Carthage

  The Intern had been staring at the Lieutenant, repelled. She had not dared to glance at the Investigator who, she supposed, had recorded the Lieutenant’s words and had taken pictures of him.

  Visitors asked few questions. Not even the red-faced man had seemed to enjoy the Lieutenant’s account though he roused himself to say now, in a faltering voice, “A man don’t have to commit the crime, to get himself ‘condemned.’ Some of us believe in free will.”

  “All of us believe in free will, sir! We are not animals, and we are not machines. We are made in God’s image.” The Lieutenant spoke emphatically.

  A subtle look came into the Lieutenant’s face. “This one time I was present at a ’lectricution, here at Orion, had to be a fat man weighed three hundred sixty-five pounds, squeezed in that chair. And every damn thing that could go wrong, like with Old Sparky, went wrong. And he ain’t even unconscious but howling-like. And the hood over his head kind of crooked. And the death-squad is wondering what to do, the warden, all of us—then we see there’s blood coming out of the head, and soaking through the hood, and it’s forming the shape of a cross. See?—a sign that God was approving the execution, no matter the damn glitches.”

  The Intern couldn’t resist glancing at the Investigator. Blood in the shape of a cross! A vindication of capital punishment! But the Investigator only just frowned and ignored the Intern.

  “Who can open this door? Any volunteer?”

  The Lieutenant regarded them as an adult might regard a group of captive children.

  The Intern wanted to run away somewhere and hide. The Intern was feeling sick to her stomach. But she saw the Investigator make a signal to her, with a gesture of his hand, imperceptible to the others. So she stepped forward, bravely. “Sir, I will.”

  Struggling then to open the door. Which seemed to be sunk in the earth, and locked. And the Lieutenant leering at her. And the Lieutenant urging her.

  “It is not locked, fella. Just keep tryin’.”

  A final budge, and the door didn’t give an inch. The Lieutenant positioned himself in front of it and with a flurry pulled at the handle, out, and up—(the Intern saw, this was the trick: you had to lift the damned door not yet yank at it)—so that the door opened like a gaping mouth.

  Reluctantly, the tour-group shuffled inside. Inside, and down. Three stone steps. Already an odor worse than Cell Block C, worse than the dining hall, wafted to their nostrils.

  Helplessly the visitors descended into the execution chamber. The Lieutenant stood beside the doorway, ushering them inside. The Intern was the last to enter. He winked at her as if to indicate that, if he didn’t keep a sharp eye on her, the little fella would slip away.

  The execution chamber held an astonishing surprise: the inner chamber appeared to be a bathosphere.

  An octagon, painted robin’s-egg blue. And the windows Plexiglas.

  The Investigator asked what was that contraption? Looked like a diving bell—bathosphere.

  The Lieutenant laughed. He’d been herding the visitors into the windowless space, trying to get them to fan out, to sit in chairs near the front of the room. They were edgy, fluttery as frightened hens. After the trauma of the cell block some of them were close to collapse, the Lieutenant had to gauge how much more they could take. He told the Investigator, “Yessir. This is a ‘bathosphere.’ Bought at a carny over at Dayton Beach.”

  You could see, the diving bell/bathosphere had a carny air to it. It was eight-sided, like a deformed circle; like an eye, the most perfect robin’s-egg blue, gouged out of its socket.

  Robin’s-egg blue: the hue of bright childlike hope.

  Not all of the visitors seemed familiar or comfortable with the word. “Bathosphere” was explained to them—“Used to be, a deep-sea diving bell, that the prison authority purchased from a private source. It was preferred that the execution chamber be airtight and soundproof.”

  One of the visitors asked about methods of execution? Was the bathosphere a gas chamber? The Lieutenant said that the state used the ’lectric chair from 1923 to 1999, then came lethal injection; gas, never.

  Before 1923, there was hangings. Lots of hangings.

  The vehement man whose face wasn’t so flushed any longer but rather mottled and splotched, said, with feeble conviction, “What the hell, know what I say?—‘Dying is got to be cruel and unusual punishment.’ ”

  “Sir, you are correct. And some of these murderers, you knew what they did to their poor innocent victims some of ’em children, you’d be the first to say ‘cruel and unusual’—Amen!”

  The Lieutenant spoke decisively. The Lieutenant went to close the door—his captives shuddered.

  “Here,” he beckoned them forward, “is where the family-of-the-victim sit. These chairs here.” He was indicating a row of strangely diminutive straight-back chairs resembling furniture of the Great Depression photographed by Paul Strand. The chairs were side by side with no space between them, in a curve facing the robin’s-egg-blue octagon. The Plexiglas windows in the sphere were not large but vertical so that you could sit in the first row and peer into the death-chamber only inches away. The Intern felt a swirl of nausea, contemplating the possibility of seeing another human being put to death at such intimate quarters, strapped to what might have been an operating table.

  “Notice these chairs, which are where officials of the state, the warden, the death-warrant officer, could be the arresting officer and the D.A. if they wish, a senator or a governor, can sit. And back here, individuals of the press which, in the old days, would be contested-over.”

  One of the visitors asked if media was allowed to broadcast an execution? Tape, videotape?

  “Absolutely not! The privacy of the condemned is respected.”

  “And you would not want anyone to see Old Sparky lighting a man up—roasting him like a pig.” One of the men chuckled, with sudden heartiness. “I mean, you would not want the world to see. To give arms to the anti-capital-punishment movement.”

  The Lieutenant drew his hand over the front of the robin’s-egg-blue octagon in a kind of caress. He said:

  “Our ’lectric chair has been banished, now. Nobody chooses to die that way, and who can blame ’em? Now it’s ‘lethal injection’ that’s all the rage. Sometimes it’s expedient that two condemned go together—one following the first by like a half hour. If they were accomplices to each other, they might be executed at the same time. And yes, if you’re thinking to ask, there’ve been man-and-woman condemned executed at Orion in the past on the same watch. Anybody remember ‘Bags and Briana’ from the late 1950s? No?”

  No one remembered. Or acknowledged remembering. Even the Investigator, who’d researched Orion, and was of an age to remember the late 1950s, did not respond.

  “Kidnapped a little boy, to ransom him from his rich parents in Boca Raton. But they did terrible things to the child. And they killed him anyway, despite the ransom. So, terrible things were done to them.” The Lieutenant paused, wiping at his forehead with a folded tissue. “ ’Course, each of ’em tried to blame the other. Eight minutes for Bags to die. That’s pretty-near a record.”

  The woman professor, partway recovered from Cell Block C, ventured a question. Had many women died in the Florida execution chambers?

  “ ‘Many women’? Why, ma’am, no—not compared to the many who deserved to die, but had good luck.” The Lieutenant smirked.

  “And are there many on Death Row right now?”

  “Many? Last count was four. Death Row for them is at Lowell Correctional.”

  “What sorts of crimes did they commit?”

  “Pretty nasty crimes, ma’am. You can look ’em up, if you’re curious.”

  The Lieutenant spoke sneeringly. For some reason, the Lieutenant was not charmed by the female sociology professor from Eustis.

  How low the ceiling in the execution chamber! How oppressive the windowless walls, that seemed to be straining inward.

  The Intern looked for the Investigato
r. His snowy-white hair and white cotton dress shirt were bright in this shadowy place and the Intern felt a powerful urge to make her way to the Investigator, to take his hand in both her hands, to appeal to him. Help please help me. I should not be in this place. Something will happen to me here.

  She’d had a premonition, when the Investigator had first invited her to accompany him. She’d known, this was a mistake.

  In her old, lost life back there she’d made numerous mistakes.

  She had paid for these mistakes. (Had she?) But still, you are never fully acquitted of any mistake that involves another, and so the Intern had not been fully acquitted of her mistakes, and her shame of such mistakes.

  The only way to erase such error, and such shame, is to erase the self—to “extinguish” the self.

  But the Intern did not want that.

  The Intern did not want to die—for then, the Intern would have no further chance of helping others, of giving assistance to individuals like (for instance) the Investigator who seemed to need her, and whom she had come to care for.

  The Intern saw the Investigator on the farther side of the room, moving about restlessly. What was he looking at? What was he recording, in his little book? Had he been taking pictures with his mini-camera? She felt a voluptuous yearning, an utterly irrational yearning, for the time when, back in the Investigator’s office, he would click on his computer, and array for them to see the miniature photos he’d been taking at Orion. Now, he was scribbling into his little book. Badly she wanted to take his hand—her own hands were chill as ice.

  That could never be. The Investigator would throw off the Intern’s silly little paw like a snake. The Investigator would be embarrassed, offended. The Investigator would be mortified. All relations between them professional and otherwise would cease at once.

  The Lieutenant was passing out photocopies of—what?

  Bright-color photos of “Last Suppers.”

  “First thing to get clear, folks, the condemned’s ‘Last Supper’ can’t cost more than forty dollars. That is mandated by law.”

  Forty dollars! To some visitors, forty dollars for a felon-dinner was high.

  “Also they can’t have alcohol, not any kind. The Death Team delivers the death warrant within thirty days of the execution so that gives the dead man—excuse me: ‘condemned man’—time to consult his family, to make arrangements to come visit him, and time to consult his lawyer, if his appeals ain’t all run out. And he gets to choose the means of execution, and his Last Supper.”

  The tour-group stared at the photocopied pictures of “Last Suppers” the Lieutenant had passed out to them.

  These were gaudy, glossy photos of plastic food trays. In one, the tray was filled with fried things—potatoes, onion rings, chicken wings. Another contained two boxes of Frosted Flakes. Another, two dozen hot dogs in plain buns with mustard and relish on the side, and several cans of Coke.

  Some of the visitors were laughing nervously. Was this meant to be funny? The Intern was shocked, the Lieutenant seemed to be offering these photos to amuse.

  “Oh—who could eat at a time like that . . . I never could.”

  “Oh, so sad!”

  “How could you! These poor sad people . . .”

  “If it was me, I sure wouldn’t have Cheez Doodles and Dr Pepper . . .”

  A more ambitious supper was lobster roll—(from McDonald’s)—and corn on the cob. Another was beefsteak and steak fries and Mountain Dew.

  One of the more curious suppers, a platter of greasy donuts and two tall glasses of milk.

  Another, a quart of Baskin-Robbins chocolate-ripple ice cream and a single tall glass of milk.

  Another, heaped Mexican food—tacos, burritos, tamales, hot green sauce. And a tall glass of Gatorade.

  The Lieutenant said, “They begin to eat but never finish. They seem hungry at first then change their minds.” A sly look came into the Lieutenant’s face as if he was wondering if he should tell his visitors this story, he’d told many times. “This poor bastid Scroggs, such a dimwit he was he told the guard he’d like to save half his pecan pie for ‘afterward.’ Twenty-nine years old when his appeals ran out, he’d confessed to killing a dozen girls in Fort Myers. Too stupid to try to lie to the police, he just said yes—he’d done what they were saying he’d done. Then, he thought they’d let him go!” The Lieutenant laughed, heartily.

  There was a moment’s pause. No one laughed. No one smiled.

  The Lieutenant paid no heed. Like a stand-up comedian whose contempt for his audience transcends his resentment and fear of their power over him, the Lieutenant simply moved on to his next bit.

  “Now, folks: how’d you choose to die, if you have a choice?”

  Again there was silence. The Lieutenant continued:

  “Like, in Florida at one time, you had your choice of hanging or ’lectrocution. Now, you have your choice of lethal injection or ’lectrocution. In some states there’s ‘firing squad’—Utah, I think. In some states there’s still gas chamber, but maybe not hanging. Everywhere it’s mostly ‘lethal injection’ which can be a hard way to go, frankly. What’d you choose, you had a choice?”

  Most of the visitors chose lethal injection—reluctantly. The others stood silent.

  The Lieutenant surprised the Intern by turning to her and asking in a haughty voice what she’d choose. The way a schoolteacher would turn to a student he guessed wasn’t paying attention to him.

  The Intern said she would not choose.

  “Between ’lectrocution and lethal injection? You wouldn’t choose?”

  “I would not.”

  “In some state where there was gas chamber, ’lectrocution, hanging, fire squad, lethal injection—you wouldn’t choose? Sure you would.”

  But the Intern was sure she would not. She would not participate in her own death.

  “You, sir? What would you choose?”

  The Lieutenant was addressing the Investigator who was the sole person in the tour-group who seemed to have challenged the Lieutenant’s authority.

  The Investigator shrugged. He, too, would not choose. “I would force the state to choose. I would not participate in my own death.”

  The Lieutenant said, exasperated, “But you would! If it was a matter of the easiest death—or what you think is the easiest.”

  The Investigator persisted. “No. I would not participate in my own death because I would not grant to the state that power over me.”

  “But then, you would be granting to the state the power! What you say doesn’t make any damn sense.”

  The Lieutenant seemed offended, genuinely annoyed with both the Intern and the Investigator. Two such very different individuals, clearly strangers to each other, yet clearly temperamentally akin. You felt that, if the Lieutenant had his way, he’d have sentenced half the visitors in the tour-group to death just to teach them a lesson.

  “I suppose you think, sir, that the death penalty is ‘barbaric.’ That’s what you think?”

  “Did I say that? I don’t believe that I said anything like that—the word barbaric never crossed my lips.”

  “But you think so, sir! Don’t you! You are some kind of—leftist-liberal judge—you are not a Florida judge . . .”

  “I am not a judge, Lieutenant. Not even a retired judge.”

  “Well, so—a lawyer, then. A professor. You’d let murderers go? Rapists, serial killers—child-killers?”

  But the Investigator was too canny to be drawn into a heated discussion with the Lieutenant at such a time and in such a place. The Intern guessed, he was eager to take forbidden pictures of the robin’s-egg-blue death-chamber and would speak no more to the Lieutenant.

  “Well, now—who will volunteer to step inside? Just for a minute, to demonstrate.”

  The Lieutenant meant the diving bell. The Lieutenant leered at his captives, who shrank from his gaze.

  How hateful this was! A nightmare, and there was no way out except to comply with the Lieutenant. r />
  “We require a volunteer. Who?”

  The Intern didn’t wait for the Investigator to signal her. She said, “I will, sir.”

  The others stared at her. The Intern saw gratitude in their faces.

  The Lieutenant seemed annoyed. “You! Well, fella—have to give you credit, you’re a stubborn little guy. But there’s other folks here, could help us out . . .”

  “I will do it, sir. To spare anyone else.”

  In a daze the Intern approached the robin’s-egg-blue octagon. Her head was ringed with headache-pain and her stomach churned with nausea. At least she was so small, she had no difficulty stepping through the doorway and into the interior; she had no difficulty straightening to her full height. (The ceiling inside the bathosphere, that seemed oppressively low, was in fact, at its apex, at least seven feet high: an adult man could stand comfortably in such quarters, for a while at least.)

  The Lieutenant was glaring at the Intern. Yet, the Lieutenant was pleased with the Intern: the way the Intern had seemed to be obeying him.

  The Lieutenant leaned inside the doorway, gruffly instructing the Intern to climb up onto the table and lie down on her back.

  The Intern complied. The ugly bathosphere ceiling was close above her head and so she shut her eyes. The Lieutenant’s voice continued, with restrained excitement.

  “There’d be the Death Team, if this was an execution. They’d be strappin’ the little fella in, he wouldn’t have gone inside by himself.”

  The Lieutenant spoke with regret, this wasn’t an actual execution, or even any kind of demonstration. But it was all the tour could offer.

  “We never had any ‘Old Sparky’ like I said—our ’lectric chair is in storage. Lethal injection, there’s nothing much to see.”

  Yet the Lieutenant continued in a zestful manner to describe botched lethal injections he had witnessed over the years: “Like, your veins are all wizened from shooting heroin, they’ve got to stick you all over—arms, legs, inside-thighs—feet, haunches—underneath the jaw—foot. Poor bastids like a pincushion some of ’em, squeaking No no no more! God help me I am sorry.” The Lieutenant paused, for effect. “And sometimes the chemicals are botched, the solutions ain’t right, or what they call in the right ‘proportion’—so the stuff that comes into the condemned man’s veins is fiery-hot—like acid—and he’s screaming, inside the head-hood. Even with a rag or a sponge in his mouth, he’s screaming and you can hear him. No ‘merciful death’—it ain’t what they deserve. So don’t waste pity.”