The Flask

Chapter eleven.

11

   The next morning Ray woke up to the sound of hoots and hollers from outside the Sherriff’s office building. A crowd of people marched down the hall to his cell, and they all stood there glaring at him. Most of them were calling him “no-good murderer” and “prick”. He didn’t know who any of them were, and he kept insisting he knew nothing about what he was being accused of. Higgins parted the crowd and walked up to the cell door. He inserted his key into the lock, slid the heavy door to the side, walked in and put heavy chain irons around Ray’s wrists and ankles. He hoisted Ray up from his seated position and escorted him down the hall and outside to the center of town. It was so bright outside that Ray had to squint, so hard it that it made the wound on his nose pop open and resume bleeding. People chanted his name in disgust. He tried to tell everyone he didn’t know what they were talking about but no one heard him.

No one wanted to hear him.

   As he walked past the corner of the bank he noticed a poster with a sketch of a man wanted by the law.

   It read: “$500 reward for the capture of Raymond Cyril Christie, wanted for murder.” He didn’t recognize the man.

  Ray was led to a large wooden structure that had been set up in the middle of the dusty road between the bank and the Sherriff’s office. Two large men held each of his arms and escorted Ray up the steep narrow stairway which led to the top deck.

  Ray could see the looped end of the heavy rope swinging lazily in the light summer breeze.

  He began to panic. “I didn’t do anything...listen to me…hey stop, LISTEN TO ME!” he pleaded. No one paid any attention to his words. Blood still trickled off the end of his nose and into his mouth.

   The noose was placed around his neck. He could hear the muffled sound of the Preacher reading a passage from an old leather-bound Bible. The entire town was there watching. People had even brought their children to watch. The screaming and chanting became a dull roar. Ray’s ears rang. Even the children were cursing and calling him names. Some people tried to spit on him.

  The rope was snugged up around his neck. It was very coarse, he thought. It had a strange familiarity. It reminded him of someone he thought he once knew.

   Higgins walked up to Ray and said something that Ray couldn’t understand. He could only see his lips moving. He held a black canvas bag in his hand. As Higgins began to place the bag over Ray's head, one member of the large gathering caught Ray's attention. In the center of the crowd below, a man stood and watched. A fair-skinned blond man with ice-blue eyes. On his shirt was a badge; a gold badge in the shape of a star that glinted in the midday sun.

   Suddenly Ray yelled out…” Hey, Richard…Richard Clark! The albino!”

   Higgins asked “what?”

   Ray remembered his mother screaming in his dreams, his father, the flask, RC, the robbery, the murders, the snake-bitten horse, Kyle….everything came back to him in an instant.

   He looked at the man in the crowd, the one with the ice-blue eyes. “Richard Clark! You pale-faced prick!” he laughed heartily. Clark turned his head when he heard Ray yell his name, grinned back at him, mouthed Ray’s name, winked and made a shooting gesture toward him. Ray grinned back at him, then turned to Higgins and said “let’s get on with this.” The bag covered Ray’s face, the floor dropped out from under his feet, the rope squeaked against the heavy pine post, and the knot around his neck grew tighter and tighter. Ray’s legs twitched for a few seconds, and then stopped.

His final breath was painful.

“Hello Kyle, let’s throw some horseshoes little brother” he thought, as everything went quiet and dark.

Raymond Cyril Christie died that day with a smile on his face.