Executioner's Song, The - Norman Mailer [110]
Gary stopped at a gas station on University Street and Third South, a couple of blocks from Vern's house. Gary knew a fellow named Martin Ontiveros who worked there, and in fact, had put in some time that week painting Martin's car. Now he stopped off to ask Ontiveros if he could borrow $400, but was told by Martin's stepfather, Norman Fulmer, who ran the gas station, that they'd just bought 6,000 gallons that day, and didn't have a dime to their name. Nothing in the station but credit-card slips. Very little cash. Gary drove off to Orem.
Around nine o'clock he started to go back to Spanish Fork to look for Nicole, but on the way he stopped at a store, and the motor wouldn't start. The truck had to have a push. So he pulled in again at Norman Fulmer's gas station to complain. Not only did he have trouble starting, he told them, but in addition, the motor was overheating. "Well," said Norman, "just put it in the bay. We'll change the thermostat." Gilmore asked how long it would take and when Fulmer said twenty minutes, Gilmore said he would do a little visiting.
As soon as Gilmore was gone, Martin got into the truck, turned the key and pressed the starter. The motor turned over with no trouble.
In the middle of washing the couch cushions, Debbie Bushnell went out to the front office and asked Ben to go to the store and get some low-fat milk. She was also hoping he would bring back some ice cream and candy bars, and began to giggle at the thought she must be pregnant again. She had certainly felt telltale cravings. Ben, however, didn't want to go. He was interested in the Olympics.
Washing the couch cushions proved to be a job. She couldn't get it done to her satisfaction with a damp cloth. So she decided to unzip the covers, wash them, dry them, put them on again. In the meanwhile, she was planning to vacuum out the corners of the couch, but when she started to turn on the Kirby, she couldn't bring herself to press the switch. Three times in a row she just kept looking at the label-Kirby-on the vacuum, and not turning it on.
Then she heard Ben talking to somebody in the front office. She thought maybe there was a child there, because she heard a balloon pop. So she went out to talk. No reason. Just felt like talking to a kid.
As she went through the door from the apartment to the office, a tall man with a goatee, who had been about to leave, turned around and came back toward her. The craziest word went through her head. "There's poopy-doo," she said to herself. Quickly, she turned around and went back to the apartment.
She actually retreated into the farthest corner of the baby's bedroom.
In her mind, she kept seeing that man looking her square in the face from the other side of the counter. She had an ice-cold feeling on her heart. That man was after her.
Then she got herself together, and walked through the living room into the kitchen and peeked into the office through the narrow space between the television set and the square hole in the wall that separated the kitchen from the office. You could sort of squint into the office through that space. She got there in time to watch the strange man walk out the door. Then she walked in.
Ben was on the floor. He just lay there face down, and his legs were shaking. When she bent over to look at him, she saw his head was bleeding. She had had first-aid courses once and they told you to put your hand to a wound and apply pressure, but this was awful heavy bleeding. A wave of blood kept rising out of his hair. She put her hand on it.
She sat there with the phone in her free hand ringing the operator. It rang five times, and ten, and fifteen times, and a man came into the office and