Free Nothing Lost by John Gregory Dunne

mistakes can’t kill people,” Charley Buckles said, swallowing a tobacco laugh. “They’re already dead.”
    â€œFunny, Charley.”
    â€œJ.J.,” Charley Buckles said. “One thing I always wondered. Why the initials? What’s the matter with James?”
    â€œMy family called me Jamie,” J.J. said after a moment. There was something about Charley Buckles that invited unintended confidences. It might have been his ridiculous name. Or his medicine-ball shape.
    â€œI think I see the problem,” Charley Buckles said, clearing his throat, a sound like the rumble of thunder. His face was beet red, and his breathing came in quick spurts heavy with phlegm and nicotine. “People named Jamie don’t generally ask for the death penalty.”
    J.J. nodded. As if to himself, he said, “It’s a frivolous name.” A sudden sharp memory. Emmett called him Jamie even as he was drowning. Death was much on his mind this evening.
    â€œAnd riding the lightning is a most unfrivolous penalty,” Charley Buckles said, his words lost inside a wheezy laugh. Another change of direction. “Listen. I saw Poppy outside when I got here. Signing autographs, enjoying the hell out of herself.”
    â€œShe says she’s representing the mother and father.”
    â€œThey’re lucky they died, you ask me.”
    An unexpected take. “Lucky, Charley?”
    â€œHell, J.J., they would’ve been in the victim business.” He hawked some phlegm and left it in the blue bandanna he used as a handkerchief. “Selling T-shirts. NO MERCY FOR PERCY or some such. It’s a funny goddamn kind of famous, waiting for somebody like Percy Darrow to die. If they was still alive, they’d wake up tomorrow, wishing he was still around, wondering what the hell they’re going to do with the rest of their lives. Nobody on the TV wanting to talk to them. No cameras. No notebooks. They’d end up missing that son of a bitch.”
    Charley Buckles still had the capacity to surprise.
    â€œThat Poppy.” Charley Buckles had switched gears again. “I see her on that fat one’s show. Rosie something. And that blonde, what’s-her-name, married to the bald guy with no eyebrows, her show. She’s going to be on
Nightline
tonight, I hear.” Another snort. “That fellow Poppel will have his hands full with her.”
    â€œKoppel,” Harold Pugh said. “Not Poppel.” Harold Pugh had slipped back into his office, as always unnoticed, after yet another trip to ensure that the wiring attached to the electric chair would not short out when the governor’s office ordered the execution to proceed. Practice makes perfect, the warden had said. You can’t over prepare. Harold is a compendium of the obvious, J.J. thought. In the A.G.’s office, the warden, as elusive and recessive as a piece of ectoplasm, was known as The Shadow. That night’s scheduled execution was the biggest event in Harold Pugh’s twenty-five years of silent and uncomplaining service in the Department of Corrections. It was an effort for him not to show his resentment that Poppy McClure would be talking to Ted Koppel in the parking lot while he was attending to the needs of Percy Darrow’s last meal and waiting for the governor’s message that all appeals had been exhausted. “And the reason he’s here is because it’s the first execution in this state since 1959, not because . . .”
    Harold Pugh caught J.J.’s eye and left the sentence dangling. He had made his point. No reason to mention Poppy. It was he who would ask Percy Darrow if he had any last words, he who would order the switch pulled, he who would announce to the media that the sentence had been carried out and the will of the people observed. But it would be Poppy McClure on
Nightline,
not he. He would not have occasion to tell Mr. Koppel about the two Big Macs, the