Executioner's Song, The - Norman Mailer [133]
It wasn't an emotion so much as a physical sensation. A magnet could have been pulling her to the bars. She reached out to put a hand on the arm he extended through, and one of the officers stepped forward and said, "No physical contact."
She stepped back, and Gary looked good. He looked surprisingly good. His eyes were more blue than they had ever been. All that fog from the Fiorinal was gone. His eyes looked into her as if he was returning from all the way back and something ugly had passed through completely and was gone. All through these last couple of bad weeks, it was like he had been looking a year older every day. Now he looked fine. "I love you," he said as they said goodbye. "I love you," she said.
In the same hour that Nicole was going to and from the jail, April went berserk. She began to scream that someone was trying to blow her head off. Kathryne could do nothing. First she had to call the police and then she decided to commit her to the hospital. It was horrible. April had flipped out completely. Kathryne even had to keep the children out of the house all those hours while it was being decided.
4
The Sheriff, Ken Cahoon, was a tall man with an easygoing manner and white hair. He wore metal-rimmed glasses, had a large nose, a small mouth, a small chin, and a little potbelly. He liked to believe he ran a reasonably good jail. His main tank had bunks for thirty men but he never went over twenty if he could help it. That kept the fights down. The trustees who worked in the kitchen were given a cell to themselves, and there was also Maximum Detention, with room for six. That was the tank where Gary now sat by himself. Plus another cell for six down the same hall to hold prisoners on work release. Altogether, Cahoon's jail could carry forty people without busting the seams of anyone's patience.
A while after Nicole left, Cahoon decided to look back in on Gilmore.
"I have blisters on my feet," Gilmore told him.
"From doing what?" asked Cahoon.
"Why," said Gilmore, "I've been jogging in place."
"Well, dummy, quit jogging in place."
"No," said Gilmore, "give me some Band-Aids. I'll put them on and I can jog some more."
Next day, he asked the same thing. Said he wanted them because his feet were sore. "Why, let's see," said Cahoon, "if you've got an infection."
Gilmore said, "Just give me some Band-Aids. It's not that bad."
"No," said Cahoon, "if you got blisters, I want to see them."
"Oh, hell," said Gilmore, "forget it."
Cahoon decided he was pulling a bluff. There was no telling what he might use the Band-Aids for, unless it was to tape contraband to the bottom of the bedsprings or something.
Next morning, Gilmore said to a guard, "I want out of here today. I've got a Writ of Habeas Corpus. Let me see the head man of the jail."
Cahoon decided Gilmore must have the opinion they were back-woodsy in this little old humble place. Now Gary said to Cahoon in a nice confidential voice, "Look, I'm in for five days. I'm not being held for nothing but a traffic violation. So I would like out of here right now. You see," he said, "I've got to be under a doctor's care. As you may know, I came in with this cast on, and things of this nature want attention. I'd like to be taken to the hospital. The hand has to have its medication, and if you can't get me out, you see, there could be complications."
Cahoon thought Gilmore was a pretty good con man, considering the odds, and he didn't exactly laugh at the idea that Gilmore might get loose in some simple but crazy way. A while back, they'd had a man in the tank named Dennis Howell, and another prisoner happened to come in also named Dennis Howell. The same day, word came