The Execution

Death lived to be fed behind the green steel door. Death-- in all of its full fist-clenching, wisp-o'-smoke rising, purple foam-choking form. Knowing that the next clanging of the cold, metal keys, the next hollow footsteps he heard might be those of the guards leading him to his execution, prisoner number S0023 closed his eyes and prayed.

He opened them to absorb a scene more grotesque than his mind had previously been able to conjure. The slick, oaken chair, with a ghoulish henchman, soaking electrodes in a tub of brine behind it, loomed dark against the sea of foam grey walls.

Two guards adjusted electrodes to the prisoner's ankles and wrists as the condemned man slouched, staring at the five silence signs on the walls, the only forms of deference in an otherwise humanly debasing death ritual. A young, blond-haired man, in his thirties, adjusted the wet sponge and electrode to the prisoner's newly shaven head and placed a dark brown leather mask over his head and face, forever fading from his view the six official witnesses and five newspaper men, all seated on cement benches with brass spittoon "vomit pots" in front of them. Except for the bodies in it, the room was sterile, barren, hospital-deadly clean.

The young blond-haired executioner twisted a knob in the black box on the wall. Four times in a row the lights went up, then down, accompanied by a hum. The first turning was at 8;02 A.M.; the last was at 8:04 A.M. Dr. T. B. Miller, physician at the Mount Rock Prison, Rougher County, New York, examined the man in the chair.

"I pronounce Jerry Spade dead."

These were the only words spoken in the chamber except for those of Reverend Last. As the dream of death drew to a close, he continued to chant:

    "Though like the wanderer,
    the sun gone down
    Darkness be over me
    My rest a stone; yet in
    my dreams I'd be
    Nearer, my God, to Thee."

Nathan closed his eyes again and prayed, "Lord ..."

"Hey, Nathan, whaddya' doin'?" Vito Savio's Lower East Side savvy rang across the cell block from three doors down.

"Readin'."

"Reading' what?' joked Vito in a half-mouthed, half whisper, mocking his neighbor's fully hushed tones.

"I'm readin' that article you gave me when I firs' got here--you know, the one 'bout Jerry's execution. Boy, that article really did it for me, but I don't have to worry no more. They's goin' to get me some real help. I heard the lawyers talkin' in court during my second trial." Nathan spoke in tones barely audible. Little did he know that the guard standing watch on the row that very evening was the same guard who smuggled that New York News article of March 4th, 1962, in to Vito. Only the Bible and a few institutionally selected articles were allowed on Death Row in those days, and Nathan wasn't taking any chances.

"Whadda they gonna do for ya?" With pointed finger slid between the bars, Vito leaned his 5'8" slim, muscular frame forward, remembering all of the broken promises the D.A.'s had made to him in the past.

"Oh, listen to this. In the courtroom, during my trial, at the big, wooden table, Spears, the D.A., came over and shook Cain, my lawyer's hand. Then Cain said to him, "We'll run this along the lines of the Hatfield case." Cain finally did it that time; he finally stood up to that ol' Spears and tol' him how things were gonna' be for a change. Don't you know-- I got all excited inside, knowing that Cain was finally doin' somethin' for me."

Frantically, Vito began pacing there in his 8'x10' white-washed cell, his steel blue eyes flaring, as he ran his fingers through his wavy, dark,strictly-Italian hair. "No, no--they got you set up, those slimes. Don'tcha see, man? You're a sheep bein' led to the slaughter."

"What?!"

"Hatfield!"

"Who's Hatfield?"

"They executed him. Last year, they took him to the Pardons Board, the Pardons Board turned him down, and seven days later they fried him. Case closed."

"What?! I gotta get rid of that lawyer. Ol' dumb Nathan. They's probably sittin' somewheres laughin' 'bout me right now."

"Naaa, you ain't dumb. Those slimes played the same game with me. Tol' me if I pleaded guilty, they won't send me to the chair. And you see where we's both goin'."

"Yeah, Spears, that D.A., he tol' me that same story, too. Boy, oh boy, oh boy! Vito, how do I get rid of that lawyer and get me a new one?"

"Yo, don't worry, I got a plan. I'll write it down on paper and slide it on the floor to you." Nine years Nathan's senior, Vito was a seasoned veteran, who had learned how to play the game rather well. In fact, once, in the courtroom when he had played the game too well, even better than the D.A., the judge had accused him of "making a mockery of the justice system."

Nathan, on the other hand, had always had a childlike trust in people of authority, even though he was at times disobedient. Paradoxically, Vito Savio believed, it was this same trust that was leading prisoner number S0023 to the Electrocution Room, faster than you could call the state police to take him there.

As Nathan splashed water on his face from his ash green, toilet-face bowl combination, he glanced up into the piece-of-tin mirror on his grey-green walls. True, he looked the same--that same young, well-built, admittedly handsome black male, who had entered the system without bail two years earlier at the age of 20. Then again, on second glance, he felt that maybe his head was just a little too big, which is why the kids on Uber Street had called him "muscle-head", along with the fact that they feared his toughness and his willingness to do anything to protect those whom he loved. Still he was happy with his outward appearance, and the number of young females who had been attracted to him told him that it was justifiably so.

It was his internal nature he loathed--the person he was inside. After he was discharged from the Marines, he even believed that he had become "a real animal."

But now all of that had changed, too. It happened on December 26, 1963. Before Nathan went to sleep that dark December night, on his thinly-mattressed frame of steel, he prayed, as always. He asked God to give him strength, to let him see the next day. When he woke up on December 27th, he felt he was a different man, a man whose prayers God had answered, a man whom God had strenghthened.

Now, on March 7th, 1964, as he lay waiting, waiting for what seemed the inevitable, he couldn't help but reflect upon the events leading up to his dramatic conversion. It certainly was far better, a necessary escape route, than thinking about his fate in New York's leather-strapped death chamber.

On March 7th, 1963, Nathan remembered being transferred from the Bluetone County Prison to the Restricted Housing Unit, to the section known to the layman as Death Row, to the inmates as "the hole"...