Three days before an execution and the ghouls were all ready taking up spaces in the parking lot by the prison. Looking out I saw motor homes and people grilling making signs that said "Cole Burn in Hell!" Well they said Cole, but most of them had just duct taped his name over a blank spot. Ready to be taken apart and used next week when the teen age kid whose conviction on rape and murder charges would be taken up 13 steps and dropped, despite the fact that no one had bothered to check the DNA evidence that would acquit him.
Truth be told I think I'd rather walk through a busy street in Bagdhad with a USA flag jacket on, then walk through a crowd of these people. They had been taught to fear and to love their fear from the day they were born. Told too often that anyone other than them was strange and a stranger was a dangerous character. Told to stay in their homes and collect weapons for the day that the stranger would knock on their door and conditioned to stand their ground even if that person was just looking for directions or had come to there by mistake.
They were people infected with group think, who if given the chance would likely get a rope of their own and hang the next person they could. Then rejoice with a bud light and brat over a grill as the body cooled above them. Feeling that for just a moment they would be safe, not knowing that the people around them would turn in a heart beat and destroy them if they had reason to think that person had behaved in a manner they might find suspicious.
"Did it just get a bit colder in here?" Jon asked.
"Funny I was about to ask the same thing." Kat said.
"That's just the sensation of people getting rid of extra baggage, like their souls for example." I said as we passed by a checkpoint where a guard checked all our id's then waved us through. "Mind if I hang out here?" Jon asked as we got up to the imposing building.
How about you and Kat scout the hotel, get a line on the bar and see if there's anyone interesting to talk to about this." I said. Wanting to spare my team mates the horrors and psychic strain of a place like this.
"I'm with this idea." Jon said and Kat nodded. The effect of being in this places shadow seeming to wear on both of them. Not that I could be too critical. I was doing this stone cold sober and the dark gray edifice felt like it had a soul of it's own. Having contained so much misery and anger for years it couldn't help but have a spirit that reflected that.
I was escorted inside by two large guards dressed in blue fatigues. Past walls painted in a nice institutional style. if it wasn't for the large men and women dressed in fatigues carrying clubs you might think you were in school. Hell with today's zero tolerance policies aimed at students you probably would be at school.
This is where society dropped off what it considered to be it's trash. Men and women who basically suffered from the poor judgement to be born into poverty by and large. Where they were forced to earn a hard scrabble living, while being shown the best of the world being consumed by others. On their TV's they see mansions, fast cars yachts and a world of super models. While at home they had hot dogs wal mart soda and a 12 year old truck that may or may not get them to work every day.
Some of them took to making or selling drugs to earn quick cash to reach for that dream, only to get smacked down by a harsh reality of mandatory minimums and the side effects of years of legislation designed to keep people from being pharmecutical entrpeneurs. Once you got busted that conviction followed you and made it harder to get a job, and more difficult to get an education past whatever they may have gotten in public school.
We created a society where we had created a perpetual potential criminal class. The people who were too poor to get a good start, then forced to grovel for anything they could get. Meanwhile so scared of all the crime they see around them that they'd vote in anyone who said they would make it go away. Smiling as they saw tougher laws passed on crimes that had no victim never guessing that they might be staring down the barrel of the law themselves someday.
None dare call it a plan, but to my mind it smacked of social engineering of the worst sort. A permanant under class to be counted on as cheap labor and perpetual skapegoats.
Richard Cole was one of those people. He'd never got popped for drugs and only had one charge against him in his life prior to this. A bar fight that later got dropped when they shook hands and made up over it. He earned good money as a mechanic at a local garage.
Now he was walking in to give what was likely to be his last interview. Prior to coming to a very harsh stop on a rope.
Cole was a long lean man, with dark hair and a beard. He had the face of a man who had seen a lot and liked quite a bit of it. He struck me as a person who would have an easy smile. His arms resembled steel cable. Apparently while the state expedited his appeals he had made good on his old career by fixing vehicles in the Prison motor pool.
The guard sat him down then cuffed his hands to a round o ring on the floor. His arms were extended and his back bent. "There is no way that can be comfortable." I said.
"You're right. Now imagine a two hour meeting with your lawyer like this." He said and grinned. "Shit I don't mind around here good company is in short supply."
"Well I'll do my best to be good company." I said. "So how ya holding up?"
"Right now I'm fine, when they get me to the top of that gallows.. Well we'll see." Cole said with a tired smile.
"Think you're going there?" I asked.
"Shit." He said with an exasperated look. "The governors favorite past time is killing people, when the supreme court said the drugs in lethal injection were cruel and unusual he just brought back hanging." He shook his head. "I voted for him, man if that wasn't a huge mistake." He paused. "They sent better people than me to go die up there."
"What do you mean?" I asked.
"Paul Watson that guy what got hung the first time? you might have heard about that."
"Yeah, I heard it didn't go well."
"That's the polite way of saying they dropped him and the asshole hangman set the rope wrong, he struggled for 20 minutes." He shook his head. "They got rid of that idiot. The one they got now does it right, person drops, no muss no fuss." He looked up. "Sorry if I'm a little morbid."
"It's all good I can't imagine what I would feel if I was in your shoes.":
He grinned. "Yeah Paul was a good man, they said he killed his wife but all they had was circumstantial evidence. Hell they couldn't even place him at the scene and he had no defensive wounds. Any way Paul was in the army, a medic, so he volunteered in the sick bay here. Man could sew a set of stitches so clean you'd barely know you got cut a month later. Man shoulda been a doctor."
"I heard you didn't get the best legal representation." I said by way of asking a question.
"That's the polite way of saying my attorney was too drunk to file a motion to plea me down to a lesser charge. The fella was taking slugs from a hip flask in the front of the judge. Man sometimes I think I just walked into a world of bad luck."
I took a deep breath. It's kind of hard to see someone so well and truly fucked and not feel for him. Worse yet when there's jack you can do for him. "I heard the victim's mom wrote to the governor asking for clemency."
"Yeah Judy. Well shit we'd been neighbors since were kids. I can never forgive myself for what happened, I was just trying to scare off some bad guys who were beating up my friend. Then the gun went off and the damn round passed through that cardboard thick wood they used in her house. Her poor baby was dead before she hit the floor." He paused. "I can't make that right, never can. Shit if me getting hung would bring that girl back I'd step off the trap myself." There was a wetness to his eyes and he bent down to wipe them.
"Ain't it fucked when you don't know what's right?"
"Yeah, I don't know whats right, but I can't help but think that what they're doing to you is wrong." I replied.
"Would I sound less than contrite if I said I agreed with you?" He said.
"Nah, I think you'd sound like anyone in a well and truly fucked situation." I replied.
"Yeah." The guard walked back in. "Okay Cole times up for now."
Cole looked at me. "Gonna be there for the big show?"
"I got invited but I hadn't quite made up my mind." I replied.
"I'd appreciate it if you could, read some of your stuff. I think someone needs to know what happens." Cole said as the guard un shackled him from the O-ring.
"Okay for you I'll be there, meanwhile I'll hope something goes right for you."
"Thanks." He said and walked off. The door shutting behind with a bang that made me think of guns going off.
How the hell did this happen? People fuck up, mistakes happen. We all, in our time, pay a price. Should the price be your life? Maybe for a small select few, but for the likes of Richard Cole, or Paul Watson?
Not really. In my humble opinion. A guard opened the door and came in. "She's agreed to see you."
As I was walked out to my next interview I couldn't help but wonder, when did we got so scared of ourselves that we'd let our fellow citizens be murdered, in this case by the gross, to make us feel better. Worse yet, when had people who wanted to run the show decided that lives made for great political capital?
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