We later heard from the prison that the warden and others had been heartened by Gary’s behavior on this day. They thought he might be hungry enough for freedom to try calming down and living a more sensible and productive life. Gary had recently started working in the prison art shop, and the warden and a few of the guards had liked his work so much, they bought some of it for themselves. The warden also encouraged Gary to enter some art contests, and in the fall of 1972, after he had won first place in’ several, the prison supervisors granted Gary a school release to attend a community college in Eugene and study art. All in all, it was a great opportunity: If Gary did well under the terms of the program—if he attended his classes, got fair grades, followed the rules of the campus and the halfway house where he would live during weekdays, and if he would never leave the Eugene area without the consent of his counselors—then the chances were good that at school’s end he might receive an early release from prison and would probably also receive a job placement at a Portland-area art or advertising firm. In other words, if Gary handled this right, he would come out of jail with a start on a good career and a new life. We all saw it as a turning point.
MEANTIME, GARY HAD HIS OWN HOPES.
Among his friends at Oregon State Penitentiary was a young man I’ll call Barry Black. Some of Gary’s other inmate friends would later express their belief that Barry might have been Gary’s secret prison lover, but Gary steadfastly denied that he ever had homosexual affairs or partners in his prison years. Still, there is little doubt that, in some form or another, Gary loved Barry Black. Barry was the friend that Gary turned to first when he needed help—Barry was the man who had comforted my brother after Frank and I had given him the news of Gaylen’s death—and apparently Gary thought that the two of them might have a successful friendship outside of prison as well. When Gary learned Barry was going to be taken for some dental surgery to the University of Oregon Dental School, up in the West Hills of Portland, he talked Barry into arranging for the trip to coincide with Gary’s own school release schedule. Gary told his friend he would meet him in Portland at the dental school. He had a plan for the two of them.
ON AN EARLY MORNING IN LATE FALL, A PRISON GUARD drove Gary to the halfway house dormitory in Eugene, where he would spend his evenings, and released him. He gave Gary a new set of clothes and his first week’s school allowance. He told Gary that he had a day or two to get registered at school and become familiar with the campus, and to buy his books and art supplies. He also told Gary that he had to be back at the dormitory by early evening. He could leave the dorm in the evenings only for the purpose of approved night classes.
“You’re on your own now, Gary,” the guard said. “Don’t fuck up. We’re counting on you.”
Gary told the guard not to worry and shook his hand.
Gary walked over to the campus and found the gymnasium, where school registration was taking place. He picked up his packet and began to fill out his forms, but he got intimidated, he later said, by all the confusing lines of people around him. The students all looked so young and confident, so attractive, so nicely dressed. It made him feel nervous and out of place. He went for a walk and found a bar. He had a few drinks. He thought to himself that he could still register for school the next day, but that he needed to use this day to relax. He found his way over to the freeway and hitched a ride to my mother’s place, almost a hundred miles away in Oak Grove. He knew he was violating his release agreement, but he was sure he could be back to the dorm by early evening.
Gary visited with my mother for an hour or two, until it was time for her to go to work. She had been overjoyed to see him. Around noon that same day, he showed up at the door of my small house, near Portland State University. I was taking my own second stab at college, and I was close to being late for class. But when I saw Gary at my door, smiling and looking nervous, I felt like I had to take the time for him. He came in and we talked for a while. I asked him if he had started his classes yet. He told me about going over to the campus and being flustered by all the young people around him. He said he just wanted to see his mother and me and a couple of his friends, and then he would be all right. “I’ll go back before the night,” he said. “I can still register tomorrow without getting in any trouble.”
But the next afternoon Gary showed up again, wearing the same clothes. He had a red glare about his eyes. He obviously had not returned to Eugene and, for his failure to do so, would not only lose his scholarship but could be sentenced to additional jail time.
“Gary, what in the hell are you doing here?”
He skirted the question. “Let’s go get some lunch someplace. Know any good places?” I was pissed. Gary was blowing something important, plus, he was being pushy. But I didn’t know how far I could push back with him. I went to get my jacket. When I returned, he was on the phone. He asked me what my address was.
“Why?”
“I’m calling a taxi.” I explained that there was a restaurant within walking distance. He said he didn’t want to be seen on the streets. I didn’t like the sound of that. We ended up at a topless bar—the only place Gary felt comfortable. He seemed in a trance as he studied the girl onstage.
“I want you to tell me what’s happened,” I said, trying to break his spell. “It’s obvious you’re not going to school.”
He was silent for a long time, staring at the table between us. When he spoke, it was with his slow, countrified drawl. “I’m not cut out for school. Man, they can’t teach me anything about art that I don’t already know. Besides, there are more important things.” He leaned toward me and locked his stare into mine. “A friend of mine from the joint is being brought up to the dental school here next week. A couple of guards are bringing him up and I want to go see him. Uh, I need a gun. Can you help me?”
I felt horrified. I was being pressed into a place where I never wanted to be—a place with guns. I didn’t know anything about that world. I didn’t know anything about buying guns or using them, and I didn’t want to know. Instead of saying that, though, I gave Gary some sort of warning about his getting shot or shooting someone and getting more time in prison.
“Hey,” he interrupted, “if you’re worried about being an accomplice or something, then forget it. I’m no snitch.”
“It’s not that. I just don’t want to have anything to do with anything like that. No matter what happens, Gary, you’re throwing away your life.”
He narrowed his eyes. “It’s a matter of dignity,” he said. I looked away, shaking my head. Gary stared without expression at me for a long time, fidgeting with a book of matches. “I’d do it for my brother,” he said, and motioned for us to leave. Once more, he insisted on taking a taxi, back to my place, but he didn’t get out with me. He smiled and ruffled my hair as I got out of the cab. I started to say something but he stopped me. “It’s okay,” he said, but there was a terrible hurt in his eyes. I got out of the taxi feeling ashamed—feeling that I had let down somebody whose love and approval I had always wanted—and also feeling scared. I could tell that Gary was determined to get his gun and set his friend free, even if it meant a shoot-out. I didn’t see how my brother could come out of such a scenario alive. Even if he did, I didn’t want to be the person who had put a gun in his hands. I would feel guilty for whatever that gun did.
This was the first time that Gary put me in the place of making a horrible choice. I knew what his plans were. He had told me the day and the hour he planned on springing his friend from the guards at the dental school. I knew that when that happened, there was a good chance somebody would get killed. I thought about whether I should turn my brother in, and then I thought how I would feel if it was Gary who got shot dead on that day. I decided I could not turn him in. I did not want him dead. But as soon as I decided that, I felt as if I was already morally implicated in whatever killing he might do. He was a dangerous man. He should not be on the streets.
I hated knowing what I knew, I hated having to live with m
y choice. I hated the idea that I loved him more than the people he might kill.
I ONLY SAW GARY TWICE MORE during that escape period of less than a month. He stopped by for a couple of hours one night while I had a girlfriend over and asked me to play Johnny Cash records for him. He was charming and sober. He kidded the young woman. “You being nice to my brother? He’s my little brother you know, and I feel like I have to look out for him.”
Privately, I tried to prod him out of his plans. “Let’s just say they’ve changed,” he said. “Don’t you worry about it. The less you know, the better off you are.”
Another day I came out of class at Portland State and Gary was waiting for me outside. He had borrowed a car and said he wanted me to meet some friends. We drove out, Gary drinking beer all the way, but he was in a friendly, conversational mood. His friends lived in a mansion high on a hill on the east side of Portland. These were the people, it turned out, who were running Portland’s largest pornography and massage parlor business. They were dressed nicely and were polite, and they lived in a beautiful home. They were sitting at their dining table, looking at large black-and-white stills of blow jobs. They were trying to figure the best sequence for arranging the photos. Gary and I sat in another part of the room. He showed me his prize cache of drawings and paintings, a voluminous folder of poignant studies of everything from ballet dancers to bruised boxers, and an occasional depiction of violent death. Mostly, though, they were drawings of children, round faces with a bewildered, inviolable innocence. “Here,” he said, “take whatever you want.” To him, pictures were just something one drew and gave to somebody.
He wanted to take me on a tour of his friends’ premises, to show off the luxury that wasn’t his. While showing me around the indoor swimming pool, Gary, without warning, opened his jacket, took out a pistol and handed it to me, butt first. “Think you could ever use one of these?” he asked, head cocked in his best Gary Cooper fashion.
I felt as though I were being tested, and I didn’t like the method. I also felt awkward and vulnerable, holding a gun for the first time. I kept the barrel pointed toward the pool water and my finger away from the trigger. “I suppose I could if I had to, Gary, but I hope you’re talking about a situation where it’s a matter of survival, not choice.” He took the gun and put it in his jacket pocket. “C’mon,” he said. “I’ll drive you home.”
We drove in silence back to my apartment. I felt he was angry, but I wasn’t sure why. Gary started to honk at a car in front of us that was going too slow for him. The driver decelerated. “Son of a bitch,” Gary muttered, and swerved violently into the left-hand lane, right into the path of an oncoming car. The car honked and braked and at the last possible second Gary yanked our car off the road onto a sidewalk.
We stared at each other, twin mirrors of wide-eyed, openmouthed fear. “You almost got us killed!” I shouted. He rested his forehead on the driving wheel, breathing deeply. “Sometimes,” he said, “you just have to be willing to face that possibility.”
A FEW NIGHTS LATER, WHILE WATCHING THE NEWS, I learned of Gary’s arrest for armed robbery. He had walked into a service station in southeast Portland, high on whiskey and some opiate. He put a pistol to the attendant’s head and said: “Give me everything you have in your register or I’ll blow your fucking head off.” He was pulled over just a few blocks from the gas station and taken into custody without incident.
I felt relieved: Nobody had been killed. I also felt angry and saddened. Once more, Gary had thrown away his life. I tried to visit him at Multnomah County Jail, where he was being held, but this time he wasn’t allowed visitors. A couple of days later, my mother called me. Gary had been found lying on his blood-soaked mattress in his cell. He had cut himself on his right arm and he had also lacerated his abdomen. He was at the emergency clinic of the same hospital he had planned on springing his friend from.
Jesus Christ, I thought. There’s no fucking end to this.
GARY’S TRIAL FOR THE ROBBERY ATTEMPT was held in Multnomah County on February 12, 1973. My mother and I attended.
Gary entered the room in handcuffs. He asked to address the court, and the judge granted him the permission.
“I hope you don’t mind if I refer to my notes,” Gary said. “I’m not much of a public speaker.”
“Not at all, Mr. Gilmore,” the judge said.
Gary went on. “You have read the pre-sentence report and have decided probably what you are going to give me, but I would like to make a special appeal for leniency. I have done a lot of time, and I don’t think it would do me any good to do any more. What I mean is, I have been locked up for the last nine and a half calendar years consecutively and I have had about two and a half years’ freedom since I was fourteen years old. I have always gotten time and always done it, never been paroled, only had one probation, that was when I was a juvenile. I have never had a break from the law and I have come to feel that justice is kind of harsh and I have never asked for a break until now. I still have time to do at the penitentiary …
“Your honor, you can keep a person locked up too long, the same way that you can keep them locked up long enough. What I am saying is, there is an appropriate time to release somebody or to give them a break. Of course, who’s to say when this is? Only the individual himself really knows and it’s more a matter of just convincing somebody. There have been times when I felt if I had a break right then I would probably never have been in trouble again, but like I said, I don’t feel that I have ever had a break from the law. Last September, I was released from the penitentiary to go to school in Eugene at Lane Community College and study art, and I had every intention of doing it. One day I’m in the pen for nine years and the next day I’m free, and I was kind of shook. Things have changed and it was different, man, and nothing prepared me for this. While I was waiting to register at the college. I got drunk. Well, I didn’t get drunk, I had a couple of drinks. I realize this was a pretty stupid thing to do, and I was afraid to go back to the halfway house with booze on my breath. I thought I would be taken back to the pen immediately, and to be honest, I guess I kind of wanted to continue drinking. It tasted kind of good.
“Anyway, I split and went to Portland, out of fear of going right back to the penitentiary. I honestly intended to do good down at Lane, like I said. I wanted to study art and that is what I was there for. After I left it occurred to me to go back, but I didn’t. Freedom tasted pretty good and I hadn’t been out for a long time. It’s a pretty nice world out there. It wasn’t long before I was broke and I spent a couple of days looking for a job but couldn’t find one. I didn’t have any work background. When you are free you can afford to be broke for a few days and it doesn’t matter, but if you are a fugitive you can’t afford to be broke at all. I needed some money and I wanted to leave, I wanted to go far away, I wanted to change my name, I wanted to get a job, and I wanted to just live, and I needed some money, and I committed a robbery. When I committed this robbery I had no intentions of hurting anybody, and that’s the truth.
“I stagnated in prison a long time and I have wasted most of my life—at least half of it. Probably the best years of my life. I have had a brief taste of freedom and to tell you the truth I had almost forgotten what I am missing. I am not a stupid person although I have done a lot of stupid and foolish things, but I want freedom and I realize full well that the only way I can have it and maintain it is to quit breaking the law. I never realized that more than I do now. If you were to grant me probation on this sentence you won’t be turning me loose right now. I still have time to do. On the other hand, you can sentence me to additional time, but like I said, I have had about two years of freedom since I was fourteen and I have got problems, and if you give me more time I am going to compound them. That is all I have to say.”
The judge sat quietly for several moments before giving his reply. He told Gary that he thought he had stated his history and his case effectively, and he had been moved by his plea. But the crime tha
t Gary was appearing for—armed robbery—was a serious one, and he had already been convicted once for this same crime. Given the severity of the offense—given that another man’s rights had been violated at the end of a gun—the judge felt he had no option but to impose an additional sentence. All together, for the escape and the robbery, Gary would be sentenced to another nine years. The judge promised, however, that if Gary’s performance at the prison was satisfactory in the time ahead, then the court would not oppose a possible parole at an earlier date.
“Your honor,” my brother said, “my next parole appearance is this month. Do you think the Parole Board might parole me right away?”
The judge smiled grimly. He recognized there was a little humor in the remark. “I would doubt it, Mr. Gilmore, but I think if you were sitting on the Parole Board you wouldn’t consider yourself for a parole right now either, in the light of this past experience.
“All right. That will be the sentence.”
After the proceedings, Gary asked for a moment to speak to my mother and me. My mother was shaking, she was crying so hard. Gary leaned over and kissed her on the cheek. “Look, don’t worry,” he told her. “They can’t hurt me any more than I’ve already hurt myself.”
Shot in the Heart Page 37
