The Summons
by Jeffrey Greene
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Table of Contents parts 1, 2, 3 |
conclusion
It reminded him of a table he had once seen in the Burn Unit of the hospital, used to irrigate the patient’s burns. The surface was like a shallow trough, with raised sides to contain the water, but instead of a drain in the center, there was a large hole. At one end of the table was a steel crank; peering underneath, Mr. Aaron could see that it was joined to a long screw connected to a pair of padded clamps bordering the underside of the hole.
“Almost time,” said Varnadore, checking his watch. “Now, if you’ll just stand right here, facing the stairway door.” He pointed to a spot about ten feet behind the table, so that someone coming out of the stairway door would see the table and, at a midpoint behind it, the robed and hooded figure of Mr. Aaron.
When he made no move to obey, Varnadore took him by the arm. He shook it off and backed away. “I have a right to know what this is all about,” he almost shouted, trembling with indignation. “Now, you will please tell me what the Hell is going on here or, so help me, I’ll... walk out that door!”
“Of course you have a right to know, Mr. Aaron,” he replied, addressing him by name for the first time. “Liberties have been taken with your patience. In your position I would feel the same way. But it is your — I hesitate to say misfortune — to be the test case of a new policy, one that I had no voice in formulating. I am only a functionary, a processor like yourself.
“Perhaps we are somewhat alike: both of us efficient, performing our respective functions in the strictest accordance with procedure. So acutely sensitive am I to the form of things, that it is causing me actual physical pain to see you standing where you are instead of in the place prescribed by law, the law, Mr. Aaron, that it has been my privilege to serve for over thirty years. So will you indulge me by standing over there while I talk? Thank you.
“In our time, involvement in all phases of the judicial process has become the civic duty of every citizen. Unfortunately, there are unpleasant but necessary tasks that many otherwise responsible citizens try to avoid. They agonize, prevaricate, call in sick, and thus slow the mechanism of justice. Recently, powerful voices in the District lobbied for a change. Why cause the citizen needless suffering, who after all has committed no crime? Simply summon him, they urged, and when the moment is ripe, make his duty clear to him. That policy is now in effect, and you, Mr. Aaron, for no other reason than that your name heads an alphabetical listing of District One residents, have been chosen to carry out a sentence of death.”
The last phrase seemed to enter his flesh like a paralyzing dart. He had no time to contemplate his position, however, for at that moment the stairway door flew open, and with a rattling of chains, scuffling feet, and shouted curses, a struggling knot of five men lurched into the room.
Four of the men were uniformed guards. The fifth was a very tall man in gray coveralls, with a shaved head and skin the color of ashes. The flesh had wasted away from a big bony frame, but he was still considerably larger than any of the guards, whose combined strength was only slightly superior to his, though his wrists were handcuffed behind him and his ankles chained.
The guards were doing all the cursing. The prisoner had been silent except for deep-chested grunts uttered while throwing his head back and forth in desperate attempts to butt the heads of the guards, but when he caught sight of the table and the two figures standing behind it, he gave vent to an animal scream that reverberated in the chamber and completely unnerved Mr. Aaron, who was panting like a winded runner under the suffocating hood.
Varnadore might have been back at his desk in the gray room, so unaffected was he by the screams and the struggle. “It’s a curious thing,” he observed in a neutral tone. “One condemned man looks very much like another.”
The sight of the table, whatever its purpose, seemed to give the prisoner new strength. He was dragging the four guards back toward the door, when a fifth guard, who had just entered the room carrying a gallon can and what looked like a club, placed them carefully on the floor, drew a blackjack from his pocket and knocked the prisoner senseless. They dragged him to the table while the fifth guard followed with the can and the club. They slid him underneath the table, then crawled under it themselves and lifted him up so that he was on his knees with his head protruding through the hole.
The fifth guard, who Mr. Aaron now realized was a woman with closely cropped hair, a hard masculine jaw, flat chest and short, thick limbs, turned the crank on the side of the table until the clamps were tight enough to hold the prisoner’s neck in place but not enough to constrict his windpipe.
For a moment the only sounds in the room were the squeaking of the crank and the labored breathing of the condemned man. His eyelids fluttered; he moaned. An egg-sized lump was rising on his forehead. At a signal from Varnadore, four of the guards left the room.
The fifth guard unscrewed the lid of the can and began to dowse the condemned man’s head and body with a fluid, the wafting fumes of which reached Mr. Aaron even through the foul-smelling hood: it was gasoline. The man’s eyes jerked open, then squeezed tightly shut as the gasoline ran into them. He drove his shoulders upward with all his strength against the bottom of the table, but in his position he could get no leverage, nor could he pull his head back through the hole, though he was lacerating the skin of his neck in repeated attempts. He could do no more than wince, curse, and spit out gas as she sloshed it in his face, until his head, neck, clothes, and the surface of the table were thoroughly soaked.
Her methodical movements and expressionless face presented an appalling contrast to the contorted features of the condemned man, who foamed at the mouth with curses and cries for mercy, his face purple, the veins standing out in his neck and forehead as again and again he abandoned speech to rend the air with screams in which terror and rage were equally mingled.
Mr. Aaron could hardly bear to listen any longer, and it took everything he had to keep his place, especially when she picked up what he now saw was a torch and ceremoniously presented it to him. She waited patiently as his arm slowly extended and his fingers closed on it, then bowed formally, took a step back, about-faced and marched to the other end of the room, where she flicked a switch that turned on a big attic fan almost directly over the table. The steel shutters concealing it opened, revealing gray sky through the whirling blades, which pulled the air upward in a strong draft that he could feel on his hands. Then she, too, left the room.
Varnadore stepped behind him, and he felt a gentle tug on the robe; looking down, he saw a hand indicating a vent in the fabric that allowed access to his coat pocket. Almost in his ear he heard the sibilant voice say, “The lighter,” even though the roar of the fan had all but drowned out the condemned man’s cries. He reached into his pocket and pulled out the lighter, holding it in a tightly-clenched fist at his side.
He heard the voice again, this time in a stage whisper that seemed to locate itself inside his head:
“I’m exceeding my authority by telling you this, but I think it might help you to see your duty. You may not recognize the prisoner, although he is notorious. He was convicted by an impartial jury of crimes so atrocious, that were you to know the particulars of the least of them, you would first be nauseous, then filled with an anger that might well turn into vengeful fury, in which case I would be forced to restrain you from too-zealously performing an office that must in its very essence be neutral, divorced from all emotion.
“True, the sentence is harsh, but be assured it fits his crimes. Nor can I deny you your ethical stance, but remember this: whether you favor the death sentence or bitterly oppose it is irrelevant now. Under these robes you are nothing less the the gloved hand of the Law, here to dispense justice. And where would any of us be if our hands had wills of their own?”
The condemned man had apparently worn himself out screaming. His head lolled and his lips moved as if he were mouthing a prayer. A puddle had formed between his knees, and he shuddered as with fever. Mr. Aaron stared at the shaved head protruding from the table, trying desperately to perceive it as unrelated to the body below, something already dead: the mounted head of a monster that was being burned as part of a ritual or invocation to the gods of justice, but it was impossible. The fear possessing the man’s body had only augmented his life energies. His bowels had apparently loosened; a stench more potent than the gasoline assailed the executioner.
Mr. Aaron felt the lighter, slick with sweat in his left hand, and the pine torch wrapped in kerosene-soaked rags in the other. He had only to throw it on the table and in a few moments, after hideous struggles, one more cancerous spot of evil in the world would be removed and cauterized. So simple, yet his hands shook as uncontrollably as the condemned man’s, and the sweat streaming down his face and under his clothes had grown cold. Feeling Varnadore’s eyes on his back, he raised the lighter and flicked it.
The flame guttered in the updraft and, as he ignited the torch, the red, rolling eyes of the condemned man fastened on his and widened. The human semblance was obliterated by the most abject terror he had ever seen in a human face. The condemned man shook his head back and forth, repeating, “NO-NO!” and “NO!” in a hoarse pathetic screech, the words bursting from him as if from a high-pressure hose, voice rising to a squeal as Mr. Aaron raised the torch to throw it.
With his arm extended and his body poised to leap backward to escape the flare-up, the thought passed through his mind: What a coward you are. A coward from a race of cowards. He saw himself as he was: a round-shouldered, middle-aged clerk sweating in the robes of an executioner, lured to this moment by a ruse of the State but also by a lifelong reflex of obedience.
He lowered the torch and turned to face Varnadore. “I won’t do it,” he said, flinching even before the processor of executions glared and spat out, “What!?” Mr. Aaron’s response was to throw the torch across the room, where it burned harmlessly on the tile floor. The color rose in Varnadore’s face, and Mr. Aaron took a step backward in anticipation of some explosive reaction.
But when Vernadore spoke, his voice, though edged with annoyance, was calm, almost resigned. “You refuse, then?”
Mr. Aaron nodded. “Will I be arrested?”
“Follow me,” Vernadore replied, walking briskly toward the door and not once glancing at the condemned man, who was craning his head to follow his exit, an expression of shocked bewilderment on his face, his mouth working but no sound coming out. As Mr. Aaron hurried to follow him, holding his robe to keep from tripping, he felt oddly embarrassed under the prisoner’s gaze, as if, having failed in his office, he was now a comical figure.
The five guards were playing poker in the stairwell when Varnadore charged into their midst so quickly that they had no time to grab their winnings and leap to attention. Standing on a pile of crumpled bills and playing cards, he waited until they were stiffly at attention, then said icily: “Return the prisoner to his cell, then report to my office.”
In the elevator, after the immense relief of removing the robe and returning it to the closet, Mr. Aaron again asked if was going to be arrested.
“There is no law against refusing to carry out an execution... yet,” was the testy reply. “Nor will you be subject to official disapproval. Only official... disappointment. There is a minor formality, however, before you can be dismissed.”
When they arrived at his office, he produced a bulky form with several carbon copies and asked him to sign it. “You’re welcome to read it, but what it says in effect is that you are aware that by not carrying out the execution you are relegating the responsibility to someone else.”
“You mean someone else will be summoned to—”
“Oh yes. The next name on the list. Aarons, Aaronson, whoever.” He was gazing steadily at him, smiling his counterfeit of a smile.
“Everything repeated,” Mr. Aaron said, appalled. “The prisoner put through that again.”
“And again, and again, and again...” said Varnadore, almost dreamily. “Until we find someone who won’t refuse.”
Shivering in the icy room and eager to be gone, he signed it. Varnadore tore off the bottom copy and handed it to him. “Keep this for your records,” he said in a tone of dismissal. “Good day.” He walked quickly to the elevator.
Before the doors closed, Mr. Aaron saw Varnadore bent over some paperwork, blended back into his gray habitat, where he would sit in cold stasis until the elevator brought the next piece of business.
It had rained during the morning and the air was moist and cool. He luxuriated in the brisk wind blowing through his damp clothes, the sweet smell of the sycamores, leaves crunching underfoot. He searched for a secluded spot in the park. With the Hall of Justice rising above the trees behind him, he unfolded the paper Varnadore had given him, knelt down and set fire to it. His nervous glances continually shifted from the flames to all directions of the park. Though he kept looking long after the wind had scattered the ashes, there was no one watching.
Copyright © 2024 by Jeffrey Greene
