Executioner's Song, The - Norman Mailer [215]
Gilmore was dressed in the white clothing they wore in Maximum Detention, and he was sitting on his bunk engrossed in his drawing. He had a pencil in his hand and a half-finished pencil portrait before him, but he got up, shook hands, said he was happy to meet Campbell. They got along fine. The Chaplain saw him often.
Until now, Cline Campbell had never been involved with counseling a person who was going to be executed. The men on Death Row were always there, and Campbell had chatted with them, and joked with them, but did not have serious counseling sessions. Those men were not close to being executed-their appeals had gone on for years-and their conditions were depraved. But then all of Maximum was a zoo, a flat one-story zoo with many cages.
At right angles to the main hall were the regular units. Behind a gate would be a series of five cells facing another five cells. Each prisoner had a full view therefore of the prisoner across from him, and partial views of the remaining prisoners on the other side. Sometimes all ten men could be speaking at once. It was a bedlam of cries, and sound reverberated from steel and stone. Echoes crashed into one another like car collisions. It was close to living on the inside of an iron intestine.
Most men were in Maximum Security for three months, no more. But prisoners on Death Row were there forever. Other men could leave their tier at mealtime to move to the cafeteria, or go to the yard. On Death Row, your meals were served in your cell. You never went to the yard. One at a time, each man could leave his cell for a half hour a day and walk up and down the tier. You could talk to the other men, take out-as Campbell had seen-your God-given penis, or invite the other man to stick his through the bars. You could be threatened-and Gilmore was the man to issue such a threat-to get away from the bars, or you'd catch a cup of urine in your face.
That was exercise on Death Row.
Compared with other convicts there, Gilmore was relaxed. In fact, Campbell marveled at this ability. Campbell would make a point of going to the kitchen first to bring him a cup of black coffee, and Gilmore would grin, "How you doing, preach?" and speak in a quiet voice.
Sometimes they would talk in Gilmore's cell. More often, Campbell would have him called out, and they would go into a counsel room in Maximum Security in order that nobody overhear their conversation. Several times, Gilmore would say, "I really appreciate rapping with you. I can't talk with anybody else here."
Once in a while they got into deeper conversations. Gilmore would say, "This is stuff I wouldn't even tell the shrinks," and mentioned a time when he first went to MacLaren and a couple of boys held him and he was raped. He hated it, he said, but would admit that as he got older, he participated in the same game on the other side. They nodded. There was the old prison saying, "In every wolf is a punk looking for revenge."
One time, Gilmore made a statement Campbell did not forget.
"I've killed two men," he said, "I want to be executed on schedule." Then he added, "I want absolutely no notoriety." His voice was emphatic. He told Campbell he didn't want news coverage, TV, radio interviews, nothing. "I just believe I ought to be executed, I feel myself responsible."
Campbell said, "Well, that can't be all of your motive for wanting to die, Gary, just responsibility?" Gary answered, "No, I'll be honest with you. I've been in eighteen years and I'm not about to do another twenty. Rather than live in this hole, I'd choose to be dead."
Campbell could understand that. Generally, the LDS Church did believe in the death penalty. Campbell certainly did. He thought to watch a man become more debased, more hateful, more resentful and mean, both to himself and to others on Death Row, was absolutely cruel. The man was better off, and would change less, and be more