three, always on the hour. We knew the chair was hot when the lights blinked once, twice, or maybe three times if the first jolt didnât finish a man. Otherwise they kept the lights on in the death house, to make a point that didnât really need making. They didnât have but one light switch for a man on the row. Preachers used to say that we know neither the day nor the hour, but a death house man knew both. Kilby had turned that bit of scripture into a lie.
We marched past the cemetery, where the graveyard crew boiled water for the unclaimed bodies. Because that winter ground was so hard, they poured steaming buckets over the cemetery dirt before they shoveled. Three gurneys lined the death house wall. Uly told me that when it was cold enough for the bodies to keep, theyâd leave them out on Friday and Saturday, covered under denim blankets until the funeral on Sunday morning. That was the day for our personal businessâvisitors, mail call, or getting buried.
The guards went only as far as the gatehouse, so we marched to the cell block on our own. We had plenty of people watching. The tower guards kept an eye out and so, too, did the visitors on the main house balconieswaiting for the executions. We were part of the same show, marching with our lines as sharp as the airmen on the parade grounds over at Gunter Air Base. The trusties had the big house looking its best. The camellias were blooming, and I thought the same thing I always thought when I saw them, that winter was the wrong time for flowers and Kilby was the wrong place.
I saw something on my first Friday that Iâd not seen in the days before it. When we got close to the death house, a few of the men slipped their rags from their pockets and tied them around their necks. Theyâd dipped those rags in kerosene we used for root burning, so the smell was still strong in their noses as we marched those last few yards to our block. Uly started on a fresh chaw of kudzu, rolling a few bits of torn leaves and a thick slice of root. Before we started to walk, he had told me to gather up the same, so I chewed on mine as well.
He had told me why, so I could be ready on that first walk and every one after. The bitters of the leaves and the starch of the root were enough to keep my stomach still when we walked past the chamber. Smokestacks lined the Kilby roof, and we all knew which one carried the air from the chair room. When that wind hit us, we couldnât help but know what was mixed in it, the last bit of breathing a man did when they strapped him in, and after that, the warm smell of his smoke.
Whenever I saw the lights blinking, I hoped he died on his first shot so he wouldnât have to live through his burning. The men in my crew stopped talking then, because whether we knew the dying man or not, it was only decent to be quiet if we couldnât be still. Polk stopped calling the cadence and just let the rustle of his leg guards keep the time.
Chapter 5
O n that first time Warden Duggan stood before us, those fresh off the bus from Ripley Street jail, he said that a man had to get used to his time inside, so we would have no visitors for sixty days. By the time I sat in that visiting room waiting for Mattie, the January cold was blowing in from every which way. I had prayed I would never feel another winter like the one Iâd had in Belgium the year before, but I had found one worse than Europe a few miles from home.
The visiting room was in the old denim factory. Blue lint still covered the rafters, and webs of it came down, shaken loose by the birds that nested up there. I could tell a man whoâd just come from seeing his people, because the blue dust colored his shoulders.
The cold and my nerves together had set my hands to shaking, so I did all I could to calm myself, or to look calm at least. A man couldnât show such things inside Kilbyâswalls, so I put my shaking hands tight against the plywood of the
We marched past the cemetery, where the graveyard crew boiled water for the unclaimed bodies. Because that winter ground was so hard, they poured steaming buckets over the cemetery dirt before they shoveled. Three gurneys lined the death house wall. Uly told me that when it was cold enough for the bodies to keep, theyâd leave them out on Friday and Saturday, covered under denim blankets until the funeral on Sunday morning. That was the day for our personal businessâvisitors, mail call, or getting buried.
The guards went only as far as the gatehouse, so we marched to the cell block on our own. We had plenty of people watching. The tower guards kept an eye out and so, too, did the visitors on the main house balconieswaiting for the executions. We were part of the same show, marching with our lines as sharp as the airmen on the parade grounds over at Gunter Air Base. The trusties had the big house looking its best. The camellias were blooming, and I thought the same thing I always thought when I saw them, that winter was the wrong time for flowers and Kilby was the wrong place.
I saw something on my first Friday that Iâd not seen in the days before it. When we got close to the death house, a few of the men slipped their rags from their pockets and tied them around their necks. Theyâd dipped those rags in kerosene we used for root burning, so the smell was still strong in their noses as we marched those last few yards to our block. Uly started on a fresh chaw of kudzu, rolling a few bits of torn leaves and a thick slice of root. Before we started to walk, he had told me to gather up the same, so I chewed on mine as well.
He had told me why, so I could be ready on that first walk and every one after. The bitters of the leaves and the starch of the root were enough to keep my stomach still when we walked past the chamber. Smokestacks lined the Kilby roof, and we all knew which one carried the air from the chair room. When that wind hit us, we couldnât help but know what was mixed in it, the last bit of breathing a man did when they strapped him in, and after that, the warm smell of his smoke.
Whenever I saw the lights blinking, I hoped he died on his first shot so he wouldnât have to live through his burning. The men in my crew stopped talking then, because whether we knew the dying man or not, it was only decent to be quiet if we couldnât be still. Polk stopped calling the cadence and just let the rustle of his leg guards keep the time.
Chapter 5
O n that first time Warden Duggan stood before us, those fresh off the bus from Ripley Street jail, he said that a man had to get used to his time inside, so we would have no visitors for sixty days. By the time I sat in that visiting room waiting for Mattie, the January cold was blowing in from every which way. I had prayed I would never feel another winter like the one Iâd had in Belgium the year before, but I had found one worse than Europe a few miles from home.
The visiting room was in the old denim factory. Blue lint still covered the rafters, and webs of it came down, shaken loose by the birds that nested up there. I could tell a man whoâd just come from seeing his people, because the blue dust colored his shoulders.
The cold and my nerves together had set my hands to shaking, so I did all I could to calm myself, or to look calm at least. A man couldnât show such things inside Kilbyâswalls, so I put my shaking hands tight against the plywood of the
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