A Covenant with Death (20 page)

“Thank God,” I said. “The suspense is over.”

“And the President has been initiated into the Tall Cedars of Lebanon. And the Barling bomber is to be tested. It will carry seven guns and five thousand pounds of bombs. Oh, and here's one for you.” She read it silently. “Chief Justice Harry Olson of the Chicago Municipal Court says that mental deficiency is—this a quote—‘the root from which criminality springs.' He says the law should use modern science and weed out defective stock. Eugenics, he says.”

“Does he say how?”

“No.”

“Gelding shears, I imagine. Does he say what crimes?”

“No.”

“Hell of a price to pay for a shot of whiskey. I think he just doesn't like Catholics.”

“What?” She vailed the newspaper and looked up.

“All those rumrunners and bootleggers. In Chicago they're mostly Irish and Italian. You got to look behind the news.”

“Olson,” she said. “One of those damn Swedes.”

“All right,” I said. “Drop it.”

After that she recited some advertisements (“Lady Sealpax Dainty Athletic Underwear”) and soon enough we were home. That night I read some Gibbon and was much comforted. “The art of man is able to construct monuments far more permanent,” he wrote, “than the narrow span of his own existence; yet these monuments, like himself, are perishable and frail; and, in the boundless annals of time, his life and his labours must equally be measured as a fleeting moment.” Stambulisky and Bryan Talbot, Harding and Harry Olson, the Prince of Wales and I, we were small potatoes.

But not that small, I thought, drowsing, not that small; that can't be right; and I fell asleep with one arm around Rosemary and the other around Rafaela.

9

Bryan Talbot's appeal was denied by a unanimous superior court on June 28th, and Oliver Parmelee immediately sent the record to the Governor. The event was noted, and honored by a day's speculation, but the town had, after all, other cares and considerations. President Harding, for example, was moving west, and was cutting grain in Kansas just three days after the American State National Bank of Wichita reported a shortage of one million five hundred thousand dollars and one cashier. And then a Presidential automobile soared off a cliff near Denver, two killed. To my mother such cosmic happenings were of little importance, but she very quickly found the counterpoint to Bryan Talbot's imminent demise: a turtle branded in Tonga by Captain Cook in 1773 had been found alive. “One hundred fifty years,” she said. “How old is Talbot?”

It was a strange season. The newspapers were full of death and I was preparing to take the bench. A sharp drop in the suicide rate was credited to general prosperity and I was studying the documents in a hotly contested condemnation that Hochstadter had held over for me. While I pored over injunctions and restraining orders four Labour members of Parliament were suspended for calling various other members of Parliament murderers because children were dying of starvation. I took the bench, robed and dignified, on July second, Monday, at ten in the morning, having read at breakfast that a Mr. J. C. Gomez of Venezuela, vice-president, brother of El Dictador, had unfortunately been assassinated. I labored for arbitration, for a settlement. Mr. Hewlett, an irascible rancher of sixty or so, was about to be deprived of eighteen of his three thousand acres, object a new highway, and was, quite obviously, trying to hold up the state for more cash. In the end I got him to settle for twenty-two dollars more an acre than the state had offered. Then I had to get the state's agreement. Then a man in Florida, decent and honest and wanting no skeletons in his daughter's closet, confessed to her fiancé that he had long before escaped from a Georgia chain gang, on which he had been serving a monstrous sentence for a petty crime. The fiancé promptly turned him in, earning, to my taste, a permanent niche in Dante's lowest, iciest circle of Hell. My mother went to her room and did not emerge for a whole afternoon. The man himself was philosophical, telling the newspapers that he would rather spend twenty years on the chain gang than have his daughter married to a traitor. Meanwhile a successful duelist in Russia was tried for murder. He had fought the duel over a woman, who had witnessed it; she was tried as an accomplice. President Harding, near Spokane, had driven a locomotive twelve miles, realizing a boyhood dream. You see what sort of summer we were having.

On the Fourth of July we had a parade. Bruce Donnelley contributed the hot dogs and was seen to smile. He liked giving. He had come out of the east—Ohio, they said—twenty years before and prospered among us, and what he could not give in laughter and tears he made up in money; his heart was locked, his purse open; gaiety was damnation but charity was the mark of a good man. He was everybody's stern rich uncle, and everybody's civic ideal, and nobody knew him. He patted children on the head and sat on the dais during the more inspirational proceedings. To a captive audience Mayor Cathcart made a speech about the land of the free and the home of the brave and of course no one dared walk out. A small Mexican boy lost an eye when he lingered near a four-inch firecracker. I was at home that night wondering if independence was a good thing, and reading, when the telephone rang. My mother answered. I thought of Rosemary and listened, but heard only one end of an enthusiastic exchange of greetings and protestations of affection. I went back to Anna Christie. Shortly my mother called, and sailed smiling into the room. “Ben. It's the Governor.”

I went quickly to the telephone. “Governor. Hello.” My mother hovered.

“Ben,” he said. “Nice to hear your voice. Everything all right?”

“Just fine, sir. Couldn't be better. How are things in the capital?”

“Under control. Everybody getting rich but me. Ben, I've been going over the record on Bryan Talbot.”

My hands and feet prickled. “I wasn't sitting, you know.”

“Yes, I know. But Parmelee's letter was impressive. Trouble is, there's nothing in the record for me to act on. Talbot sounds like a bad apple, and even if the evidence is all circumstantial, it's pretty damning. I've got nothing against hanging a murderer, but I don't want to be casual about it.”

“I see.”

“I know Parmelee by reputation,” he said. “He's an honest man, and if I turn him down I want to be sure. You were there all the time?”

“Yes. I missed an hour or two. I didn't hear Hochstadter's charge, but I read it. It was good. Fair. Even-handed.”

“Then you think the superior court was right.”

I paused for a long moment.

“What is it, Ben? If you think they were wrong, tell me.”

“No, it isn't that. I—why are you asking me? Why not Hochstadter?”

“Oh, I've asked Alvin. I've asked several people.”

Better. Relief washed over me. “All right,” I said. “I'm not one hundred per cent sure, but I have no reasonable doubts. I know what you mean about Parmelee; and there was something about the way Talbot handled himself that made me not so sure. But it was a fair trial; I think he did it. I wouldn't mind if you could find some reason to commute, but I can't give you one.”

“No. There's nothing to act on. It's a hell of a thing. But it always is. It was a lot more fun when I just had to arrest them. Well, thanks, Ben. Anything I can do, let me know. It's been nice talking to you. Eulie sounds the same as ever.”

“She is. It's a shame.”

He enjoyed a boisterous laugh and said, “So long, Ben.”

“Goodbye, Governor.”

I hung up. I was covered with sweat.

My mother was not entirely beyond redemption. “Let me get you some coffee,” she said quietly, and I was grateful.

And so we approached Friday morning, July sixth, and the death of Bryan Talbot. Judge Hochstadter had set his vacation for the seventh, in an ancient and honorable tradition: he had passed sentence, and would not spare himself the personal consequences. Though God knows the true consequences were Bryan Talbot's alone. Hochstadter prepared the orders and talked awhile with Alfred Harmsworth and Willie Waite. The execution was set for six, and Edgar Musgrave's request to be admitted was promptly denied. Hochstadter and I, Dietrich and Parmelee, Alfred and Willie. That was all. And Bryan Talbot, and a preacher if he wanted one.

I thought of Talbot. I thought of visiting him but did not. He was now not a man but a sacred object, or a damned, which was the same. I mean that I was timid and, unreasonably, ashamed. There must come to every man who is part of an apparatus a moment when the apparatus functions without him, in spite of him, unheeding; the moment when he must say, You take the king's shilling, you fight the king's war. Either that or he deserts. But the moment is a hard one. You join up because they need a man and you think you are a good one, and suddenly you are not a man at all but one small dumb erg in a monstrous blind force. I wondered if congressmen felt that way when they declared war. I knew lieutenants did when they said “Let's go.” And knowing about death, its inevitability, a favorite discovery of so many young poets, was not enough; we all knew about death. We were engaged to marry her, and as we grew old and the ceremony approached, we made friends with her. But Bryan Talbot's was a shotgun wedding.

Yet I slept well, and woke with the alarm at five, and ate a hearty breakfast, wondering what last breakfast Bryan Talbot had ordered. The heat still lay upon us but not so heavily in the early light; the sky was pink and blue and yellow when I left the house and the air was almost cool to my cheek. Not to be born is the best for man. Something else from Sophocles plucked at my mind, something about death not being the worst; it was worse to want to die and not be able to. But who wanted to, really? Only those who believed in a blissful hereafter; and they did not want death so much as birth. Timor mortis conturbat me. A bookish lout. I walked with my head down. I had never seen a hanging. I might throw up. Thou owest God a death; a demand note. But hedged about with options and renewals. Not for Bryan Talbot, though. Foreclosure today. Timor mortis conturbat me, my own or anyone else's. Had he made a will? No living relatives. The end of the Talbots. Dust.

Judge Hochstadter joined me in front of the courthouse and we walked to the jail in silence. Inside, we nodded to Alfred and Willie and the two attorneys. Judge Hochstadter drew the orders from his pocket and I signed them and handed them to Alfred. The attorneys inspected them. Parmelee was dead white. “This is wrong,” he said. “I know it's too late but this is wrong.” Dietrich was silent.

“I'm sorry,” Hochstadter said. It was ten minutes of six. Inside the jail it was cool. The overhead lights were still on. Alfred was glum and avoided our eyes. Willie Waite stared at nothing and twisted the hood. I wondered if it was the hood he wore to Klan meetings.

Five of us stepped outside into a beautiful morning while Alfred went to fetch the prisoner. Hochstadter gazed up at the sky and shook himself. He drew in a deep breath and let it out with a hoarse clearing of the throat. His eyes were not quite focused, as if he were looking back over the years and remembering dead men. The courtyard was bare and stony, with the platform at one end and the rope in place. The wood of the platform was raw, fresh white pine from Donnelley's lumberyard, stark and unfinished and temporary. Willie climbed the steps and tugged at the rope.

Talbot came out of the jail screaming, hanging limp while Alfred and the preacher, a Mr. Morrison, dragged him. At first it was just noise but then we heard the words. “No! No! I didn't do it! Don't kill me! No! No! I didn't do it!” Without his glasses he seemed much younger; shirt open at the throat, hair mussed, eyes wild, pleading, desperate, furious. His knees hit the ground and Alfred hauled him up. Talbot's hands were behind him in steel handcuffs. Willie stood patiently on the platform. The sun was high enough to rim the far wall, a streak of yellow light on the stone. Parmelee shuddered. Dietrich was staring sightlessly at the ground. Talbot was still yelling but he shut up when they reached the steps, and went limp again; Alfred and Morrison tugged him up on his knees, a step at a time, and then they were there. Talbot had wet his pants.

We uncovered. I looked. I owed it to myself, and to every man who would ever stand before me, to look. Morrison bowed his head and so did the others but I went on looking. I was looking into Talbot's eyes but he was staring at Willie Waite. Morrison was saying, “The mercy of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting,” and Alfred had the hood in one hand, the other on Talbot's shoulder, when the sunlight struck the arm of the gibbet above Talbot's head, and the others were standing with their heads bowed and their eyes closed so that only I saw Talbot move; with a swift sidewise glance at Alfred and then a quick, jerking motion he was free, hands locked behind him, and he shot forward screaming with his head down and rammed Willie Waite in the belly. They tumbled off the platform with Talbot on top. Morrison stood there with his mouth open. Alfred cursed and leapt to the edge of the platform and then down, but he was too late. Willie's head had smashed against the cobblestones with a rude, hollow crack and Talbot was up, stomping at Willie's neck, blubbering and keening and stomping until Alfred jumped on him and dragged him down. Parmelee ran forward yelling “Bryan! Bryan! Bryan!” and we, the other three, stood frozen; but deep inside me a monstrous atavism stirred; I could feel my eyes glitter; and I knew with horror and exultation that I was blessing him because he had done what all men should do. Odium mortis conturbat me.

10

“He's dead,” Doctor Schilling said. “Skull smashed like a sugar bowl.”

“Oh, Jesus,” Alfred said. “Oh, dear God.”

Oliver Parmelee went on shaking his head. “Gentlemen, gentlemen,” he said, and shook his head. “Gentlemen.” Then Dietrich too shook his head and they stood in the now sunny courtyard like mechanical dolls.