Today in Salem: Thou shalt not kill. The sixth commandment isn’t hard to understand. Except that it is. Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.
The stubborn Giles Corey is making it even more complicated. The Sheriff is about to put him to death by pressing. And Giles is allowing it. Is he indirectly dying by his own hands? If so, is he breaking the sixth commandment by killing someone — himself? Will God punish him, since the church cannot?
A small crowd of onlookers is standing in the grassy field across from the jail. Most of them were at the meeting house yesterday when Giles was excommunicated, and most of them have the same questions. There won’t be any answers today, though.
At the edge of the crowd, a man is standing with one foot on the ground and one foot on top of a stack of flat stones, each one as large as a man’s torso. He’s holding a large board that seems to swivel as Giles emerges from the jail, shuffling toward the field and shaking off the Sheriff’s hand. Giles is 81. He doesn’t need to be restrained.
The crowd murmurs when Giles once again holds his hand up to the Sheriff and, with the stiff bones of an old man, lays himself down. The man by the stones steps forward and places the board over Giles’ torso, then turns toward the stones. He and the Sheriff grunt as they pick up the top stone together and lay it on the board over Giles’ heart.
“How do you plead?” the Sheriff asks, but Giles remains silent, still refusing to speak. The Sheriff lets a few seconds go by, then gives the smallest of nods toward the officer. They lay a second stone on top of the first. “How do you plead?” the Sheriff says again. “What saith ye?”
“More weight,” Giles wheezes.
Three, four stones. With his dying breaths Giles’ tongue lolls out, and the Sheriff, perhaps to hasten the inevitable, uses the tip of his walking stick to push it back in. Five stones and several minutes later Giles is still, his breath pressed out of him at last.