Executioner's Song, The - Norman Mailer [176]
Luis was shocked. "No," he answered.
"Well," said Gary, "do you want to buy some?"
It took a couple of seconds. Then Luis shouted, "Geelmore, Geebs, I tired of your chit!" He slammed the door in the corridor.
Goddamn, thought Gibbs, that wetback is the only toy we got.
Chapter 25
INSANITY
Would he, at least, testify for Gary in the Mitigation Hearing, Snyder and Esplin asked.
Yes, said Woods, he could find his way clear to doing that. But, he warned, with the best will in the world, what could he offer in good professional conscience that the District Attorney would not be able to reduce?
They did not ask him if he liked Gary, and if they had, he might not have replied, but the answer he could have given was, Yes, I think I do like Gary. I may even like him a little more than I want to.
Woods felt he understood a few of Gilmore's obsessions. Getting up in the middle of the trestle and racing the train or standing on the railing of the top tier in prison were impulses familiar to Woods. He sometimes believed he had gone into psychiatry so one hand could keep a grip on the other.
Hell, if Gilmore were a free man, Woods might have taken him on a rock climb. That is, he might have, if he were still doing it.
Woods felt again the swoop of his last long fall on an ice face. That had ended climbing. The guy with him had almost been killed in a crevasse. So Woods knew the depression that came when you ceased making crazy bets. He also knew the logic to making them in the first place. No psychic reward might be so powerful as winning a dare with yourself.
If you were really scared, and went through it, and came out on the other side intact, then it was hard not to believe for a little while that you were on the side of the gods. It felt as if you could do no wrong. Time slowed. You were no longer doing it. For good or ill, it was doing it. You had entered the logic of that other scheme where death and life had as many relations as Yin and Yang.
That was the identification Woods felt. Gilmore had also felt compelled to take a chance with his life. Gilmore had been keeping in touch with something it was indispensable to be in touch with.
Woods knew all about that, and it depressed him. Looking back on the times he had seen Gilmore at the hospital, he felt uneasy at the reserve he had maintained between them, even felt shame that he had never had a real conversation with the man.
After a while, he did get Gilmore to talk a little about the murders, but it was no help. Gilmore seemed genuinely perplexed over his behavior. Kept going back to his feeling of being under water.
"Lot of strange things," he would say. "You know, it was inevitable."
This vagueness impressed Woods as pretty straight, a convict trying to convince you he was insane would give more of a picture show. Instead, Gilmore gave the impression of a man who was quiet, thoughtful, cornered, and living simultaneously in many places.
On the other hand, Gilmore had been in seclusion all the way.
That had been altogether against Woods's ideas of treatment, for it cut off interaction with the other patients. They had a new brand of therapy to offer at this hospital and he was all for giving Gilmore some of it. The prison authorities, however, had only agreed to transfer Gilmore from County Jail for these two-and three-day visits if he were kept in lockup all the way. So there you were. A man who had spent nearly all of his last twelve years locked up every night in a cell the size of a bathroom, was still being locked up.
In addition, they had all been concerned, himself included, that no error be made with the guy, so they kept seeing him in pairs.
Later, he heard Gilmore had said, "One thing I have against Woods is that he never talks to me alone." Yes, Woods thought, I really kept my distance.
Of course, he knew why. Becoming a psychiatrist had left Woods in a funny place, philosophically speaking. He did not like to stir his doubts. His own contradictions, once set moving, had a lot of momentum. Woods hadn't had, after all, the kind of upbringing