It doesn’t take long to drive the twelve miles to St. Martinville from New Iberia. The main road leads them to the center of town, where the parish courthouse stands in a dry expanse of lawn. A grand white building with a triangular roof, it has an overhang supported by large scrolled columns. The jail stands behind it.
They park on the street, and Lane cuts the engine. Seward takes a sip from his flask and opens the truck door, then slides himself to the ground. Lane stays in the driver’s seat, hands on the steering wheel, staring at the branches of a tree outside. He can smell the woman on his hands, and her vanilla scent also wafts up from his chest, where her sweat mingled with his. He wishes he could shower.
Soon he hears the captain yell for him; he slides out of the truck and goes around to the back. Seward has opened the trailer, and is readying himself to climb inside. “Let’s do this,” he says.
As the two wrestle the chair to the ground, a crowd starts to gather. Men stand muttering in small groups near the jail, a handful of children, too, up late for the occasion. Some have climbed into the tree directly overhead, knocking acorns loose in their ascent. They squat in the branches like little monkeys, transfixed. Their presence makes Lane edgy, as complicit in this endeavor as the other men involved.
Two deputies from the St. Martinville jail stand by uselessly as Lane and the captain set the chair on the ground. Seward turns to them, wiping his forehead with the back of his arm. He is sweating copiously, nearly wheezing, and Lane wonders if the man might keel over. “All right,” the captain says. “Where’s this baby go?”
One of the deputies gestures over his shoulder toward the jail. “In there,” he says. “Second floor.”
Seward looks at the deputies with distaste. “My back ain’t fit fer the task,” he says, motioning the two men toward the chair. “I’ll carry the wires.”
Lane and the deputies lift the chair awkwardly. They tilt the whole thing back and struggle with it to the entrance of the jail, each deputy bearing a leg, and Lane the seat back. The death mask stares at him grimly.
It takes a few attempts to maneuver the chair through the jail doorway. Seward barks orders, curses. He has lit a cigar, and Lane finds the smoke nauseating. He grits his teeth, his skin slick, his body pulsing with heat. He feels weak from lack of food, and wishes he’d had more to eat, yet when he thinks of the jerky in his pocket, he retches. A man will soon be killed in this chair. He does not want to think of it, but even when he tries to turn his mind to the task at hand, the thought is there. A man will soon be killed in this chair.
On the third attempt, they get the chair through the doorway. Lane and the deputies set the chair down at the bottom of a narrow staircase, where they rest for a moment as the captain climbs up the steps ahead of them, carrying a coil of wires over his arm. Because of his limp, he takes the stairs like a young child, leading with the right foot, following with the left, his shirt back stained thoroughly with sweat.
In a moment, according to some unspoken cue, the three men lift the chair again and carry it clumsily up the stairs. The staircase turns three times, and each time the legs get caught, or the seat back hits the wall. “Back left room,” one of the deputies pants, at the top of the stairs, and the men carry the chair down the hallway, past three cell doors with tiny barred windows. Lane can’t see through them, but he has the distinct impression that there are prisoners inside, watching them, staring out.
The room designated for the execution is small and cramped, about double the size of Lane’s cell back at Angola, which he can cross in three strides. It is lit dimly by an overhead light, in which Lane can see the shadows of dead flies caught by the celluloid covering. Seward is at the back of the room, his upper half out the window; at the sound of their entrance, he pulls himself inside. To Lane’s relief, the cigar has gone out. “Set it here,” the captain orders, pointing with the butt of the cigar. “Back to the window. That way we kin run the wires out to the truck.”
Lane and the deputies set the chair as instructed. “All right,” Seward says. He ties the ends of the wires to an arm of the chair and tosses the coil out the window, where the black cables unspool to the ground. “Let’s hook ’er up,” he says. He looks at Lane. “Come on, trusty.”
Lane follows the captain back out to the truck. There’s still an hour until midnight, but the crowd around the jail has gotten large. Lane observes the gathered people; earlier they were quiet and staring, but now they are talking loudly, giving only half their attention to the ghastly entertainment.
“Wait here,” Seward says, when they have reached the truck. He takes a pull of his whiskey and hauls himself with great effort up into the trailer. Inside, he turns around. “Give me them wires,” he orders.
Lane collects the ends of the cables from where they have tumbled to the ground. He hands them to Seward, who takes them deep inside the trailer, to the generator in the back. Soon, he emerges again, and lowers to the ground a green steel switchboard with several needle dials across the front. “Generator’s connected,” the captain reports. “Now I’m a take that up and connect the other end.” He sits down on the trailer floor and slides to the ground. “When I say OK, you fire her up, see how she runs.”
“Sir?”
“Red button on the side. Even a fool like you kin figure it out.”
Seward lifts the switchboard and takes it toward the jail. Slowly, Lane climbs into the trailer, which seems much larger without the chair inside. He walks back to the generator and sits down beside it in the dark, waiting for the captain’s cue. He looks out through the trailer’s doorway, which frames the crowd; the children in the trees; and the cables, running like deadly snakes across the dirt and up through the jailhouse window.