He isn’t sure how long he has been lying there when he hears footsteps coming down the hallway toward his cell. He can tell from the gait that they belong to Sheriff Grazer, and what he feels isn’t fear as much as a speeding up, a surge of the heart and a skittering of the mind so quick he doesn’t have a chance to register his thoughts.
Grazer appears on the other side of the cell door. “Well, bald Willie,” he says, working the key in the lock. He swings the door open and steps inside.
“Is it time?” Willie asks, sitting up. His voice is a near whisper.
The sheriff looks at his watch. “Soon,” he says. “But not quite.” He tosses a package wrapped in brown paper onto Willie’s cot. “Fresh set of clothes,” he says.
Willie eyes the package, wondering what it matters, if the clothes he dies in are fresh or dirty.
Grazer opens his hands, as if Willie had spoken his thoughts aloud. “It’s the policy, don’t ask me why,” he says. “Get changed into those and I’ll come get you for the ride over.” He sniffs, steps out of the cell. He pulls the barred door shut; it hits the door frame with a familiar clank. It’s the last time he’ll ever hear that noise, Willie thinks, the last time he’ll hear the clank and rattle that have kept him these months locked inside. Something about this realization makes his insides plummet the same way they do right before you let go of a rope swing in midair, the terror and excitement indistinguishable.
Grazer pauses before turning to walk down the hallway, gripping the bars of the cell as he looks inside. He shakes his head. “Damn strange to think you gonna be dead in just a few hours’ time.”
Willie looks at the sheriff in the dim light, thinking of the first time they met, how stunned the sheriff had seemed at the sight of him, as if awaiting a different convict. It seems like a lifetime ago, a lifetime of hunger, heat, boredom, fear. Now here they are. All he has left to suffer is the chair—and then … He doesn’t know. He can feel his pulse skip at the thought. “I reckon it is,” he says, finally, and with shaking hands he reaches for the clothes.