Today in Salem: Just as there can be too much of a good thing, the people of Salem are beginning to think there’s too much of a bad thing. Of the 16 people who’ve been condemned, 8 are now squeezed into an ox cart, packed so tightly that they can only stand, not sit.
8 people, 8 nooses, 8 ladders.
This is the fourth hanging the crowd has witnessed, and the people are restive and unsure. So when the pious Mary Esty says an affectionate goodbye to her husband and children, nearly everyone begins to cry. Most of her children are grown, but her 14-year-old son is there, looking manly, breathing heavily and standing tall next to his father.
Next to her, the fortuneteller Samuel Wardwell tries to say he’s innocent, but he chokes on the executioner’s pipe smoke before he can finish.
The know-it-all Gospel Woman Martha Corey, with her husband Giles pressed to death only 3 days ago, is suddenly pitiable as she pleads her innocence once more, then prays sincerely.
The others – the fainting shrew Alice Parker, the widow Mary Parker, the nurse Ann Pudeator, the ornery Wilmot Redd, and the elderly beggar Margaret Scott – have scarcely finished their last words when the executioner pushes the ladders out from each one, all 8, until they’ve stopped kicking and are swinging slowly, lifeless.
“What a sad thing it is,” says the minister, “to see eight firebrands of Hell hanging there.”