Executioner's Song, The - Norman Mailer [211]
You are a very strong girl, a very strong soul. You know that, and you know that I know it. You had to get that strength somewhere, you're not simply born with it. I mean you can bring it from an earlier life, but you had to originally earn it by overcoming something hard. We are only stronger than the things we overcome.
October 13th
My bills are all due and the babies need shoes And I'm busted.
Cotton is down to a quarter of a pound And I'm busted Got a cow that went dry and a hen that won't lay A big stack of bills that get bigger each day The county will haul my belongings away I'm busted.
I went to my brother to ask for a loan I was busted.
How I hate to beg like a dog for a bone but I'm busted.
My brother said "There ain't a thing I can do My wife and nineteen kids are all down with the flu. And I was just thinkin of callin on you-I'm busted."
The bravest people are those who've overcome the greatest amounts of fear.
I just hate fear. I think that fear is sort of a sin in a way . . . I may shortly, next month, be faced with more fear than I've ever known before . . . I can't say what I will feel when and if that time comes . . . I sort of feel that all my life has been building to this.
October 15th
If you come to see me and they won't let you in, go to the Warden, his name is Sam Smith. Don't argue or get angry with him-people in his position don't have to listen to arguments, they are a power unto themselves, just explain that we are engaged to be married and that the visits, and our letters, mean an awful lot to both of us.
It's a dull motherfucker back here. I ain't got conversation. All these two Mexicans talk about is pimpin bitches and how sharp they are. Little greaseball turds. I've heard all this conversation for years-it never varies from penitentiary to penitentiary. Pure bullshit-essence of bullshit.
I'm not saying its right to break the law. I'm not talkin about that-but these prisons as they exist are wrong.
October 17th
I ain't had a nite's sleep since I been here. They keep the lites on outside the bars 24 hrs. a day. I hang my towel up at nite to shut out some of the lite and they wake me up when they count and threaten to take my fuckin mattress if I don't take the towel down. It's insane.
Kathryne was in a state about Nicole. Things were bad enough when Gary was at the County Jail, but then Nicole was just going from Springville to Provo. Now, it was different. Hitchhiking to the prison took Nicole through Pleasant Grove, and she would often leave the kids with Kathryne and stop off on her way back.
Kathryne tried to talk about it to Gary, but it wasn't very successful.
"How's he seem?" she would ask, and Nicole would answer, "How? How could he seem?" Then, Kathryne found out through Kathy that Gary was saying he wanted to die. Nicole was very quiet about this.
Kathryne really got scared when Nicole said that her kids would be better off without her.
They got into a big fight over that. Kathryne said a lot of mean things she didn't even feel. To begin with, she was afraid of hitchhiking, so she got on Nicole's ass over that. Then, Gary. "He's no good," Kathryne would say. "He's nothing but a damned killer and he deserves the death penalty. No," she would correct herself, "that's too good for him."
"You don't understand him," Nicole would say. "No," Kathryne said, "I don't, but why don't you try to understand those two poor women who have to raise those kids who don't have a father now, while you are running up every cockeyed day to see that damned killer."
Kathryne wasn't really feeling as angry at Gary as she pretended.
Secretly, she might even feel bad for him, but she had to find a way to stop Nicole from hitching to the prison. All Kathryne could see for the future was that when they executed Gary, Nicole would go to pieces.
It was one big argument. At the end, Nicole was yelling. That, at least, was better than silence. "Fine, isn't it," Kathryne said. "Go and blow a man's head off." " I don't care," said Nicole, "I don't want to hear a goddamned