Ott could hardly believe his ears. His dream had been to exonerate his family by proving that Friedrich and Otto Rabun hadn’t knowingly participated in the gassings; but here was Brian Shelly claiming that the gassings had never even taken place! “How do you know the Holocaust was a lie?” Ott asked, fearful the answer wouldn’t be convincing.
“A friend of mine has been working on a documentary about it. He says there’s no evidence of any gas chambers. It was all a fraud created by the Jews to justify the State of Israel, and the Allies and Russians used it to demoralize and pacify the German people after the war. When the documentary is finished, he’s going to expose the Jews for the liars they are.”
Ott invited Brian and Tim to stay and have a German beer with him and tell him more about the documentary. They accepted the invitation, but Ott ended up doing most of the talking, thoroughly enjoying himself recounting for Brian and Tim how Jos. A. Rabun & Sons had built Dresden and, embellishing here and there, how his grandfather and great-uncle had helped Hitler build the Third Reich. “The sacrifices they made for the cause!” he said. “And how the Rabuns had suffered at the hands of the Russians and Jews!”
Brian and Tim hung on Ott’s every word, awestruck. They said they had never been so close to a genuine Nazi family. In their excitement, they even asked Ott to speak in the fierce syllables of German to make the conversation more authentic and then translate back. As the beer flowed, Ott was more than happy to show off his skills, engaging in outright fabrication to impress his guests, saying: “Mein Grossvater, Otto Rabun, war ein Bauteil der SS und kannte Hitler gut. Er beriet mit Hitler auf Operationen in Osteuropa und empfing persönlich das Eisenkreuz vom der Führer.” And then back in English: “My grandfather, Otto Rabun, was a member of the SS and knew Hitler well. He consulted with Hitler on operations in eastern Europe and personally received the iron cross from the Führer.”
This all greatly impressed Brian and Tim, and they, in turn, revealed to Ott that they belonged to a secret, exclusive group in the United States that considered people like the Rabuns to be heroes and martyrs. A fellow like Ott, they told him, the sole surviving heir to all that greatness, a man with the right breeding and blood, might be just the type of person who could become an important member of this group, a leader even.
Ott was flattered and astonished. No one had ever spoken to him like this before. Their words reached down to soothe all the injuries and injustices of his life. In the warmth of their wide embrace, Ott opened his heart to receive and be received. He explained the frustrations of his youth and found solace, understanding, and acceptance. In return, he joined in the Shellys’ ugly remarks about Jews and blacks even though, in his heart, he harbored no genuine hatred for either group-only for those who had harmed the Rabuns. It was a glorious evening for Otto Rabun Bowles, one he would long remember. When Amina came down to say it was time to close up the house for the night, Brian and Tim greeted her like a celebrity and begged her to pose with them for pictures but, being in her bedclothes, she refused.
Walking out to their car, Ott said to Brian, “You’ve got to tell me more about this group you keep talking about. The people who are going to fight back. How can I join?”
Brian extended his hand. “We’re called The Eleven,” he said. “And you just did.”
33
At 12:01 A.M., two guards lace a foul smelling leather mask around No. 44371’s head and face. It is almost a comfort, this mask, because it holds, like a memory, the final impressions and breaths of other men whose names have become numbers, and, in this way, the mask whispers to the next man to wear it that he is not alone. No. 44371 has been staring off into the gallery behind the glass, looking at no one in particular. He knows what to expect. In fact, he knows just about everything there is to know about the art of judicial electrocutions. More, possibly, than the executioner himself.
No. 44371 knows, for example, that the idea of electrocuting criminals originated in the city where he himself was raised-Buffalo, New York-from the creative mind of a dentist in the eighteen-eighties who began experimenting with the application of electricity to animals after witnessing the accidental death of a drunk who had stumbled onto a live wire. No. 44371 also knows that the beloved inventor of the electric lightbulb, Thomas Edison, promoted the concept of electrocuting criminals as a means of winning control of the electric utility industry away from archrival George Westinghouse, by demonstrating the dangers of Westinghouse’s alternating current transmission system over Edison’s own safer but inferior direct current lines. So determined was Edison to sway public opinion against Westinghouse that he invited the press to witness the execution of a dozen innocent animals with a one thousand volt Westinghouse AC generator, coining the term “electro-cution.” The next year, he successfully lobbied the New York legislature to use Westinghouse AC voltage in the first Electric Chair. No one, Edison gambled, would want AC voltage in their homes after that. Westinghouse did all he could to stop it, refusing to sell the generator to prison authorities and even funding judicial appeals for the first souls to be put to death by the device. He lost those appeals, and the condemned men lost their lives, but he did ultimately win control of the electric utility industry.
Yes, No. 44371 knows well the peculiar history of the Electric Chair, and now all of it flashes through his mind. He looked at it long and hard until he reached the point where he could look at it and not swallow so much and blink so often, anesthetizing himself to the fear of his own death by bathing himself in it. Hence, he read with more than morbid curiosity about the case of William Kemmler, who, by murdering his paramour in Buffalo, won the honor of being first to sit in Edison’s Chair. And this made No. 44371 wonder about the peculiar relationship the City of Buffalo bore to the dentist, the Electric Chair, Kemmler, and his own life. In the year eighteen-ninety, the United States Supreme Court denied Kemmler’s petition for a writ of habeas corpus, ruling that death by electricity does not violate the Constitution’s prohibition against cruel or unusual punishment. So sanctioned, the citizens of New York on August sixth of that year wasted no time in trying out their new device. They fitted Kemmler with two electrodes, one on his head and the other at the base of his spine, and for seventeen seconds passed a Westinghouse alternating current of seven hundred volts through his body. Witnesses reported seeing hideous spasms and convulsions and clouds of smoke and smelling burned clothing and flesh. They gave him a second dose of one thousand and thirty volts, lasting two minutes. A postmortem revealed that Bill Kemmler’s brain had been hardened to the consistency of well-done meat and the flesh surrounding his spine had been burned through. Among those in attendance that historic day at Auburn Prison was a disgusted George Westinghouse, who remarked on the way out: “The job could have been done better with an ax.”
Techniques improved.
No. 44371 has been assured by the guards that he will receive a lethal jolt of two thousand volts straight away, then two more of about one thousand volts each for good measure, each lasting a minute in duration and spaced ten seconds apart. His body temperature will be raised in that time to over one hundred and thirty-eight degrees Fahrenheit-too hot to touch but not so hot that he will begin to smoke like poor Bill Kemmler. His chest will heave and his mouth will foam, his hair and skin will burn, he will probably release feces into his pants-and his eyeballs will burst from their sockets like a startled cartoon character, hence the snug fit of the stiff leather mask the guards have just placed over his face.