Norman Mailer
THE EXECUTIONER'S SONG
First published in 1979
CONTENTS
Book One WESTERN VOICES
PART ONE
Gary
PART TWO
Nicole
PART THREE
Gary and Nicole
PART FOUR
The Gas Station and the Motel
PART FIVE
The Shadows of the Dream
PART SIX
The Trial of Gary M. Gilmore
PART SEVEN
Death Row
Book Two EASTERN VOICES
PART ONE
In the Reign of Good King Boaz
PART TWO
Exclusive Rights
PART THREE
The Hunger Strike
PART FOUR
The Holiday Season
PART FIVE
Pressures
PART SIX
Into the Light
PART SEVEN
The Fading of the Heart
Deep in my dungeon I welcome you here
Deep in my dungeon I worship your fear
Deep in my dungeon I dwell
I do not know if I wish you well.
—old prison rhyme
BOOK ONE
WESTERN VOICES
PART ONE
Gary
Chapter 1
THE FIRST DAY
Brenda was six when she fell out of the apple tree. She climbed to the top and the limb with the good apples broke off. Gary caught her as the branch came scraping down. They were scared. The apple trees were their grandmother's best crop and it was forbidden to climb in the orchard. She helped him drag away the tree limb and they hoped no one would notice. That was Brenda's earliest recollection of Gary.
She was six and he was seven and she thought he was swell. He might be rough with the other kids but never with her. When the family used to come out to Grandpa Brown's farm on Decoration Day or Thanksgiving, Brenda would only play with the boys. Later, she remembered those parties as peaceful and warm. There were no raised voices, no cussing, just a good family get-together. She remembered liking Gary so well she would not bother to see who else was there—Hi, Grandma, can I have a cookie?—come on, Gary, let's go.
Right outside the door was a lot of open space. Beyond the backyard were orchards and fields and then the mountains. A dirt road went past the house and up the slope of the valley into the canyon.
Gary was kind of quiet. There was one reason they got along. Brenda was always gabbing and he was a good listener. They had a lot of fun. Even at that age he was real polite. If you got into trouble, he'd come back and help you out.
Then he moved away. Gary and his brother Frank Jr., who was a year older, and his mother, Bessie, went to join Frank Sr., in Seattle. Brenda didn't see any more of him for a long time. Her next memory of Gary was not until she was thirteen. Then her mother, Ida, told her that Aunt Bessie had called from Portland, and was in a very blue mood. Gary had been put in Reform School. So Brenda wrote him a letter, and Gary sent an answer all the way back from Oregon, and said he felt bad putting his family through what he did.
On the other hand, he sure didn't like it in Reform School. His dream when he came out, he wrote, was to be a mobster and push people around. He also said Gary Cooper was his favorite movie star.
Now Gary was the kind of boy who would not send a second letter until he received your reply. Years could go by but he wasn't going to write if you hadn't answered his last. Since Brenda, before long, was married—she was sixteen and thought she couldn't live without a certain guy—her correspondence lapsed. She might mail a letter from time to time, but Gary didn't really get back into Brenda's life until a couple of years ago when Aunt Bessie called again. She was still upset about Gary. He had been sent from Oregon State Penitentiary to Marion, Illinois, and that, Bessie informed Ida, was the place they built to replace Alcatraz. She was not accustomed to thinking of her son as a dangerous criminal who could be kept only in a Maximum Security prison.
It made Brenda begin to think of Bessie. In the Brown family with its seven sisters and two brothers, Bessie must have been the one who was talked about the most. Bessie had green eyes and black hair and was one of the prettiest girls around. She had an artistic temperament and hated to work in the field because she didn't want the sun to make her tough and tanned and leathery. Her skin was very white. She wanted to keep that look. Even if they were Mormons farming in the desert, she liked pretty clothes and finery, and would wear white dresses with wide Chinese sleeves and white gloves she'd made herself. She and a girl friend would get all dressed up and hitchhike to Salt Lake City. Now she was old and arthritic.
Brenda started writing to Gary once more. Before long, they were into quite a correspondence. Gary's Intelligence was really coming through. He hadn't reached high school before they put him in the Reformatory, so he must have done a lot of reading in prison to get this much education together. He certainly knew how to use big words. Brenda couldn't pronounce a few of the longer ones, let alone be sure of their meaning.
Sometimes, Gary would delight her by adding little drawings in the margin; they were damn good. She spoke of trying to do some artwork herself, and mailed a sample of her stuff. He corrected her drawing in order to show the mistakes she was making. Good enough to tutor at long distance.
Once in a while Gary would remark that having been in prison so long he felt more like the victim than the man who did the deed. Of course, he did not deny having committed a crime or two. He was always letting Brenda know he was not Charley Good Guy.
Yet after they had been sending letters for a year or more, Brenda noticed a change. Gary no longer seemed to feel he would never get out of jail. His correspondence became more hopeful. Brenda said to her husband, Johnny, one day. Well, I really think Gary's ready.
She had gotten into the habit of reading his letters to Johnny, and to her mother and father and sister. Sometimes after discussing those letters, her parents, Vern and Ida, would discuss what Brenda ought to answer, and they would feel full of concern for Gary. Her sister, Toni, often spoke of how much his drawings impressed her. There was so much sorrow in those pictures. Children with great big sad eyes.
Once Brenda asked: "How does it feel to live in your country club out there? Just what kind of world do you live in?"
He had written back:
I don't think there's any way to adequately describe this sort of life to anyone that's never experienced it. I mean, it would be totally alien to you and your way of thinking, Brenda. It's like another planet.—which words, in her living room, offered visions of the moon.
Being here is like walking up to the edge and looking over 24 hours a day for more days then you care to recall.
He finished by writing:
Above all, it's a matter of staying strong no matter what happens.
Sitting around the Christmas tree, they thought of Gary and wondered if he might be with them next year. Talked about his chances for parole. He had already asked Brenda to sponsor him, and she had replied, "If you screw up, I'll be the first against you."
Still, the family was more in favor than not. Toni, who had never written him a line, offered to be a co-sponsor. While some of Gary's notes were terribly depressed, and the one where he asked if Brenda would sponsor him had no more good feeling than a business memo, there were a few that really got to you.
Dear Brenda, Received your letter tonight and it made me feel nice. Your attitude helps restore my old soul. A place to stay and a job guarantee me an awful lot, but the fact that somebody cares, means more to the parole board. I've always been more or less alone before.
Only after the Chr
istmas party did it come over Brenda that she was going to sponsor a man whom she hadn't seen in close to thirty years. It made her think of Toni's remark that Gary had a different face in every photograph.
Now, Johnny began to get concerned about it. He had been all for Brenda writing to Gary, but when it came down to bringing him into their family, Johnny began to have a few apprehensions. It wasn't that he was embarrassed to harbor a criminal, Johnny simply wasn't that sort of person, he just felt like there's going to be problems.
For one thing, Gary wasn't coming into an average community. He would be entering a Mormon stronghold. Things were tough enough for a man just out of prison without having to deal with people who thought drinking coffee and tea was sinful.
Nonsense, said Brenda. None of their friends were that observing. She and Johnny hardly qualified as a typical straitlaced Utah County couple.
Yes, said Johnny, but think of the atmosphere. All those super-clean BYU kids getting ready to go out as missionaries. Walking on the street could make you feel you were at a church supper. There had, said Johnny, to be tension.
Brenda hadn't been married to Johnny for eleven years without coming to know that her husband was the type for peace at any price. No waves in his life if he could help it. Brenda wouldn't say she looked for trouble, but a few waves kept life interesting. So Brenda suggested that Gary might only stay weekends with them, but live with Vern and Ida. That satisfied John.
Well, he told her with a grin, if I don't go along, you're going to do it anyway. He was right. She could feel awfully sympathetic to anybody who was boxed in. "He's paid his dues," she told Johnny, "and I want to bring him home."
Those were the words she used when she talked to Gary's future parole officer. When asked, Why do you want this man here? Brenda answered, "He's been in jail thirteen years. I think it's time Gary came home."
Brenda knew her power in conversations like this. She might be that much nearer to thirty-five than thirty, but she hadn't gone into marriage four times without knowing she was pretty attractive on the hoof, and the parole officer, Mont Court, was blond and tall with a husky build. Just an average good-looking American guy, very much on the Mr. Clean side, but all the same, Brenda thought, pretty likable. He was sympathetic to the idea of a second chance, and would flex with you if there was a good reason. If not, he would come down pretty hard. That was how she read him. He seemed just the kind of man for Gary.
He had worked, Mont Court told her, with a lot of people who had just come out of prison, and he warned Brenda that there would be a recycling period. Maybe a little trouble here or there, a drunken brawl. She thought he was broad-minded for a Mormon. A man couldn't, he explained, walk out of prison and go right into straight normal living. It was like coming out of the Service, especially if you'd been held a prisoner of war. You didn't become a civilian immediately. He said if Gary had problems, she should try to encourage him to come in and talk about it.
Then Mont Court and another probation officer paid a visit to Vern at his shoe shop and looked into her father's ability as a shoe repair man. They must have been impressed because nobody in these parts was going to know more about shoes than Vern Damico, and he would, after all, not only give Gary a place to live, but a job in his shop.
A letter arrived from Gary to announce that he was going to be released in a couple of weeks. Then, early in April, he called Brenda from the prison and told her he would get out in a few days. He planned, said Gary, to take the bus that went through Marion to St. Louis, and from there connect with other buses to Denver and Salt Lake. Over the phone, he had a nice voice, soft spoken, twangy, held back. A lot of feeling in the center of it.
With all the excitement, Brenda was hardly taking into account that it was practically the same route their Mormon great-grandfather took when he jumped off from Missouri with a handcart near to a hundred years ago, and pushed west with all he owned over the prairies, and the passes of the Rockies, to come to rest at Provo in the Mormon Kingdom of Deseret just fifty miles below Salt Lake.
Gary couldn't have travelled more than forty or fifty miles from Marion, however, before he phoned in from a rest stop to tell Brenda that the bus ride so far had been the most kidney-jogging experience he ever felt and he'd decided to cash in his ticket at St. Louis and come the rest of the way by plane. Brenda agreed. If Gary wanted to travel deluxe, well, he had a little coming.
He called her again that evening. He was definitely on the last flight and would phone once more when he arrived.
"Gary, it takes us forty-five minutes to get to the airport."
"I don't mind."
Brenda thought this was a novel approach, but then he hadn't been taking a lot of airplanes. Probably he wanted time to unwind.
Even the children were excited, and Brenda certainly couldn't sleep. After midnight, she and Johnny just waited. Brenda had threatened to kill anybody who called her late—she wanted that line to be open.
"I'm here," said his voice. It was 2 A.M.
"Okay, we're coming to get you."
"Right on," said Gary and hung up. This was one guy who wouldn't talk your ear off for a dime.
On the ride, Brenda kept telling John to hurry up. It was the middle of the night, and nobody was on the road. John, however, wasn't about to get a ticket. They were traveling the Interstate, after all. So he kept at 60. Brenda gave up fighting. She was altogether too excited to fight.
"Oh, my God," said Brenda, "I wonder how tall he is."
"What?" said Johnny.
She had begun to think he might be short. That would be awful. Brenda was only five feet five, but it was a height she knew well. From the time she was ten years old, she had been 130 pounds, five-five, and wholly equipped with the same size bra as now—C cup.
"What do you mean, is he tall?" asked Johnny.
"I don't know, I hope he is."
In junior high, if she put on heels, the only person big enough to dance with her was the gym teacher. She used to hate like hell to kiss a boy on the forehead and tell him good night. In fact, she got so paranoid about being tall it could have stunted her growth.
It certainly made her like boys taller than herself. They let her feel feminine. She just had this nightmare that when they got to the airport, Gary would only come up to her armpit. Why, she would abandon the whole thing right there. Shift for yourself, she would tell him.
They pulled up to the island that ran parallel to the main entrance of the terminal building. So soon as she got out of the car, there was Johnny over on the driver's side, trying to tuck his shirttail in. That annoyed Brenda no end.
She could see Gary leaning against the building. "There he is," Brenda cried, but Johnny said, "Wait, I have to zip my pants."
"Who gives a shit about your shirttail?" said Brenda. "I'm going."
As she crossed the street between the parking island and the main door, Gary saw her and picked up his satchel. Pretty soon they were running toward each other. As they met, Gary dropped his bag, looked at her, then encircled her so hard she could have been hugged by a bear. Even Johnny had never gripped Brenda that hard.
When Gary put her down on the ground again, she stood back and looked at him. She had to take him all in. She said, "My God, you're tall."
He started to laugh. "What did you expect, a midget?"
"I don't know what I expected," she said, "but, thank God, you're tall."
Johnny was just standing there with his big good face going, um, um, um.
"Hey, coz," said Gary, "it's fine to see you." He shook hands with Johnny.
"By the way, Gary," said Brenda demurely, "this is my husband." Gary said, "I assumed that's who it was."
Johnny said, "Have you got everything with you?"
Gary picked up his flight bag—it was pathetically small, thought Brenda—and said, "This is it. This is all I have." He said it without humor and without self-pity. Material things were obviously no big transaction to him.
Now she n
oticed his clothes. He had a black trench coat slung on his arm and was wearing a maroon blazer over—could you believe it?—a yellow and green striped shirt. Then a pair of beige polyester trousers that were badly hemmed. Plus a pair of black plastic shoes. She paid attention to people's footwear because of her father's trade and she thought, Wow, that's really cheap. They didn't even give him a pair of leather shoes to go home in.
"Come on," said Gary, "let's get the hell out of here."
She could see then he'd had something to drink. He wasn't plastered, but he sure was tipped. Made a point of putting his arm around her when they walked to the car.
When they got in, Brenda sat in the middle and Johnny drove. Gary said, "Hey, this is kind of a cute car. What is it?"
"A yellow Maverick," she told him. "My little lemon."
They drove. The first silence came in.
"Are you tired?" asked Brenda.
"A little tired, but then I'm a little drunk too." Gary grinned. "I took advantage of the champagne flight. I don't know if it was the altitude, or not having good liquor for a long time, but, boy, I got tore up on that plane. I was happier than hell."
Brenda laughed. "I guess you're entitled to be snockered."
The prison sure cut his hair short. It would, Brenda judged, be heavy handsome brown hair when it grew out, but for now it stuck up hick style in the back. He kept pushing it down.
No matter, she liked his looks. In the half-light that came into the car as they drove through Salt Lake on the Interstate, the city sleeping on both sides of them, she decided that Gary was everything she expected in that department. A long, fine nose, good chin, thin well-shaped lips. He had character about his face.
"Want to go for a cup of coffee?" Johnny asked.
Brenda felt Gary tighten. It was as if even the thought of walking into a strange place got him edgy. "Come on," Brenda said, "we'll give the ten-cent tour."
They picked Jean's Cafe. It was the only place south of Salt Lake open at 3 A.M., but it was Friday night and people were sporting their finery. Once installed in their booth, Gary said., "I guess I got to get some clothes."
The Executioner's Song Page 1
