Resonance

Chapter Eight

"How could this have happened?" said Waylon, running his fingers through his newly cut hair and looking to Mr. Burns with accusing eyes as they stood outside the courthouse. "You bribed the jury, didn't you?"

"Yes, I did."

"Then why did they render a guilty verdict?"

"Perhaps the Stanton family out-bribed me."

Waylon grew still and quiet as he thought of his brother sitting in jail for years on end. "I told him we'd get him out of this..." His aunts Constance and Maybelle joined him on the steps and hugged him. "Aunt Constance, I promised him..."

"He knows you tried everything you could, dear."

After the recess, they filed back inside the courtroom to hear the sentencing. Waylon looked over to his brother and mouthed the words, "I'm so sorry." Clayton forced half a smile, then nodded and mouthed the words, "That's okay."

The judge banged his gavel. "The defendant, Clayton Smithers, unabashedly admits to his perverse lust for others of his sex, and the facts in hand demonstrate his willingness to betray the trust of a friend to satisfy it. It reveals the moral decay in our society that his own brother defends his indecency and that wealthy men will spring to his defense, claiming he is incapable of directing himself on a natural, righteous path but rather must remain a servant to sin. In consideration of the facts presented here, and in light of his unrepentant attitude and the risk that society will grow complacent and bereft of morals should we grant anything but scorn to such a criminal as him, it is my duty to ensure that he and others like him do not continue to pose a threat. It is with this in mind that although the maximum sentence for the crime of aggravated sodomy is twenty years in prison, I sentence Clayton Smithers to ten years in addition to castration, which I believe will serve as a far more effective deterrent."

At the word "castration," many in the court gasped. Waylon stood up rapidly, his chair skidding as he said, "For the love of God, no!" As the bailiffs guided Clayton away to his cell, Waylon ran up to him and said, "I won't let them do this to you. I swear! We're not sunk yet! We'll file an appeal, and –"

"Stop wasting your time on me," said Clayton, eyes turned to the ground. "We both know it won't do any good, anyway."

"We can't give up now! I refuse to believe the judge is so callous and un–"

"Don't you see? They don't care. To them, I'm just a filthy pervert who's getting what's coming to him."

"I'm not giving up."

"You should, though. Concentrate on your doctoral work. It'd be best if you forget you ever had a brother."

"No, I'll fight for you! I'll fight for you until you're a free man." The bailiffs kept him from following any further. "Clayton! Don't give up, promise me that!"

Clayton simply shook his head, tears welling in his eyes.

Waylon fell to his knees at the doorway of the courtroom as he watched them take his brother away. Mr. Burns approached from behind and patted his shoulder. "I promised him..." He arose, and Burns patted him over the shoulder blade a couple of times before withdrawing.

"We're not licked yet. We still have the appeal."

"I know, but..." His eyes darted to where Sterling still sat in the courtroom, wiping tears from his eyes before landing his head with a thud on the tabletop. "You." He spoke with such a pointed authority that despite Sterling's back facing him, he knew that word was directed at him. "Why are you crying? You're the reason my brother is suffering!"

"It's because – I really thought he liked me before he did this."

"Yeah, well, he really thought you liked him before you did this." He stared straight into his eyes. "Can you really live with what you've done to him? Can you live with being the reason a man who loved you to pieces gets butchered and spends a decade behind bars?"

"I don't have to talk to you," he said, turning away, grabbing his briefcase, and heading for the door.

Mr. Burns approached Sterling's father, Lloyd Stanton. "I was so disappointed you denied your son's history on the stand. You must realize I can't let this go unpunished."

He smirked. "As if you'd incriminate yourself just to get my son in trouble."

"No, I won't reveal our corporate doings to the eyes of lady law. I will, however, reveal information about your corporate operations that your competitors will be delighted to know. You won't be in business much longer."

"Why do you care so much about the fate of the Smithers boy, anyway?"

"It is as I testified on the stand – his brother saved my life in the lab, and I owe it to him."

"Yeah, right. You're not one to feel indebted to anyone for any reason, even if he did save your life. Why really?"

"My reasons are my own."

Clayton perched himself upon the rickety wooden chair and tied one end of the rope to an overhead beam. He pulled the loop of rope over his head, then clasped his trembling hands together as he whispered in prayer. "This is really how it ends, then." His last sights – a crooked nail sticking out of the end of a warped floorboard dimly lit by a single bulb and the faint shadow of the rope he'd hang by, a fuzzy annulus of execution. He sniffled, thinking of his mother and Waylon and his aunts, who would be horrified to hear that his body had been found hanging in a prison utility closet. And his father... would he even visit his grave? "I'm sorry, Waylon... I just can't have hope. I can't live like this." He felt a chill down his spine, and then an odd sense of serenity. "This is how it ends." He faced his doom with equanimity as he stepped off the chair.

Clifford Burns, Jr. observed the men walking about in the work areas of Springfield Penitentiary, scrutinizing them, every one of them a potential subject for his experiments. When one of the few surviving heirs to the Burns family fortune had requested a job as a prison guard, they had looked askance at him, but had assented nonetheless. Those who questioned the whims of a Burns had the unfortunate tendency to have misfortunes befall them. "All right," said the nearest prison guard, "time to get back into your cells, now." The men trudged back to their cells, and Cliff went to the nearby utility closet where he disguised his latest formulations as common cleansers.

He opened the door.

Before him, Clayton hung from a rope, his face beginning to turn blue. Cliff grabbed a concealed dagger from a holster in his boot and cut the rope, dropping him down to the ground. He knelt and loosened the rope around his neck, and Clayton inhaled shallowly and desperately. Once he was fully conscious, he said in a hoarse whisper, "Why did you stop me?"

"Now, it can't be as bad as all that, can it?"

"Oh, yes, it is. They're going to castrate me and keep me locked up here for ten years. It can't get much worse than that."

Cliff cringed. "You're Verna's son – Monty's protégé – aren't you? Waylon Smithers?"

"Yes. I mean, no. Waylon's my brother."

"I see. What's your name, young man?"

"Clayton. Clayton Smithers."

"Here's the deal, Clayton – I have an experimental potion that mimics death in whosoever takes it, and I need someone to test to gauge proper dosing. Test it for me, and I can get you out of here." He produced from his jacket a small glass vial with a thimbleful of clear liquid sloshing about inside and handed it to him.

"Is it safe?"

"Safer than hanging."

He nodded and drank from the vial. He was really in no position to doubt the man who had just spared him his life, particularly if he could make it worth living. For a minute, they stared at each other, waiting for something to happen, until Clayton began to convulse briefly, then went still. Clayton checked his pulse and laid a hand on his chest. After an extended time detecting nothing, he caught a heartbeat and slight inhalations. "Excellent!" He laid the noose over Clayton's head, then burst the door open and hollered for another guard to note that a prisoner was dead by his own hand.

"...And this evidence is incompatible with the gamma ray hypothesis. This is what Dr. Chadwick surmises is a new, neutral particle, or neutron," said Dr. Arnold Frink.

A man opened the door to the seminar room. "Telegram for a Mr. Waylon Smithers."

Waylon raised his hand, and the courier approached him and handed him the yellow envelope.

"Excuse me," said Dr. Frink, "Is it necessary you interrupt my lecture for this?"

"I'm afraid so," said the courier. "It says it's urgent."

Waylon unfolded the paper. "He's dead?" As he read, his hands began to shake as he unconsciously lowered the paper. "He killed himself?" The paper crumpled as he brought his hands together and started to cry into it. "Excuse me. I have to go." He left the seminar room and sat in his car, where he began to cry in earnest. He wanted to go see his aunt Constance and Maybelle, but he didn't want to be the one to tell them. He didn't want to deal with any callous remarks from his father, but he wouldn't be home yet for an hour or more.

He pulled into the drive of his family home and rang the bell. A moment later, his mother greeted him with a teary hug. "Mom..."

"This is all my fault..."

"No, don't think that way. This was Sterling's fault. This was the jury's and the judge's faults. And Dad is the one who disowned him, not you."

"I should've been there for him."

"What's done is done. Just... I hope to heaven there is such a thing, because it's what he deserves."