Sunday's Execution - Pt. 3

His mother should have taught that it’s rude to stare before he killed her, Logan thought. He decided to say as much, thinking it clever.

“I don’t mean nuthin’ by it.” Ephraim said, frankly. “Yer just not like those other hangmen.”

“How’s that?”

“Well, I done met three hangmen so far, includin’ yerself. The other two were so damn…hm…what’s a good word? They took themselves serious-like. Holy-like.”

“Reverent?”

“Sure. Yer just not like that, I don’t think.”

Logan sat himself on his front stoop.

“No, I don’t suppose I am.”

“Pro’bly better that way.”

Ephraim mirrored Logan and sat flat on the ground. They now both stared off towards town. The morning yawned on. People were now bustling about, funneling into the church. Logan’s house was far enough away to where no one, even if they deigned to look in his direction, could make out much of what was going on.

“You a god-fearin’ man at all, Logan?” Ephraim asked.

“Not in particular, Ephraim. Figure you might not be either, killing your mother and all.”

“Aw hell, I didn’t kill her.” Ephraim confessed. “Not sure how she died, really. She was just out in the garden and done fell over.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“Have I lied yet?”

Logan reflected. No, Logan thought, you sure haven’t.

“Anyway,” Ephraim continued, “when she died, I went to one of the deputies in my town and told him I’d done it.”

“Why?” Logan scoffed.

“I wanted to be killed, dummy.” Ephraim remarked, as if it were something people said all the time.

Logan felt a strange guilt knot up in his stomach. Had he really tried to execute an innocent man? He never thought about that before. Sure, he knew that some folks were wrongly convicted, but he always figured that they got off and that the men he hung were guilty. Were some of those men innocent? He’d hung so many people. More people means more of a possibility that one of them was actually innocent, he figured to himself. He dug at the dirt with the muzzle of the pistol. He swallowed as his mouth began to fill with an excess of saliva.  

He forced the thought from his mind. He instead wondered listlessly about Ephraim’s “condition”. He couldn’t die or he was very difficult to kill. There has to be an explanation. How many others out there were like him? Would he have to deal with this again? How much more complicated could his job be?

While Logan sat, thoughts swirling in his head, Ephraim spoke again.

“Been try’na kill myself nigh on five years now, I reckon. I tried every damn thing. Stood in front of a train once,” he recalled, “and it knocked me clean out of my shoes. I just got up and walked home after that. Barely felt a thing.”

The flatness of Ephraim’s tone tugged at Logan. That tone denoted such a pain that being shot or hit by a train couldn’t match. Logan dug his little hole in the dirt with the gun deeper. He didn’t like thinking about this. It was getting hot. He imagined that the sheriff was still stuttering his way through a recounting of the failed execution to a bored and irritated Thorndike. He’ll take Fresh away from me, Logan worried. His stomach lurched.

“Momma didn’t like me none.” Ephraim started again. “I reckon no one in town liked me. Momma told me I came out silent. Never cried. Never talked much. Spooked her, I think. Spooked everybody. When everyone found out I couldn’t feel nothin’, it got worse. People’d stare at me. Wouldn’t let me in the church after a while. Momma couldn’t handle that. They started treatin’ her bad, too. I couldn’t help it none. I just don’t feel nothin’. Momma tried to drown me when I was about ten. I didn’t fight her or nothin’. Wasn’t even scared. But I couldn’t die. She kept me around to help out around the farm but there wasn’t any love there. Them townsfolk seemed too happy to see me get sentenced to death and I didn’t mind. To me I was just seein’ if it would work.”

“Mhm.” Logan responded, barely listening.

“I ain’t ever smiled or enjoyed nothin’ since the day I was born.” Ephraim added.

“Ayup.”

Logan envisioned his horse. She must be missing him. He sure as hell missed her. He stood up, stuck the gun in his pocket, and dusted off his pants.

“Come on, get up.” Logan said.

“Where we goin’?”

“Out back. I need to tend to my horse and I can’t let a prisoner out of my sight.”

Logan helped Ephraim to his feet and escorted him behind his house towards his one-horse stable. There, poking expectantly out of the yoke, was the beauty herself. Statuesque and well-fed, Fresh Air stomped, nickered, and whinnied when she saw Logan and the stranger approaching. Logan smiled wide, a magnetic reaction. “That’s my breath of Fresh Air.” Logan declared proudly, as he often did when greeting his horse.

The horse would never know about the men he killed. The horse would never judge or condemn him for it. She just knew him as a friend and Logan, fatalistically, understood she’d be the only one he’d really have.

They approached the stable and Fresh Air immediately began nuzzling Logan’s outstretched hand. Ephraim stood a few paces away, watching the hangman and his horse. Even the condemned felt like an intruder on this scene. He stood, silent and awkward, as Logan fawned over his steed.

Logan, catching Ephraim in his peripherals, became the embarrassed one. No one had seen him with his horse before. Fresh Air took a moment to eye the stranger. Logan caught this, too. “Ain’t she the prettiest thing you’ve ever seen?” Logan said, flushed, unsure of what else to say.

“Sure.”

“She was a gift.”

“Sure, okay.”

A sick excitability rose through Logan’s gut. He couldn’t identify it immediately as conspicuous pride; a desire to share his happiness. No one had cared to ask or even speculate on what Logan might like. Now that he had a literal prisoner, he didn’t have much to worry about in the ways of what this person thought of him. “Would you like to pet her?” Logan asked.

Ephraim shrugged. Why not? He stepped forward, lifting one hand casually towards Fresh. She snorted and backed up half a pace.  “Slower now.” Logan urged. “Slower. You’ll scare her if you move too fast.”

Ephraim took the note, raising his right hand slower, dragging up left hand with it by the chain. He let his hand hover in the air a moment. Fresh stepped forward, haltingly, then began sniffing Ephraim’s hand. She snorted again but didn’t back away. “That’s it.” Logan said. “That’s it. Now, gently pat the bridge of her nose there.”

Ephraim did so. Fresh gently exhaled and snorted, blinking at Ephraim. Then, Logan saw, Ephraim was completely entranced, just as Logan himself had been when he first met Fresh. The prisoner and the horse stared at each other, suspended in the moment.

At that moment, Logan noticed something else. Color, where there had been a pallid absence before, began rising in Ephraim’s cheeks. Even more surprisingly, a smile cracked and began spreading across Ephraim’s mouth. It was as if a dam burst somewhere inside his brain causing this ecstatic contortion. His eyes, piercing and cold, became soft and dewy. Human. Child-like. Logan took a step back. He thought of the little girl in the store.

Ephraim rubbed Fresh’s nose, then glided his hand across to her cheek to pat it, smiling like a fool.

Logan held his breath.

Ephraim turned to the hangman, absolutely beaming for the first time in his life.

“I think she likes me!” he declared, triumphant.

The smile was still plastered across Ephraim’s face when another bullet from the sheriff’s six-shooter went straight between his eyes and exploded out the back of his skull. The viscera flew high and seemed to hang in the air, glistening in the sunlight, before splattering in the dust. Ephraim swayed on his feet before collapsing, all jangling chains and meat, with a resounding whump! against the ground. The gore pooled and congealed in the prairie dust around Ephraim’s head. Fresh Air went ballistic, neighing and squealing in fear from the noise and the smell of blood and smoke. Logan, maybe a better natural shot than he figured, let the gun clatter to the ground and stood staring in disbelief that the man he just shot was dead.