Mizell asked Trusdale if he had anything to say before sentence was passed.
"I can't think of nothing," Trusdale said. "Just I never killed that girl."
The storm blew for three days. John House asked Barclay how much he reckoned Trusdale weighed, and Barclay said he guessed the man went around one forty. House made a dummy out of burlap sacks and filled it with stones, weighing it on the hostelry scales until the needle stood pat on one forty. Then he hung the dummy while half the town stood around in the snowdrifts and watched. The trial run went all right.
On the night before the execution, the weather cleared. Sheriff Barclay told Trusdale he could have anything he wanted for dinner. Trusdale asked for steak and eggs, with homefries on the side soaked in gravy. Barclay bought it out of his own pocket, and sat at his desk cleaning his fingernails and listening to the steady clink of Trusdale's knife and fork on the china plate. When it stopped, he went in. Trusdale was sitting on his bunk. His plate was so clean Barclay figured he must have lapped up the last of the gravy like a dog. He was crying.
"Something just come to me," Trusdale said.
"What's that, Jim?"
"If they hang me tomorrow morning, I'll go into my grave with steak and eggs still in my belly. It won't have no chance to work through."
For a moment Barclay said nothing. He was horrified not by the image but because Trusdale had thought of it. Then he said, "Wipe your nose."
Trusdale wiped it.
"Now listen to me, Jim, because this is your last chance. You were in that bar in the middle of the afternoon. Not many people in there then. Isn't that right?"
"I guess it is."
"Then who took your hat? Close your eyes. Think back. See it."
Trusdale closed his eyes. Barclay waited. At last Trusdale opened his eyes, which were red from crying. "I can't even remember was I wearing it."
Barclay sighed. "Give me your plate, and mind that knife."
Trusdale handed the plate through the bars with the knife and fork laid on it, and said he wished he could have some beer. Barclay thought it over, then put on his heavy coat and Stetson and walked down to the Chuck-a-Luck, where he got a small pail of beer from Dale Gerard. Undertaker Hines was just finishing a glass of wine. He followed Barclay out into the wind and cold.
"Big day tomorrow," Barclay said. "There hasn't been a hanging here in ten years, and with luck there won't be another for ten more. I'll be gone out of the job by then. I wish I was now."
Hines looked at him. "You really don't think he killed her."
"If he didn't," Barclay said, "whoever did is still walking around."
The hanging was at nine o'clock the next morning. The day was windy and bitterly cold, but most of the town turned out to watch. Pastor Ray Rowles stood on the scaffold next to John House. Both of them were shivering in spite of their coats and scarves. The pages of Pastor Rowles's Bible fluttered. Tucked into House's belt, also fluttering, was a hood of homespun cloth dyed black.
Barclay led Trusdale, his hands cuffed behind his back, to the gallows. Trusdale was all right until he got to the steps, then he began to buck and cry.
"Don't do this," he said. "Please don't do this to me. Please don't hurt me. Please don't kill me."
He was strong for a little man, and Barclay motioned Dave Fisher to come and lend a hand. Together they muscled Trusdale, twisting and ducking and pushing, up the twelve wooden steps. Once he bucked so hard all three of them almost fell off, and arms reached up to catch them if they did.
"Quit that and die like a man!" someone shouted.
When they reached the platform, Trusdale was momentarily quiet, but when Pastor Rowles commenced Psalm 51, he began to scream. "Like a woman with her tit caught in the wringer," someone said later in the Chuck-a-Luck.
"Have mercy on me, o God, after Thy great goodness," Rowles read, raising his voice to be heard over the condemned man's shrieks to be let off. "According to the multitude of Thy mercies, do away with mine offenses."
When Trusdale saw House take the black hood out of his belt, he began to pant like a dog. He shook his head from side to side, trying to dodge the hood. His hair flew. House followed each jerk patiently, like a man who means to bridle a skittish horse.
"Let me look at the mountains!" Trusdale bellowed. Runners of snot hung from his nostrils. "I'll be good if you let me look at the mountains one more time!"
But House only jammed the hood over Trusdale's head and pulled it down to his shaking shoulders. Pastor Rowles was droning on, and Trusdale tried to run off the trapdoor. Barclay and Dave Fisher pushed him back onto it. Down below, someone cried, "Ride em, cowboy!"
"Say amen," Barclay told Pastor Rowles. "For Christ's sake, say amen."
"Amen," Pastor Rowles said, and stepped back, closing his Bible with a clap.
Barclay nodded to House. House pulled the lever. The greased beam retracted and the trap dropped. So did Trusdale. There was a crack when his neck broke. His legs drew up almost to his chin, then fell back limp. Yellow drops stained the snow under his feet.
"There, you bastard," Rebecca Cline's father shouted. "Died pissing like a dog on a fireplug. Welcome to hell." A few people clapped.
The spectators stayed until Trusdale's corpse, still wearing the black hood, was laid in the same hurry-up wagon he'd ridden to town in. Then they dispersed.
Barclay went back to the jail and sat in the cell Trusdale had occupied. He sat there for ten minutes. It was cold enough to see his breath. He knew what he was waiting for, and eventually it came. He picked up the small bucket that had held Trusdale's last drink of beer and vomited. Then he went into his office and stoked up the stove.
He was still there eight hours later, trying to read a book, when Abel Hines came in. He said, "You need to come down to the funeral parlor, Otis. There's something I want to show you."
"What?"
"No. You'll want to see it for yourself."
They walked down to the Hines Funeral Parlor & Mortuary. In the back room, Trusdale lay naked on a cooling board. There was a smell of chemicals and shit.
"They load their pants when they die that way," Hines said. "Even men who go to it with their heads up. They can't help it. The sphincter lets go."
"And?"
"Step over here. I figure a man in your job has seen worse than a pair of shitty drawers."
They lay on the floor, mostly turned inside out. Something gleamed in the mess. Barclay leaned closer and saw it was a silver dollar. He reached down and plucked it out of the crap.
"I don't understand it," Hines said. "Sonofabitch was locked up almost a month."
There was a chair in the corner. Barclay sat down in it so heavily he made a little woof sound. "He must have swallowed it the first time when he saw our lanterns coming. And every time it came out, he cleaned it off and swallowed it again."
The two men stared at each other.
"You believed him," Hines said at last.
"Fool that I am, I did."
"Maybe that says more about you than it does about him."
"He went on saying he was innocent right to the end. He'll most likely stand at the throne of God saying the same thing."
"Yes," Hines said.
"I don't understand. He was going to hang. Either way, he was going to hang. Do you understand it?"
"I don't even understand why the sun comes up. What are you going to do with that cartwheel? Give it back to the girl's mother and father? It might be better if you didn't, because . . ." Hines shrugged.
Because the Clines knew all along. Everyone in town knew all along. He was the only one that hadn't known. Fool that he was.
"I don't know what I'm going to do with it," he said.
The wind gusted, bringing the sound of singing. It was coming from the church. It was the Doxology.
Thinking of Elmore Leonard
I have written poetry since I was twelve and fell in love for the first time (seventh grade). Since then I've written hund
reds of poems, usually scribbled on scraps of paper or in half-used notebooks, and have published less than half a dozen of them. Most are stowed in various drawers, God knows where--I don't. There's a reason for this; I'm not much of a poet. That's not lowballing, just the truth. When I do manage something I like, it's mostly by accident.
The rationale for including this piece of work is that it (like the other poem in this collection) is narrative rather than lyric. The first draft--long lost, like my original take on the story that became "Mile 81"--was written in college, and very much under the influence of Robert Browning's dramatic monologues, most notably "My Last Duchess." (Another Browning poem, "Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came," became the basis of a series of books many of my Constant Readers know quite well.) If you've read Browning, you may hear his voice rather than mine. If not, that's fine; it's basically a story, like any other, which means it's to be enjoyed rather than deconstructed.
A friend of mine named Jimmy Smith read that lost first draft at a University of Maine Poetry Hour one Tuesday afternoon in 1968 or '69, and it was well received. Why not? He gave it his all, really belting it out. And people are captivated by a good story, whether it's in verses or paragraphs. This was a pretty good one, especially given the format, which allowed me to strip away all the prosy exposition. In the fall of 2008, I got to thinking about Jimmy's reading, and since I was between projects, I decided to try re-creating the poem. This is the result. How much resemblance it bears to the original I really can't say.
Jimmy, I hope you're out there someplace, and come across this. You rocked the house that day.
The Bone Church
If you want to hear, buy me another drink.
(Ah, this is slop, but never mind; what isn't?) There were thirty-two of us went into that greensore, Thirty days in the green and only three who rose above it.
Three rose above the green, three made it to the top, Manning and Revois and me. And what does that book say?
The famous one? "Only I am left to tell you."
I'll die of the drink in bed, as many obsessed whoresons do.
And do I mourn Manning? Balls! It was his money put us there, his will that drove us on, death by death.
But did he die in bed? Not that one! I saw to it!
Now he worships in that bone church forever. Life is grand!
(What slop is this? Still--buy me another, do. Buy me two!
I'll talk for whiskey; if you want me
to shut up, switch me to champagne.
Talk is cheap, silence is dear, my dear.
What was I saying?)
Twenty-nine dead on the march, and one a woman.
Fine tits she had, and an ass like an English saddle!
We found her facedown one morning,
as dead as the fire she lay in,
an ash-baby smoked at the cheeks and throat.
Never burnt; that fire must have been cold when she went in.
She talked the whole voyage and died without a sound; what's better than being human? Do you say so?
No? Then balls to you, and your mother, too; if she'd had a pair she'd have been a fucking king.
Anthropologist, arr, so she said. Didn't look like no anthropologist when we pulled her out of the ashes with char on her cheeks and the whites of her eyes dusted gray with soot. Not a mark on her otherwise.
Dorrance said it might've been a stroke and he was as close to a doctor as we had, that poxy bastard. For the love of God bring whiskey, for life's a trudge without it!
The green did em down day by day. Carson died of a stick in his boot. His foot swole up and when we cut away the boot leather, his toesies were as black as the squid's ink that drove Manning's heart.
Reston and Polgoy, they were stung by spiders big as your fist; Ackerman bit by a snake what dropped out of a tree where it hung like a lady's fur stole draped on a branch. Bit its poison into Ackerman's nose.
How strong a throe, you ask? Try this:
He ripped his own snoot clean off! Yes! Tore it away like a rotten peach off a branch and died spitin his own dyin face! Goddam life, I say, if you can't laugh you might as well laugh anyway.
That's my goddam attitude, and I stick by it; this ain't a sad world unless you're sane.
Now where was I?
Javier fell off a plank bridge and when we hauled him out he couldn't breathe so
Dorrance tried to kiss him back to life and sucked from his throat a leech as big as a hothouse tomato. It popped free like a cork from a bottle and split between em; sprayed both with the claret we live on (for we're all alcoholics that way, if you see my figure) and when the Spaniard died raving, Manning said the leeches'd gone to his brain. As for me, I hold no opinion on that.
All I know is that Javy's eyes wouldn't stay shut but went on bulging in and out even after he were an hour cold.
Something hungry there, all right, arr, yes there was!
And all the while the macaws screamed at the monkeys and the monkeys screamed at the macaws and both screamed for the blue sky they couldn't see, for it was buried in the goddam green.
Is this whiskey or diarrhea in a glass?
There was one of those suckers in the Frenchie's pants--
did I tell you? You know what that one ate, don't you?
It was Dorrance himself went next; we were climbing by then, but still in the green. He fell in a gorge and we could hear the snap. Broke his neck, twenty-six years of age, engaged to be married, case closed.
Arr, ain't life grand? Life's a sucker in the throat, life's the gorge we all fall in, it's a soup and we all end up vegetables. Ain't I philosophical?
Never mind. It's too late to count the dead, and I'm too drunk. In the end we got there.
Just say that.
Climbed the high path out of all that
sizzling green after we buried Rostoy, Timmons, the Texan--I forget his name--and Dorrance and a couple of other ones. In the end most went down of some fever that boiled their skin and turned it green.
At the end it was only Manning, Revois, and me.
We caught the fever too, but killed it before it killed us.
Only I ain't never really got better. Now whiskey's my quinine, what I take for the shakes, so buy me another before I forget my manners and cut your fucking throat. I might even drink what comes out, so be wise, sonny, and trot it over, goddam you.
There was a road we came to, even Manning agreed it was, and wide enough for elephants if the ivory hunters hadn't picked clean the jungles and the plains beyond em back when gas was still a nickel.
It bore up, that road, and we bore up with it on tilted slabs of stone a million years jounced free of Mother Earth, leaping one to another like frogs in the sun, Revois still burning with the fever and me--oh, I was light!
Like milkweed gauze on a breeze, you know.
I saw it all. My mind was as clear then as clean water, for I was as young then as horrid now--yes, I see how you look at me, but you needn't frown so, for it's your own future you see on this side o' table.
We climbed above the birds and there was the end, a stone tongue poked straight into the sky.
Manning broke into a run and we ran after, Revois trotting a right smart, sick as he was.
(But he wasn't sick long--hee!)
We looked down and saw what we saw.
Manning flushed red at the sight, and why not?
For greed's a fever, too.
He grabbed me by the rag that was once my shirt and asked were it just a dream. When I said I saw what he saw, he turned to Revois.
But before Revois could say Aye or Nay, we heard thunder coming up from the greenroof we'd left behind, like a storm turned upside down. Or say like all of earth had caught the fever that stalked us and was sick in its bowels. I asked Manning what he heard and Manning said nothing. He was hypnotized by that cleft, looking down a thousand feet of ancient air into the church below: a million years' worth of bone and tusk, a whited sepulcher of eternity, a thras
hpit of prongs such as you'd see if hell burned dry to the slag of its cauldron.
You expected to see bodies impaled on the ancient thorns of that sunny tomb. There were none, but the thunder was coming, rolling up from the ground instead of down from the sky. The stones shook beneath our heels as they burst free of the green that took so many of us--Rostoy with his mouth harp, Dorrance who sang along, the anthropologist with the ass like an English saddle, twenty-six others.
They arrived, those gaunt ghosts, and shook the greenroof from their feet, and came in a shuddering wave: elephants stampeding from the green cradle of time.
Towering among em (believe what you want) were mammoths from the dead age when man was not, their tusks in corkscrews and their eyes as red as the whips of sorrow;
wrapped around their wrinkled legs were jungle vines.
One come--yes!--with a flower stuck
in a fold of his chest hide like a boutonniere!
Revois screamed and put his hand over his eyes.
Manning said "I don't see that." (He sounded like a man explaining to a fucking traffic cop.) I pulled em aside and we three stumbled into a stony cunt near the edge. From there we watched em roll: a tide in the face of reality that made you wish for blindness and glad for sight.
They went past us, never slowing,
the ones behind driving the ones before, and over they went, trumpeting their way to suicide, crashing into the bones of their oblivion a dusty mile below.
Hours it went on, that endless convention of tumbling death; trumpets all the way down, a brass orchestra, diminishing. The dust and the smell of their shit near choked us, and in the end Revois ran mad.
Stood up, whether to pelt away or to join em I don't never knew which, but join em he did, headfirst and down with his bootheels in the sky and all the nailheads winking.
One arm waved. The other . . . one of those giant flat feet tore it off his body and the arm followed after, fingers waving: "Bye-bye!" and "Bye-bye!" and "So long, boys!"
Har!
I leaned out to see him go and it was a sight to remember, how he sprayed in pinwheels that hung in the air after he was gone, then turned pink and floated away on a breeze that smelled of rotten carnations.
His bones are with the others now, and where's my drink?
But--hear this, you idiot!--the only new bones were his.
Do you mark what I say? Then listen again, damn you: His, but no others.