The Unfortunate Public Execution
There is a certain number of days a person gets to live. At least that is what my father told me. When it is time, it is time.
I have lived for a very long time, in certain number of days, again and again it felt unending to me. In this repetition, I have seen many miracles small and large, and many atrocious events. Not too soon, I realised that there are very few things that I can change, and that I be willing to change, no matter how many chances I have.
The one thing I do, is to keep records of my version of these events as I experience it as truthfully as I could, and to guard these from the taint of my own memory and the corruption of the ‘histories’. Though I try to be as impartial as I could to record only truths, yet I remain unconvinced that I have escaped this prison of being human.
~Sapphire Ink.
1st July 1755
The day of the public execution was noticeably hot. Summer gave no mercy and judged the spectators, officials and the condemned equally. In fact, the sun had been preparing the whole township of Butler since two days prior. On top of that, the water had ran a dirty brown and smelled of horse piss early yesterday, leaving most people reverting to a more intoxicating version instead. The combination proved effective in riling up the crowd as I could not recall a more ominous one in other public executions I’ve been to.
I arrived a mere four days before, not for the execution but on my way to visit an old friend in the next town over. Though the town wasn’t exceptionally attractive, I found myself extending the motel room each morning. The notice of the public execution was pasted on a post across the street and a lose edge flapped like a flag whenever I passed it by.
The gossip made small mentions about it among chat of the rising prices and lowering quality of malt. His name was Tom the Sickle Hand, a cold hearted murderer of three good women. He had a pattern, cutting each of the women’s jaw from ear to ear with a sickle. The bodies were left on ditches with their hands tied on their back and their carved smile for unsuspecting passers to find.
He was wanted for three long years before they caught him as he passed through to his next kill — carrying, unsurprisingly, the notorious sickle. He said he was looking for work, and he’s good at harvests, oh sure he was. When they found him, they noticed his sickle was shiny, polished and suspiciously clean. Other travelling workers don’t find it necessary to clean their sickle so meticulously, since their sickle would not be drenched by blood.
All this the residents explained to me. There were no witnesses of course, they’re all dead. But this man does not have his papers, and so he wasn’t helping himself either.
I stood both far and close enough to watch the podium and the crowd comfortably, at least much more comfortable than the death row man being brought up the steps. He was half-naked wearing only a muddy loose pair of trousers and his bare feet and hands were shackled with chunky iron chains. They had not bothered giving him a shower, since he’ll soon soil himself presumably.
The sheriff told the public the man’s charges and conviction solemnly but firmly as written in the papers he held. Meanwhile, Tom the Sickle Hand looked ambivalent as he focused and unfocused on the noose before him. His eyes alternating between fear, anger and resignation. When he was asked for his last words, he simply shook his head in a daze. “I didn’t do it.”
The crowd got excited at that. Faces were animated as if in slow motion and to great extremes. Tomatoes and other innocent vegetables were contributed to the stage with much exuberance. They booed, yelled, and in drunken stupor cheered as leaves hit the fearsome Tom the Sickle Hand.
There was usually silence and suspense when the executioner does his job, but not that day. The crowd guided the noose around Tom’s slender neck, pulled the knot tighter and opened the door to his next journey. As he reflexively kicked and struggled against his bonds, the audience cheered. That seemed to stop his struggle after a short while and he swung calmly to the beat of collective pauses between the chants. Below the podium, a puddle started to collect.
I wondered whether in his last moment he imagined himself being cheered as a hero instead, lifted and passed from the arms of good citizens to the meadow all heroes go to. Highly unlikely.
Unfortunately, the execution was too quick to pass. If only he could die in slow motion, he could have really been the hero who saved that day. Again summer tempted their hands and many took it. Last night’s bad decision is today’s worse decision. Someone pressed too close to another’s lady, or stepped on another’s shoe, accidentally elbowed his neighbour while cheering on death and justice. Soon enough punches were thrown, knives taken out of pockets, screams, shouts and the sheriff’s whistle disharmonised.
I took the nearest way out of the area, not wanting to risk losing my writing to a stray punch. To call what happened silly or stupid would be to demean the death of the two good citizens who died in that afternoon brawl, no matter how close to truth those adjectives would be. So I would remember it as unfortunate instead.
As I passed the crowd and the fresh juice seller collecting collateral fortune from the execution, the newborn kitties suckling their mother’s teats on the porch, this flower caught my eye — ripped out from the sidewalk crack from where it grew against all odds and then bereft of further future. I thought I’d keep it here and let the scents of Butler that day soak through these pages.
