Corner of Tenth and J, later that night.
STEVIE stands behind a microphone, JOHN’s cross nearby. Light from video crews, flashbulbs.
STEVIE: Can’t we get this monstrosity out of here?
People are tripping over it left and right.
This is blasphemy. This thing’s a scandal. [VOICES ad lib… ]
Quiet!—I’m sorry.—Goddamn you!—I’m sorry.
Here is the information we’ve got for you.
This evening, shortly after five p.m., an as-yet-unidentified prisoner overcame and stabbed to death a guard in the Walls Unit, who remains nameless until notification of family. Thereafter this prisoner gained access to the execution chamber in this corner of the unit, right behind me, and…
You have the statement. You have the statement…
[VOICES ad lib… ]
Now, Mrs. Blaine has asked to say a word, wife of William Blaine, who supervised our Teams in the unit there—She’s the wife of Will Blaine, a very special employee of, a very…
The wife of Will Blaine, the widow, the wife, the widow…President of the Texas Citizens for Victims’ Rights, Marsha Hollings Blaine.
MASHA comes up, well dressed, with well-coiffed, abundant hair.
VOICES ad lib…
MASHA: I say today an innocent has been killed!
Today is a Day of Judgment on us all!
[VOICES ad lib… ]
Look at you all!—like wasps on watermelon!
[VOICES ad lib… ]
Rahr! Rahr! Rahr!—like curs on carrion.
I LOST MY HUSBAND IN THAT PLACE TODAY.
…Maybe he’s in a better place. Who knows?
…Some people go around with this idea
The Milky Way is just some big machine,
And we’re being eaten alive by this machine,
Trodden down and gutted out and gobbled
And scattered out along beside the road
To fertilize the ditch, and that’s our fate:
And I say, God above, let it be so!
Let there be no Resurrection Day!
[VOICES ad lib… ]
LET THERE BE NO RESURRECTION DAY!
If Bill Jenks thinks that he can raise the dead—
Let him raise himself! WE’RE WAITING, BILL.
Let him raise someone, and then I’d say
That he was onto something—wouldn’t you?
[Of the cross] Look here, look where someone’s set up the means
Of execution in the gory Bible days.
Here they hung them after they’d been scourged.
You know what scourging was? They whipped the skin
Until it ripped, and then they whipped the muscles
Underneath, until their whips licked bone.
And then they hammered what was left up here,
And broke the legs of what was left, so that,
Without support, it slowly suffocated.
And that’s the boy the power of whose blood
You plead, an executed criminal…
[VOICES ad lib…]
LET MY HUSBAND ROT IN THE GROUND UNTIL HE’S MUSH,
Let him rot in the ground till he’s gravy,
Until he clarifies like honey in the heat
And dribbles into dirt that doesn’t feel
A thing or think a thought.
May the dirt I called my husband never wake,
May that dirt stay dead until the whole
Universe collapses into cinders,
May the weight of general emptiness
Strive and grind against itself and work
The cinders down to black, stupefied darkness,
May he be dead until the final thought of God,
As long as his assassins stay dead, too.
…When Texas trips the lever of the blade,
And that blade dives down through a killer’s neck,
And that neck pumps that evil blood six feet,
And that head goes rollin’ into the world,
What drives that blood is the beautiful heart of Texas,
And staring out of that head are the eyes of Texas.
The dead face of the killer we have killed—
This is the face of liberty and justice.
This is the beautiful face of liberty and justice!
Weeping, she makes a smile and strikes a pose.
BLACKOUT
- END -