“Yeah, same thought here. It was just on TV last week. One of Henry Fonda’s best.”
“A week ago,” Charlie sighed. “Just that short a time?”
“They are not innocent, though,” John said.
“But still. A week ago we didn’t kill screwed-up punks for stealing drugs. That Bruce kid, right guidance, he might have straightened out.” John shook his head.
“Look, Charlie, might have beens are finished. Charlie, we got six thousand, maybe seven thousand people in this town now. How much food? How much medicine? Water still works for downtown, as long as the pipe to the reservoir holds, but up on the sides of the hills we’re out. Charlie, we don’t keep order, in a month people will be killing each other for a bag of chips.”
John felt the heat of the cigarette burning his fingers and he looked around, then dropped it into an empty coffee cup. “Or a pack of smokes. I’m sorry for that one, boy, but you did the right thing.
“Just keep in mind what I said on their behalf back in there.”
Charlie nodded.
There was a knock on the door; it was Tom and Kate. Charlie motioned them in.
“Reverend Black is in there with them. Time is just about up,” Tom said. “Tom, you will not do the execution,” John said. Tom looked over at him.
“You are the police authority in this town. If someone must do the execution, it cannot be you or any other officer or official of this town. That terrible task has always been kept separate from the hands of those out in the field who directly enforce the law. If not, well…” He thought of Stalin, of the Gestapo. “It has to be someone else.”
Tom nodded, and John was glad to see that in spite of his angry talk earlier, Tom was relieved.
John looked over at Charlie.
“Not me, John.”
“No, it can’t be you, either, Charlie. You’re the emergency government; and Kate, the traditional government. No, not you.”
“Then who?” Charlie asked. No one spoke.
“You, John,” Kate said quietly.
Startled, he looked at her. He had simply been advising as a historian; he never imagined it would come back on him like this.
“Damn all, I was not volunteering myself.” John said, “I was just trying to keep us in touch with who we once were as a country.”
“I’m not going out there to ask for volunteers,” Charlie said. “I will not let this turn into a circus with some sick bastards mobbing in to take a shot. I want you to do it. You’re the historian, John; you understand it, the meaning of it. You’re a respected professor in the town. Everyone knows you, or knows your kin here.”
“Oh Jesus,” John whispered, knowing he was trapped.
Reluctantly he nodded his head.
“Where?” Tom asked.
John couldn’t think.
“The town park,” Charlie said. “It’s the public gathering place. I don’t want it here.”
“Fine then,” Tom replied. “We take them down to the park now and do it. We load them into Jim’s van. The tennis courts have a concrete practice wall. I’ll go outside and announce it for one half hour from now.”
The mention of the tennis courts chilled John. It made him think of the Taliban and the infamous soccer stadium in Kabul. Is that what we have now, tennis courts?
“Maybe in private,” Kate ventured. “Maybe in private. I don’t like the thought of public execution.”
“I don’t either,” John said slowly, “but we have to do it. There’s fear in this town. I’m hearing people say that the refugees from the highway are ‘outsiders.’ We’re already beginning to divide ourselves off from each other. We do private executions and I guarantee you, within a day there’ll be rumors flying from those who don’t live here that we are doing Stalinist courts and executing people in the basement of the police station. If we are forced to do this, we do it in public.”
“Besides,” Tom interjected, “it’s a statement to anyone else who might be thinking about stealing.”
“Wait a minute, Tom,” John said. “I pray we aren’t down to killing people for stealing a piece of bread.”
Tom shook his head angrily.
“John, don’t misread me. You might not believe this, but I don’t like it any more than you.”
John stared into his eyes and then finally nodded.
“Ok, Tom, sorry.”
“I’ll go make the announcement.”
“Tom,” Kate said. “Adults only. I don’t want kids down there.”
Tom left the room and seconds later there was the crackling hiss of an old handheld megaphone and Tom began to speak.
There was a scattering of applause, even a few cheers, someone shouting a rope would be better.
Damn, it did feel like an old western, John thought, the crowd all but crying, “Lynch ’em!”
The crowd immediately broke up, many setting off for the park, some, especially those with children, staying behind. Long minutes passed, John silent, looking out the window.
He heard cursing from out in the corridor and crying. The two were being led out.
“We better go,” Charlie said, and opened the door.
John felt as if he were being led to his own execution. Could he do it? All those years in the army, the training, but never a shot in anger or even in detached professionalism, as they were told they should act. During Desert Storm he was XO of a battalion, but even there, he was in a command vehicle a couple miles behind the main line of advance, never on the actual firing line pulling the trigger.
He thought of the taunting rednecks back when he was in college, the frightful moment when rage drove him to the point that he might very well have shot one, and the shock of it afterwards… and then the shaking of hands with one of them only days later and a shared drink.
He was outside. The two were in the back of Jim Bartlett’s Volkswagen van, handcuffed, feet chained. The back of the van door was slammed shut, Tom up in the front seat with a drawn pistol, Reverend Richard Black crouched down between Jim and Tom.
John looked at the two as the door closed and realized when he made eye contact with Bruce, barely remembered but still a former student, there was one thing he could not do.
He saw Washington with Jeremiah and Phil and walked up to them.
“Washington, I need your help. God, do I need it,” and John told him.
Washington nodded, saying nothing, and got into the car with John, Kate, Phil, and Jeremiah squeezing into the backseat, Charlie up front with Washington and John.
The two vehicles set off and as they turned onto Montreat Road and then the side street over to the park, he saw people walking fast, heading for the park, others just standing there, staring.
“Killing is a sin!” someone shouted as he drove slowly, following the van that was dragging along at not more than five miles an hour.
It was like a damn procession out of the French Revolution, he thought.
They rolled down the steep hill to the corner of the park, a large crowd already gathered by the tennis courts and the concrete practice wall painted white, bits of paint flecking off.
The two were led out of the back of the van and all fell silent.
Swallowing hard, John stopped the car. He looked over at Washington.
“Just aim straight at the chest, sir,” Washington said. “You try for the head and you’re shaking at all you’ll miss. First shot to the chest, he’ll collapse. They don’t go flying around like in the movies; usually they just fall over or sag down to the ground. Once he’s on the ground, then empty the clip; just empty it. If you have your wits about you put the last shot into the head. Do you understand me, sir?”
Washington handed the Glock to him.
“A round is chambered.”
John nodded.
