He locks the rectory door behind him, opens all the downstairs windows, removes the collar from his neck, and opens the topmost buttons of his shirt. He unloads Nell’s picnic basket in the kitchen, washes the dishes carefully, dries them one by one, and returns them to the basket, and on top of them he sets the rest of the pecan pie. Standing at the kitchen counter, he forces himself to eat: crackers with tuna.
He’d planned to be with Willie up until his execution at midnight, but after dinner Willie had said he’d rather be alone. Alone himself now, Hannigan isn’t sure how to fill the time. He wanders through the house before finally settling on the living room sofa; only when he is supine does he realize how tired he is; part of him would like never to have to move from here again.
He doesn’t shut his eyes, because he doesn’t want to fall asleep; instead he stares at the ceiling, which in the room’s dimness appears to have infinite depth, as if it were a space that he might float up into. He thinks of this morning, of Della Biggs and the magnitude of her distress. He thinks of Willie’s poor mother, whom he has visited in St. Martinville once before. He wonders if these women will ever recover from their grief, or if they will spend the rest of their lives aching with the singular pain of a mother who’s survived her child—the pain that his mother couldn’t endure.
He thinks of Willie, his earnest attempts to prepare himself for a death he’s never protested against, even as he’s plainly denied the crime. He pictures Willie the day they first met, Willie’s thin arms waving at him through the bars of his cell, calling him over to ask for a Bible. He pictures the look on Willie’s face as he considers a hand of cards. He pictures Willie tonight, eating his dinner, the calendar hanging on the bullpen wall behind him: October, a painting of cotton fields. He can see the dish of potatoes, nearly empty, the pastry crust of the pecan pie, Willie’s eyes closed, his brow untroubled. He sees Willie put his fork down, and sit back contented in his chair. He sees the ropy loop of a noose encircle the boy’s neck, sees the floor suddenly give way beneath his chair, sees him falling, falling, until snap! the rope is taut and Hannigan jerks awake.
He sits up, sweating. He puts his feet on the floor and leans forward. Oh, the whiskey beckons. He can taste its smoky peat, can feel the burning liquid rivering through his veins. What he would do now for that numb descent into oblivion! He stands, walks into the kitchen, takes the untouched bottle of Old Crow from the back of the pantry cabinet, and holds it up to the window. Moonlight glints in the dusty amber of the luring spirit inside, the stuff that smoothed his young adulthood into something he can’t remember.
He runs his finger around the wax seal. He should pray, he thinks, he should pray; it was prayer, at first, that saved him from the stuff. But when he shuts his eyes to speak to God, he finds he has nothing to say.
He gets a glass from the cabinet, fills it with ice, and brings both glass and bottle with him to the living room, where he sets them on the coffee table. He sits down on the sofa, and for a moment, he just looks at them in the darkness, the glass, the ice, the whiskey.