Kimonos in the Closet

53The Executioner

53 The Executioner It’s not the lucrative profession it was back in the Dark Ages. So between executions these men supplement their incomes by singing opera or driving school buses or fishing for salmon. You see them on summer nights playing backgammon and later drunk and staggering home, leaning on the shoulder of a friend. No one gets anxious if a gardener starts acting eccentric and plants tulips all over town or if a tuba player loses his place in life and goes honking through the night. But when an executioner acts erratic, people take notice. They double the watch if he builds a bonfire in his backyard and spikes a stake into its center. If he hauls his axes and cleavers down to the hardware store to sharpen their blades, word spreads that danger is afoot. But it’s time to call the professionals in if on some full moon you follow the echoes of hammers and saws down to the town square where he’s hung a noose from the rafters of the gazebo and is cutting a trap door into its floor. ...