Today in Salem: The pregnant Elizabeth Proctor wills herself to keep looking, not to blink, to keep her eyes wide, and to watch every movement of her husband as he climbs into the sheriff’s cart and prepares for his final journey. She memorizes John’s face, the set of his shoulders, the way he holds out a calloused hand to help the only woman who will be hanged today. He is innocent, and it confounds her, why God would allow this.
The cart sags under the weight of the condemned: three farmers, a minister, and another minister’s niece, and although the farmers might prefer to walk, it would be difficult with the throng of people surrounding them. An even larger crowd is waiting at Gallows Hill, though, twice as large as those at previous hangings. For as much as the hanging itself is sensational, it’s the minister George Burroughs that the crowd has come to see. Is it true? Is a minister — a minister — in league with the Devil? Worse, is it not true? Are they about to hang an innocent man?
A wooden ladder is leaning against the branch of the hanging tree, where several ministers wait to pray for the condemned if they ask. The prisoners stand up in the cart, and the former deputy John Willard steps to the front. He’d quit his position last spring when he began to think he was arresting innocent people. But now he knows it. “Please pray with us,” he says to the ministers. “We are innocent. Please pray that ours will be the last innocent blood that is shed.”
At that, John Proctor steps forward. “We are innocent, and yet we ask that God will forgive us all our sins.” He looks at the crowd. “We also pray that he will forgive the sins of our accusers.” The crowd starts to shuffle and bow their heads as the Reverend Cotton Mather begins to pray.
It’s now, when people are looking away or closing their eyes, that the Sheriff decides the order of execution, for when the crowd looks up, the outcast Martha Carrier already has the noose around her neck. If any of them are guilty it’s she, with a trail of death and smallpox behind her. Rev Cotton Mather has barely said Amen when the crowd begins to boo and jeer.
It’s easy to see her husband, standing a full foot taller than the men around him. But Martha is looking up at the sky. Does she not hear him begging her to confess? Or are his entreaties drowned out by the noise of the cheering crowd? Just like that, before she can look down, the Sheriff knocks the ladder away and she hangs, swaying in the swirling dust.
The elderly George Jacobs Sr. stands on a lower rung, having climbed with difficulty, not having the use of his canes. Jacobs has always been ornery, even vulgar, and now is no different. He has no last words except a string of his own accusations, of the girls lying, the judges ignorant, the Sheriff stealing. At that, the Sheriff kicks the ladder away and Jacobs hangs, as quickly as an 80-year-old man would.
The hangings continue, one after the other. The ladder creaks under the weight of the bold John Proctor. With his pregnant wife Elizabeth in jail, his oldest son is running the 700-acre Proctor farm and caring for the younger children. Still, he’s found a way to be there, and mirrors John’s stance, with his shoulders back and an angry look in his eyes.
The crowd is quieter now as the former deputy John Willard climbs the ladder easily. He stares hard at the Sheriff, who used to direct him in his arrests. Then he locks eyes with his wife, who holds their three year-old daughter on her hip, swaying the way mothers do. Willard isn’t a large man like Proctor, but he stands tall and doesn’t flinch or resist when the Sheriff kicks the ladder.
Finally it’s the minister George Burroughs who climbs the ladder and turns toward the crowd. “What say ye?” asks Cotton Mather. The ladder wobbles as the sheriff ties Burroughs’ hands and legs. “Our Father, Who art in heaven,” Burroughs says. “Hallowed be Thy Name.” He calmly finishes the Lord’s Prayer, flawlessly, with nary a stutter.
An uncomfortable buzz begins at the front of the crowd and moves to the back, and several women begin to cry. Everyone knows that witches and wizards cannot recite Scripture, most especially and in particular the Lord’s Prayer. And yet here he is, the minister they’ve accused, doing exactly what he should not be able to do.
“Stop!” someone yells. “Stop!” The cry spreads through the crowd, growing louder and louder, until it seems like half of the people are raising their hands and shouting. Something has changed. The Sheriff hesitates, and looks at Rev Cotton Mather.
“It’s the Devil’s work!” cries one of the afflicted girls, and points at Burroughs. “The Devil is telling him what to say!”
Mather blinks and gives a nod; the tiniest, almost imperceptible nod. At that, the Sheriff turns away and kicks the ladder, hard, until the Reverend George Burroughs hangs.
The deputies bury the bodies quickly, this time in one large grave, so quickly that George Burroughs’ hand protrudes from the dirt, resting awkwardly on someone else’s foot. Tonight several men will float down the dark river, just as some have before them. They will take the bodies of John Proctor and George Jacobs, and bury them at home with dignity. The others will be left behind.
