8am: t-minus 16 hours

Always bin one for risin’ early. Growin’ up in a minin’ town can do that to a man. Though, if I hafta be honest, ten years of institutionalisation does instil routine, if ya’ll excuse my formality.

Bin up since 6am. 6 ay-em. On a day when, truth be told, I’d be excused for layin’ in some. The place was quiet, for a change. Not the usual hubbub of conversation - must be something in the air.

Looked down at my breakfast. I had ordered eggs, two of ‘em, runny if it please ya and bacon, lots. Just gimme the packet. Don’t be worryin’ yourself over two pieces or three pieces, just make the lot. And toast. White bread, that I can put my eggs on. When you pop ‘em they run, and what else is toast for but to sop up your eggs? Hashbrowns, two of ‘em as well, golden-brown and crispy. And coffee. The stuff can kill a man if he don’t look out, especially the way they make it here, so I ordered the whole pot. Because, well, what’ve I got to lose?

Left the beans off, though. No beans. Beans ain’t no food. One of the Seven Deadly Vegetables, beans is.

I’d bin given a sheet to fill out, what I wanted to eat. Included breakfast, lunch and supper. Breakfast and lunch must be eaten right here but dinner? Hmm-hmm. I get some alone time away from pryin’ eyes. Just me and a room, table and chair, no visitors. Requested that special. Warden said aye. Mad Mike, Lou the Jew, and Pedo Pete gonna have to suck it up today, what with the smells of fine-ass food comin’ outta my cell. Just the four of us here in Heartbreak Hotel, unless you count the screws.

But no one ever counts the screws.

The family was comin’ for one last visit today. Mama, Pop and Mary-Lou. There’d be sadness and tears and all, and mama would sniff and ask herself again: where did we go so wrong? Then they’d stay, at a motel I guess, until the evenin’. Until the governor’s call that may or may not come. Until the lightnin’, if it didn’t. They’d see me again for goodbye’s late in the evening but, before that, it was gonna have to be a chat with the warden and - oh Lordy - the Reverend again. Can’t blame the man for doin’ his job, I guess, but it gets right tiresome. Like I got any kinda soul that warrants savin’.

And the lawyer. The lawyer will be here too. Poor kid.

Finished up my breakfast and left the tray on the table for collection. Kept the pot of coffee because a man can never have two much of that. Had requested a fifth of fine southern whiskey but the warden said no, he would have to draw the line at that. No man should have to face the lightnin’ without a taste of heaven on his lips, I said. Warden said that was the Reverend’s job. Guess he missed my point.

Now, there was this one extra thing that I couldn’t quite figure out. I’ve had this “Consent Form” for a coupla days now and they wanted me to say yay or nay to a visit from the family. Not my family, they can come, but the other one. From the people that I hurt. That family, they bin wantin’ to speak to me and mayhap in their place I’d a-done the same but I weren’t in their place and I weren’t sure I wanted to face that kinda music today. There would be all recriminations and accusations and “why did you do that” and it was my right to say if I wanted to see ‘em or not. They’d be watchin’, for shore, but I guess they just wanted to see me face-to-face.

I ticked off the “YES” box because, why not.

The thing about your last day on The Row is: you can see who you want, eat what you want. Hell, if they’d let me have some extra time I might even stay.

10am: t-minus 14 hours

“You signed it,” said the warden.

He was sitting across from me, Consent Form in hand. I shrugged.

“Well, good for you,” he said, as he put the form to one side. “It isn’t going to be easy.”

“Nuthin’ about this day is gonna be easy,” I said. We were seated in my cell, an extra chair for the warden, enjoying another cup of coffee. The morning papers were on the table next to him. He pointed to ‘em.

“Brought you the papers. In case you needed to kill some time.”

I shrugged again. I picked up the first paper on the pile and checked the headlines: Hatchet Sam. Catchy name. Never liked it much but reporters will be reporters. They never could let a story come in the way of a good name. The warden saw me looking at the headline, and leaned forward a trifle.

“I’ve always wanted to ask: why Samuel? How did a good ole southern boy such as yourself come by such a thing?”

My daddy used to be a religious man, I told him. Fancied the old Southern Baptist hellfire and brimstone, snake handlin’, all that. Liked the God of the Old Testament, figured his son might one day follow in his footsteps and wanted a name you could hang a hat on. Fancied a little Old Testament retribution too, he did, especially when it came to me, a minor infraction and a swatch from the tree out back. By the time Mary-Lou came along daddy had beatin’ the religious outta himself. Just a pity I had to bear the marks of his conversation.

“You need to go over the events of the day again?” the warden asked. I shook my head. Figured I had it down. Breakfast, shower, change, chat to warden. See the family, see the other family, lunch, dinner, the Reverend, the lightnin’. Perhaps a call from the governor if the lawyer proved worth his salt, but that probably ain’t never gonna happen. Like the whiskey.

The warden leaned back and regarded me carefully. I met his gaze, not one to shrink that that sorta thing. How many times, the warden asked, have we spoken about getting this out in the open? About baring your soul and coming clean? I shrugged again and smiled.

“Maybe tomorrow,” I said.

“I’ve heard you in countless conversations over the years, Sam, when you don’t think people are noticing or you just forget to keep it up. You’re not a stupid man. You speak as well as I do, hell, better than I do, when you choose not to overinflate that drawl of yours. Not many cons refer to past childhood transgressions as “minor infractions”.”

“I read,” I replied, tilting my head to one side and regarding the warden.

“Read? I read,” said the warden, leaning forward again. “I read! I read mystery thrillers, and horrors, and westerns, and the comics, and an occasional prison manual. You” - he waved his arms at my bookshelf - “you…95% of the men in here, me included, wouldn’t understand a word of what you read. Why do you keep this up?”

“You think it matters now?” I asked, spreading my hands as if to say: hey pal, get a load of these surroundings. Where you think we be, huh?

“I just don’t get it, an educated man such as yourself…” the warden started.

“Educated man?” I interrupted. “That’s your beef? You can’t understand why I speak the way I do when I have voh-cab-you-larry? The other day I sacrificed a piece of bacon and threw it into Lou the Jew’s cell. He freaked the fuck out. Mad Mike laughed, Pedo Pete jacked himself off, just another day in the office. Sound like the work of “educayshin” to you?”

The warden threw his hands in the air, like he has done on countless occasions through countless of these little chats. I kept my grin to myself.

“I just…” he started again. “I just want to know why. It isn’t my business, I know. My business is the lock on that cell and the safety and happiness of my guests. How many years have we sat like this…?”

“You have the file,” I interrupted again, pointing at his folder.

“Goddammit, Sam, you know what I mean.” He shook his head.

“You wanna know, don’tcha? You want that feather in your cap where you can tell them reporters: hey, lookee here. Hatchet Sam, he done be quiet about this whole shitstorm for ten years, never once, not even at his trial and not once since then or before then, has he ever said why he done gone and do the things he done gone and do? But you know what? Me and Hatchet Sam. We done become friends and all. He done confessed to me, he did, he done gone and told me all.”

“Is that what we are?” said the warden. “We’re friends now?”

“What time is my useless, wet-behind-the-ears lawyer showing up?” I asked.

The warden got up, took his folder and tapped on the bars for the screw.

“You have the schedule,” he said, turning back to look at me. “Look it up for yourself. See you soon, Sam.”

12pm: t-minus 12 hours

The lawyer meetin’ was as I expected. He had nothing more going for him that the books he had read. Pfft. Education. Teach a man to memorise some law but not to think for hisself. It was all “Mr. Packer” this and “Mr. Packer” that, and “we are looking into precedent vis-à-vis, and for example, so-and-so versus so-and-so” and no matter how many times I asked the little nut to call me Sam he just kept on talkin’ at me. Talking AT me, mind you, and not TO me. Get the feelin’ the little twerp should be spending his time making tea for a real lawyer somewhere, not tryna argue a capital case such as mine. A stay of execution is not for dummies.

About the most fun I had with the guy was when he asked - magnanimously I might add and with much fucking flourish and pompous sincerity - if there was anything he could “do for me”.

“Yeah,” I replied. “There shore is.”

Woo, did the little guy jump at the opportunity to be useful.

“What I’d like,” I said, “because you know I feel I have been hard done by with this whole “Hatchet Sam” nomenclature they hung on me - nomenclature, yes, write that down, n-o-m-e-n-c-l-a-t-u-r-e, yes, you have it - and I wonder if you would be prepared to request that the name be changed.”

“Uh…what did you have in mind?” the twerp asked. I got some joy from watching his gears spinnin’, like no clutch was engaged and he was goin’ nowhere.

“I figure with a name like Samuel Packer, they missed the ball, you see? Why “Hatchet Sam” when “Packer the Hacker” has more…I dunno…panache?”

Squirm, little man. I kept up a serious, business-as-usual face while the twerp pulled his too-tight collar away from his throat so that he could swallow. He turned to his folder again and continued to review my case. Which wasn’t worth the paper it was written on. We had no mitigatin’ circumstances, no cause for clemency, no nuthin’ that any self-respectin’ governor in a lightnin’ state would consider. This here was by God Hatchet Sam, the biggest news story in America at one time. He done want this one in the bag. His constituency done demand this one of him.

I waved goodbye to the lawyer, him off to file papers or make calls or whatever he needed to do to get me that stay of execution. I wasn’t bettin’ on him. Now, don’t ya’ll be getting’ me wrong. It weren’t that I wanted to die. No one really does. Somethin’ kicks in inside a man when faced with his own mortality. It’s what gets him to shore when his boat done go over, or jump out the way of a rampagin’ bull. No man wants do die. I can’t speak for them folk what done it themselves, and all, be it a .45 in the head or a rope in the barn. None be coming back to speak to me. But I daresay a certain regret must kick in, at that last moment, when the line is crossed and there ain’t be no way back.

But I’ve had ten years on The Row to come to terms with this. Truth be told, the lightnin’ be a horrible way to go. It be my time and no disputin’. When the word came down I did hang my head. I went through phases of grief and all, and then I cried and then I rationalised. I ain’t never accepted it. I could make a joke and say that Mad Mike, Pedo Pete and Lou the Jew are piss-poor company but when the choice is between them and being dead…I dunno. I guess it ain’t the dying, so much, the being dead and all. I reckon there ain’t nuthin’ on the other side of this. I made my peace on God a long time ago. I figured that, with all the sufferin’ in this world he must either not care about it, or not be able to do anythin’ about it, or he be dead or not existin’ in the first place. Nietzsche done write that. He said that the Enlightenment, this age of reason and clarity, had eliminated the possibility of the existence of God. Maybe. But maybe that be more literal. Maybe God once was, but died.

God is dead, Nietzsche said. God remains dead. And we have killed him. How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of it?

Nah, it ain’t being dead that troubles me: it’s the dyin’. The method. The lightnin’. Just like them folk which killed themselves, no one who ever rode the lightnin’ has come back to tell us how that was. But I reckon it hurts somethin’ bad.

2pm: t-minus 10 hours

Where did we go so wrong, said mama, as she cried into her napkin. I rolled my eyes but kept my peace.

The kitchen had outdone themselves, in my opinion. Roast chicken and greens, I said. One of those with extra cheese and extra onion. Tomato, lettuce, all that. But no olives. Olives be as bad as beans. Another one of the Seven Deadly Vegetables. I bin expectin’ to eat in my cell, but now this.

Pop was quiet, as he always was. Mary-Lou done tell us all about her husband, and her new job, and her new house, and how things be lookin’ up, and about the wireless and all the new music comin’ out now and about this new rock n’ roll. She asked if I knew who Elvis was. I said I be in prison, not a monastery. Why do you think we done call this place Heartbreak Hotel? There was a film too, she said, comin’ out, called Jailhouse Rock. I said I did know about that, but as it was coming out this very year it was unlikely that I was going to be seein’ it and all. She asked why I wouldn’t be seeing it. Mama cried more. Pop said nuthin’. Sweet Mary-Lou. Dumber than a dead prairie dog, sometimes. Good thing she could swell out a dress. Ain’t nuthin’ for her poor husband by way of fine conversation. At least she had the grace to pink up some.

My mama and me, we had no relationship worth a fig. Never had, never will. Not now, anyways. Them reconciliation days, if there ever were, are over. How my daddy stayed with this woman all these years is a mystery to me. She done order him around, and order us around, from day one. Nuthin’ was good enough for mama. She had what you might call entitlement, a figuring that she was better than some other folk, when really she was not. She was about as common as they get, a daughter of a hog farmer and the wife of a miner. My Pop, he done what he could to provide and he done right by me, to a point, no man could ask for more than that, but mama acted like she had a station above her own and made our lives hell because we would not give her that. Couldn’t give her that. I think Pop had a dream once. I believe he did. What man does not? But that woman, she sucked that dream and that life from that man so that what sat before me now was a husk, like a fly dangling at the end of a spider’s web, all done and with nuthin’ to do but wait for that one strand to break so that he could fall into the dust and be swept out. I think I’ll ask the Reverend to pray for mama’s death. Pray that my daddy can come out from under that yoke and live his own life.

Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

People have blamed the Great Depression for the trouble they were in. But I ain’t never seen Pop blame nuthin’ for his. Maybe he shoulda. Maybe he shoulda hit mama upside the head and told her to be still. But that weren’t my daddy. He be quiet, is all. Say nuthin’. Take his licks and do his best. I wonder, sometimes, if he does not pray for mama’s death. I shore wouldn’t blame him if he did.

I spent the rest of the afternoon doin’ some readin’, a book on education which, after the talk with the warden, was on my mind. Seems most people say that the industrial revolution was to blame for the way them kids be educated nowadays. They be sayin’ that, because of specialised tasks and all, schools be focusin’ on some subjects to the exclusion of some others. They say that the role of school was to instil in children an acceptance of authority and the takin’ of instruction without question, so that they could be conditioned by queues and timetables and routine to best integrate into an industrial workplace where these skills were required. They also be sayin’ that education today produces good workers but not good thinkers.

This man, what done wrote this book, he be sayin’ somethin’ different. He be saying that it goes back to before the agricultural revolution, 10 000 years ago, and that our education today is nuthin’ but a footnote in time compared to the biological history of our species. He says, you see, that them children bin learning by play and explorin’, they bein’ hunter-gatherers and all, and that parents understood this to be a good way for ‘em to learn. But, he says, with the agricultural revolution came permanent houses, because crops had to be planted, and people had to learn to plow and plant and cultivate, and to attend to their flocks. Because they were settled down they also had more children, and the older ones had to work more in the fields to support their families, or stay in with the little ones. They had less time for play with more time needed for work.

But then, in them Middle Ages, there came levels of status, the haves and the have-nots. Those who did not had become dependent upon them which did. People realised that they could increase their wealth by gettin’ others to work for ‘em, and so forms of servitude came in. Now, you had your kings and your lords and your nobles and you had us common folk, the serfs. And because of this, the lesson that children had to learn was obedience, a suppression of their own will, and a show of reverence towards their lords and masters. A rebellious spirit, the book said, could end in death.

I checked the clock in the hall. All this talk of death and industry reminded me that the other family would be comin’, just before dinner. Mad Mike, Pedo Pete and Lou the Jew were quiet this afternoon. You woulda thought someone had died.

6pm: t-minus 6 hours

I was shackled for this meetin’, hand and foot. You’d think people would feel safe around other people in this day and age, but no. You can be a pillar of the community, pay your taxes, clean up after your dog and cook for the homeless people after church, but you go and kill three people and all that reputation goes out the window. I never did have a dog and couldn’t care less about church nor homeless people but you get my point.

I had been, however and a long time ago, a pillar of the community. Which is what these people now sittin’ across from me would likely wanna know about.

There were two of ‘em. They were introduced as the daddy of the man I done killed, and the younger sister of the woman I done killed. The sister, she shore was a peach. I am a man with a fondness for blonde southern belles and this one did not disappoint. Pedo Pete would do himself a nut, though mayhap this one be a bit old for him, bein’ in her thirties and all. She had one of them flared out dresses which be so in the fashion these days, blue with a bow cinching in her little waist and a white hat on her pretty little head. A little sober, I though, as she seemed to type for a little more flamboyance but I guess she was dressin’ as befit the situation.

The old man, now, he was sure dressed to the nines. Not like one of them Elvis freaks but more with my time, from my time on the steelworks. Finely tailored suit with a hat to match. A fine lookin’ man with a jaw you could break a head on. The way he was beholding me, it was likely my head that jaw wanted to break.

The other family, they said, those of appropriate age, would be in the audience tonight for the lightnin’. It was but the two of ‘em what wanted to meet me and speak to me. The old man done start by saying that he hadn’t seen me since the trial, and these ten years been good on me. Which is a pity, he said, because his son be dead and rotted and here I was, the very picture of health and masculinity. The sister, she be gentler, though there be steel in those eyes. Mary-Lou could learn a thing or two from this one.

Our how-do-you-do’s and pleasantries outta the way, if pleasantries they could be said to be, the sister began what sounded like a speech she had worked on and agonised over for a long while. I felt for these people, I did, I’m not a monster. She told of the difficulty of hearing of their deaths, of the police investigation and the trial and the years afterwards, missing their family and comin’ to terms with them not bein’ around anymore. She told of how she had toyed with forgiveness and how such as herself - a fine Christian woman - needed to forgive and move on and she done be wantin’ this opportunity to sit face-to-face and tell me that, though she could not condone and would never accept me and that death was too good a fate for such as myself, she had found it in her heart to forgive and now she wanted closure.

I know what she meant by closure, that message came across clear as a songbird on a spring morning. Like I done tell the warden, I had not once said the why of the killin’, only the how. The how was pretty obvious to all concerned and the police photographs did paint a picture on that which you could not argue. The case was shut, as they say, and the killer thrown in jail with a sentence of death on his head.

I felt I owed these people somethin’. Perhaps this is what the Reverend called atonement.

I was one of the luckier ones, after the War, I said. The daddy of an army friend done offer me a job in the city, in the steelworks, on account of being an army engineer and havin’ some learnin’ in that direction. A lot of learnin’, truth be told, as the warden would keep remindin’ me. A lot of people be strugglin’ what with the Depression and all and bein’ offered a job was a windfall. I had to take up lodgin’ in the city but gettin’ away from mama and her demons was a bigger windfall than the job itself.

It took me two years to be promoted to foreman at the works, on account of me being good with people and havin’ knowledge of engineerin’. I have come to believe that some of the ways I bin suggestin’ for improving our productivity is still used to this day, not just in my works but in other works across the city and, by now, across the country. A man can take pride in that. It was good times, and the only thing to stick in my craw was Carmichael, the shop steward. He was one of them Reds, had brought in some ideas from the steelworks in Birmingham, in England, he done say, about how workers and owners are equal and how the workers needed more representin’ in decisions. He said the owners were exploitin’ the workers with little pay and lotsa hours and that kinda thing is music to a man’s ear. He be a worker like the rest of us, but with stations like what mama had. When the unions came in, he was one of them what went on trainin’ and became our shop steward.

He started by tryna get better workin’ conditions for the men, which I was all for. It was when he had a small success that things started changin’. Now, he was chargin’ dues, takin’ from the men money in exchange for his representin’ them. I done speak out about this and all but it fell on deaf ears, at least at first. Carmichael started dressin’ well, and had a nice car, and I questioned this but he wouldn’t hear of it. I followed him to this home one night and saw how nice it was. But the conditions? They didn’t improve much for us. Carmichael did talk about strikin’ and some men did. Those men lost their jobs, too. They didn’t mjch care about the unions, the owners did. Then the strikin’ went to the streets and damages were made and police did come and some of those men, they done be arrested. But he said that all this was progress. I decided it was high time we spoke about the money Carmichael was done takin’ from the men with nuthin’ but misery in return. No equal rights, no progress, just no jobs and starvin’ children.

I went around to his house, then, that one night. I been wantin’ to speak to him and set things aright. I am not a small man and Carmichael, he was not a big man, and I figured I could scare some sense into him, get him to stop takin’ money from the men and give some to the wives that now had no money, a husband in jail and hungry kids. I wore one of them masks what you wear in winter as I did not want to be recognised by him. I did confront him, in his house, while his wife and daughter were sleepin’. I told him to lay off or there would be trouble and I had my hatchet in one hand and was waving it at him, to make him understand that this situation was serious.

He said to me, while we were talking, he said Sam Packer, is that you, and I knew then that this was trouble. I had to get out of that house now and mayhap pretend the next day to not know what he was talkin’ about but the man was waving a pipe at me which may have cost as much as one man’s wages and I hit him upside the head with the hatchet instead. I was sore angry with Carmichael. He was scum, plain and simple, the kind of man I would be spittin’ on in the street before feedin’. The kind of man who looks to hisself and doesn’t mind hurtin’ other people to get what he wants. I took off my mask and looked down at him, all bleedin’ on the carpet and I said, yes sir, Sam Packer it is, and you done finished now with takin’ advantage of my men and my friends. He held his hands out to stop me but I hit at them with the hatchet until they was all broken and bloody and when he couldn’t hold ‘em up anymore I hit him again in the head.

His wife, which I expected to be sleepin’, she done scream behind me and I turned and it was not just the wife but the daughter as well, her being twelve years old at the time (so the court said) and she turned to run for the door but I couldn’t let that happen on account of her havin’ seen my face. So I hit the wife in the head with my hatchet as well. She must have been made of frailer things than Carmichael because it took but one blow. The daughter done scream and run, up the stairs of that nice, old house, and I followed. I don’t know if she knew who I was and I guess I weren’t thinkin’ about none of that. She tried to crawl under her bed but I caught her by one leg and pulled her out.

She be as frail as her mother.

9pm: t-minus 3 hours

It was 9pm by the time them people done left. I was overdue on dinner and the Reverend wanted to keep me company from 10pm till the lightnin’. The kitchen bin keepin’ things fresh for me, considering it was a special dinner I done requested. I figured I would have had my fill of good food. I could have requested a steak, red line in the middle and juicy, with potatoes, but I had said no sir, ice-cream for me, please. A big ole bowl of ice-cream. That will be my last meal.

I ate my dinner in peace, in a room with a table and a chair, tryna finish a book I had meant to finish but now was runnin’ out of time. The warden came in a little after I was finished and sat down, goin’ over some last-minute things, seein’ if there was anythin’ I might need.

“No, sir, warden, I don’t believe there is,” I said, as I was preparing to go back to my cell. He put a hand to my chest and stopped my walkin’. I looked down and saw in his hand a silver flask. Without sayin’ nuthin’, I took that flask and tucked it into my waistband.

“See you soon, Sam,” he said, like he did that mornin’.

I nodded my thanks, and called for the screw to take me back.

The Reverend was waitin’ in my cell when I got back. We sat in silence for a bit, each waitin’ for the other to speak. Eventually, the Reverend done broke the silence.

“Well, Sam, here we are,” he said. I nodded.

“You read any of that?” he asked, pointin’ to the literature he had left me, on top of the Bible that came with the cell. I nodded again. No matter my feelin’ on the matter, the Reverend was a man that demanded - nay, commanded - respect. You didn’t talk down to the man, you done talk up.

I understood what the literature was saying, I told him, the same as I had told him countless times. I did know my scripture. My Pop would recite verses to me during a beatin’, he fancied Ecclesiastes for that. We had family Bible readin’s too, mama and Mary-Lou and me sittin’ and listenin’. That weren’t too bad. Pop had a strong voice, and he read about as well as any man I had ever heard, and he had passion, did Pop. His words would start simple, as he read, and then start to pick up as his voice would lift. Sometimes, I thought, it was like watchin’ a butterfly take flight.  The words would start still, gentle-like, and would start to spread just a little, like them little openin’ wings. I would find myself holdin’ my breath as the words would spread out to all the corners of the room and, then, with not so much as a crash but as a whisper you might imagine from the woman on your pillow, in the dark, the words would lift off and soar. Pop would rise up with them, till he was standin’, one hand holding his Bible while the other would point, and wave, and ball into a fist as his fervour rose and rose and rose. It was the only time I ever saw my daddy excited about anything. If a woman can suck that kinda life out of a man, then mayhap it wasn’t the demons in her but she be the demon itself.

You can’t base your own relationship with Jesus on what another one said and did, said the Reverend. I said aye, I knew that. But it discoloured it some. When religion left Pop, it left the house. My mama, being a Protestant, made noises in that direction from time to time but it held no water for me and Mary-Lou and it stuck not at all. Both of us, we let it go. Mary-Lou because she needed to be told what to do and me ‘cos I had seen the truth of God long ago and could never reconcile with that again.

What truth of God did I see, the Reverend wanted to know. I was not going to insult this man and his God, and I told him as gentle as I could. I said that God must not care about us, or he must not be able to help us. Either way, that be a God not worthy of any worship I might offer. But more importantly, I said, God must be one sadistic son of a bitch, beg your pardon, Reverend. He took it with grace as always and waited for me to say more. I said to the Reverence, you have a God that makes the whole world, the sun and stars, the animals and the water and the plants and trees. Then he done make us, and put us on this earth. He tells us, God that is, that he has a wonderful gift for us, and he calls that gift Free Will. He says that we can choose to accept him, and his son, a’course, and by doing so gain everlasting life. Or, we could say no, and burn in Hell forever. I tell you, Reverend, I said, that does not sound like Free Will to me, or a gift. That sounds like what Carmichael be doin’: using coercion and guilt and bribery to make people like him, to make people want to follow him.

We sat for a while longer. The Reverend then done pray for me, and it was sweet and it was kind. He said he would be there, at the end, and I could call on him anytime I needed, just like I could call on God to come and save me. I figured it was too late for all that. My mind had turned fully to the lightnin’, and I could not think about much of anything else.

So I opened the warden’s flask, and took a sip of that. Then I took another.

11pm: t-minus 1 hour

My head and been shaved earlier in the day. It’s because the cap they put on needs to have good contact with your head, so that your hair does not catch on fire. They done shave my left leg too, much for the same reason. The doctor would be around soon to put a plug in me. I can’t say I be lookin’ forward to that. Mad Mike done say that when the current fries, the shit flies, and the plug be stoppin’ that from happening. There be a diaper, as well, to put on at the end. A firin’ squad or a hangin’, that be less trouble all round. I did not care for this one little bit. It didn’t feel humane to me. And I was scared.

The lawyer had come around, and I saw from his face that he had no good news for me. I done shook his hand and thanked him for his help and his effort on my behalf, and we done talk a little. He said that the governor could still call, and I felt it might be cruel to give a man some hope. But I weren’t holdin’ none of that against him.

When it was time, the warden came and he read a short statement to me. We would have another in the lightnin’ room. I walked out of my cell for the last time. Mad Mike, Pedo Pete and Lou the Jew were standing by the doors of their own cells, quiet and respectful-like. I was the first man in five years to ride the lightnin’ in Heartbreak Hotel, and I recall from that how bad I felt for the man. Now, it was my turn, and I done shake hands with each man, and we exchanged some words, and I did the same with the screws on the Row.

We walked down a corridor, turned a corner and walked down another. Two screws stood to either side of a door at the end, and when they opened it I caught sight of Gruesome Gertie for the first time, all done up with leather straps. I am a brave man, I believe myself to be, but I did buckle then and went down on one knee. I don’t know if I mayhap peed myself a little. My head was clamourin’ so much that I couldn’t feel that either which way. But I did think that I might have. The screws on either side of me helped me to my feet, and now I weren’t walkin’ quite so much as they were draggin’ me along. I did not want to go and I felt myself want to call for the Reverend and his God but I did not want to add indignity to my night as well.

It was not a big room and the chair itself was not comfortable. I was seated in it and the leather straps were tightened. They done put a wet sponge on my head and tightened the cap down on it, all the while attaching something to my leg as well. The warden nodded at me, then nodded at one of the screws, and it was then that they pulled back the curtain that was in front of me.

Through a window was another room, with chairs, and there be people seated on them chairs. There be my Pop, quiet and not saying anything, and there be mama all a-cryin’. Mary-Lou, she done nod at me and I nodded back, and then she put her arms around Pop. Good for you, Mary-Lou. My lawyer was there as well, and the sheriff what done arrested me all of ten years ago. Carmichael’s daddy and his wife’s sister were there, in their own row, with some other people which I suppose where the rest of the family. There were a couple other people, I suppose from the governor’s office. I looked to a telephone on one wall, and saw that the warden was doin’ the same thing. Then the warden sighed and done turn back to me.

He read a statement, to the effect that on the 14th of November, 1947, I done killed with malice aforethought, Lewis Carmichael, aged 35. He said that on the same date I done killed Louisa Carmichael, aged 37. He said that on the same date, I had done killed Sarah Carmichael, aged 12. I saw the sister start to cry when the warden done say that. He said that I had been found guilty by a jury of my peers, and that the judge had sentenced me to die for three counts of murder in the first degree, and that by the law of the fine state of Louisiana, he was authorised to carry out my execution.

The warden then done turned to me, and said, Sam, do you have any last words.

I looked to the Reverend, standing there. I looked back to the warden, and then to Mary-Lou and to the sister. I looked to Carmichael’s daddy, and my daddy, and my mama.

But I shook my head, and said no. I did not. I figured that I had said what needed to be said and what was done, was done.

My warden, he done nod to the screw standing behind me.

A black cloth went over my head. I closed my eyes.