Executioner's Song, The - Norman Mailer [157]
One morning, for instance, Kip went to an LDS church right down the street, and came back all dressed up in his Sunday pants, all fired up with religion. He was planning to go to the evening services but she started fooling around with him. Before she was done she made Kip cream his pants. That messed him up. The pants were so wrinkled and wet, he couldn't go to church.
Well, she told Gary a little of that in her letter. Wanted to see what sort of reaction she would get. After all, it had happened weeks ago, and wasn't important. But Gary simply ignored it.
9
Sheriff Cahoon wasn't surprised when Gary asked if he could come out and talk. Cahoon even took him into the front room and they sat by the desk. Had a nice friendly conversation. Gary said he agreed with Sheriff Cahoon on the way the place should be run and to come to some agreement on what was expected from him and Nicole. Well, said Cahoon, he wanted Gary's lady to come and act ladylike, not create no problems. Come decently dressed. When he saw the spark in Gary's eye, he remarked that, of course, her dress wasn't that far out. Her attitude was creating the problem. Gary agreed they could arrive at an understanding. Cahoon said they were having a good one, and he would permit Gary a phone call to Brenda to notify Nicole she was reinstated.
On the next visit, she told Gary about using the razor blade in the underpass. She had tried and couldn't do it. Scared of dying. He told her it was very hard to bleed to death. Most people who tried it got sick. It was one of the hard ways to die.
She had a bandage on, but he finally asked her to show him the stitches. Then said, "That's a fucking deep cut," and the tone went through her like praise, as if he had said, "Baby, you did that for me."
He never did mention Kip.
Having agreed to these visits, Cahoon got concerned all over again. Gilmore and his girl friend were having the damnedest correspondence. One letter actually talked about how she cut her arm and felt the warm blood dripping. Heard it make a puddle on the ground. The guard who brought it to Sheriff Cahoon said, "What kind of message is this to be writing to a guy on First-Degree Murder?"
Cahoon sure read it carefully. Nicole kept talking about the silver sword and life after death. How they would have a better kind of life with the silver sword. She wrote about going up to the spot where she had been bleeding and the rain had washed most of the blood away. Since she was always bringing him books, Cahoon inspected one of them, and it was all about the hereafter. How to get jubilant.
It made the guards so nervous that next visit when Nicole turned around from talking to Gary and went to reach into her purse for a cigarette, the officer on watch was so jumpy he actually grabbed her wrist. It was that silver sword she kept talking about.
Cahoon was debating whether to stop her visits again, but all of a sudden, she stopped coming to the jail. Her letters also stopped.
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Nicole had decided to take the plunge. At the end of a long letter to Gary that had been full of love, she put in a couple of sentences at the end to say how pointless it was that she spent so much time-and she wrote it right out-"getting fucked." Had to know what he thought.
September 5
I just read your letter. It's a long and beautiful letter and full of love. But on page 5 you said "it's such an ugly thing to do. I spend so much time either getting drunk or getting fucked." I felt like I had been hit or something-a cold numbness moved thru me and I couldn't go on reading the letter for a few minutes. Nicole, don't ever tell me anything like that again unless you want to hurt me. I don't want anybody to fuck you and I try not to think of that-I do pretty good until you write and tell me.
She felt as if somebody had socked