A song in the morning

**

The explosion of the trap.

Jeez lay rigid on his bunk.

His breath came in great pants.

The silence.

He had heard the feet stamping and shuffling on their way to the gallows. He had heard the swell of the singing, seeking out new heights of sympathy. Then the crash of the trap.

An awful sorrowing silence. The singing was to support four men, and the men were gone from where singing could boost them. The singing had ceased with the fall of the trap, cut in mid phrase.

The God awful silence around Jeez, like he was alone, like he was the only man in the bloody place.

He always heard the trap go.

He heard it the day before when the hangman was practising his drops with the earth-filled sacks, he heard it go on the morning of a hanging. As the crow flies or the worm crawls, Jeez lay on his bed just 29 yards from the gallows beam. He heard everything in the hanging room, and everything in the workshop and the washhouse underneath.

They'd be suspended now, they let them hang for twenty minutes. Then there would be the water running in the washhouse as they cleared up the mess after the district surgeon had completed his postmortem. Then there would be the hammering in the workshop as the trusties nailed down the coffin lids. Last there would be the sounds of the revving of an engine and the sounds of the van pulling away, running down the hill.

Beverly Hills wasn't a place for seeing what happened.

Christ, it was a place for hearing.

Listen to a multiple execution.

Singing, trap, silence, water, silence, hammering, van engine.

Those were the sounds of four men getting to be stiffs.

God Almighty, Jeez… It was the route they had in mind for Jeez. While he had been at Beverly Hills he had heard the sounds of one hundred and twenty-one guys getting stretched. And now one hundred and twenty-five. Jeez had heard the trap go under each last one of the mothers.

He shouldn't have written the letter all the same.

The letter was weakness. Shouldn't have involved her.

But he had heard the trap go so many times. Shit, and he had to to call for someone… he felt so alone.

This was a civilised gaol, not like the one a long time back. There were no beatings here, no malnutrition, no rats, no disease, no forced labour. Here, his cell door wouldn't be thrown open without warning for a kicking and a truncheon whipping. No risk that he would be frog marched into a yard and kicked down and shot in the nape of the neck.

This was five star. So bloody civilised that Jeez had sat in a cell for more than a year, a cell that measured six foot by nine foot, while the lawyers debated his life. Three meals a day here, a good medic here, because they wanted him healthy on the day. He had written his letter because he was losing hope.

What were the bastards doing? Why hadn't the bastards got him out?

He hated himself for believing they'd forgotten him.

They'd got him out the last time. Took the bastards long enough, but they'd got him out. They couldn't let a man, one of their own, couldn't let him… never finished.

Couldn't let him… Course they couldn't. He hated himself when the hope went, because that wasn't the Jeez way.

He was one of a team, a bloody good team, a team that didn't forget the men out in the field.

He was fine on the days when he didn't hear the trap fall.

It was only on those sodding days that the doubts bit.

He'd done them well. He'd kept his mouth shut through interrogation, bloody weeks of it. He'd kept his mouth shut through the trial. He'd kept his mouth shut when the security police from Johannesburg and the intelligence men from Pretoria had come to talk to him in his cell. He hadn't let the team down.

Jeez heard the spurting of the water hose in the washhouse.

On the high ceiling of the cell the bulb brightened.

Another day. God Almighty, it just wasn't possible that the team had forgotten about Jeez.

In an hour, and after he had eaten his breakfast, he would hear the hammering start.