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By Root 2064 0

any thing past her: she might even set fire to the whole penitentiary to stop them. He was a little surprised at himself for being so inwardly calm, so resigned; it wasn’t because he had any hope of once again being saved at the last minute but because he knew he would not be, and the only way to take it, this time, was to accept what Ernest had been preaching at him for several days now: “We ort not to fear nothin, not even that black thing they call death. Me and you will jist not be no more, but the whole world won’t be neither. It will go with us, Nail. The whole world will die when we die, don’t ye see? But it has to die sooner or later, I reckon, just as we’uns all do, so one time is about as good as another. That’s all time is. One time is as good as another.” The twelve witnesses, whoever they were this time, were sure going to be surprised to see both of them going to the chair so calmly. If the twelve witnesses were expecting any excitement from either one of them, they were going to be in for a letdown.

But there weren’t going to be twelve witnesses, or even nine. When the head-shaving was finished, the new warden himself came down into the death hole. Yeager had impressed Nail as just maybe a little bit nicer than Burdell, although Nail knew that any man who had been the boss at Tucker Farm had to be plenty tough, or else numbskulled, and Nail hadn’t seen enough of him to know which. Now Yeager was saying, “Good afternoon, gentlemen,” and Nail couldn’t tell whether he was saying “gentlemen” politely and friendly-like or just being sarcastic.

Nail heard Ernest say, “Howdy, Warden.” Nail just nodded his head at the warden politely, and the warden could see him, because they now had electricity down in the hole; or at least they had wired up one bulb that gave some illumination to the basement. It was one of the new warden’s “improvements.” Now they learned of another: the warden was offering them a “last meal.” “Just anything you want to eat hee hee,” the warden said, the end of his sentence sounding like some kind of half-cough, half-laugh.

At neither one of Nail’s previously scheduled executions had they offered him anything special to eat, or any special treatment, not even a final cigarette. He hadn’t had a smoke now for six months, and no longer craved one. He wondered where the warden got this idea of a special “last meal.” Probably he’d heard it was what they did in Tennessee or some civilized place. “Wal, I reckon I could set my teeth into a platter of chicken’n dumplins,” Nail said.

“Me, I’d like a real honest beefsteak,” Ernest said. “I aint never et me one of them afore.”

“We’ll see what we can do about them dumplins hee hee,” said Yeager. “Now, you boys ought to know somethin about tonight’s little entertainment hee hee. So I’m gonna tell y’all. First off, there won’t be no pack of reporters like last time. Just one, from the Gazette. Second off, there won’t be no twelve witnesses. New law says not but six, so that’s all y’all will get, okay?” The warden waited to see if either of them would comment on the new law, but neither of them did. “And third off hee hee,” the warden resumed, “there is a real good chance that the governor hisself will show up. I can’t promise nothin, but yes, I do believe he might appear, so I want you boys to behave yourselfs and be gentlemen, okay?” Nail nodded, and, since he heard nothing from the other cell, he assumed that Ernest was nodding also. “Now, if the governor does show up, I don’t want y’all to start in to yappin at him about clemency or nothin like that. He’s done made up his mind, and if y’all start beggin him and beggin him, it’ll just embarrass all of us hee hee. So I want y’all to just keep quiet, okay?” Again Nail assented by nodding. “Of course hee hee, if y’all want to holler when the power comes on, y’all just go ahead and holler, won’t nobody care. That’s expected of y’all anyhow hee hee, aint it?” Nail took the question to be rhetorical and did not even nod. The new warden went on, “I aint never watched a execution before, myself. You have, aint