However, even an attorney of moderate talent can postpone doomsday year after year, for the system of appeals that pervades American jurisprudence amounts to a legalistic wheel of fortune, a game of chance, somewhat fixed in the favor of the criminal, that the participants play interminably, first in the state courts, then through the Federal courts until the ultimate tribunal is reached — the United States Supreme Court. But even defeat there does not signify if petitioner’s counsel can discover or invent new grounds for appeal; usually they can, and so once more the wheel turns, and turns until, perhaps some years later, the prisoner arrives back at the nation’s highest court, probably only to begin again the slow cruel contest. But at intervals the wheel does pause to declare a winner — or, though with increasing rarity, a loser: Andrews’ lawyers fought to the final moment, but their client went to the gallows on Friday, November 30,1962.
«That was a cold night,» Hickock said, talking to a journalist with whom he corresponded and who was periodically allowed to visit him. «Cold and wet. It had been raining like a bastard, and the baseball field was mud up to your cojones. So when they took Andy out to the warehouse, they had to walk him along the path. We were all at our windows watching — Perry and me, Ronnie York, Jimmy Latham. It was just after midnight, and the warehouse was lit up like a Halloween pumpkin. The doors wide open. We could see the witnesses, a lot of guards, the doctor and the warden — every damn thing but the gallows. It was off at an angle, but we could see its shadow. A shadow on the wall like the shadow of a boxing ring.
«The chaplain and four guards had charge of Andy, and when they got to the door they stopped a second. Andy was looking at the gallows — you could sense he was. His arms were tied in front of him. All of a sudden the chaplain reached out and took off Andy’s glasses. Which was kind of pitiful, Andy without his glasses. They led him on inside, and I wondered he could see to climb the steps. It was real quiet, just nothing but this dog barking way off. Some town dog. Then we heard it, the sound, and Jimmy Latham said, «What was that?»; and I told him what it was — the trap door.
«Then it was real quiet again. Except that dog. Old Andy, he danced a long time. They must have had a real mess to clean up.
Every few minutes the doctor came to the door and stepped outside, and stood there with this stethoscope in his hand. I wouldn’t say he was enjoying his work — kept gasping, like he was gasping for breath, and he was crying, too. Jimmy said, ‘Get a load of that nance.’ I guess the reason he stepped outside was so the others wouldn’t see he was crying. Then he’d go back and listen to hear if Andy’s heart had stopped. Seemed like it never would. The fact is, his heart kept bearing for nineteen minutes.
«Andy was a funny kid,» Hickock said, smiling lopsidedly as he propped a cigarette between his lips. «It was like I told him: he had no respect for human life, not even his own. Right before they hanged him, he sat down and ate two fried chickens. And that last afternoon he was smoking cigars and drinking Coke and writing poetry. When they came to get him, and we said our goodbye, I said, ‘I’ll be seeing you soon, Andy. ‘Cause I’m sure we’re going to the same place. So
scout around and see if you can’t find a cool shady spot for us Down There.’ He laughed, and said he didn’t believe in heaven or hell, just dust unto dust. And he said an aunt and uncle had been to see him, and told him they had a coffin waiting to carry him to some little cemetery in north Missouri. The same place where the three he disposed of were buried. They planned to put Andy right alongside them. He said when they told him that he could hardly keep a straight face. I said, ‘Well, you’re lucky to have a grave. Most likely they’ll give Perry and me to the vivisectionist.’ We joked on like that till it was time to go, and just as he was going he handed me a piece of paper with a poem on it. I don’t know if he wrote it. Or copied it out of a book. My impression was he wrote it. If you’re interested, I’ll send it to you.»
He later did so, and Andrews’ farewell message turned out to be the ninth stanza of Gray’s «Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard»:
The boasts of heraldry, the pomp of pow’r, And all that beauty, all that wealth e’er gave, Await alike the inevitable hour:
The paths of glory lead but to the grave.
«I really liked Andy. He was a nut — not a real nut, like they kept hollering; but, you know, just goofy. He was always talking about breaking out of here and making his living as a hired gun. He liked to imagine himself roaming around Chicago or Los Angeles with a machine gun inside a violin case. Cooling guys. Said he’d charge a thousand bucks per stiff.»
Hickock laughed, presumably at the absurdity of his friend’s ambitions, sighed, and shook his head. «But for someone his age he was the smartest person I ever come across. A human library. When that boy read a book it stayed read. Course he didn’t know a dumb-darn thing about life. Me, I’m an ignoramus except when it comes to what I know about life. I’ve walked along a lot of mean streets. I’ve seen a white man flogged. I’ve watched babies born. I’ve seen a girl, and her no more than fourteen, take on three guys at the same time and give them all their money’s worth. Fell off a ship once five miles out to sea. Swam five miles with my life passing before me with every stroke. Once I shook hands with President Truman in the lobby of the Hotel Muehlebach. Harry S Truman. When I was working for the hospital, driving an ambulance, I saw every side of life there is — things that would make a dog vomit. But Andy. He didn’t know one dumb-damn-darn thing except what he’d read in books.
«He was innocent as a little child, some kid with a box of Cracker Jack. He’d never once been with a woman, Man or mule. He said so himself. Maybe that’s what I liked about him most. How he wouldn’t prevaricate. The rest of us on the Row, we’re all a bunch of bull-artists. I’m one of the worst. Shoot, you’ve got to talk about something. Brag. Otherwise you’re nobody, nothing, a potato vegetating in your seven-by-ten limbo. But Andy never would partake. He said what’s the use telling a lot of stuff that never happened.
«Old Perry, though, he wasn’t sorry to see the last of Andy. Andy was the one thing in the world Perry wants to be — educated. And Perry couldn’t forgive him for it. You know how Perry’s always using hundred-dollar words he doesn’t half know the meaning of? Sounds like one of them college niggers? Boy, it burned his bottom to have Andy catch up on him and haul him to the curb. Course Andy was just trying to give him what he wanted — an education. The truth is, can’t anybody get along with Perry. He hasn’t got a single friend on the premises. I mean, just who the hell does he think he is? Sneering at everybody. Calling people perverts and degenerates. Going on about what low I.Q.’s they have. It’s too bad we can’t all be such sensitive souls like little Perry. Saints.
Boy, but I know some hard rocks who’d gladly go to The Corner if they could get him alone in the shower room for just one hot minute. The way he high-hats York and Latham! Ronnie says he sure wishes he knew where he could lay hold of a bullwhip. Says he’d like to squeeze Perry a little. I don’t blame him. After all, we’re all in the same fix, and they’re pretty good boys.» Hickock chuckled ruefully, shrugged, and said, «You know what I mean. Good — considering. Ronnie York’s mother has been here to visit him several times. One day, out in the waiting room, she met my mother, and now they’ve come to be each other’s number-one buddy. Mrs. York wants my mother to come visit her home in Florida, maybe even live there. Jesus, I wish she would. Then she wouldn’t have to go through this ordeal. Once a month riding the bus here to see me. Smiling, trying to find something to say, make me feel good. The poor lady. I don’t know how she stands it. I wonder she isn’t crazy.»
Hickock’s uneven eyes turned toward a window in the visiting room; his face, puffy, pallid as a
funeral lily, gleamed in the weak winter sunshine filtering through the bar-shrouded glass.
«The poor lady. She wrote the warden, and asked him if she could speak to Perry the next time she
