Executioner's Song, The - Norman Mailer [160]
Speaking of health, he expected the death sentence.
"A good lawyer could get you Second Degree. They parole Second Degree in Utah in six years. Six years, you're on the street."
"I can't afford a good lawyer," said Gilmore. "The State pays for my lawyers." He looked down at Gibbs from his bunk and said, "My lawyers work for the same people that are going to sentence me."
4
"They keep taking me," said Gilmore, "to be interviewed by psychiatrists. Shit, they come up with the stupidest questions. Why, they ask, did I park my car to the side of the gas station? 'If I parked in front,' I said to them, 'you'd ask me why I didn't park to the side.' " He snorted at that. "I could put on an act, have them saying, 'Yeah, he's crazy,' but I won't."
Gibbs understood. That offended a true man's idea of himself.
"I am telling them that the killings were unreal. That I saw everything through a veil of water." Now they could hear the drunk moaning again. " 'It was like I was in a movie,' I say to them, 'and I couldn't stop the movie.' "
"Is that how it came down?" asked Gibbs.
"Shit, no," said Gilmore. "I walked in on Benny Bushnell and I said to that fat son of a bitch, 'Your money, son, and your life.' "
They both cracked. It was funny as hell. Right there in the middle of the night, in this hot fucking two-bit asshole jail, with the drunk slobbering in his shit and counting his sins, they couldn't stop laughing. "Pipe down in there," said Gilmore to the drunk. "Save your crying for the Judge." The drunk was one wet sorrow. Like a puppy first night in a new house. "Hell," said Gilmore, "the morning after I killed Jensen, I called up the gas station and asked them if they had any job openings." Again they cracked.
Gilmore, tonight, would break off his arm if he could make a good joke. Cut off his head and hand it to you, if his mouth would spit nails. "What's your last best request when they're hanging you?" he asked, and answered, "Use a rubber rope." Pretended to be bouncing on the end, he put his face in a scowl, and said, "Guess I'll be hanging around for a while."
Gibbs thought he'd piss his pants. "What," asked Gilmore, "Is your last request when they put you in the gas chamber?" He waited. Gibbs wheezed. "Why," Gilmore said, "ask them for laughing gas."
"That is enough," said Gibbs, "to choke you up."
For that matter, he was almost strangling on his own phlegm. Smoking gave him a dozen oysters every meal. The kid with phlegm-pot. Gilmore asked, "What do you say to the firing squad?"
"I," said Gibbs, "ask them for a bulletproof vest." They laughed back and forth like an animal going in circles and getting weak. "Yeah," said Gibbs, "I heard that one."
Gilmore had a quality Gibbs could recognize. He accommodated. Gibbs believed he, himself, could always get near somebody-just use the side that was like them. Gilmore did the same. Around other each other tonight, they were like boiler-plated farts. Filthy devils.
No sooner did he think this, than Gilmore got serious. "Hey," he said to Gibbs, "they're figuring to give me the death penalty, but I have an answer for them. I'm going to check into the State of Utah's hole card. I'm going to make them do it. Then we'll see if they have as many guts as I do."
Gibbs couldn't decide if the guy was a bullshitter. He couldn't visualize doing something like that.
"Yes," said Gilmore, "I'll tell them to do it without a hood. Do it at night if it's outside, or in a dark room with tracer bullets. That way I can see those babies coming!"
The drunk was screaming, "I didn't mean to kill the little boy, oh Judge, I'll never drive again."
"Knock it off," shouted Gilmore.
Yeah, he said to Gibbs, the only legitimate fear a man in his position could have while facing the firing squad was that one of the marksmen might be a friend or relative of one of the victims. "Then," said Gilmore,