“I’m prayin, I’m prayin, I’m prayin,” Toot-Toot said, holding his gnarled hands up. They looked like that famous engraving, you probably know the one I mean. “The Lord is my shepherd, so on ‘n so forth.”
“Who’s Bitterbuck got?” Harry asked. “We’re not going to have some Cherokee medicine man in here shaking his dick, are we?”
“Actually – ”
“Still prayin, still prayin, still gettin right with Jesus,” Toot overrode me.
“Shut up, you old gink,” Dean said.
“I’m prayin!”
“Then pray to yourself.”
“What’s keepin you guys?” Brutal hollered in from the storage room. That had also been emptied for our use. We were in the killing zone again, all right; it was a thing you could almost smell.
“Hold your friggin water!” Harry yelled back. “Don’t be so goddam impatient!”
“Prayin,” Toot said, grinning his unpleasant sunken grin. “Prayin for patience, just a little goddam patience.”
“Actually, Bitterbuck’s a Christian – he says,” I told them, “and he’s perfectly happy with the Baptist guy who came for Tillman Clark. Schuster, his name is. I like him, too. He’s fast, and he doesn’t get them all worked up. On your feet, Toot. You prayed enough for one day.”
“Walkin,” Toot said. “Walkin again, walkin again, yes sir, walkin on the Green Mile.”
Short as he was, he still had to duck a little to get through the door on the far side of the office. The rest of us had to duck even more. This was a vulnerable time with a real prisoner, and when I looked across to the platform where Old Sparky stood and saw Brutal with his gun drawn, I nodded with satisfaction.
Just right.
Toot-Toot went down the steps and stopped. The folding wooden chairs, about forty of them, were already in place. Bitterbuck would cross to the platform on an angle that would keep him safely away from the seated spectators, and half a dozen guards would be added for insurance. Bill Dodge would be in charge of those. We had never had a witness menaced by a condemned prisoner in spite of what was, admittedly, a raw set-up, and that was how I meant to keep it.
“Ready, boys?” Toot asked when we were back in our original formation at the foot of the stairs leading down from my office. I nodded, and we walked to the platform. What we looked like more than anything, I often thought, was a color-guard that had forgotten its flag.
“What am I supposed to do?” Percy called from behind the wire mesh between the storage room and the switch room.
“Watch and learn,” I called back.
“And keep yer hands off yer wiener,” Harry muttered. Toot-Toot heard him, though, and cackled.
We escorted him up onto the platform and Toot turned around on his own – the old vet in action. “Sittin down,” he said, “sittin down. sittin down, takin a seat in Old Sparky’s lap.”
I dropped to my right knee before his right leg. Dean dropped to his left knee before his left leg. It was at this point we ourselves would be most vulnerable to physical attack, should the condemned man go berserk, which, every now and then, they did. We both turned the cocked knee slightly inward, to protect the crotch area. We dropped our chins to protect our throats. And, of course, we moved to secure the ankles and neutralize the danger as fast as we could. The Chief would be wearing slippers when he took his final promenade, but “it could have been worse” isn’t much comfort to a man with a ruptured larynx.
Or writhing on the floor with his balls swelling up to the size of Mason jars, for that matter, while forty or so spectators – many of them gentlemen of the press – sit in those Grange-hall chairs, watching the whole thing.
We clamped Toot-Toot’s ankles. The clamp on Dean’s side was slightly bigger, because it carried the juice. When Bitterbuck sat down tomorrow night, he would do so with a shaved left calf. Indians have very little body-hair as a rule, but we would take no chances.
While we were clamping Toot-Toots ankles, Brutal secured his right wrist. Harry stepped smoothly forward and clamped the left. When they were done, Harry nodded to Brutal, and Brutal called back to Van Hay: “Roll on one!”