Bradley Denton - Blackburn

Blackburn saved Green Lantern until his last meal was served at 7:00 P.M. He read it while he ate, and was disappointed. It had lost something over the years. When he had eaten all of his meal that he could, he lay down on the bunk and reread X-Men. He was stuffed and sleepy, and wondered if he had time for a nap.

He dozed, but the guards awoke him at eight-fifteen and took him to a shower stall next to the holding cell. They had him strip and throw his clothes into a laundry bag. When he finished showering, they handed him a towel, and then clean clothes and a pair of slippers. He dressed, commenting on the fact that the shirt was short-sleeved. The guards did not respond to that, but returned him to the holding cell and told him he could relax for a few hours.

Blackburn couldn't relax. He wasn't frightened, or even nervous; he was simply wide awake. Showers did that to him. One of the guards asked if he would like a television brought in, but Blackburn asked for a Houston Chronicle instead. When that was provided, he skipped the news sections in favor of the advice columns and funnies. He didn't see much point in knowing what was going on out in the world; it was probably just more Iran-Contra bullshit anyway.

The warden and chaplain came at eleven-thirty, along with three men in suits whom Blackburn didn't recognize and a guard wheeling a gurney. Blackburn was glad to see that the gurney had a mattress. He was taken from the holding cell and escorted to a closed door, where he was told to unbutton his shirt and to lie down on the gurney. He did so, lying down with his feet toward the door, and the guards secured him to the gurney with six leather straps. His right arm was strapped to a board that angled out from the side of the gurney. Then the warden opened the door to what Blackburn knew was called "the Death House," and the gurney was wheeled inside.

The room had brick walls. The wall on Blackburn's left had a door that led to the executioner's room. Beside that door were two small, square holes, one above the other. Beside the upper hole was a rectangular mirror. Blackburn knew that the executioner and a doctor on the other side of the mirror would be able to see him, but he wouldn't be able to see them.

The gurney stopped under the mirror. Blackburn looked up at it and winked.

The door beside the square holes opened, and a man in a blue smock stepped into the Death House. This man was not a doctor, but a "medically trained individual." He came around the gurney to Blackburn's right side, reached across Blackburn, and took a long needle attached to a clear plastic tube from the lower of the two square holes. He pulled the tube out so that it lay across Blackburn's bare chest, then smoothed the skin on Blackburn's inner elbow and pushed in the needle.

Blackburn watched the needle go in, but had no pain. "You're good," he told the man in the smock. "I didn't feel a thing."

"Thanks," the man in the smock said. "You have good veins." Then he looked startled, and glanced at the other men in the room. They pretended not to have heard anything.

The man in the smock taped the needle to Blackburn's arm, then pulled a second tube from the lower hole. This tube was gray, ending in a metal disk that the man in the smock taped to Blackburn's chest. It was a stethoscope for the doctor.

The man in the smock returned to the executioner's room and closed the door.

"Hey," Blackburn said. "What's the top hole for?"

The warden's face appeared over Blackburn. The warden had a weak chin and a receding hairline. He wore glasses.

"We don't use the top hole," he said.

"Then why'd you put it in the wall?" Blackburn asked.

The warden didn't answer. Instead, he said, "Jimmy, you can make a statement now, if you like."

Blackburn had known this moment was coming for almost a year, and had rehearsed various statements. But he hadn't been able to pick one and one alone, and he still couldn't decide.

I have never killed a woman; Leslie doesn't count, because she lit the fuse herself.

Auto mechanics are, without exception, crooks.

No man knows love who has never had a dog.

I regret making Leo drink motor oil; I should have just come back later and shot him.

Artimus Arthur will be remembered as the greatest man of letters of the twentieth century.

Go fly a kite.

The unit of currency in Laos is the kip; in Mongolia, the tugrik.

Morton giveth, and Morton taketh away.

Tell Jasmine not to take less than sixty thousand for the homestead.

Tell Dolores I forgive her.

Tell the people of Wantoda, Kansas, that I've made them famous.

Tell Ernie's parents that if they never did anything else in their lives, they can still be proud because they made Ernie.

Tell Heather not to let Alan play with anything sharp.

All of these were worth saying, and none of them were enough.

"Jimmy?" the warden said.

Blackburn tried to shrug, but the leather straps were tight.

"Green Lantern isn't what it used to be," he said.

The warden frowned, then stepped away. The chaplain appeared over Blackburn then, and Blackburn made a noise in his throat as if he were bringing up phlegm. The chaplain stepped away too.

Blackburn felt something cold in his arm, and he raised his head to look at the clear tube lying across his chest. It was full of a colorless liquid. He knew that the liquid was a saline solution, with no poison in it. They would keep this going for a while, so he wouldn't know when the drugs started. The drugs would be sodium thiopental, pancuronium bromide, and potassium chloride. He didn't know what those words meant, exactly, but he had taken pride in learning them. He wasn't sure why. Maybe it was something like learning the words "Colt Python," which also didn't mean anything, by themselves. They only meant something when applied to steel and lead. Just as drugs only meant something when they slid into your body.

He became aware of a dull pressure in his bladder and bowels, and smiled. They would wish they could kill him twice.

He turned his head to the right and saw a glass panel in the far wall. The glare from the ceiling light kept him from seeing the faces of the witnesses behind that panel, but he saw their shapes. They were like ghosts. He stared at them for several minutes to make sure they were uncomfortable. Then he looked up at the ceiling light. This was taking too long.

The ceiling light was a single bright bulb. Blackburn guessed that it was at least two hundred watts. He stared at it, playing a game to see how long he could look without blinking. Then one of the men in the room appeared over him again, blocking his view.

"You're in my light," Blackburn said.

The man stepped away, and the sun was bright in Jimmy's eyes. His black fiberglass rod and Zebco 404 reel gleamed.

"Well, come on if you're coming," Dad said.

Jimmy hurried down the bank, almost falling. Dad took the lid off the Folger's coffee can, reached in, and pulled out a wriggling red worm.

"You do it like this," Dad said, holding the hook of his own rod and reel in his right hand. "You thread it on, head to ass or ass to head. You don't jab it through sideways, 'cause then the fish just bites off what he wants."

Jimmy stood close and watched. The worm bunched up on the hook as Dad pushed it on. The free end flailed.

"Does it hurt it?" Jimmy asked.

"Worms ain't got nerves." Dad took his hands away from the hook. It dangled before Jimmy's face, no longer metal, but hook-shaped flesh. "Now do yours," Dad said.

Jimmy laid his rod on the flat mud beside the water and sat down. He dug into the dirt in the coffee can and pulled up a worm, slimy and strong. It almost slipped away. He clutched the worm in his right hand and picked up the brass hook at the end of his line with his left.