“Oh boy,” he said. “Oh boy oh boy.”
A notice was scotch-taped to a corner of the platform. CAUTION, it said. “This penitentiary, like comparable institutions, operates exclusively on DC (Direct Current) current only. Electrocution, however, must be performed using AC (
Alternating
) current, or the condemned’s body will be charred beyond recognition, making
legal
identification of the corpse impossible. Also, because of the high-body-heat factor in electrocution—the electrocutionee’s body temp. will normally rise to 140 degrees F. (Fahrenheit)—even under a jolt of the more humane Alternating (AC) Current, care must be taken to avoid administering DC current, since two to three thousand volts will immediately raise the body temp. to 400 degrees F., or sufficiently beyond the kindling point of human flesh to create a fire hazard. This chair is equipped with AC/DC conversion facilities. Make sure that the following procedures are carefully followed.” Then there was a complicated list of directions that Feldman found impossible to follow. The electrical schema was incoherent. How is the guy supposed to know what to do? he wondered. They even have to tell him what AC and DC stands for. He read the sheet again, then a third time. Finally the letters seemed to blur and the arrows on the schema to move around.
He clapped his fists rapidly, excitedly, just under his chin, pantomiming a kind of classic vaudeville distress. “I’ve got to get out of here,” he said moving away from the platform, and he began to tour the room in great rough circles. “The last mile, the last mile,” he said, still knocking his fists together. Out of breath, he paused at the far edge of one of his circles. He could still see the awful chair, and he turned his back to it and sat down cross-legged on the cold floor.
“All right,” he asked himself, “where do I stand? Where do I stand, what did I do? I didn’t do anything.” Adultery, he thought. “Adultery,” he said, “I committed adultery. Two victims I made tonight. Lilly. Lilly is a victim. And the other one—her husband. Her husband is a victim. Now, are they married? She’s married, Mona’s married. But are
they
married? She knew about the bidet, she found the kitchen. So let’s say they’re married, where do I stand now?
“The unwritten law is that the husband has the right to kill the man taken in adultery.
Or
the woman. It’s his choice. There have been cases where the unwritten law has given him the right to kill both. Taken in adultery. I’m a dead duck.
Taken
in adultery. But I
wasn’t
taken in adultery. Hey, what is this? I
wasn’t
taken in adultery. I walked into the goddamn kitchen. The guy was counting deposit bottles. It was the furthest thing from his mind.”
He got up and rushed to the stairway. “
What is this?
” he roared up the stairs. “What do you think you’re doing? I wasn’t taken in adultery. You’ll never get away with it.” He started up the stairs. “Do you hear me?
I was not taken in adultery!
It doesn’t count twenty minutes later. The unwritten law says you’ve got to kill the guy immediately. And it means bare hands, or a blunt instrument, or a handy knife. Electric chairs are out. Do you hear me? They’re
out. I don’t have to be anybody’s electrocutionee!
”
He sat down on the stairs, exhausted. “What the fuck am I talking about?” he said. He shook his head. “That’s not where I stand. That has nothing to do with where I stand. He hates me.
That’s
where I stand.” It’s the unwritten law, he thought. Sure, power liked to play by the rules. But power was arbitrary. It changed its mind. It killed you with its alternating current. There were ways to get rid of Feldman—he thought of his discharge suit carefully made sizes small a week after he’d arrived—and they didn’t even have to be clever. They could shoot him, stick a shiv in him, beat him up, run him over—anything. The thing is, he thought, I don’t really understand why the warden hates me. It was very puzzling. He could not honestly say that he hated the warden. He wondered if that was what was wrong. Really, he thought, I don’t hate enough. It’s a weakness. He had never hated the Communists. He had not even hated the Nazis. Nazis were nuts, but they had been good for business. Did the warden know he had not hated the Nazis? He was a little sorry now. Not hating was
bad
for business, but to tell the truth, he didn’t even hate what was bad for business. Then he remembered that he didn’t give a shit about his neighborhood and always voted No on bond issues. Once he had rejected a referendum which proposed to merge the population in the county with the population in the city, lifting the city into seventh place in the nation. The campaign slogan had been “Seventh in America, Seventy-fifth in the World.” It hadn’t appealed to him. Well, that was too bad, because they could kill him for that. They could kill him for his lack of support, for his indifference to having a National League team in the town, for not getting behind the United Fund, for his public indifference and for his private indifference. For not signing petitions, and rejecting their projects. And for his ambiguous status: not partisan or loyal opposition, not anarchist, not anything. Simply inattentive, mealy-hearted. They could kill him for that.
He looked around wearily. Only then did he realize that there was no one to put him in the chair. He was alone. It was out of the question that he would die. He climbed the rest of the stairs and stood before the metal door.
“Ha, ha,” he said, “you think I’m going to volunteer for that? What’s the matter with you? Ha, ha. Fat chance, you hear me? Big fat chance.” He put his ear to the door to see if he could hear the warden. Nothing. It was probably too thick. He might be out there and he might not. Still, he felt better about his position now that he realized he could save himself from electrocution by the simple expedient of not sitting down in the chair. And if they had decided to starve him—that would be ironic, he thought, starved to death with the kitchen just on the other side of the metal door—he would take his shoe off and pound it against the door. Someone would hear that. A trusty. Or Mona, if the unwritten law had not taken care of her and she was still alive, raiding the icebox. Someone would hear him. God would hear him.
“Dear God,” Feldman prayed, “dear Jesus and Buddha, Jehovah and Love, Mind, Spirit, Soul and Guts, dear Yin, dear Yang, Allah, Father, Son and Holy Ghost, Jupiter, Zeus, Thou and Almighty Dollar—blast and cream them, wreck their plans, rip them for Feldman.”
What in the name of all that’s holy am I praying about?
Calmly he thought of his fears. Tonight he had feared death by freezing and death by falling. He had feared death by frying and death by being left alone. And each he had hoped to forestall: by refusing to sit, by ripping his buttons, by pounding his shoe. But those deaths, far-fetched as those salvations, had not happened. They had not happened because the warden had not meant them to. They were not the Warden’s Deaths, who could have him shot or beaten or run over, who could have him thrown into machinery or dropped from walls. They were his own, Feldman’s Deaths. Feldman’s death was Feldman’s doing. His imagination was the murderer, and the deadly plans and bloody businesses and the doom schemas had been all his own, everything his own. Him the killer, the assassin in trees, him the waylayer.
It was true: he wanted his death. He wanted his death because it was coming to him and he wanted everything that was coming to him.
He turned again, went down the stairs, entered the room and rushed to the platform, scrambling onto it awkwardly. Maybe it was converted to AC and maybe it wasn’t, but it was turned on all right. He picked up the leather strap and flung it aside so that he could sit down. He sat well back in the chair, excited by the idea of the two or three thousand volts that would course up his ass. “All right,” he told the warden, “we both get what we want.”
Nothing happened.
“Tch tch,” he said. “I don’t do anything right.” Of course, he thought, he had to be strapped in. He reached around and grabbed the great leather strap and fastened it to the metal buckle attached to the other side of the chair. He pulled it tight. He could hardly breathe. He slipped his fists and wrists through the leather loops on the arms of the chair. Still nothing happened, and he realized that he was not making the proper contact. A curved metal band like a leg shackle was connected to the right front leg of the chair, and Feldman kicked off his shoe and tried to push his foot through it. Restrained as he was by the leather strap across his chest, he could not get the correct leverage. He pulled his hands out of the loops, undid the buckle at his side and forced his feet into the hoop. It was like stepping into a boot. Then he refastened the chest restraint and put his wrists back through the loops. They needed adjustment, but he could only tighten one. He chose the right, since it was to his right leg that the electrode was attached and the probability was that that side would take the initial jolt. He imagined his loose left arm, involuntarily escaped from its bond, waving in electric death.
He was ready. Now he would die. Last words? Nah. He wondered if there would be time enough to know what it was like. He hoped so, or what was he doing in the damn chair? Here goes, he thought, the big one. “It is finished.” He giggled and leaned his head far back into the headrest at the top of the chair, his neck scraping against the metal plates.
He lived.
This too, he thought. I’m a lousy conductor.
He undid all the straps, rose and stretched. His foot was still in the leg manacle.
I
didn’t know, he thought. I supposed it was turned on. What he had felt about his death was perhaps all he would ever feel. If that was so, then now, in a way, he didn’t have to die. Ever.
It is finished, he thought. But he was very sleepy. He got his foot out of the hoop, found his shoe, sat back down in the chair and made himself comfortable. Soon he was dead to the world.
A
Warden’s Assembly was called. Feldman filed into the hall with the others and sat down.
Maintenance trusties unfolded the Gothic sidings and fitted them into place along the walls. Seen from close up in the still lighted auditorium, they had the cartoony aspect of painted flats in old burlesque skits. Scalloped apertures, cut into the cardboard and covered with sheets of colored cellophane that might have been torn from lollipops, were aligned with the auditorium windows. Bits of sequins embedded in the siding gave a quartzy effect to the granite blocks. Here and there little painted gargoyles frowned down from the moldings. They had the faces of the bad men. Everything had a livid cast, quickening the eye as though it were perceiving under strobe light.
The workmen finished and the warden entered from the back of the auditorium. The first to see him began to applaud. Those up front, without even turning, clapped lustily. One man stood, then another, and soon everyone was on his feet. There were shouts of “Bravo! Bravo!” “Hurrah” called a man near Feldman and was immediately echoed by one next to him, who seemed peeved that he had not thought of it first. “Hurray for the warden,” another invented, and “Three cheers for Warden Fisher,” yelled someone else. “Two-four-six-eight,” a voice rose triumphantly, “who do we appreciate?” And the thunderous answer. “
Fisher! Fisher!
”
The warden climbed the steps leading to the stage and looked out calmly over the cheering men. The applause was brutal. He smiled and glanced down shyly and they screamed. He raised his hand, and the men cheered louder. Piercing whistles shrieked through the room like the announcement of bombs. Again the warden looked up and raised his hand, but the applause raced on. A trusty fitted a collar microphone around his neck, and the warden raised both hands and faced the men. “Civilization is forms,” he said. “It’s also doing what you’re told. It’s knowing when enough is enough.”
The men began to shush each other. Some in the rear pounded each other’s shoulders, admonishing silence. “Shut up, you guys,” someone near Feldman said. “Warden Fisher wants to speak.” “That’s right,” another added, “we won’t hear him if you’re not quiet.” Feldman’s neighbor nudged him and pointed to a convict down the row who was still applauding. “Some guys ruin it for all the others,” he whispered. A man pointedly stifled a cough.
“‘
The Parable of the Shoo-in
,’” the warden announced. A few around the auditorium began to applaud again, but they were effectively squelched by those next to them.
“A guy had worked for a large corporation for seven years,” the warden said. “He’d had the whole bit: the interview in college in his senior year, the junior-executive training, the tour of the plant in Milwaukee, the couple of moves to branch offices around the country. The works. The guy was a quick study, very diligent, and his superiors were duly impressed. He made it apparent almost at once that he had what it takes. Some of his suggestions saved his company thousands of dollars, and he came up with some fresh new ideas for promotions and campaigns that were substantively reflected in the annual profits.
“Gradually he came to the attention of the higher-ups, the big boys, and whenever they were in his city they made it a point to look him up. Always they came away impressed and delighted.
“When the lad had been with the company five years a job opened up in the home office that they thought he might do well in. It wasn’t the biggest job, but it was a good one, and for the right man it had a future that didn’t quit. When they told him he could have it he didn’t hesitate a minute, and the company liked that too. This was a difficult post, very sensitive, and some of the men they had put into the spot in the past, though they looked terrific on paper, just hadn’t worked out and had jeopardized their careers with the firm. Most fellows would have thought twice about making the shift. The money was about the same, and it was more expensive to live in the town where the home office was situated. But the guy took it, and just as the big shots expected, he did very well. In fact he was the best man they’d ever had in that particular slot.
“It soon became apparent, however, that if anything he was
too
big for the job. Oh, he didn’t complain, you understand. He wasn’t arrogant and didn’t even seem particularly aware of the sensation he was making in the organization, but the men at the top saw that he was being wasted, and when a vacancy opened up on the board of directors of this internationally famous company, they immediately thought that the young man would be a perfect choice to fill it. They discussed this among themselves and decided to propose him formally as a candidate.