Executioner's Song, The - Norman Mailer [29]
"When Fungoo finally got to see it with a mirror, he went into shock. Couldn't even hit me. We'd had some hash smuggled into Isolation, and he decided I was bombed out of my head. He blamed the weed, not me. The last time I saw him, he had tattooed a giant rattlesnake all over his neck to cover the three pricks. He didn't trust anybody by then so he done it with soot and water." Brenda and Johnny's smiles had become as congealed as the grease on a cold steak.
"Guess that's an ugly story, huh," said Gary. "Yeah," he said, "a couple of times I got to feel bad about it. It sure fucked up Fungoo's world. I guess I must have racked up real bad karma on that one . . . but couldn't resist." He sighed.
It was exactly five weeks and two days since he had come to them from prison. Now she could believe the story. "God, how can he be so horrible?" she asked Johnny now. "How could he have done that to a man who trusted him?"
"I guess he was saying a man will do anything in prison to amuse himself. If you can't, you're gone."
She loved Johnny for saying that, loved her big strong whale-heart of a husband who could have compassion for possible rivals, which was more than she could say for herself. "Oh, Lord," said Brenda, "Gary loves Nicole."
PART TWO
Nicole
Chapter 4
THE HOUSE IN SPANISH FORK
Just before the time her mother and father split up, Nicole found a little house in Spanish Fork, and it looked like a change for the better. She wanted to live alone and the house made it easier.
It was very small, about ten miles from Provo, on a quiet street at the start of the foothills. Her little place was the oldest building on the block, and next to all those ranch bungalows lined up on each sidewalk like pictures in supermarket magazines, the house looked as funky as a drawing in a fairy tale. It was kind of pale lavender stucco on the outside with Hershey-brown window trim, and inside, just a living room, bedroom, kitchen and bathroom. The roof beam curved in the middle, and the front door was practically on the sidewalk-that's how long ago it had been built.
In the backyard was a groovy old apple tree with a couple of rusty wires to hold the branches together. She loved it. The tree looked like one of those stray mutts that doesn't get any attention and doesn't care-it's still beautiful.
Then, just as she was really settling in, getting to like herself for really taking care of her kids this once, and trying to put her head together so her thoughts wouldn't rattle when she was 'alone', why just then Kathryne and Charles chose to split, her poor mom and dad married before they were hardly in high school, married for more than twenty years, five kids, and they never did get, Nicole always thought, to like each other, although maybe they'd been in love from time to time. Anyway, they were split. That would have dislocated her if she hadn't had the house in Spanish Fork. The house was better than a man. Nicole amazed herself. She had not slept with anybody for weeks, didn't want to, just wanted to digest her life, her three marriages, her two kids, and more guys than you wanted to count.
Well, the groove continued. Nicole had a pretty good job as a waitress at the Grand View Cafe in Provo and then she got work sewing in a factory. It was only one step above being a waitress, but it made her feel good. They sent her to school for a week, and she learned how to use the power sewing machines, and was making better money than she had ever brought in before. Two-thirty an hour. Her take-home came to $80 a week.
Of course, the work was hard. Nicole didn't think of herself as being especially well coordinated, and certainly she was not fast-her head was too bombed-out for sure. She would get flustered. They would put her on one machine and just about the time she started getting the hang of it, and was near the hourly quota, they put her on another.