Executioner's Song, The - Norman Mailer [173]
I was surprised to get this flick back-l bet those cops in Orem looked this picture over pretty good, huh? Bastards pisses me off to think that some fuckin pig-or anybody-saw such a personal picture of my love.
Sept. 21
I would really like you to see a picture of that sculpture "Ecstasy of St. Therese." I believe the sculptor is Bernini. I've never seen any great works of art in person but I guess I'm familiar with most European Art through books I've studied. I once saw a picture of Christ by a Russian artist that really haunted me for a long time.
Christ didn't look anything like the popular beaming Western Christian version of the kindly shepherd we're used to. He looked like a man, with a gaunt, lean, sort of haunted face with deep set large dark eyes. You could tell he was pretty tall, angular, rangy, a man alone and I guess that was the most striking thing about the picture.
No halo, no radiant beam from heaven above. Just this extraordinary man-this ordinary human being who made himself extraordinary and tried to tell us all that it was nothing more than any of us could do. Loneliness and a hint of doubt seemed to fill the picture. I would like to have known the man in that picture.
In the Salt Lake pokey, just before Gibbs had been transferred to Provo, a jailer told him about some student who'd been in law school with Jensen. The dude had actually tried to get into jail to kill Gary.
He had planned to tell the guards he was a working lawyer, but would smuggle in a knife.
Gilmore said he could sympathize. What was a dead man worth, if he didn't have friends to avenge him? Then he looked at Gibbs and said, "You know, this is the first time I've ever had any feelings for either of those two guys I killed."
Sept. 22
I'm the only one in my family who feels the pull of the Emerald Isle. It's a land of magic.
I got something I want to give you and I hope you won't think its silly. It's something I do and it's kind of magic. It's a force, a pull, that I've tapped and it works. Just a little sort of chant:
GOOD THINGS COME
TO ME NOW.
Lately I have revised it to: GOOD THINGS COME TO US NOW. Just a personal prayer spoken softly, quietly in my mind, aloud if I'm alone. I hope this don't seem silly to you. I know the power of things like this, the rhythm, the repetition of a soft harmonic chant sets magic in the air, pulls, draws, gives the believer power to attract and power to receive.
2
In their tank, labeled by Gilmore The Stinking Dungeon, they had a cracked porcelain toilet, now nicotine yellow in color. You flushed it by pressing a button on the wall. But in order to get enough leverage, you had to grab on to the side of the shower, and lean for two full minutes on the button. Only that way could you build sufficient pressure.
Then, once the waters started, you had to hold the toilet plunger to the base of the bowl until the level came up to the rim, That was the only way to have enough liquid to force a load down. All the while, a leak would be oozing around the seal at the bottom. The Open-Pit Sulfur Mine, they called it.
One afternoon, needing fuel for coffee water, they tore down the cardboard sign that gave instructions on how to flush the pot, and Gary replaced it with words of his own, written with a Magic Marker on the wall.
Important Notice !!!
To Flush this Chitter
You keep Butt on Bowl
Press Button Firmly with Tongue
Good Luck Motherfucker
Then he fell in love with the Magic Marker. "After I'm gone, they'll really think a nut was in here," he said, and on all the walls, he wrote, "WALL," wrote "CEILING" on the ceiling, "TABLE" on the table, "BENCH" on the bench, "CHOWER" in the shower. Then he numbered each bunk "BUNK ONE," "BUNK TWO." Finally he printed on Gibbs's face and his own: "FOREHEAD,"