At the Head of the Noose

The story of an execution told from the other end.

 

I hated my job. I swear to it; I did. I hated every second of it; I hated preparation, I hated implementation, and I hated cleanup. But the five minutes it took me to walk from that place back to my house was the worst. With my hands shaking and my legs wobbling I felt like nothing more than a newly-resurrected corpse stumbling down the street. It killed me from the inside out �" that job. I know it’s ironic, and it’s hard to believe, but it’s exact as hell.

You probably wouldn’t think it true, but I remember all of them �" every single 136 of them. There’s not one that I blank on, and that’s because I made up stories to remember each of them by. They don’t let us know anything about any of our “clients.” They don’t want us to get attached or falter in our duties, but I make up stories anyway. I feel, as would anyone with a job like mine, that it was the least I could do to remember.

Take my first one, for example. My first “client” was a woman, and a real pretty one at that. She couldn’t have been a day over 26, and she had long, curly brown hair with big, blue eyes. Looked damn near a goddess, if you ask me. I couldn’t imagine her doing anything to deserve what she got. So, the story I made up goes like this:

Her name was Mary Sawyer. She was a dashing 25-year-old woman from Jamestown, where she lived with her husband, Robert, and her two sons. She followed a simple, Christian life, never doing anything to cause anyone any trouble. In fact, all she ever strived for was peace and well-being. Her older brother, Howard, however, was not quite like her. He was always going around wreaking lots of havoc. So, one day he did something truly awful �" robbed a bank, shot a governor, or something of the sort. Well, Mary, being the fine lady that she was, looked out for her brother and fostered him in her home while the police were out searching for him. All was fine and well, but only for a short while, and pretty soon the law came around and found both of them out. The only thing she was ever responsible for was looking out for family, but she ended up at my doorstep anyway.

I have stories like that for the whole lot of them. Some of them are more elaborate, some of them are miniscule, but there’s one for each, even the n*****s.

Take a man I called Elijah, for example. I dealt with him a year ago, in the spring of 1824. He was a slave from Virginia, working on a tobacco plantation outside of Richmond. That man was bigger than any other I’ve ever seen in my life; he must’ve stood at least 6 ½ feet tall with shoulders as wide as I am, and hands thick enough to crush a skull with a single clench. In fact, I have no doubt that that man could’ve eaten me if the thought possessed him.

He had a kindly face, though. Despite his domineering stature, Elijah had a tender soul, and you could tell just by looking into his eyes, which was the first thing (against my better judgement) I did when I approached him that fateful day.

His story goes like this:

He was born and raised on that same tobacco plantation, and he’d never known anything more. When he was 16 he married a woman named Loretta, and not two years later she had given birth to their one and only son �" James. The place they stayed at was kindly enough, and Elijah thought that he was living a pretty good life, as far as slaves go. But, one day the master’s gold-plated watch went missing, and he was tramping around that plantation with enough rage to kill, saying he was going to start shooting if somebody didn’t come forth and confess.

Elijah was going about his daily duties when he saw his six-year-old son walk on by with a glimmer of gold hanging out of his pocket. After seeing the master rage past with a rifle in his right hand, Elijah knew exactly what had happened. He grabbed that watch from his son, marched on up on the master, and nobody died that afternoon. The next day, however, is a different story. I suppose he would have rather been standing up there with me than see the likewise of his son.

See, in my mind not a single one out of those 136 people deserved what they got. Even if they had robbed someone or done something bad, nobody deserved that. I can’t imagine standing there as people booed and hissed, waiting until a bag was put over your head so at least the disapproving crowd was replaced with blackness. Those few seconds before the final act must be torturous �" I imagine that the moments proceeding the forever ambiguous trek into the mysterious confines of death must be filled with nothing more than worry, confusion, and pure terror.

I suppose I’ll find out soon enough.

So, I bet you’re wondering why I didn’t quit my job if I really hated it all that much. Well, that’s a complicated story. You see, I got sucked into that job for one reason and one reason only:

I had been a poor man in my earlier years, much poorer than I am now. I relied on garbage food and gutter water to keep me afloat, and the law didn’t much stand on my side. The thought of stealing had never really crossed my mind; my mother (may she rest in peace) had always taught me that there are no virtues to any thief. One night, though, as I sat in the darkness on the side of a street, I started thinking �" Which is more important? A little bit of revenue in a store’s pocket, or my life?

So, I broke into a convenience store nearby. I stole $15, three loaves of bread, a can of beans and a bottle of whiskey. I had just eaten three bites of the bread and taken one swig of the whiskey when the law came by and took me away. They hauled me off to the courthouse, I spent the rest of the night in jail, and in the morning they had given me an ultimatum. Somebody had just gone on and quit on them, actually, so they needed a new employee to fill a position that didn’t seem to the “suit the fancy” of most people.

“So,” they said, “you can either get the sentence you deserve, or you can give others the sentence they deserve. The choice is yours.”

I’ve regretted my decision every day after that, but every day has been another day that I wouldn’t have had if I had gone with the alternative. And what is a man supposed to do when ultimately faced with the choice between life or death? Our will to live can do funny things to the brain, even force us to do things that go against everything we believe in.

As of yesterday, though, I quit. I couldn’t take it anymore; my hands have begun to shake nonstop now, and for the last few months I haven’t gone a single night without a nightmare. Not one.

I was hoping that my three years of service would have softened the law’s bones and they would have been kindly enough to pardon me, but I was a fool to think that the government had any mercy. They’ve already hired another convict to fill in my position, and tomorrow night I am scheduled to know what it’s like on the other side.

I hope that poor b*****d handles it better than I did. For 26 of my 29 years I had lived on the street, perpetually hungry and constantly on the brink of death, but the three years of my life where I had a roof over my head were the worst years of my life. I hope he doesn’t feel his being begin to crumble like mine had. May he never feel his heart break as the rope pulls back, or his lungs collapse as he first hears the stark cackles of death, or his morality falter when he sees the bodies hanging there �" oblong and twisted under the strains of murder.

Because that’s what it is. Execution is the name the government puts on it, but that’s only a pseudonym for murder.

I hope he doesn’t stand out there all night, like I did the first time, solemnly staring at the ropes he fastened and the bodies he pushed, wondering what state humanity must be at in order to let such an act of horror be displayed in the city center like some work of art. I hope he doesn’t cry as much as I did, and may he never lie awake at night contemplating the existence of god, the presence of love, or the domineering power of evil.

I had believed, at one time, that the choices I had been given when asked to be an executioner were between life and death, but I had been wrong. My choices had been between death and torture, and I had chosen poorly.  

 

 

 

 

 

Reviews

[Coyote Poetry]

Dear Megan. I liked the story. You create situation, character and ending. The story isn't a positive one. Hard life create negative life and ending. Was a wild ride in the story. Sometime stories can be wild rides. Thank you for sharing your words and your thoughts.
Coyote

[JayG]

• I hated my job. I swear to it; I did. I hated every second of it; I hated preparation, I hated implementation, and I hated cleanup. But the five minutes it took me to walk from that place back to my house was the worst...
- - - - - - -
So someone we know nothing about, who lives at an unknown time and place, has an unknown job that they hate. And the worst thing about the job is walking for five whole minutes to get there.

That works if we know the story, so it works when you read it. But as the reader sees it, You've devoted 90 words to this unknown person's whining, which brings the question: Why should a reader care that someone they know nothing about dislikes an unknown job? Given that a reader is seeking to be entertained, what is it about that that would make a reader WANT to turn to page two?

Yes, I can see what you're trying to do, with the "surprise ending," But a voice we can't hear, talking about the generalized background of people we don't care about, without the hint of them having done something wrong, is no way to pull people into the story.

To be successful you have to do several things. First, you must make the reader care about the protagonist. Next, you must entertain them, and make them WANT to know more.

As a side note, it has never been hard to get people to work as executioners. Those who manned the gas levers that killed the people in the concentration camps of Germany finished their day and went out to have a beer with friends.

For a story that pulls the reader in, told in poetic form, try this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BRDq7aneXnk&t=6s