An American Tragedy (127 page)

Again Miller Nicholson, a lawyer of Buffalo of perhaps forty years of age who was tall and slim and decidedly superior looking—a refined, intellectual type, one you would have said was no murderer—any more than Clyde—to look at, who, none-the-less was convicted of poisoning an old man of great wealth and afterwards attempting to convert his fortune to his own use. Yet decidedly with nothing in his look or manner, as Clyde felt, at least, which marked him as one so evil—a polite and courteous man, who, noting Clyde on the very first morning of his arrival here, approached and said: “Scared?” But in the most gentle and solicitous tone, as Clyde could hear and feel, even though he stood blank and icy—afraid almost to move—or think. Yet in this mood—and because he felt so truly done for, replying: “Yes, I guess I am.” But once it was out, wondering why he had said it (so weak a confession) and afterwards something in the man heartening him, wishing that he had not.

“Your name’s Griffiths, isn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“Well, my name’s Nicholson. Don’t be frightened. You’ll get used to it.” He achieved a cheerful, if wan smile. But his eyes—they did not seem like that—no smile there.

“I don’t suppose I’m so scared either,” replied Clyde, trying to modify his first, quick and unintended confession.

“Well, that’s good. Be game. We all have to be here—or the whole place would go crazy. Better breathe a little. Or walk fast. It’ll do you good.”

He moved away a few paces and began exercising his arms while Clyde stood there, saying—almost loudly—so shaken was he still: “We all have to be or the whole place would go crazy.” That was true, as he could see and feel after that first night. Crazy, indeed. Tortured to death, maybe, by being compelled to witness these terrible and completely destroying—and for each—impending tragedies. But how long would he have to endure this? How long would he?

In the course of a day or two, again he found this death house was not quite like that either—not all terror—on the surface at least. It was in reality—and in spite of impending death in every instance, a place of taunt and jibe and jest—even games, athletics, the stage—all forms of human contest of skill—or the arguments on every conceivable topic from death and women to lack of it, as far at least as the general low intelligence of the group permitted.

For the most part, as soon as breakfast was over—among those who were not called upon to join the first group for exercise, there were checkers or cards, two games that were played—not with a single set of checkers or a deck of cards between groups released from their cells, but by one of the ever present keepers providing two challenging prisoners (if it were checkers) with one checker-board but no checkers. They were not needed. Thereafter the opening move was called by one. “I move from G 2 to E 1”—each square being numbered—each side lettered. The moves checked with a pencil.

Thereafter the second party—having recorded this move on his own board and having studied the effect of it on his own general position, would call: “I move from E 7 to F 5.” If more of those present decided to join in this—either on one side or the other, additional boards and pencils were passed to each signifying his desire. Then Shorty Bristol, desiring to aid “Dutch” Swighort, three cells down, might call: “I wouldn’t do that, Dutch. Wait a minute, there’s a better move than that.” And so on with taunts, oaths, laughter, arguments, according to the varying fortunes and difficulties of the game. And so, too, with cards. These were played with each man locked in his cell, yet quite as successfully.

But Clyde did not care for cards—or for these jibing and coarse hours of conversation. There was for him—and with the exception of the speech of one—Nicholson—alone, too much ribald and even brutal talk which he could not appreciate. But he was drawn to Nicholson. He was beginning to think after a time—a few days—that this lawyer—his presence and companionship during the exercise hour—whenever they chanced to be in the same set—could help him to endure this. He was the most intelligent and respectable man here. The others were all so different—taciturn at times—and for the most part so sinister, crude or remote.

But then and that not more than a week after his coming here—and when, because of his interest in Nicholson, he was beginning to feel slightly sustained at least—the execution of Pasquale Cutrone, of Brooklyn, an Italian, convicted of the slaying of his brother for attempting to seduce his wife. He had one of the cells nearest the transverse passage, so Clyde learned after arriving, and had in part lost his mind from worrying. At any rate he was invariably left in his cell when the others—in groups of six—were taken for exercise. But the horror of his emaciated face, as Clyde passed and occasionally looked in—a face divided into three grim panels by two gutters or prison lines of misery that led from the eyes to the corners of the mouth.

Beginning with his, Clyde’s arrival, as he learned, Pasquale had began to pray night and day. For already, before that, he had been notified of the approximate date of his death which was to be within the week. And after that he was given to crawling up and down his cell on his hands and knees, kissing the floor, licking the feet of a brass Christ on a cross that had been given him. Also he was repeatedly visited by an Italian brother and sister fresh from Italy and for whose benefit at certain hours, he was removed to the old death house. But as all now whispered, Pasquale was mentally beyond any help that might lie in brothers or sisters.

All night long and all day long, when they were not present, he did this crawling to and fro and praying, and those who were awake and trying to read to pass the time, were compelled to listen to his mumbled prayers, the click of the beads of a rosary on which he was numbering numberless Our Fathers and Hail Marys.

And though there were voices which occasionally said; “Oh, for Christ’s sake—if he would only sleep a little”—still on, on. And the tap of his forehead on the floor—in prayer, until at last the fatal day preceding the one on which he was to die, when Pasquale was taken from his cell here and escorted to another in the old death house beyond and where, before the following morning, as Clyde later learned, last farewells, if any, were to be said. Also he was to be allowed a few hours in which to prepare his soul for his maker.

But throughout that night what a strange condition was this that settled upon all who were of this fatal room. Few ate any supper as the departing trays showed. There was silence—and after that mumbled prayers on the part of some—not so greatly removed by time from Pasquale’s fate, as they knew. One Italian, sentenced for the murder of a bank watchman, became hysterical, screamed, dashed the chair and table of his cell against the bars of his door, tore the sheets of his bed to shreds and even sought to strangle himself before eventually he was overpowered and removed to a cell in a different part of the building to be observed as to his sanity.

As for the others, throughout this excitement, one could hear them walking and mumbling or calling to the guards to do something. And as for Clyde, never having experienced or imagined such a scene, he was literally shivering with fear and horror. All through the last night of this man’s life he lay on his pallet, chasing phantoms. So this was what death was like here; men cried, prayed, they lost their minds—yet the deadly process was in no way halted, for all their terror. Instead, at ten o’clock and in order to quiet all those who were left, a cold lunch was brought in and offered—but with none eating save the Chinaman over the way.

And then at four the following morning—the keepers in charge of the deadly work coming silently along the main passage and drawing the heavy green curtains with which the cells were equipped so that none might see the fatal procession which was yet to return along the transverse passage from the old death house to the execution room. And yet with Clyde and all the others waking and sitting up at the sound.

It was here, the execution! The hour of death was at hand. This was the signal. In their separate cells, many of those who through fear or contrition, or because of innate religious convictions, had been recalled to some form of shielding or comforting faith, were upon their knees praying. Among the rest were others who merely walked or muttered. And still others who screamed from time to time in an incontrollable fever of terror.

As for Clyde he was numb and dumb. Almost thoughtless. They were going to kill that man in that other room in there. That chair—that chair that he had so greatly feared this long while was in there—was so close now. Yet his time as Jephson and his mother had told him was so long and distant as yet—if ever—ever it was to be—if ever—ever——

But now other sounds. Certain walkings to and fro. A cell door clanking somewhere. Then plainly the door leading from the old death house into this room opening—for there was a voice—several voices indistinct as yet. Then another voice a little clearer as if some one praying. That tell-tale shuffling of feet as a procession moved across and through that passage. “Lord have mercy. Christ have mercy.”

“Mary, Mother of Grace, Mary, Mother of Mercy, St. Michael, pray for me; my good Angel, pray for me.

“Holy Mary, pray for me; St. Joseph, pray for me. St. Ambrose, pray for me; all ye saints and angels, pray for me.”

“St. Michael, pray for me; my good Angel, pray for me.” It was the voice of the priest accompanying the doomed man and reciting a litany. Yet he was no longer in his right mind they said. And yet was not that his voice mumbling too? It was. Clyde could tell. He had heard it too much recently. And now that other door would be opened. He would be looking through it—this condemned man—so soon to be dead—at it—seeing it—that cap—those straps. Oh, he knew all about those by now though they should never come to be put upon him, maybe.

“Good-by, Cutrone!” It was a hoarse, shaky voice from some near-by cell—Clyde could not tell which. “Go to a better world than this.” And then other voices: “Good-by, Cutrone. God keep you—even though you can’t talk English.”

The procession had passed. That door was shut. He was in there now. They were strapping him in, no doubt. Asking him what more he had to say—he who was no longer quite right in his mind. Now the straps must be fastened on, surely. The cap pulled down. In a moment, a moment, surely——

And then, although Clyde did not know or notice at the moment—a sudden dimming of the lights in this room—as well as over the prison—an idiotic or thoughtless result of having one electric system to supply the death voltage and the incandescence of this and all other rooms. And instantly a voice calling:

“There she goes. That’s one. Well, it’s all over with him.”

And a second voice: “Yes, he’s topped off, poor devil.”

And then after the lapse of a minute perhaps, a second dimming lasting for thirty seconds—and finally a third dimming.

“There—sure—that’s the end now.”

“Yes. He knows what’s on the other side now.”

Thereafter silence—a deadly hush with later some murmured prayers here and there. But with Clyde cold and with a kind of shaking ague. He dared not think—let alone cry. So that’s how it was. They drew the curtains. And then—and then. He was gone now. Those three dimmings of the lights. Sure, those were the flashes. And after all those nights at prayer. Those moanings! Those beatings of his head! And only a minute ago he had been alive—walking by there. But now dead. And some day he—he!—how could he be sure that he would not? How could he?

He shook and shook, lying on his couch, face down. The keepers came and ran up the curtains—as sure and secure in their lives apparently as though there was no death in the world. And afterwards he could hear them talking—not to him so much—he had proved too reticent thus far—but to some of the others.

Poor Pasquale. This whole business of the death penalty was all wrong. The warden thought so. So did they. He was working to have it abolished.

But that man! His prayers! And now he was gone. His cell over there was empty and another man would be put in it—to go too, later. Some one—many—like Cutrone, like himself—had been in this one—on this pallet. He sat up—moved to the chair. But he—they—had sat on that—too. He stood up—only to sink down on the pallet again. “God! God! God! God!” he now exclaimed to himself—but not aloud—and yet not unlike that other man who had so terrorized him on the night of his arrival here and who was still here. But he would go too. And all of these others—and himself maybe—unless—unless——

He had seen his first man die.

IN THE meantime, however, Asa’s condition had remained serious, and it was four entire months before it was possible for him to sit up again or for Mrs. Griffiths to dream of resuming her lecturing scheme. But by that time, public interest in her and her son’s fate was considerably reduced. No Denver paper was interested to finance her return for anything she could do for them. And as for the public in the vicinity of the crime, it remembered Mrs. Griffiths and her son most clearly, and in so far as she was concerned, sympathetically—but only, on the other hand, to think of him as one who probably was guilty and in that case, being properly punished for his crime—that it would be as well if an appeal were not taken—or—if it were—that it be refused. These guilty criminals with their interminable appeals!

And with Clyde where he was, more and more executions—although as he found—and to his invariable horror, no one ever became used to such things there; farmhand Mowrer for the slaying of his former employer; officer Riordan for the slaying of his wife—and a fine upstanding officer too but a minute before his death; and afterwards, within the month, the going of the Chinaman, who seemed, for some reason, to endure a long time (and without a word in parting to any one—although it was well known that he spoke a few words of English). And after him Larry Donahue, the overseas soldier—with a grand call—just before the door closed behind: “Good-by boys. Good luck.”