A Book of American Martyrs(136)

Abruptly then the printed words ceased. Quickly Luther turned over the document—there was nothing on the reverse side.

He looked up. The prison official had vanished. Luther’s cell was empty except for Luther whose legs he could see, and whose hands and arms he could see before him.

Is that who I am, or someone else? Who?

On the floor beside his bed was a stack of five or six New Testaments waiting to be signed, and Reverend Davey’s black plastic fountain pen. Luther set aside the death warrant and eagerly Luther took these up.


THE NIGHT BEFORE an execution I don’t even try to sleep. Lay on my bed in my underwear and socks and the TV is on but I am not hearing it. Or maybe it’s on mute. Bottle of scotch and a glass and cigarettes to get me through the night.

When I was living with my wife I’d lay out on the sofa like this. But she couldn’t take it, on edge like I am leading up to it for days—hell, might’ve been weeks. I said to her what if I was a Vietnam vet? You’d have pity for me then.

She said, OK but you are not a Vietnam vet. Should be ashamed of yourself saying such a damn thing.

She’d known what it was to marry a CO. Half the men in her family are COs, how I met Dolores. So it was shitty for her to hold it against me pretending like drinking was something new to her, half the men in her family are alcoholics. For Christ sake.

The thing is no matter how many times you go through the “lethal injection” procedure, something can go wrong.

Like they say in a prison facility if something can go wrong it will go wrong but you won’t know when.

So in the early morning like 4:00 A.M. the first wave of the real excitement will come to me. When we were together Dolores would say Hey! I can feel your actual heart. I think this amazed her. It amazed her but also scared her. Because of the drinking, I am not like I usually am but (she has said) some different person. It is easy to drop things and break things and collide with things in this state. It is easy to fall asleep with my eyes open. And there was a clamminess coming off me—Dolores said—like I was sweating-hot but cold too like somebody standing in front of an opened refrigerator.

This feeling of something you can’t almost bear, it is so strong.

Some guys will bullshit how they have the “best sex of their lives” at such a time the night before an execution but only somebody who doesn’t know shit would believe them.

Because a doctor or a nurse, or even an EMT, for some “ethical”—“humanitarian”—reason they will not do the procedure. They will not participate in an execution.

There is a prison doctor at the infirmary, some days. But he will not assist in an execution. He has been asked many times but the asshole always refuses.

He will show up to declare the dead man dead, to sign the death certificate and collect his time-and-a-half. That the doctor will do.

(And his breath smelling of whiskey too. Fucking hypocrite.)

You’d think if these medical people were “ethical” they would set up the line at least—that’s the hard part, where a non-professional is likely to fuck up. If they got the line going in the man’s veins so somebody else could release the drugs into it at intervals that’d be “ethical.”

First comes the anesthetic. Then, the paralytic. Then, the actual poison.

The idea being, by the time the poison comes into the man’s veins he is deep asleep and will not wake up.

The paralytic is to make sure that, if he does wake up, he will not scream and struggle and you will not know if he is awake.

These matters I do not think about much if I can help it. In nine years I will be eligible for early retirement and I am counting the days.

I think that my marriage is so fucked-up, I am not sure if I want the woman back. The kids from her previous marriage helped fuck all that up.

Doing the kind of work that I do, any kind of prison work but especially Death Row, makes you special—like a leper. Why being a CO runs in families. Like law enforcement. Like Death Row assignment. Nobody else understands, and nobody else is comfortable with it. People will avoid you even at the prison. Even your supervisor. Like they are afraid to look you in the face—like it might be contagious or something. I have seen sons of bitches turn a corner to avoid me. See me at security going through and they hold back. Hypocrite fuckers.

We are like soldiers with a special status. We are paid to kill a human being—but it is not murder.

In some Western states it is by firing squad. You would be one of five or six men. Whoever thought of that!—one of five or six men and you would not know if you were firing blanks. That would be a mercy.

But if you had to fire a rifle at a man, in his heart, just you alone—that would not be possible.

With Luther Dunphy I knew it would be bad. Because Luther was a Christian like myself except a better Christian than I could ever be. Because he was one of those few in my life I believed truly did not see the color of my skin or if he did, that it made any impression on him.

Because he gave me a copy of the New Testament, that I will never sell or give away. It is precious to me.


HE HAD DECLINED a final meal. Instead he would fast.

Except for liquids he would fast for the final forty-eight hours.

Yet: God would not forsake him. He knew.

His brain was so sharply awake it hurt, like broken glass would hurt inside a human brain.

A smell of urine wakened him that morning. A smell of breakfast food, and something sour like vomit. He had not ever seen his fellow inmates on Death Row but often he smelled them, and often he heard their voices raw and yearning and ranting and he heard angry laughter that wakened him from sleep.