FEBRUARY 24, 1995. COLONEL DONALD HOCUTT , executioner for the State of Mississippi, pulls his Ford truck up to the Parchman State Penitentiary exit checkpoint off Highway 49W, halfway between Jackson, Mississippi, and Memphis, Tennessee. A guard stepping out of the checkpoint booth for a mandatory truck search sees Hocutt at the wheel and says Sir reverently, but hes barely acknowledged. Hocutt has been looking for words to describe to me the weird crackling that comes into his head every time hes in this prison farm now. When he concentrates, particularly on something that relates to his job, its as though the world doesnt exist. I could say its like a noise, he tries. Like a radio stuck in between stations. But its really more of a feeling, like I was living under power lines or something. Its not pleasant.
This is one of the last times Hocutt will pass the checkpoint, after twenty years of corrections work. We drove up this morning for him to get some paperwork for his medical discharge stamped in the administration office, then he gave me a tour of Parchmans 19,000 acres, from the gas chamber to the wardens house. His paperwork, old-fashioned-looking forms of various sizes, has been in his lap the entire tour. He keeps touching it like a high-school senior with his last yearbook, squaring corners, adjusting paper clips, and smoothing carbons with an awkwardness thats very unlike him.
It must be hard to be leaving after all this time, I say. Thats a whole world in there.
The guard has given the inside and back of the truck a once-over, and were cleared to go. Hocutt opens the leatherette console between us and wedges his paperwork in between an old cassette of Exile on Main Street and a huge nickel-plate Colt .45. Then he turns south out of the exit on to 49W and floors it, staring ahead with one arm stiff at the wheel as the truck picks up speed down the flat, two-lane Delta highway. I cant take my eyes off the Colt.
Donald, I say, touching the barrel. Thats a big gun.
Thats a dangerous gun, he says softly. Maybe you dont want to be touching it. It turns out he keeps it loaded, with an eight-shot clip of Plus-P cop-killer hollow-point bullets. Its also cocked at all times, like his eight other pistols and rifles, with only the safety on. Ill be damned if Im going to die trying to get my gun loaded. Watch me close now. He takes the wheel in both hands.
Im not sure what Im supposed to be watching. Hocutt is a huge man, easily 300 pounds, with thick, baby-face features that cloud over dramatically when he concentrates or falls into one of his moods. I hear a rustle of paper in the glove compartment, then see hes gotten his right hand off the wheel and down into the console for the Colt without my noticing. He eases the gun out and across his lap, releasing the safety with his thumb as he raises the barrel under his left elbow and aims out the drivers window. Pow, he says softly, releasing his breath.
I do that a lot when I drive, he explains, sliding the safety back on as he returns the gun to the console. Youd have never heard me just now, but for that paperwork.
Why do you do that?
Just getting ready for the day someone tries to creep up on me.
Where?
I dont know. In some parking lot.
You have enemies from being the executioner?
None I know about. Thats actually made me a pretty popular fellow around here.
Miles past the checkpoint, Hocutt nods over my head and says were still driving past prison grounds. Everything to your right, as far as you can see, is Parchman. Well have guys escaping sometimes, and Ill catch them, two, three days later, deep into the woods. They look sad that theyve been apprehended, but you really have to see their faces when I tell them they never even made it off the penitentiary grounds.
He points to the raised train bed of the old Illinois Central, ten feet past the roads right shoulder, and tells me about taking the train up those tracks when he was young to see his grandmother in Memphis. Over the raised bed, a half mile into the unfenced prison grounds, I can see the pink guard tower of Parchmans old maximum security unit. The smokestack of the gas chamber in the adjoining death house is just visible to the right of the tower. When I was a kid on the train, he says, Id get a seat on the left and start looking out the window half an hour before we even got to that pink tower, just to make sure I didnt miss it. You can see, this isnt the most beautiful countryside, but it looked like something out of Marco Polo to me. When he came back from Memphis at night on the Midnight Special, hed sit on the right and fight sleep, just to make sure hed see the tower again, glimmering in the lights of the prison farm.
I love the Parchman State Penitentiary, Hocutt says with sudden emotion, taking weight off the pedal. And I have no regrets about giving it the twenty best years of my life. I just cant be there no more, thats all. To answer your question, though. It is kind of hard for me to leave.
I ask if the fate of Parchmans gas chamber is weighing on him. Hocutts identification with it is strong, and the chamber has several parallels with his life and career. Installed in 1954, the year he was born, it was shut down in 1972, when the Supreme Court abolished capital punishment in America, then reopened when the Court reinstated the penalty in 1976, months after he began work at Parchman. A month ago, just as Hocutts medical discharge from state service came through, the chamber was all but banned by the Jackson legislature, as part of Mississippis eleven-year move toward lethal injection as its method of execution.
Its just a relic, he shrugs. Of the sixty-plus men on death row now, theyre all due to get the needle, except for five who are grandfathered in for the gas. Two of them are severely retarded and a third changes personalities every dayBilly the Kid, Napoleon, Jack the Ripper. Theyve been talking about unbolting the chamber and putting it on display in Jackson, but no museums shown any interest. Kind of surprises me. That chambers got a lot of history to it.
Its funny. People love the death penalty. They come up all the time, asking me about executions. Once I get started, though, they really dont want to hear too much about it. You know, I never heard of no kid telling his dad, When I grow up, I want to be the executioner. But when I was starting off as a Parchman guard, I couldnt wait for my shifts to come. Hocutts face clouds over and he shakes his head. Im really not feeling too good today.
On the trucks cell phone, he hits the speed dial for the Memphis psychopharmacologist who prescribed a strong mood elevator for him a few days ago. Its not the first drug or doctor hes tried. At forty-two, Hocutt is shot from the ground up: gout, maturity-onset diabetes, diverticulitis, arthritis in his upper body, partial deafness in one ear. His mind hasnt been right for years. Depressions steal over him, and for weeks he finds it almost impossible to get out of bed; the depths are followed by spurts of glee filled with plans and fantasy that keep him up at night. At the slightest provocation, he falls into rages and incessant replays of some injustice, violence, or close call from his two decades on the job, and he broods endlessly about the fight hes waged with the State of Mississippi for the past three years to get a full medical discharge. The net result is morbid hatreda constant negative draw, he sometimes calls it. Like Im on a planet where gravity is five times denser than on Earth.
