because sometimes our Louisiana weather causes the electricity to be erratic. To avoid that problem, the state prison sent its own generator. We don’t have the electric chair in Louisiana now, but some type of lethal injection is instead used for execution.
But let’s go back to the late forties, when it did travel from one parish to the other. At that time the execution was administered in the parish where the crime was committed, not necessarily at the state prison, as it is today. This attorney told me about how the chair with the generator was delivered in a truck, a special truck that delivered it the morning of or the night before the execution. He told me that the time of day for execution in that particular parish was between noon and 3:00 p.m. on Friday. He told me the generator had to be tested before the hour of execution to be sure it was working in time. He told me you could hear the generator at least two city blocks away from the jail. He had witnessed the execution of the young man who had been sent to the chair a year earlier. During that year, this attorney had argued the case before the Appellate Court of Louisiana, the Supreme Court in Louisiana, and the Supreme Court in Washington. His argument was that it would be cruel and unusual punishment to send this young man back to that chair. But he failed in each court, and a year and a week from that first date, the young man was executed. Suddenly the attorney became silent and brought his hands up to his face. My student moved closer to him and held him. He laid his head on her shoulder and wept. Forty years later, he could still remember that generator, that chair.
Students are always asking me, “Do you know the ending of your novel when you start writing?” And I have always used the analogy of getting on a train from San Francisco to go to New York. It takes three or four days to get there. I know some facts. I’m leaving San Francisco for New York. I also know the states I’ll travel through and some of the things I’ll do. I know that I’ll go to the dining car to eat. I’ll go to the club car for a drink. I’ll read the book I brought with me. I’ll get so many hours of sleep. These things I know. What I don’t know is how the weather will be the entire trip. I don’t know who will get on the train and how they’ll be dressed or where they’ll sit. I don’t know all the valleys and hills that I’ll cross during my trip. I don’t know all the different colors of nature, the colors of the leaves on the trees, the color of the different crops in the different fields. I don’t know all the turnings and twists of the rail or when the train will make a sudden stop. In other words, I can’t anticipate everything that will happen on the trip, and sometimes I don’t even get to New York, but end up in Philadelphia.
When I started
A Lesson Before Dying,
I knew that Jefferson would be sentenced to die. Because in Louisiana in the forties, if he had been caught on the premises where a white man had been killed with a bottle of liquor in his hand and money in his pocket, that added up to guilt. But would he be executed? I didn’t know for certain. Maybe the governor at the last moment would pardon him when the state could not definitely prove his guilt. The story could have ended there, because by now Grant could have reached him, convinced him that he was not the animal he had been so described in court, but that he was as much human as any of them and probably even more so. Because the story is not whether Jefferson is innocent or guilty but how he feels about himself at the end. However, the Cajun attorney gave me a different alternative. After he described that tarpaulin-covered truck delivering that chair and that generator on an early foggy morning, I knew that I had no other ending but that Jefferson would be executed. I wanted the reader to see that truck and that chair and to hear that generator.
Two things I had not anticipated
But let’s go back to the late forties, when it did travel from one parish to the other. At that time the execution was administered in the parish where the crime was committed, not necessarily at the state prison, as it is today. This attorney told me about how the chair with the generator was delivered in a truck, a special truck that delivered it the morning of or the night before the execution. He told me that the time of day for execution in that particular parish was between noon and 3:00 p.m. on Friday. He told me the generator had to be tested before the hour of execution to be sure it was working in time. He told me you could hear the generator at least two city blocks away from the jail. He had witnessed the execution of the young man who had been sent to the chair a year earlier. During that year, this attorney had argued the case before the Appellate Court of Louisiana, the Supreme Court in Louisiana, and the Supreme Court in Washington. His argument was that it would be cruel and unusual punishment to send this young man back to that chair. But he failed in each court, and a year and a week from that first date, the young man was executed. Suddenly the attorney became silent and brought his hands up to his face. My student moved closer to him and held him. He laid his head on her shoulder and wept. Forty years later, he could still remember that generator, that chair.
Students are always asking me, “Do you know the ending of your novel when you start writing?” And I have always used the analogy of getting on a train from San Francisco to go to New York. It takes three or four days to get there. I know some facts. I’m leaving San Francisco for New York. I also know the states I’ll travel through and some of the things I’ll do. I know that I’ll go to the dining car to eat. I’ll go to the club car for a drink. I’ll read the book I brought with me. I’ll get so many hours of sleep. These things I know. What I don’t know is how the weather will be the entire trip. I don’t know who will get on the train and how they’ll be dressed or where they’ll sit. I don’t know all the valleys and hills that I’ll cross during my trip. I don’t know all the different colors of nature, the colors of the leaves on the trees, the color of the different crops in the different fields. I don’t know all the turnings and twists of the rail or when the train will make a sudden stop. In other words, I can’t anticipate everything that will happen on the trip, and sometimes I don’t even get to New York, but end up in Philadelphia.
When I started
A Lesson Before Dying,
I knew that Jefferson would be sentenced to die. Because in Louisiana in the forties, if he had been caught on the premises where a white man had been killed with a bottle of liquor in his hand and money in his pocket, that added up to guilt. But would he be executed? I didn’t know for certain. Maybe the governor at the last moment would pardon him when the state could not definitely prove his guilt. The story could have ended there, because by now Grant could have reached him, convinced him that he was not the animal he had been so described in court, but that he was as much human as any of them and probably even more so. Because the story is not whether Jefferson is innocent or guilty but how he feels about himself at the end. However, the Cajun attorney gave me a different alternative. After he described that tarpaulin-covered truck delivering that chair and that generator on an early foggy morning, I knew that I had no other ending but that Jefferson would be executed. I wanted the reader to see that truck and that chair and to hear that generator.
Two things I had not anticipated
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