He did what I said, and thank God for that. If anything had happened to him, I wouldn't be here waiting for the needle, Mr. Bradley; I would have killed myself.
When I got through the arch, I saw the bad little kid waiting on the sidewalk. He was the same as always. The big kid was handing him Ronnie's glasses, and the bad little kid was handing him a bill. When he saw me coming, he lost the nasty little smirk on those weird red lips of his for the first time. Because that wasn't the plan. The plan was Ronnie first, then me. Ronnie was supposed to chase the bad little kid into the street and be hit by a truck or a bus. I was supposed to come last. And see it.
Carrottop ran into Barnum Boulevard. You know what it looks like outside the park--at least you ought to, after the prosecution showed their video three times at the trial. Three lanes in each direction, two for travel and one for turning, with a concrete divider in the middle. The bad little kid looked back when he got to the divider, and by then he was a lot more than startled. That look was pure fear. Seeing it made me happy for the first time since Carla went upsy-turvy down those church steps.
One quick glimpse was all I got, then he charged into the southbound lanes without a single look to see what might be coming at him. I ran into the northbound lanes the same way. I knew I might get hit, but I didn't care. At least it would be a genuine accident, no mysterious stuck accelerator. You can call that suicidal, but it wasn't. I just couldn't let him slip away. I might not have seen him for another twenty years, and by then I would have been an old man.
I don't know how close I came to getting creamed, but I heard plenty of screeching brakes and squalling tires. A car swerved to avoid the kid and sideswiped a panel truck. Someone called me a crazy asshole. Someone else shouted, What the fuck is he doing? That was just background noise. I had all my attention fixed on the bad little kid--eyes on the prize, right?
He was running as fast as he could, but no matter what kind of monster he was on the inside, on the outside he was stuck with short legs and a fat ass, and he never had a chance. All he could hope for was that a car would hit me, but none of them did.
He got to the far side and stumbled on the curb. I heard some woman--a stout lady with dyed blond hair--scream, That man has a gun! Mrs. Jane Hurley. She testified at the trial.
The kid tried to get up. I said, This is for Marlee, you little sonofabitch, and shot him in the back. That was number one.
He started crawling on his hands and knees. Blood was dripping onto the sidewalk. I said, This is for Vicky, and put another one in his back. That was number two. Then I said, This is for my dad and Mama Nonie, and put a bullet into the back of each knee, just where those baggy gray shorts ended. That was three and four.
Lots of people were screaming by then. Some man was yelling, Get it away from him, just tackle him! But no one did.
The bad little kid rolled over and looked at me. When I saw his face, I almost stopped. He didn't look six or seven anymore. Bewildered and in pain, he looked no more than five. His beanie had fallen off and lay next to him on its side. One of the two plastic propeller blades was all crooked. My God, I thought. I have shot a blameless child, and he's lying here at my feet, mortally wounded.
Yes, he almost got me. It was a good act, Mr. Bradley, real Academy Award stuff, but then the mask slipped. He could make most of his face all wounded and hurt, but not his eyes. That thing was still in his eyes. You can't stop me, his eyes were saying. You won't stop me until I'm done with you, and I'm not done with you yet.
Get the gun away from him, somebody! a woman yelled. Before he murders that child!
A big fellow ran toward me--he testified too, I believe--but I pointed my gun at him and he stepped away fast with his hands raised.
I turned back to the bad little kid and shot him in the chest and said, For Baby Helen. That was number five. By then blood was pouring out of his mouth and down his chin. My .45 was an old-fashioned six-shooter, so there was only one bullet left. I dropped to one knee in a puddle of his blood. It was red, but it should have been black. Like the goo that comes out of a poisonous insect when you step on it. I put the muzzle of the gun right between his eyes.
This is for me, I said. Now go back to whatever hell you came from. I pulled the trigger and that was number six. But just before I did, those green eyes of his met mine.
I'm not done with you, his eyes said. I'm not and I won't be until you stop drawing breath. Maybe not even then. Maybe I'll be waiting for you on the other side.
His head flopped over. One of his feet twitched and then went still. I put the gun down beside his body, raised my hands, and started to stand up. A couple of men grabbed me before I could. One of them kneed me in the groin. The other punched me in the face. A few more joined in. One was Mrs. Hurley. She got me at least two good ones. She didn't testify about that at the trial, did she?
Not that I blame her, Counselor. I don't blame any of them. What they saw lying on the sidewalk that day was a little boy so disfigured by bullets that his own mother wouldn't have recognized him.
Supposing he ever had one.
7
McGregor took Bradley's client back into the bowels of Needle Manor for the midday count, promising to bring him back afterward.
"I'll bring you some soup and a sandwich, if you want it," McGregor told Bradley. "You must be hungry."
Bradley wasn't. Not after all that. He sat waiting on his side of the Plexiglas partition, hands folded on his blank legal pad. He was meditating on the ruination of lives. Of the two under current consideration, the demolition of Hallas's was easier to accept, because the man was clearly mad. If he had taken the stand at his trial and told this story--and in the same reasonable, how-can-you-possibly-doubt-me tone of voice--Bradley felt sure Hallas would now be in one of the state's two maximum security mental institutions instead of awaiting sequential injections of sodium thiopental, pancuronium bromide, and potassium chloride: the lethal cocktail Needle Manor inmates called Goodnight, Mother.
But Hallas, most likely pushed over the edge of sanity by the loss of his own child, had gotten at least half a life. It had clearly been an unhappy one, beset by paranoid fantasies and delusions of persecution, but--to bend an old aphorism--half a life was better than none. The little boy was a far sadder case. According to the state medical examiner, the child who had just happened to be on Barnum Boulevard at the wrong time had been no more than eight and probably closer to six or seven. That wasn't a life, it was a prologue.
McGregor led Hallas back, chained him to his chair, and asked how much longer they'd be. "Because he didn't want any lunch, but I wouldn't mind having some."
"Not long," Bradley said. In truth he only had one question, and when Hallas was seated once more, he asked it.
"Why you?"
Hallas raised his eyebrows. "Beg pardon?"
"This demon--I presume that's what you think he was--why did he pick you?"
Hallas smiled, but it was a mere stretching of the lips. "That's rather naive, Counselor. You might as well ask why one baby is born with a misshapen cornea, as Ronnie Gibson was, and the next fifty delivered in the same hospital are just fine. Or why a good man leading a decent life is struck down by a brain tumor at thirty and a monster who helped oversee the gas chambers of Dachau can live to be a hundred. If you're asking why bad things happen to good people, you've come to the wrong place."
You shot a fleeing child six times, Bradley thought, the last three or four at point-blank range. How in God's name does that make you a good person?
"Before you go," Hallas said, "let me ask you something."
Bradley waited.
"Have the police identified him yet?"
Hallas asked in the idle tone of a prisoner who is just making conversation in order to stay out of his cell a little longer, but for the first time since this lengthy visit began, his eyes shone with real life and interest.
"I don't believe so," Bradley replied carefully.
In fact, he knew they
hadn't. He had a source in the prosecutor's office who would have given him the child's name and background well before the newspapers got hold of it and published it, as they were of course eager to do; Unknown Boy Victim was a human interest story that had gone nationwide. It had died down in the last four months or so, but following Hallas's execution, it would certainly flare up again.
"I'd tell you to think about that," Hallas said, "but I don't need to, do I? You've been thinking about it. It probably hasn't been keeping you up nights, but yes, you've been thinking about it."
Bradley didn't reply.
This time Hallas's smile was wide and genuine. "I know you don't believe a word of what I've told you, and hey, who could blame you? But just for a minute engage those brains of yours and think about it. This was a white male child--the sort of kid most apt to be missed and eagerly sought after in a society that still values white male children above all others. The kiddies are fingerprinted these days as a matter of course when they start school, to help ID them if they're lost, murdered, or abducted. I believe in this state it's even a law. Or am I wrong?"
"You're not." Bradley said this reluctantly. "But it would be wrong to make too much of it, George. This kid happened to fall through the cracks, that's all. It happens. The system is fallible."
Hallas's smile became a full-fledged grin. "Keep telling yourself that, Mr. Bradley. You just keep telling yourself that." He turned and waved to McGregor, who removed his earbuds and got to his feet.
"All done?"
"Yes," Hallas said. He turned back to Bradley as McGregor bent to unchain him. His grin--the only one Bradley had ever seen on his face--was gone as if it had never been. "Will you come? When it's time?"
"I'll be here," Bradley said.
8
And so he was, six days later, when the curtains in the observation room drew back at 11:52 a.m. to reveal the death chamber with its white tiles and Y-shaped table. Only two other witnesses were present. One was Father Patrick of St. Andrew's. Bradley sat with him in the back row. The district attorney was all the way down front with his arms folded across his chest and his eyes never leaving the room on the other side of the window.
The execution party (a grotesque term if ever there was one, Bradley thought) was in place. There were five in all: Warden Toomey; McGregor and two other guards; a pair of medical personages in white coats. The star of the show lay on the table, his outstretched arms secured by Velcro straps, but when the curtains opened, Bradley's eye was first taken by the warden, who was weirdly sporty in an open-necked blue shirt that would have been more appropriate on the golf course.
Wearing a seatbelt around his waist and a three-point harness over his shoulders, George Hallas looked more ready to zoom off in a space capsule than to die by lethal injection. As per his request, there was no chaplain, but when he saw Bradley and Father Patrick, he raised one hand as far as the wrist straps would allow in a gesture of recognition.
Patrick raised a hand in return, then turned toward Bradley. His face was paper pale. "Have you ever attended one of these?"
Bradley shook his head. His mouth was dry, and he didn't trust himself to speak in a normal tone of voice.
"Me, either. I hope I'll be all right. He . . ." Father Patrick swallowed. "He was very good to all the children. They loved him. I just can't believe . . . even now I just can't believe . . ."
Bradley couldn't, either. Yet he did. Had to.
The DA turned to them, frowning like Moses above his crossed arms. "Zip your lips, gentlemen."
Hallas looked around the last room he would ever inhabit. He seemed bewildered, as if he wasn't quite sure where he was or what was happening. McGregor laid a hand on his chest in a comforting gesture. It was now 11:58.
One of the whitecoats--an IV tech, Bradley assumed--cinched a length of rubber tubing around Hallas's right forearm, then slipped in a needle and taped it down. The needle was attached to an IV line. The line went to a wall console, where three red lamps burned above three switches. The second whitecoat moved to the console and clasped his hands before him. Now the only movement in the death chamber came from George Hallas, who was blinking his eyes rapidly.
"Are they doing it?" Father Patrick whispered. "I can't tell."
"I can't either," Bradley whispered back. "Maybe, but--"
There was an amplified click that made them both jump (the state's legal representative remained as still as a statue). The warden said, "Can you folks hear me okay in there?"
The DA gave a thumbs-up, then crossed his arms again.
The warden turned to Hallas. "George Peter Hallas, you have been condemned to death by a jury of your peers, a sentence affirmed by this state's supreme court and the Supreme Court of the United States of America."
Like they ever said balls about it one way or the other, Bradley thought.
"Do you have any last words before sentence is carried out?"
Hallas began to shake his head, then appeared to change his mind. He peered through the glass and into the observation room.
"Hello, Mr. Bradley. I'm glad you came. Listen, okay? I'd watch out, if I were you. Remember, it comes as a child."
"Is that it?" the warden asked, almost jovially.
Hallas regarded the warden. "One more thing, I guess. Where in the Christ did you get that shirt?"
Warden Toomey blinked as if someone had suddenly flicked cold water in his face, then turned to the doctor. "Are you prepared?"
The whitecoat standing beside the panel nodded. The warden recited a mouthful of legal rigamarole, checked the clock, and frowned. It was 12:01 p.m., which made them a minute late. He pointed to the whitecoat like a stage director cueing an actor. The whitecoat flicked the switches and the three red lights turned green.
The intercom was still open and Bradley heard Hallas paraphrase Father Patrick. "Is it happening?"
No one answered. It didn't matter. His eyes closed. He made a snoring sound. A minute passed. Another long, ragged snore. Then two minutes. Then four. No snores and no movement. Bradley looked around. Father Patrick was gone.
9
A cold prairie wind was blowing when Bradley left Needle Manor. He zipped his coat and stood taking long breaths, trying to get as much outside as possible into his insides, and as fast as he could. It wasn't the execution per se; except for the warden's bizarre blue shirt, it had seemed as prosaic as getting a tetanus shot or a shingles vaccination. That was actually the horror of it.
Something moved at the corner of his eye in the Chicken Run, where the condemned prisoners took their exercise. Except there wasn't supposed to be anyone there. Exercise periods were canceled on days when an execution was scheduled. McGregor had told him this. And sure enough, when he turned his head, he saw the Chicken Run was empty.
Bradley thought, It comes as a child.
He laughed. He made himself laugh. It was just a well-deserved case of the whim-whams, no more than that. As if to prove it to himself, he shivered.
Father Patrick's elderly Volvo had departed. There was no car but his own in the small visitors' parking lot adjacent to Needle Manor. Bradley walked a few steps in that direction, then whirled suddenly toward the Chicken Run, the hem of his overcoat flapping around his knees. No one there. Of course not, Jesus Christ. George Hallas had been mad, and even if his bad little kid had been real, he was dead now. Six shots from a .45 pretty much guaranteed dead.
Bradley resumed walking, but when he got around the hood of his car, he once more came to a halt. An ugly scratch ran all the way from his Ford's front bumper to the rear left taillight. Someone had keyed his car. In a maximum security prison where you had to pass three walls and a like number of checkpoints, someone had keyed his car.
Bradley's first thought was of the DA, who had sat there with his arms crossed over his chest, a portrait of Talmudic self-righteousness. But the idea had no logic to support it. The DA had gotten what he wanted, after all; he had watched George Hallas die.
Bradl
ey opened the car door, which he had not bothered to lock--he was in a prison, after all--and stood stock-still for several seconds. Then, as if controlled by a force outside himself, his hand rose slowly to his mouth and covered it. Lying on the driver's seat was a beanie with a propeller on top. One of the two plastic blades was crooked.
At last he bent and plucked it up, tweezing it between two fingers just as Hallas had done. Bradley turned it over. A note had been tucked inside, the letters crooked and bunched together and downslanted. A kid's printing.
KEEP IT, I HAVE ANOTHER ONE.
He heard a child's laughter, high and bright. He looked toward the Chicken Run, but it was still empty.
He turned the note over and saw another, even briefer communique:
SEE YOU SOON.
For Russ Dorr
In The Hair of Harold Roux, probably the best novel about writing ever published, Thomas Williams offers a striking metaphor, maybe even a parable, for how a story is born. He envisions a dark plain with a small fire burning on it. One by one, people come out of the dark to warm themselves. Each one brings a little fuel, and eventually the small fire becomes a blaze with the characters standing around it, their faces brightly lit and each beautiful in its own way.
One night as I lay drifting toward sleep, I saw a very small fire--a kerosene lantern, in fact--with a man trying to read a newspaper by its light. Other men came with their own lanterns, casting more light on a dreary landscape that turned out to be the Dakota Territory.
I have visions like this frequently, although it makes me uneasy to admit it. I don't always tell the stories that go with them; sometimes the fire goes out. This one had to be told, because I knew exactly what kind of language I wanted to use: dry and laconic, not like my usual style at all. I had no idea where the story was going, but I felt perfectly confident that the language would take me there. And it did.
A Death
Jim Trusdale had a shack on the west side of his father's gone-to-seed ranch, and that's where he was when Sheriff Barclay and half a dozen deputized townsmen found him, sitting in the one chair by the cold stove, wearing a dirty barn coat and reading an old issue of the Black Hills Pioneer by lantern light. Looking at it, anyway.