The Last Execution Read Online Free Page B

a blanket of some kind. It’s just the two of them.”
    â€œYup!”
    The painting hung on a wall somewhere. Somewhere he had been.
    The boy moves closer to the prison rails. He fills his good hand with water, moves slowly toward the light, whistles softly, reaches up, and lets the water flow out of the window. A bark in reply. He hopes this means the dog is drinking. He repeats this three times.
    The fourth time, he lets the water run over his own scorched lips. The water burns down his throat. Then he sits down again.
    Something else comes to mind. It surprises him that he can remember something like this. What he remembers is: If you pour a bucket of water into one end of the Mississippi, it takes a year for the water to reach the other end.
    He says: “One year is a long time.”
    He sees the almost infinite succession of days snake before his eyes.
    He sees the road before his eyes; he links up with the girl.
    â€œNow he’s thinking about the girl again!” exclaims the fly. “Will he never be the wiser? Hasn’t he burnt his fingers often enough?”
    The hand is buzzing, as if it’s enjoying itself immensely. It’s buzzing like a beehive.
    Then he remembers what happened one autumn night, when they had walked along a country road, he and his dad, dead tired. They froze. They were hungry. The boy could feel it, and it gnawed at him: the sweet desire to give up, just to lie down for a while. He didn’t say it, but he thought: Let me lie down in front of the workhouse. He would never say it out loud, but it seemed as though his father could sense it.
    â€œJust a little farther, my boy.”
    He rested a hand between his son’s shoulder blades.
    â€œJust over that ridge, Niels,” he said. “There lies a barn so fine! Just for us. You wait and see!”
    If those large blue-red hands could have transformed themselves into a pair of wings, they would have.
    As he and his father came over the ridge, the sky was red. A fire so big was burning. It was someone’s farm. And as they came down the slope, they could see them: the family. They stood together and watched their home burn down. The boy wanted to stop, but his father urged him on.
    â€œIt’s hard enough as it is,” he said, and walked right past them.

    Now the boy realizes he is crying, and that he’s been crying a long time.
    â€œThis is not who I am,” he says.

I t is six hours till the boy is to be executed on Gallows Hill, and as the winter sun wedges itself between the houses on the market square, the master carpenter arrives with a very long rod.
    He casts a long shadow before him, and he feels the anger right into the tips of his fingers, which are tightly clasped around the measuring rod. Had it been his business that lad had set on fire, he would have severed his head from his shoulders himself—with his very own saw!
    The sound of his heavy steps prompts a dog to come around the corner, stop, and whimper softly. Well, at least the remains of a dog. The master carpenter casts the three-legged cur a sidelong glance.
    â€œShoddy workmanship,” he mumbles.
    He can’t help but see the dog in this way. As if it were a chair. Arsonists, child murderers, and three-legged mongrels! Isn’t it about time the town council did something about the state of affairs? The town is a three-legged chair about to topple!
    The master carpenter spits a glob into the dog’s coat. It is so dirty, it could be all the same. The dog doesn’t move. But as the master carpenter takes a swing at it with the rod, it bolts—with surprising agility for a crippled cur.
    But now the master carpenter stops in mid-stride, smiling to himself, as a thought strikes him. The solution: a legion of men armed with rods. Instead of a council that just sits around arguing about trivialities, eating lavish dinners, and failing to make decisions about anything at all. He sees himself as