Prayers the Devil Answers (35 page)

The banty rooster deputy and the heavyset older one stood on either side of the crossbeam, facing in opposite directions, shotguns at the ready. The tall young deputy and the woozy-looking one worked in tandem, removing the manacles and leg irons from the prisoner, and replacing the metal restraints with rope. They tied his legs together (
“So's he doesn't kick once he falls through the trapdoor
!
”
), and bound his hands behind his back, to prevent him from clawing the rope around his neck. During all these preparations Lonnie Varden stared straight ahead, and the minister leaned in close to him speaking in low, urgent tones. Sheriff Robbins stood by observing the proceedings, glancing down at the papers she held.

When the prisoner was secured and placed squarely on the trapdoor with the noose around his neck, the sheriff walked to the middle of the platform, faced the prisoner, and began to read the official formula required by the state to be delivered before an execution. Her voice was clear and steady, but she spoke softly so that those who were not close to the scaffold had trouble hearing her. The recitation took only a couple of minutes, in any case, and then she approached the prisoner, who was pale but composed. Beads of sweat glistened on his forehead.

“Do you have any last words?” No one beyond the platform could hear her, but that must have been what she said, because the condemned man half turned and surveyed the crowd. He hesitated for a moment, and then a hoarse voice from the back of the onlookers
called out, “She fell farther than you will!”
A few people clapped and murmured in agreement.

At this display of hostility, Lonnie Varden's face crumpled and he shuddered. Then he murmured something to the sheriff, who was now standing beside him. She replied, and he shook his head.

Why waste a speech on this vicious mob of spectators?

She spoke a few more words and touched his shoulder
gently. He nodded.

She handed the legal papers to the blond deputy, who still looked green to the gills. He stuffed them in his pocket, and then she was holding only a black cloth, which turned out to be the hood the condemned man would wear into eternity.

Rev. McKee began to pray louder now, the Lord's Prayer, and some in the crowd joined in.

The lady sheriff slipped the hood over Lonnie Varden's bowed head and drew the ends of the white cord together to close it under his chin. She lifted the noose and tightened the rope until the knot rested tight against the side of his neck.

Any further delay would not be a kindness. She took a few steps back, clear of the trapdoor, until she was standing at the base of the crossbeam, next to the lever that would draw the bolt. A few more breaths, then complete silence, and—before she could touch the lever, the blond, woozy-looking deputy stumbled a little, pushing her aside. Before she could recover her balance, he jerked the lever forward, and the prisoner's body dropped out of sight.

The longest fifteen minutes of your life.

The deputies waited ten minutes before they began to disperse the crowd. The moment the body dropped through the opening the shouting had died in mid-roar. A couple of news photographers lingered to take their last shots of the swaying body, but most of the
onlookers had begun to edge away, frightened or sickened by the spectacle of imminent death. Beneath the platform the doctor waited alone, staring at the face of his pocket watch and occasionally glancing at the twitching body at the end of the rope, no more than five feet from the ground.

The deputies cleared a path so that Mr. Lidaker could drive his truck up beside the scaffold, and two of them helped him haul the pine coffin out of the back and set it on the ground nearby, in readiness.

The sheriff shook hands with Mr. Lidaker. “Thank you for all you did, sir. When the coffin is ready, take it to the undertakers. Tell them to bury Mr. Varden on the hillside cemetery, in the plot alongside Albert Robbins.”

The carpenter's eyes widened and he started to reply, but the sheriff had walked away to have a word with the doctor. He was still standing near the open trapdoor, watching the body twisting in a shaft of sunlight.

“Four more minutes,” he said when he heard the sheriff's approach.

“He's not twitching anymore.”

“Do you want to take the chance that he's unconscious and that once you cut him down he'll come to, and you'll have to do it all over again?”

“No.”

“Then wait four minutes.”

Falcon and Tyree stood together near the steps, keeping people away from the scaffold. Two men had already tried to go up on the platform to steal the rope. The deputies chased them away, because they couldn't be bothered with a minor arrest just then. Tyree had sobered up, but he looked even worse now, bilious and unsteady. “I felt like
I had to do it,” he told Falcon. “It just all of a sudden hit me that I couldn't let that little lady be responsible for that man's death. So I just . . . did it. You reckon I ought to tell her I'm sorry?”

Falcon shivered. “I don't know. I wouldn't bring it up unless she does.”

“I could tell her I was still feeling wobbly after being sick and that I stumbled and fell into it. She might not believe me, but she could pretend she did.”

“I guess she could, Tyree.”

“I just couldn't let her do it. It gave me chills to think of it.”

“Yeah, I know what you mean about getting the willies. After we tied the prisoner's legs and stepped back, she put that hood over his head, and I looked at him. He was wearing the sheriff's clothes, Tyree! Mr. Robbins, I mean. That was
his
old suit. For a second there, seeing him standing there with his head covered up and wearing that suit, I felt like we were hanging
him
.”

“She said she'd be glad when it was over. Do you think she really could have done it?”

Falcon shook his head. “I'm glad I'll never know.”

The undertaker's assistant made her say it twice. He leaned against the funeral home's black Ford hearse, staring down at the determined little lady with the badge pinned to her dress. “Yes, ma'am, I remember where we buried your husband. Sure do. Wasn't more'n four, five months ago? Up on the hill near that old weed cedar. There's no tombstone yet, but we have a little metal marker with a card in it, marking the spot.”

“That's right.”

“And you want the prisoner laid to rest beside him? Beside Albert Robbins? Are you entirely sure, ma'am?”

Ellendor Robbins's expression did not change, but her sigh meant
impatience. “Yes. I own the plot. Send the bill for the gravedigging to the county.”

“What about a funeral?”

“There won't be one. And don't mark the grave, either. I don't want it to be a sideshow. In fact, dig the grave this afternoon, but don't inter the body until after dark. I don't want any witnesses.”

“All right, but ma'am—”

“Now what?”

“The doctor over yonder under the platform is motioning for you to come. I think he's ready to cut the body down.”

chapter nineteen

E
verything has an ending, and a rope has two.

I had thought about that old saying more than once in the past few weeks, because I had seen more than my share of endings in a few short months, but now I thought that the worst was well and truly over: two men dead, and whether they deserved it or not, I couldn't save either one of them, and I never asked myself if I'd wanted to.

It was almost over, anyhow.

I had already told the deputies not to expect to see me for a couple of days. Tomorrow I would go up the mountain to get my boys from Henry and Elva's farm. Maybe I would even stay for supper and go for a walk in the woods. I had more thinking to do.

I left the sheriff's office a few hours after the hanging, as soon as I thought the day shift deputies could handle things for the rest of the day. The reporters had all checked out of the hotel and were at the depot waiting for the afternoon train, ready to chase some other story into the ground. I went home at four and slept until dark.

An hour later I was at the cemetery, waiting beside the cedar tree, when the black hearse drove up and parked on the gravel road at the bottom of the hill. I watched four men—in work clothes, not funeral
attire—get out and haul the pine box up the hill to the newly dug hole next to the grave of Albert Robbins. They looked like shadows in the moonlight, moving soundlessly across the dark grass, swaying a little under the weight of their burden.

Maybe I should have asked Rev. McKee to meet me here, but I hadn't thought of it. I reckoned I could say a prayer myself, though, if I felt like it.

When I stepped forward to meet them, the undertakers' men looked up, startled, and one of them lost his footing, and nearly dropped his end of the coffin.

“It's only me,” I said. “I wanted to make sure you had the right place.” Of course they did; they had already dug the hole, but I couldn't say why I had really come, because I didn't know myself. I just wanted to see it through, I guess.

They mumbled a greeting and got on with their work. I stood back and watched them lower the box into the ground. One last rope.

They didn't stop to pray or say any words over the grave. Death was all in a day's work to them. After they filled in the hole, they murmured hasty farewells and hurried away. I stood there for a long time, staring down at the freshly turned earth, trying to think of something fitten to say—to either of the two men lying there. But, for different reasons, I couldn't offer forgiveness to either one of them. I had the rest of my life to think of something to say, though. They'd still be there.

I went down the hill, away from the cemetery, and kept walking, but I wasn't going home. Not yet. I followed the creek path back through town, past the office, where all seemed peaceful, past the ­almost-empty hotel, and across the street to the silver railroad car with the neon sign on top:
CITY DINER
. I looked through the windows and saw Mildred, the henna-haired waitress, behind the counter. Most of the booths were empty. Now that the excitement was over, people had either gone home to relax or they'd gone elsewhere to look for more
excitement. The place had the same drained, empty feeling it had the day after the circus left town.

I crossed the parking lot and went around to the back door of the diner, thinking about Davis Howell rooting through those garbage cans for food. At least now he was safe. As I reached up to tap on the door, the scar on my wrist caught the light from the bare bulb above the stoop. I had lived with that scar for nearly twenty-five years, but the mad dog that gave it to me had died before the sun set. Its owner had to put it down, because you have a responsibility to keep the creatures in your care from hurting the community. When they get out of control, you have to stop them.

I tapped on the door and waited.

A moment later a scowling Ike Bonham jerked it open, holding a .32 pistol aimed at my head. I just stared him down, didn't move a muscle. Seconds later, when he recognized me, he grunted and shoved the pistol into the waistband of his pants. “Thought you might be somebody trying to rob us.”

Something in the way he said that made me think that wasn't why he'd answered the back door with a loaded gun. He wasn't expecting a robber—or me. I smiled a little.

“Well? What do you want? Nobody here called you.”

I stood my ground, despite the mingled stench of whisky and garlic on his breath. “No. I just stopped by to bring something for your wife. That man we hanged today asked me to give this to her. Last request. And I promised him I would. Is she here?” I craned my neck and looked past him into the grease-spattered kitchen. I wondered if the walls were really yellow or just discolored from all the smoke and grease.

“She's in the john.” He kept watching me with narrowed eyes, but he made no move to call to her. “What do you mean that killer left her something?”

“It isn't worth anything, but I guess it meant a lot to him.” I reached into my pocket and pulled out the blue tobacco tin and two small pictures: the photo inscribed
Ain't we got fun?
and the little sketch of her that Lonnie Varden had drawn on the scrap of butcher paper in his cell.

“He wanted her to have these to remember him by. You'll see that she gets them, won't you?”

Ike Bonham's hand was shaking when he took the tin, and when he saw the two pictures, his face contorted with rage. He tipped the photo up into the light, and his lips trembled as he read the scrawled message on the back:
Ain't we got fun?

I waited, but he seemed to have forgotten all about me. Still clutching the tobacco tin and the pictures, he staggered back a step and slammed the door in my face. That was all right. I turned and walked away, headed home.

First thing in the morning I would travel up the mountain to get my boys so that whatever happened in town tomorrow would be none of my business.

It was over now.