Charles Beaumont - Selected Stories Part 60

"You send that to the cleaners, boy. You never get that out alone."

The old woman sat down and breathed heavily. Her face and arms were s.h.i.+ny with perspiration.

Cleota got off work at the bakery at eleven-thirty and when she got home Willie told her everything that had happened. She said she was sorry and that she thought Willie had done right.

Aunt Lucy later learned that Doctor Smith was the one who fixed up George. She was more relieved than she let on, to hear that the wound had been a minor one; and she sermoned to Willie and to Cleota for months afterwards when she was positive that George had left town.

Now this was the only bad thing Willie ever did in his entire life, up to the time the policemen came to put him in jail for something else, so he didn't forget it right away. He didn't miss a day on his job and he didn't spoil his record by doing poor work, but most of the fellows on the line noticed that Willie Was.h.i.+ngton was not quite himself again until almost a half year had pa.s.sed. It was then that he forgot about cutting George Mana.s.san and that Cleota once more took up smiling at men in the bakery.

It was a great surprise to Willie when they shook him out of bed and carried him off to jail.

The night was sticky and hot but the pillow hadn't turned damp yet. It was soft and cool and he sank into it gratefully. Cleota was already asleep, silent, as always, like a cat. Willie had never slept withanyone else so he had the impression that only men snored. It struck him as a very masculine thing.

He finished his prayers to the Lord and fell into a pleasant languor that soon turned into sleep.

The sound of voices outside in the hall was not disturbing because there were frequently voices in the hall. Willie had gotten used to lovers' goodnights and sleepless women's babble as a soldier gets used to sleeping amid gunfire. He didn't even hear the door tried and opened.

What did awaken Willie finally was a rough hand on his shoulder, pressing hard and shaking. He heard the voice halfway through consciousness.

"Come on, you're not kidding anybody. Get the h.e.l.l out of that bed."

And when he came to completely he saw three men in his room, two of them with flashlights and the third with a gun in his hand. He did not understand.

The men were all white. They were very energetic looking men, with sharp chins and unblinking eyes. There was no hesitation.

The one with the gun pulled Willie to his feet.

"Okay, let's go, fella."

Cleota awakened with a nasal little cry. She clutched the sheets to her b.r.e.a.s.t.s and said nothing.

"Go where?" Willie's mind was not clear.

The man with the gun looked over his shoulder and laughed.

Willie looked angry. He didn't understand, but he knew he didn't like these men. He hated to be called a n.i.g.g.e.r in Cleota's presence.

The man with the gun grabbed Villie's unders.h.i.+rt and twisted it in his hand. He turned his head towards the door and took out a police credential.

Willie started to move, but the gun was pushed into his stomach. The two other men edged closer.

So Willie turned his eyes to Cleota and got dressed quickly. The men kept their flashlights on even though Cleota had switched on the lamp.

In a short time Willie was shoved into the waiting police car and taken to the city jail. He was then put into a moderately crowded cell.

No one told him exactly what he was supposed to have done, but through constant questioning he learned that he was being held for the rape and murder of a white girl. He didn't know why they had thought of him, but he did not know what the charges meant. He thought and thought and could provide no good proof of where he actually had been at the time of the crime.

He had been home, reading, but of course no one would believe that.

Cleota came to see him whenever she could and so did Aunt Lucy. They both made him feel good, though it was actually Aunt Lucy who gave him hope.

During the long days before the trial she would say to him, "Willie, it's bad trouble but they won't hurt you. Ve both know you ain't done nothin' wrong, an' when you don't do nothin' wrong the law can't hurt you. You gonna be all right, boy. You gonna get out of this all right."

And Willie would smile until one day he stopped being afraid. He was offered a lawyer but he said he didn't want one. He ate well and looked forward to the day of the trial, because he felt sure that would be the day they would let him go.

All this time he made prayers to the Lord that he'd get his job back and that he would be forgiven for hating the people around him and the people who came to ask him deep questions he couldn't figure out. Then he stopped worrying about his job and didn't hate.

And whenever he would get confused, Aunt Lucy would come by and say "Now rest easy, boy.

Everything gonna be all right. You a innocent boy and the law ain't gonna hurt you," and he'd smile and feel good again.

When the day of the trial came at last, Willie sat in the courtroom without a fear or a doubt. He thought of the stories he'd be able to tell the gang on the Line when he went back to work, so he didn't hear much of the proceedings.

They asked him where he was on the night of the crime and he told the truth. "I was at home, readin' a magazine, your Honor," he said. They asked him other questions and the tall man in the gray suittalked so fast and so loud Willie couldn't hear him clearly. Only the words 'society' and 'justice' sounded so that he could hear.

And after a time, the people in the brown stall filed back to their seats. Willie folded his hands and craned his head to hear what would be said.

". . . do you find the defendant: guilty or not guilty?"

Willie wasn't nervous. He kept grinning, wondering whether or not to look back at Cleota.

"We find the defendant guilty, your Honor."

The words were spoken slowly and clearly, but with some emotion. The thin man with the furrowed face who spoke the words looked directly at the judge and then sat down.

Willie wanted to scream but then something pierced his stomach and held his insides tight. He couldn't move or say a word. Confusion swam in his head, in great hot waves. He rose with difficulty when commanded.

". . . sentence you, Willie George Was.h.i.+ngton, to the supreme penalty prescribed bylaw..."

These words were a haze out of which only one came clearly. _Dead_.

". . . to be hanged by the neck until you are dead . . ."

Willie struggled and pulled out the thing in his heart. He screamed.

"No, your Honor, you don' understand! I didn't kill n.o.body! I didn't do nothin' wrong! I'm innocent, your Honor!"

And two men had to hold Willie's arms and pull him back to his cell.

No one paid much attention to the old Negro woman who cried "No, Lord!" or the young one who smiled strangely.

It wasn't easy for Willie, but he had plenty of time to think and so after a while he started to smile again. Aunt Lucy was able to see him upon occasion during the months and Cleota came by a respectable number of times. They both said that everything would be all right.

And since Willie had been conceived of the strongest hope there is--a woman's hope--it took only the merest spark to ignite his courage. He told himself that he had not for a moment lost his faith in the ultimate rightness of things, not even in the courtroom that day he was told solemnly he must die, for a crime he did not commit.

And so the days pa.s.sed and Willie grew stronger instead of weaker, all the while certain that the Lord would not permit him to be wrongfully punished.

So it was that on the morning designated as the time of execution Willie spoke lightly with the somber looking man in the black frock coat who wore such a long face.

"Reverend," Willie said, "I knows your intentions is good, but they ain't really much sense in your being here."

And the Reverend shook his head and opened his book.

"No sir, Reverend, they ain't nothin' gonna happen to me. It say so right here in the Good Book--here, let me show you the place where it say--"

And Willie took the book and thumbed quickly through the pages.

"Y'see, Reverend, the Lord say it: 'As ye sow, so shall ye reap'. It put different in your book, but it mean the same thing."

The man in the frock coat sighed.

"But my son, you have been proven guilty of the sin of murder."

Willie grinned.

"Yes, sir, but they got that wrong. It wasn't me what did that to that little girl. You gots to be honest bad 'fore you can do a thing like that! And Aunt Lucy can tell you-- I ain't honest bad, Reverend.

I studied hard all I could, when I was a kid, and I been workin' for the railroad since I was thirteen.

Never missed a day--up to this, I mean. Never missed a Sunday at Church, neither. An' I got me a good woman too. No sir, I jus' never did this thing, Reverend, and you knows the Lord ain't gonna cast me down for somethin' I never did."The man in the frock coat looked perplexed as he studied Willie's face. The prayers he said were not the ones he had previously considered nor could Willie hear them.

Not too long afterward other men came and walked with Willie down a long hall and into a small yard. The sun was s.h.i.+ning but the yard was dark with shadows. The cement was clean and smelled of soap and water.

The men led Willie up some steps and onto a small door out into the planks. Directly above dangled a rope, the end of which had been formed into a noose. The rope was st.u.r.dy and strong; the fibers were close and smooth.

They asked Willie if he had anything to say and he told them yes, he did.

"You folks is really wastin' your time," Willie said. "I told you, I never did nothin' wrong and the Lord ain't gonna let you hurt me."

Then a man walked up and fitted a black cloth bag over Willie's head. After that he pulled down the rope and put the noose about Willie's neck. The noose was tightened somewhat.

No one could see, but Willie was still smiling. He couldn't think clearly about anything except what Aunt Lucy had told him. Her words roared in his ears and he knew that they couldn't be wrong.

Willie waited. He didn't know what he waited for, but he waited. A long time he stood, with the handcuffs heavy on his wrists, but nothing happened.

All was silent and then, as suddenly as if it had always been, loud with the hum of voices. Words Willie couldn't hear, words that pierced the air, words that were filled with fear and awe.

After a long while the bag was taken off and Willie was led back to his cell, Later he learned what had happened, why everyone had looked so strange. The lever that controlled the trapdoor had been pulled but the trapdoor had remained fixed. It did not fall away, allowing the body that stood upon it to sink into the yielding air. It did not suddenly become the mouth of death, which was its function. The trapdoor simply had not worked. And this was strange because it had been tested according to routine a few minutes before the actual time of execution, and stranger still that it operated with the greatest efficiency a few moments after Willie was taken from the platform.

Willie thanked the Lord and thought that would set him free, but he was wrong. Someone told him that they would try to hang him again, and Willie shrugged and said that it was very foolish.

It was Aunt Lucy who told him the laws of the state, which required a man con demned to death to be subjected to three attempts at execution before he be freed. The old woman whose face looked older and more withered than ever Willie had known it to be, still spoke confidently and Willie believed her. The Lord would not desert him now.

When he asked about Cleota he received answers he somehow didn't like, although they meant nothing in themselves. He put it aside and continued to write her letters. The answers were cheerful and evasive and so Willie was not disturbed.

He spent his time praying, in between executions.

And when it came time for them to try to hang Willie again, the same somber man in the frock coat dropped into the cell to mumble; the same walk and the same tiny yard. The same dark shadows, but a different rope and a more thoroughly oiled trapdoor mechanism.

Willie got up to the scaffold unhesitatingly. He was stood to one side as the trapdoor was tested for good measure. He watched it drop swiftly and saw the blackness below, without relaxing his smile.

Then the hood was fastened securely.

A man started to say "Any last words," but he stopped. The man nodded to the executioner.

And when the lever was pulled all the way back, a great murmur went through the crowd. The trapdoor had not moved.

Some time later, Willie read in the newspaper about how he was fooling death but, of course, he knew that was wrong. They didn't understand. They didn't understand that the Lord protects his own and that an innocent man can't die for something he didn't do.

Time pa.s.sed slowly after this. And when he realized that he had been a prisoner for over a year, Willie became bored and restless. His prayers became routine and he wished mightily that they would hurry up with whatever they were going to do, so he could get back to his job and wife. Aunt Lucy toldhim he looked tired these days and he agreed with her.

Cleota wrote more frequently and visited more frequently now that they had tried to hang Willie twice already. It scared her, but only this far. She found it remarkably easy to lie to Willie now, so the sacrifice was not a great one. She had fallen in love with a number of people since her husband was first put in jail. A man named Frank Jones wanted her to go to Detroit with him. She was considering it.

Time crept, the boredom of the minutes filling Willie with a growing urge to leave the prison and have it all done with. The game had lost its amus.e.m.e.nt; it was like waiting interminable hours on a streetcorner for someone you know will show up, eventually.

So he finally stopped praying and thanking the Lord and began to pace restlessly in his cell. Even the newspaper reports had lost their interest. Everything had lost its interest, except getting out. Willie thought and the more he thought the more he wanted to have this foolishness over.

Sometimes he thought about his job; relived pleasant hours when work was not so hard. He'd had the job for seventeen years, and although he'd never risen in rank, neither had he ever been docked or rolled.

And he thought about stories of poor Negroes constantly out of work and how n.o.body would hire you if you were black. He didn't believe it. He was black and he had a job. He was black and he had a wife. What else, he wondered, could there be in life?

Time dragged, stood still, waited, inched, stopped.

Then the day arrived, the day Willie so longed for: his last execution.

The attendant delicacies were hurried this time and somewhat embarra.s.sed. The man in the frock coat had refused to come and so another man like him came instead. Willie listened politely to the Last Prayers, but he was feeling too good to really hear them. Aunt Lucy had seen him the afternoon before and he hadn't noticed the fear in her eyes. He had only heard the kind, happy words that came from the friendly face. He knew them by heart now, every word and every nuance.

"You gonna be home little while, boy. They gonna let you go and you gonna be home. The Lord has taken care of his young lamb."

The yard was filled with many people this time. It was a special occasion; rules were relaxed.

Many had notebooks open and pencils in their hands. Some looked afraid--those faces he recognized, they looked afraid. Others looked interested or expectant.

There was a slight breeze, so the rope swung gently backward and forward from the scaffold. Its shadow on the wall was many times enlarged and grotesque.

When Willie came in, everyone stopped whispering. There was absolute quiet, the quiet that is born of a beating heart. Willie grinned widely and tried to wave his hands so they could see.

He knew the way by now. He knew how many steps it was from the door to the platform of the scaffold. He knew the moment the hood would be lowered. Willie smiled at the blackness as the trapdoor was dropped five times. He smiled at the executioner, but the executioner didn't smile back.

Then the long wait. Through the coa.r.s.e black cloth over his head, Willie heard the frightened gasps and the sharp little cries. He heard someone say: "My G.o.d, it didn't work! It didn't work!"

He was carefully led from the platform back to his cell. He remembered to thank the Lord and then he went back to sleep.

The following week Willie was told exactly when he would be released, and until that time he found many interesting things to read in the newspapers.

Aunt Lucy and the men from the newspapers were waiting for Willie the day he walked out of prison a free man. Many pictures were taken of him and many questions asked and Willie was polite to everyone. But when he would ask Aunt Lucy where Cleota was, Aunt Lucy would turn her head and someone else would say something. After a time, Willie got worried and told the people he would talk with them tomorrow.

When he got home, Willie learned that his wife had left him. He didn't grasp it at first. Cleota hadrun off with a man named Frank Jones. She had left him.