Black Water by Joyce Carol Oates Page A

day like a pinwheel inexhaustibly throwing off sparks.
    The
splendid American flag all flapping silk
red-white-and-blue at the top of Edgar St. John's flagpole. The
tallest flagpole on Derry Road, very possibly on Grayling Island.
    My
daddy's a patriot, Buffy said. Served in the C.I.A. for twenty years and didn't
get his ass blown off.
    It
had not happened yet because there again was Buffy arranging her guests so she
could take Polaroid pictures. Buffy in jeans and bikini top her
"faux" ponytail sleek and blackly gleaming falling to the middle of
her back, her lewd green- taloned nails curved about
the camera, tongue protruding between glistening white teeth. Oh please be
still will you, look up here please—and you, Senator, mmm ?—like
that! Great!
    There
were several Polaroids of The Senator standing at a
picnic table, one foot on the bench, an elbow on his seersucker knee and a
casual pose it was, Kelly Kelleher close by as if in the crook of his arm,
laughing into the camera's eye as the flash popped, and The Senator was smiling
guardedly, a tucked-in sort of smile, an almost-meditative smile, a smile of
the kind that retracts even as it expands, something in the eyes deflected too,
grave, as if the man were pondering what caption might be inserted beneath this
festive Fourth of July pose to be transmitted by wire service through the
United States and numerous foreign countries, featured on network television
news?
    But
no, you can't imagine your future. Even that it is yours.
     
    One shoe on, one shoe
off. Limping. Drenched and shivering and murmuring aloud Oh
God. Oh God. Oh God.

 

    ...five means
of capital punishment remaining in
the United States at the present time. Recent Supreme Court
rulings, states' rights. Overwhelming support of death
penalty in polls. Why?—because it's a deterrent. Because it sends out the
message: Life isn't cheap. Five means of which the oldest is hanging. Last used
in Kansas, 1965. Condemned man took sixteen minutes to die, sometimes it's
longer. Still an option in Montana. The only kind of
deterrent these animals understand. Firing squad, Utah. Electric chair,
introduced 1890, New York State. "Humane" alternative to
hanging, firing squad:
    condemned man (or woman) is strapped into chair, copper electrodes affixed to leg, shaved
head. Executioner administers an initial jolt of between 500 and 2,000 volts
for thirty seconds. We're talking about hardened criminals here— murderers. The mentally and morally unfit. If death fails
to occur with the initial jolt, additional jolts are administered. Two, three, four. Some hearts are stronger than others.
Accidents occur. Smoke, sometimes bluish-orange flames rise from the burning
body. A smell as of cooking meat. As with hanging,
eyeballs sometimes pop out of sockets to hang on cheeks. Vomiting,
urination, defecation. Skin turns bright red blistering and swelling to
the point of bursting like an overcooked frankfurter. Often, current is not
strong enough and death is not "instantaneous" but by degrees.
Prisoner is tortured to death. Not decent civilized
people like the kind we know but people who are a genuine threat to society,
who must be stopped. If not, they will be given light prison sentences,
paroled—to strike again!
    Gas chamber, introduced 1924, Nevada. A popular choice as a "humane" alternative. Condemned man (or woman) is strapped in chair, beneath the chair a bowl filled
with sulfuric acid and distilled water into which sodium cyanide is dropped
releasing hydrogen cyanide gas. Oxygen cut off from brain at once. Prisoner experiences extreme horror—strangulation. The issue of
race isn't the issue believe me, that's a smokescreen, maybe it's so that more
black men have always been executed in the United States than white men, maybe
it's a statistical fact that whites who kill blacks are less likely to receive
the death penalty than blacks who kill whites, yes there's a big difference
between states, counties, urban areas,