Denis Johnson - Angels

The lawyer Fredericks was among them, and they troubled him. What made them think that after twenty years of merciless forbearance in dealing with murderers, the state would choose suddenly this morning to press its intentions to their end, and finish Bill Houston? Fredericks didn’t feel like one of them. It seemed to him they represented mostly the very people who’d be incarcerated here tomorrow, goodtimers in sleeveless sweatshirts and teeshirts vulgarly inscribed (“The Itty Bitty Titty Committee”) — slogans without meaning, transmissions into space — Honk If You Know Jesus and National Rifle Association bumper emblems nearly effaced by wind-driven sand — the children grubby and crew-cut, the women splayfooted and rubber-thonged — where were the young ladies apparelled for tennis, apparelled for golfing? Where were the outraged owners of the establishment? The bankers, the people with tie-pins and jeweled letter openers and profoundly lustrous desks of mahogany, the workers of all this machinery of law and circumstance? The people he couldn’t fight — the people who were never here? The truth was, he knew, that they had enough to keep them occupied. They were busy, complete people. They didn’t need to come here in the dark night to seek warmth around the fire of murder or draw close to the ceremonies of a semi-public death.

But these people around him — who’d probably gone to the same school as William Houston, Jr., or been acquainted with one or more of his relatives or had the same parole officer — came here because they sensed that why they themselves had not been executed was inexplicable, a miracle. And as best they could, they had to find out what it was like.

How does it feel.

Tell me how does it feel.

With no direction home.

A complete unknown…

But Fredericks didn’t hear that song, except as it issued from their collective dream of suffocation. He heard only the radios playing a news program, an eye-witness show about this execution, broadcast from the west side of the prison, near the main entrance, where radio and TV news teams had been parked since suppertime last night. What made them all believe it would actually happen? What hadn’t he been told? I am here in my white dress shirt and brown loafers. Someone is keeping a secret. I am the little boy whose dog is dead.

Cars had ceased arriving. The light in the east was blue-grey. People were talking a bit louder now; there was laughter; they were nervous. The children were getting anxious, quarreling and chasing aimlessly around all the cars, eluding their mothers.

Fredericks determined in his mind not to look at his watch. After a minute, he had to take off his watch and put it in his pocket to keep from glancing at its face. And then he went over to his Volvo and threw the watch onto the front seat and walked away from it. He just wanted to find out if he would know, without a watch, when it was time.

It was time.

Brian said, “Mr. Houston? Let’s take you for a ride up that pipe.”

He couldn’t believe he’d actually been asleep. All night he had lain with the Unmade, with God, the incredible darkness, the huge blue mouth of love.

I’m going to be turned into space. This is the hour of my death.

He couldn’t stand. “Didn’t the appeal go through?”

“No,” Brian said.

“Well it doesn’t even have to go through. They just have to get it started.”

“Nothing happened. This is it, Bill.”

“See you, Richard.”

“See you,” Richard’s voice said.

“Are they all in there?”

“Everybody’s in there but you and me,” Brian said.

He stood up. He had a desire out of nowhere to let everyone know it was all right; everything was fine.

“Take off your pants,” Brian said in a kindly way.

“Take off my pants?”

He looked down at his prison-issue jeans. What did everybody want his pants for? He thought he was going to cry.

“We can’t have a big pile of clothes all soaked with gas,” Brian said. “Didn’t anybody tell you?”

“You mean I got to be naked?” Tears sprang out of his eyes. It must have been years since he’d cried tears before another; but this was too much. They hadn’t warned him about this.

“You can keep your shorts on,” Brian said.

He stood there handcuffed, shorn nearly bald, wearing only his white underpants. It was chilly and he was shaking, but it wasn’t important, even if they thought he was afraid. Two guards from CB-6 were present, and he noticed them. Familiar faces. He nodded. There was a young doctor from the clinic standing there, and a short gentleman reading out loud. The warden. The Order of Execution. The door was open. There was a hearse parked outside it in the early morning. Only one.

The witnesses were already behind the glass. He couldn’t hear, and shook his head. Was everything behind glass?

The warden stopped reading. “Is something wrong?”

Wrong? He stood next to Brian facing the warden, the doctor, the two guards. Every one of them was terrified. They were all scared to death of what was happening. The warden’s voice trembled. “Do you have anything to say at this time?” he asked Bill Houston.

Bill Houston was floored by the question. “Is there something I’m supposed to say now?”

Everyone was confused.

Brian said suddenly, “I want you to know I don’t think you deserve to die. I think you been healed.”

Nobody knew how to react. They all looked around. It was obvious even the warden didn’t know if Brian had just broken a rule. “I really feel that way,” Brian said defiantly.

“Thank you,” Bill Houston said.

They all stood there in a long silence. What was going on now?

“What’s going on?” Bill Houston asked.

The warden looked green and ill. “We still have a couple of minutes,” he said. “I think we should wait, don’t you?” He glanced around helplessly.

Bill Houston whispered to Brian, “I don’t think I can stand up any more.”

Taking him by the elbow, Brian helped Bill Houston into the gas chamber.

A truth filled up the chamber: there was nothing left for him now. The door had shut on his life. It said DEATH IS THE MOTHER OF BEAUTY. He couldn’t hear a thing. He wondered if they’d put cotton in his ears.

And then there was a faint rattling in the pipe to his right, and the sound of boiling liquid beneath him. He looked down at the length of surgical tubing that ran from his chest to the door. There it goes. Up that tube. Boom boom boom boom boom boom boom. That’s all that’s ever really been important. A visible vapor was curling up over his knees.

He held his breath. Every rivet of metal was a jewel to him. He felt he could hold his breath forever — no problem. Boom, boom. Even as his heart accelerated, it seemed to him inexplicably that his heart was slowing down. You can get right in between each beat, and let the next one wash over you like the best and biggest warm ocean there ever was. His eyes were on fire. He hated to shut them, but they hurt. He wanted to see. Boom! Was there ever anything as pretty as that one? Another coming… boom! Beautiful! They just don’t come any better than that.

He was in the middle of taking the last breath of his life before he realized he was taking it. But it was all right. Boom! Unbelievable! And another coming? How many of these things do you mean to give away? He got right in the dark between heartbeats, and rested there. And then he saw that another one wasn’t going to come. That’s it. That’s the last. He looked at the dark. I would like to take this opportunity, he said, to pray for another human being.

Casablanca Cafe, normally closed before six AM, was open early for the execution. Fredericks looked in through the window, and saw that the place was still empty. The crowd was still down by the highway. At this moment they would all be looking toward the Death House, watching the rust-colored pipe that rose ostentatiously above the little building that was itself obscured by other prison buildings; and as the chamber beneath it was voided by a suction pump, some would believe they smelled the stench of rarefied cyanous vapors, like peach blossoms. And they would be excruciated, amused, reassured, or made pensive, depending on who they were.