Page 23 of Deja New
TWELVE
FEBRUARY 19, 1858
LAKE STEILACOOM, WASHINGTON
When I finish my jerky and porridge and coffee, I will kill an innocent man.
For the first time in a long time, the hangman had no appetite. He had no fear of blood or shit or puke, of death or the things men did to deserve death. He’d been hunting since he could hold a knife; he had attended many funerals. He could not remember a time when he did not understand death was a natural end for all God’s creatures, even when it was engineered as a tool of the state.
He had hanged a rapist when he was nineteen, then went home and devoured the last of the corn bread (his sister had gifted him with a twenty-pound sack of meal when he moved west, knowing his penchant for baking and eating it by the pan). Now in his early thirties, he had executed men foreverything from stealing telegrams to patricide. His appetite had never flagged because punishment was a consequence of crime. Think of the chaos if it wasn’t! Besides,someonehad to do it.
So, no. He did not fear death. He feared hell.
Chief Leschi was a native, a war chief, a raider, and an instigator. A man who took a bad deal, then blamed everyone but himself for taking that deal.
But he wasn’t a murderer. And most people knew that.
The chief kicked up a ruckus—you bet! He would tell anyone who stood still how the government tricked him, stole from him. He squawked often enough that Acting Governor Mason sicced the militia on him. Didn’t shut him up, butdidresult in two militia fellas turning up dead. This horrified every white person in a hundred miles, and was enough for Mason.
First trial: hung jury. Second trial: conviction and death sentence. Because the second time, the judge didnotexplain that killing combatants in war did not meet the law’s definition of murder. (The state occasionally learned from its mistakes.)
So, guilty despite a total lack of evidence. Guilty despite his fine lawyers. Guilty despite appealing to the Territorial Supreme Court. Guilty despite sympathetic coverage from the press. Guilty despite appeals to the governor. Guilty despite the local lawman’s stunt: Sheriff Williams let himself be arrested so he wouldn’t have to supervise the execution.
But the government couldn’t back down. Not after taking the trouble to frame Chief Leschi for the murders. Not after terrified locals had shrieked for the chief’s head for eleven months. So they maneuvered around the sheriff, moved the execution date, and then moved the locale to Lake Steilacoom.
And an hour from now, the chief would swing from gallows so hastily thrown together, the platform was still bleeding sap.
“Don’t envy you this one,” the sheriff had said, and it was true, today his duty was his burden. But the sheriff knew, and the prosecutors. The press knew. The locals knew. It was that lone fact that afforded him one comfort: This would not be his sin alone. They would all be complicit, and, one day, they would all answer to God for it.
Forgive us, Lord God, for we knowexactlywhat we do.
He went out to do his duty.
