Mr. Cunningham steers both Gabe and Buddy through the crowd by their necks. The other three men walk up ahead, pushing through the throng. The close press of bodies, the stink and heat, the din of voices—it’s all dizzying. But Gabe walks obediently where Mr. Cunningham directs him; he understands that he doesn’t have a choice.
Pope and the other two men stop in the far corner of the green, beneath the limbs of a water oak. Gabe looks up at the broad branches. A gallows, yes, but also an escape. He tries to shrug himself out from beneath Mr. Cunningham’s hand, but his movement only makes the man’s grip tighten around his neck. Gabe twists his head up in surprise; Mr. Cunningham squints down at him suspiciously. “Just where you think you’re going, boy?”
“Nowhere, sir. I mean, I thought I’d climb the tree, if that’s OK, sir.”
Mr. Cunningham looks from Gabe to the tree above them. Then he releases his grip, half shoving Gabe forward as he does.
Gabe hoists himself up into the branches. He scrapes his knee against the rough bark as he climbs, but he hardly notices, grateful to be out of the crowd, away from his companions.
From above, the mob of spectators seems like an odd pattern of heads and shoulders, shadows and artificial light from the streetlamps circling the green. It is larger than any crowd Gabe has seen before. The sidewalk near the jail has been cordoned off, and deputies stand guard. Nearby, Gabe can see a truck parked in the street, its back open, wires snaking out and up the side of the building, and Gabe understands that these will zap the life out of Willie Jones. He follows the wires in his imagination through the window and into that second-floor room, where he can see the deadly chair, the straps and buckles, a cloaked executioner, smoke and sparks. His father, too. Got that nigger just what he deserves.
Suddenly, the chatter of voices rises; heads begin to turn in one direction. Gabe looks that way, too, and sees a black car approaching from down the street, moving slowly as the people in the street give way. They do so solemnly, almost respectfully, it seems to Gabe, even though they’re here to see the man inside die.
The car pulls up against the curb outside the jail, and the back door opens. A deputy climbs out first, followed by Willie Jones. He is tall, thin, his head shaved bare. His hands and ankles are bound together, and his posture is one of weary defeat, his head lowered, his shoulders limp. A big man climbs out of the car last, after Willie. He wears a uniform of navy blue, someone more powerful than an ordinary deputy. This man puts a hand on the small of Willie’s back and begins to steer him across the sidewalk.
There is a commotion, then, as the deputies lining the barrier converge around a man who has stepped onto the sidewalk into Willie’s path. The big man in the uniform drops his hand from Willie’s back and steps forward, gestures the deputies back to their places with angry motions of his hands; they obey. The man stands where he was, unmoving in the middle of the sidewalk, where Willie has also stopped. The man is built like Willie, but thinner, older; there is no doubt in Gabe’s mind that he is Willie’s father.
The man steps forward and takes Willie in his arms, holding Willie’s bald skull in the palm of his hand, his long fingers spread wide around Willie’s scalp. Willie’s face rests against the old man’s shoulder. How familiar to each other they must be, Gabe thinks—that skull the same one the old man cupped his hand around when Willie was a baby, the crevice between the older man’s neck and shoulder the same one Willie wept on as a boy. Gabe thinks of his own father’s shoulder, the ledge of collarbone, the cedar scent of his shaving cream, the crisp fabric of his shirt, and he feels his throat tighten. He shuts his eyes. He doesn’t want to be here. He doesn’t want to see. He would give anything, he thinks, to stop this thing from happening.