Sunday's Execution - Pt. 1

Logan couldn’t remember the last time someone knocked on his door. He was half-way into a boot when it happened. So infrequent were his guests that he sat staring at the door in disbelief, questioning whether he heard the knock at all. A second knock from the visitor dispelled his doubt. He stuffed his feet into his boots and shambled across his dusty wooden floor. This visitor, whoever they were, threw a wrench in an otherwise routinely pleasant Sunday morning for Logan: his favorite time of the week.

Sunday mornings were when Logan got up early, just as the sun was creeping over the hillside, to take his horse, Fresh Air, out to ride through a nearby canyon pass. He’d only had Fresh Air for about two years now, since she was a foal, but Logan couldn’t imagine a time before having her around. Before then, the days and weeks of his life congealed into a stifling frustration; an anvil of repetitious loneliness and muted contempt that he had become numb to. Now, only most days bled together. Fresh Air, with her dapple-gray coat and curious disposition, was divinely unique against the dusty yellows, browns, oranges, and reds of the prairie that stretched for miles beyond Logan’s homestead. She was a beacon. Sundays were the only days he didn’t work and the only times he felt in the mood to let Fresh out of the stable to do anything but graze in his humble pasture.

Whatever this visitor wanted, Logan thought, they better make it quick. He was a man of punctuality, and his horse would be missing him if he was too late. If someone was knocking on his door, he figured, it could only be one of two kinds of people.

One: Someone from work. While it had never happened before, this seemed the most likely answer. Logan didn’t have friends in town. The only people that spoke to him on a regular basis were those that he worked with.

Two: A busybody. These were rare, but they were the only people that dared speak to him beyond what was necessary. Some were pompous. Some were venomous. Some were just plain drunk. All of them, however, had the same intent: to ask questions about Logan’s work. The worst of these folks, the ones that made Logan’s stomach do flips, were the genuinely curious ones. These were the most uncommon of the bunch that would only approach Logan in secret.

“Do you think you’re doing the right thing?”

“You think you’re going to hell, mister?”

“What’s it feel like?”

“Do you ever have nightmares?”

Logan bristled as he recalled when that question was asked. He could hear it in his head as clearly as he heard the knock. It was a child that asked him, a little girl. Couldn’t have been older than seven, Logan reckoned. He was in the general goods store in town, picking up a few necessities. It was deathly quiet as the clerk, like most, wasn’t up to exchanging pleasantries with Logan. Then the question pierced the stagnant air. Before Logan could register the question, he turned and saw the little one. She stared up at him, gawking with big, blue, marble eyes. Almost as soon as Logan turned, the girl’s mother swooped in, grabbed the girl’s wrist and yanked her away, cautious herself to avoid Logan’s eye.

No, he remembered answering in his head, not anymore.

There was a third knock, an urgent rapping. Logan was brought back from his memory of the child. He stood, vacant, in front of his door. He was often prisoner to his own spiraling trains of thought, having only himself to keep him company for so long.

Logan opened his door and came face to chest with the town sheriff.

Sheriff Watson was a lumbering, hulk of a man. A head or two taller than most with the shape and mental fortitude of a barrel. Folks often joked, amicably so, that their Sheriff could take six shots to the chest and keep standing. Logan, being around the sheriff more than most, couldn’t validate that boast. He was almost positive that the sheriff hadn’t so much as fired a gun at another human being, much less been shot himself.

The sheriff had already begun to perspire in the wee hours of the morning. Sweat dripped in rivulets here and there across his forehead, over his red, cherub cheeks, and absorbed into his mustache. He wrung his poor sunhat out with both hands in an anxious fervor. He only met Logan’s eyes briefly before shifting his gaze just above Logan’s head. He opened his mouth to speak, his lips trembled, but he could not bring himself to start. Logan was one of the unlucky few who knew the sheriff’s true nature.

The two men stood on opposite sides of the threshold, unsure of what to say for too long, neither with the gift of gab. Instead of speaking, the sheriff patted his forehead and panted in the rising heat. Logan realized he’d need to be the one to start. “Sheriff. It’s a surprise. What can I do you for?”

The sheriff licked his lips. “B-bit of b-business, I’m afraid, uh, Winslow.” He quivered from behind his slick mustache.

“Didn’t think you came just to join me for breakfast.”

The sheriff swallowed uncomfortably at the thought. Logan was almost worried the sheriff’s meaty palms would tear his hat in two. “No…not today.”

“Can I get you something anyway? Coffee, or -?”

“Have you been readin’ the papers, Winslow?”

“Lately?”

“Uh, ayup, lately.”

“No. Can’t say I have.”

Logan told the sheriff the truth. He barely bothered himself with the goings on in the prairie and thought that the rest of the world were none of his concern. He had his life and he grew comfortable with it. Last he read, some highfalutin folks back east were trying to put his own profession out to pasture. He wasn’t interested in worrying about that day to day.

“Right, okay…have you heard of a feller by the name of Ephraim Johannsen?”

“I can’t say I have, no. He new in town or something?”

“No!”, the sheriff bleated, wide-eyed. “Well, sort of, but um…you need to meet him.”

“Okay.” Logan replied, confused. “Where is he?”

The oafish sheriff took a wide step to the left. About twenty feet back, next to the sheriff’s old mare, was a man, a prisoner, bound in chains on his hands and feet, dressed in rags. Logan was surprised he hadn’t noticed the delinquent before. His eyes and nostrils flared ever so subtly, betraying his cool demeanor. Shit, he thought, they really did bring work to me.

Ephraim, as sallow, dirty, and pitiable as any prisoner, found Logan’s eyes with fluid ease. Even with the distance between them, Logan felt the weight of the stare. While Logan was accustomed to stares, usually malicious or wary, this prisoner’s gaze was different. It was unemotional, glassy; as if he weren’t looking at Logan at all. A shiver beset him. He thought of the little girl from his memory again, of the brief eye contact he had with before she was whisked away.

It was a distant coyote call this time that brought Logan back to reality. He blinked and tore his gaze away from the prisoner. He saw the sheriff had taken to staring at his own shoes, waiting for Logan to say something, anything, to move this interaction along. Logan, never having to address a prisoner before, gave it his best shot. “Ephraim.” Logan nodded.

Ephraim didn’t respond. He merely continued staring.

“Ephraim Johannsen is a felon.” The sheriff remarked.

“I can see that. Sounds like my kind of customer.”

The sheriff grimaced at this as his stomach let out a sickly groan. It was clear from the get-go he didn’t want to be here, but his whole body seemed to not be able to stand it. Logan had long outgrown the self-consciousness of this reaction. Being around Logan always caused sheriff Watson’s bowels to go haywire. “The little d-devil…killed his own m-mother.” The sheriff balked.

Logan didn’t bat an eye at this. He didn’t much care what the bastard had done. He also grew out of that irrelevance. “What’s the man doing on my stoop, sheriff?” Logan asked, fearing he already knew the answer. The sheriff, through all his tremulousness, raised an eyebrow.

“You’re gonna execute him, Winslow.” The sheriff said.

Logan Winslow had been the executioner of Rock Springs for twenty-one years, since 1888, serving out the sentences passed down by the honorable hanging judge Horatio Thorndike. In his forty-two-year life, Logan had hung seventy-two people out of the hundred-and-twenty or so that Thorndike had sentenced to death. The ones that avoided the gallows usually stayed holed up in prison far longer than any man should. Thorndike was the only one in town that had any shred fondness for Logan. Apparently, according to Thorndike, it’s damn hard to find a good hangman, especially if you are as fervent about sending men to death as Thorndike was. Most hangmen would quit after a certain number or just couldn’t stand the ostracization by his peers. Logan was different. He had thicker skin, like an “armadilla!”, Thorndike would say. This was not out of a passion for justice or an outlet for some morbid lust. Truth is, it was the only thing Logan thought he was good at. His wandering mind often prevented him from focusing on much of anything. He failed spectacularly at every trade he attempted in youth. When the position for a hangman opened after the last one kicked the bucket, Logan was eager to give it a shot. He needed the money more than he needed a clear conscience, he figured. Turns out, you don’t need a particular skill set. You just put the hood on a fellow, pulled a lever, and went home.

Logan didn’t believe that Thorndike necessarily enjoyed sentencing men (and two women) to death. What Thorndike really enjoyed were the festivities. The spectacle. An execution was a goddamned party for Rock Springs and many towns like it all over the world. Nothing quite got the people in such a good mood as a hanging. There’d be folks picnicking, drinking in public, starting fights, ending fights with hugs. It wasn’t just a community event; it was widespread merrymaking leading up to and immediately after a man would lose his life. Sure as anything, people loved Thorndike for providing them with their communal opportunity to let off of steam. And, sure as the townsfolk loved Thorndike, Thorndike loved to join them. He’d be out there enjoying the fruits of his labor with his people, his community. Logan, of course, couldn’t do the same. He had to work. Someone had to pull the lever.

Despite being the enforcer, the man pulling the lever and kicking off the climax to the day’s events, Logan was a pariah. It’s one thing to sentence a man to death, that’s a-okay. It’s another to kill a man. A defenseless man. Logan thought he was past the insecurity of being a pariah, but one question always stuck with him and he could never quite make out a good answer. How do you love the execution, but hate the executioner?

This man, Ephraim, Logan’s purported seventy-second kill, was a first. A lawman had never come straight to his door to ask him to do his job. He was normally given his orders, the date, the name, and the offense, while he was serving his other job as one of the jailers. Another brainless job. Sit, hold the keys, make sure no one escapes. You can’t have an execution six days a week despite how much Thorndike might fantasize about it. There’s just not that many men deserving of the rope, unfortunately.

“What date’s the execution for?” Logan asked.

“Today. Soon as possible, I reckon.”

“This is from Thorndike?”

“Ayup. I just came from his office.”

“Naw, that can’t be right. We don’t do executions on Sunday. Everyone likes a hanging, but not right after church. Does anyone know?”

“No. Thorndike said this one’s off the books. No one knows.”

“What in the hell do you mean off the books?” Logan snapped. This was already taking too long.

The sheriff’s head bowed, like a scolded child. “This is just supposed to be between us lawmen and…you.” The Sheriff gulped, nervous.

“This isn’t right. This stinks to high hell, is what it does. I want you to get Thorndike out here and – “

“Have you read the papers, Winslow?” the sheriff butt in.

“No, I haven’t read any goddamn papers!” Logan barked.

The sheriff winced and backed away. Logan had one of the simplest jobs in the world and now this poor excuse for a sheriff was coming to muck up his morning with complications. Logan wasn’t sure if he heard Fresh Air’s impatient whinnying on the wind or if he was caught in his imagination again.

“Logan”, the sheriff steadied himself, “this m-man…” His lips puckered into a thin line, as if his body was silencing him unconsciously.

“Shit now, this man what?” Watson wiped sweat from his brow, shaking his head back and forth while he did. “This man what?” Logan repeated.

“This man’s already been hung twice!” Watson blurted out. He covered his mouth and clenched his eyes shut. Logan looked between the craven sheriff and the prisoner. Had he heard that right?

“What do you mean he’s already been hung twice?”

“It was in the papers –“

“Enough about the papers. Tell me what happened.”

-- Cont. in Pt. 2 --