Shame

shows. Then Edison’s assistants forced them out onto a sheet of tin where they met their deaths from the high voltage of an alternating generator.
    “Of course, Edison had a reason for those spectacles. He and George Westinghouse were vying to get acceptance of their electrical currents. Edison wanted to show everyone that Westinghouse’s AC current was much more dangerous than his DC current, so he went around electrocuting animals with AC current. Edison also said he wanted to provide a more humane way for people to die. But isn’t it strange how ostensibly noble motives can bring about such ignoble results?
    “Edison’s experiments weren’t done quietly. On film, he proposed a unique experiment to the nation—the electrocution of an elephant. The three-ton challenge, right? I got to see an old movie clip, the same clip that filmgoers throughout the nation saw. It demonstrated the result of Edison’s so-called experiment. A full-grown African elephant was led out to an iron grid, and the killing switch was flipped.
    “In death, the elephant screamed. Its feet smoked and its trunk writhed and twisted. When the animal toppled over, its flesh stuck to the iron grid.”
    Caleb could hear her unsteady breathing over the line. It was his turn to be the calming voice. “Where was the one percent inspiration in that?” he quietly asked.
    “Yes,” Elizabeth said. “Where was it?”
    “You don’t need to tell me any more.”
    “Yes, I do,” she said. “I know it sounds crazy. I suppose the elephant was just some kind of defense mechanism my mind came up with, something to divert me from all the horror at hand. I had all these conflicting emotions. I saw Mr. and Mrs. Krulak, Tracy’s parents, for the first time since her funeral. I remembered how Mrs. Krulak had always sent Tracy care packages, packages meant to be shared with us. I felt guilty seeing them, felt the guilt that survivors feel, and wondered why I had been spared and Tracy hadn’t. And I saw others I had interviewed for the book. There were thirty of us altogether, twelve official witnesses, twelve from the news media, and six staff members. We were crowded together in the witness area. It was such a strange gathering, all of us there to watch a man die.
    “Your father was brought into the room wearing a black rubber mask. I remember being grateful for that. I didn’t want to see his expression as he died. And yet, even with that mask he wasn’t anonymous. He sought me out among those in the gallery. He nodded at me, and I nodded back. I think there was some hissing among the gallery at our signaling—there wasn’t much sympathy for your father in that room—but I can’t be sure. The elephant was trumpeting nonstop then. It made it hard for me to hear, hard for me to focus on things in a linear fashion.
    “I remember how time slowed down for me in his last moments. In my mind, everything is so defined. Even with the din in my head I remember the expressions on the faces around me. Even now, I can still picture everything and everyone. But the sounds come back whenever I think about it. Everything intermixes. Death and trumpets.
    “The electrodes were attached to your father’s head and leg. All that remained was for him to ride the lightning. I stopped watching your father immediately after the first two thousand volts were administered. I listened, mostly. Around me I heard gasps and prayers and sounds that weren’t words. A few of themen cursed your father, as if dying weren’t enough. And for just a little while the elephant kept trumpeting and trumpeting.
    “And then I heard nothing, nothing at all, and that was the worst sound of all.”
    There was an unwilling tremor in Elizabeth’s voice as she finished. This time she was the one who was angry at showing a side of herself she always kept concealed.
    “I wish your editor had let you write that chapter just the way you described it,” Caleb said.
    “Even if she had, I wouldn’t have been satisfied. I’ve always had this feeling that the last chapter was yet to be written. Something always nagged at me, always told me that there was more there, but I never found it.”

33

    E LIZABETH TOOK THE stairs up to the second floor of the Amity Inn. I need the exercise, she told herself. But even more than that, she didn’t want to have to worry about sharing the closed space of an elevator with a stranger. Since the attack, her unease had grown, not lessened. Even walking