The Speed Queen by Stewart O’Nan Read Free Book Online Page A

California. What this woman and her husband did was let them park in a grove of pecans off behind their cabins. In the middle of the night the man and woman would cut their throats, steal their stake and sell the trucks to a man up in Wichita. They got caught when the man in Wichita stopped buying the trucks. The police found a whole barn full on their property. In the house there were fifty wedding rings on a keychain. They hanged the woman first. Her last words couldn't be repeated.
    Then for sixty years, nothing. It was like the rules changed with Connie Whatever-her-name-was. Mr. Jefferies said I was next on the list. There were others who'd been waiting longer, but he said they'd want me because of the publicity. The Marjorie Standiford Case, they called it, like it was all my fault, or the Sonic Killers, like Natalie's book. Not that she made that name up; it was in the papers even before we got caught. She didn't even write the book, it was this lady sportswriter from the Oklahoman.
    But Mr. Jefferies was straight with me. He said we had somewhere between two to four years. All we could hope was for the governor to lose the election.
    "Is he supposed to lose?" I asked, cause I really didn't know. I didn't even know who the governor was for sure.
    "We can't worry about that," Mr. Jefferies said. "Right now we need to get this appeal together."
    That was five years ago, so I owe him one.
    Thank you, Mr. Jefferies. You didn't lose. I should have told you about me and Natalie.
    That's the worst thing, the waiting, knowing you can't stall forever. Like I said, I've had two stays, which isn't a lot but it's something. Mr. Jefferies is at his office now, faxing things to the Tenth Circuit Court in Denver, so who knows.
    The execution itself only scares me a little. I've read every book in the library on it. They make you lie down on the table and strap you in. Then the technicians stick an IV line into your vein that pumps in a saline solution. They do that for forty-five minutes just to make sure everything's set. A lot of people they do are heavy users, so finding a good vein is a problem. They strap you in and let you lie there like you're going to have an operation, only you're not waiting for a doctor.
    There are three chemicals —sodium pentothal's the only one I know. Each one is in a syringe that ties into the IV line. Two people press down buttons in two different rooms, and the machine presses down the plungers in order. One set goes into you. the other drains into a bucket so no one Feels bad. First, the pentothal knocks you out, then the machine waits a minute before the next one. The next paralyzes your heart and your lungs. The third just makes sure. They say you choke some but in most cases it's pretty quick. It's not sleep but it's not the gas chamber either. Oklahoma was the first state to switch to it. They used to hang you. You might say something about that.

14
    I think me being a woman works both ways. Mr. Jefferies talked with me about this. A man in my position would probably be dead already, but he wouldn't be getting all this bad publicity. People expect killers to be men. A woman's not supposed to kill, and a mother's definitely not. Mr. JefFeries said it was better when we were the Sonic Killers because people tended to blame everything on Lamont, being the man. That's stupid but that's how people think. Since Lamont was dead and we were married, the blame shifted onto me. Even if Natalie didn't lie, she would have gotten off easier because it looked like she was just going along for the ride.
    In the beginning I used to get a lot of letters from women's groups, but they all wanted me to say things about Lamont beating me, how that was the reason I stayed with him and why I couldn't see that he was crazy, which isn't at all true. I hey just wanted someone else to say what they said so people would think it was true.
    That's a tough question. Darcy could answer it better than I can. She's read a lot