivered, turned his back to the inclement weather, and ducked in the front door. He brushed the raindrops from his sport coat and stepped up to the glass booth. “I’m here for the execution,” he told the guard.

The big guard at the desk, whom Rick had never seen before, gave him that baffled stare he had grown accustomed to over the years. “What the hell is going on?” the guard demanded to know. “We were told you’d have a special escort. Top secret and all that shit. What are you doing waltzing in the front door?”

“My name is Rick Beanblossom. I’m a burn victim. I have a media pass to witness the execution.”

The guard threw up his hands in embarrassment. “Oh God, I’m sorry, I thought you were the executioner. Yeah, I’ve heard of you. You wrote that book. Do you got your pass, Rick? I’m sorry about that. Bernie here will take you down to the cafeteria. That’s where you’ll wait until they walk you out to the house.”

Rick had his hand stamped with invisible ink. He signed his name in the log book. Bernie the guard issued him a badge, which he clamped to his coat. He passed through the metal detector and was then escorted down to the cafeteria.

The ritual for the witnesses was almost as bizarre as the ritual for the condemned man. More than two thousand people had written letters to Warden Johnson asking if they could be witnesses at the execution. The warden chose twenty-four of them. They were confined to the cafeteria. The place reminded Rick of the cafeteria at his junior high school, huge, cold, and filled with echoes. Tables and chairs were bolted to the floor. A balcony for guards hung overhead. He recognized some family members of the victims from the sound bites he had seen on the news, but there were only two or three of them. Most of those gathered were news people or state officials. He nodded to the few faces he knew. Others stared at him, as befuddled as the guard at the front desk first was.

“He’s that burned guy married to Andrea Labore.” “Is she going to be here tonight?”

The room had the stale atmosphere of a bad party. Soft voices and whispers were the unwritten rule. A full meal was being served, everything but a roasted pig with an apple stuffed in its mouth. Witnesses shuffled through the cafeteria line ordering their free food. Rick wasn’t hungry. He grabbed a Pepsi and downed a pair of aspirin. He checked his watch. It was 10:30. Andrea would remain in the newsroom until it was over.

He sat at a table away from the others, an old habit that was hard to break. Redd Battlemore came and sat beside him. Redd was the old salt from the Pioneer Press. The crime beat was his life. “Never thought I’d live to see this in Minnesota,” he said to Rick. “But then I never thought I’d see casino gambling here, either. Or a domed stadium. Or a snake like Per Ellefson in the governor’s office. The Nordic Nixon. He’ll let him fry, Rick. You mark my words. He’ll let him fry.”

The man without a face reflected a moment on all that was lost. “Not exactly the land we inherited, is it?”

“The wife and I, we’ve been looking at some property in Wisconsin, up by Hayward. Pretty country. Might build there when I retire. Of course the wife wants to retire to Florida, but I’ll be damned if I’ll live in a state that does this kind of thing. And you, Rick?”

“No, I’ll never leave Minnesota.”

More than an hour later, 11:40, uniformed guards along with the deputy commissioner of corrections arrived to usher them across the prison yard to the Death House.

It was still drizzling. Rick was wearing only his blue sport coat and faded jeans. The temperature kept falling. The wet cold cut to his bones. As they walked across the muddy, floodlit prison yard a strange feeling came over him, as if a thousand angry eyes were watching them pass. They were. Nasty shouts began to rain down from the dark windows.

“Write the truth for a change, you assholes!”

“You gonna throw that switch, Masked Man? Even in war it’s against the law to kill a prisoner!”

“If they can kill him, they all can kill you too!”

It began as a single chant from a lone inmate in the north wing-a prisoner who had done his homework. In seconds there were several prisoners chanting. Then it seemed the entire prison population was at their bars chanting, a violent, passionate chorus that chased the group of witnesses as they solemnly paraded to the Death House. It was a spooky chant from inside the walls that mixed with the eerie version of “Amazing Grace” being done outside.

“Human rights! Human rights!”

“Human rights! Human rights!”

It was a proud, defiant chant that grew louder and louder, almost terroristic in nature, and it didn’t reach its zenith until they were inside the Death House and the steel door was sealed and locked.

When they had taken the tour in the daytime the death chamber had looked stark and stuffy. Now in the hour before midnight in the cold rain it was bright and foreboding-blizzard white and ominous.

In the left corner of the room stood the American flag. In the right corner stood the flag of Minnesota with the state motto showing: L’Etoile du Nord. The Star of the North. Rick thought the Spark of the North would be more appropriate. Between the two flags, on the black rubber mat on the linoleum floor, sat the big, fat oaken chair. Hot white lights shone down on it like on an anchor chair in a television studio.

Thirty folding chairs were set up on three raised platforms, almost like in a showcase theater. There was nothing but a few feet of space to separate the witnesses from the electric chair. A sign on the back wall said NO
SMOKING
. A red phone hung on the wall next to the door. Fire extinguishers were lined up beside the entrance.

None of the witness seats were assigned. Everybody moved about in an awkward game of musical chairs. The seats up front were the last to be taken. Rick walked up the aisle between the chairs to the back wall and stood. The large round clock read 11:45.

They waited patiently; the minutes seemed like hours. It was the longest Rick could remember a group of reporters ever going without one of them cracking a morbid joke.

Then they heard him coming down the hall, the way Marley’s ghost came for Scrooge. The haunting echo of the rattling chains passed unimpeded through the walls of the Death House. Warden Johnson stepped into the chamber. He was followed by the Weatherman. Audible gasps slipped out of those who had known Dixon Bell. His head and face were totally hairless and sickly white. His once sharp eyes were bloodshot and raw. His fat had melted away, leaving the big man starved in appearance. He was manacled at the ankles. His hands were clamped into that horrid pair of handcuffs which were locked to a chain around his waist. His chalky face showed more confusion than fear. The death squad guided him to the chair and sat him down beneath the spotlights.

The electric chair faced the witnesses dead on. Dixon Bell raised his head and squinted. Rick couldn’t tell if he’d been spotted or not. He watched as they strapped the Weatherman into the chair the same way doctors had once strapped the charred Marine into a bed. The chair seemed to have three straps for every appendage.

When they were done dressing him for slaughter, an electrician wired his right leg. Then they placed a stand before him and pointed a microphone up at his mouth. It looked like a chrome erection.

Warden Johnson stepped forward. “Dixon Graham Bell, would you like to make a final statement before the will of the people of Minnesota is carried out?”

Rick wanted to cry as Dixon Bell asked for water. Then the Weatherman mumbled his final forecast and said good-bye.