Executioner's Song, The - Norman Mailer [298]
Gilmore asked for immediate execution before a firing squad. "I do not seek or desire your clemency," he wrote, underscoring "not" three times.
During the Board of Pardons Hearing, Schiller wondered who the neat well-built little fellow with the trim mustache might be.
Looked like a young prep-school instructor, a respectable package tied with the right string. Who might he actually be? The fellow kept glaring at him.
He was the kind of young establishment lawyer, or young Utah bureaucrat, who didn't glare often. But when he did, watch it, liquid fire came out. Schiller shrugged. He was used to people blasting him with their thoughts. At times like that, fat felt comfortable-one more layer of asbestos against the flames.
Still the fellow disliked him so intensely, Schiller had to ask about him. It took several newsmen before one could say, "That's Earl Dorius. Attorney General's office." Later, Schiller saw him talking to Sam Smith, and that was another sight. Sam Smith was ten inches taller.
Schiller was finding the prison difficult to understand. They kept saying they wanted no publicity, but were holding the Board of Pardons Hearing in a conference room off the main hallway of the Administration Building. The press had been invited. That was like throwing a little meat to a lot of lions. There were TV cameras, microphones, still cameramen, flashbulbs, lights on tripods, overhead lights on stands. The perfect definition of a circus. The hottest room he had been in for a long tame.
Everybody was standing on chairs to get a better look as they brought Gilmore through the door in leg shackles. It was like a movie Schiller saw once about the Middle Ages where a fellow in a white smock trudged in to be burned at the stake. Here, it was loose white pants and a long white shirt, but the effect was similar. Made the prisoner look like an actor playing a saint.
Schiller was changing his mind about Gilmore's looks again.
It was as if he could take off one mask, hang it on the wall, pick up another. Today Gary did not look like a janitor, a door-to-door salesman, or an ice-cold killer. The hunger strike was ten days old and it had left him pale. The pits in his face showed, and the scars. He appeared good looking, but frail. Eaten away at. Didn't look like Bob Mitchum or Gary Cooper, but Robert DeNiro. Same deadness coming off. Same strength in back of the deadness.
All around, CBS and NBC crews were talking, and Schiller was not comfortable with how much they despised Gilmore. They spoke as if he were some low jailhouse lawyer who had enough tricks to get this far. One fellow from the local press muttered: "Can you believe the attention this cheap punk is getting?"
Schiller remembered that the Head of the Pardons Board, George Latimer, was once the defense attorney when Lieutenant Calley went to trial for machine-gunning Vietnamese villagers at My Lai. To Schiller, Latimer was one more red-faced Mormon with a big bulldog head and eyeglasses. A pompous self-satisfied look. Fever and bilious emotions. What a room. The only pleasant face he could see was Stanger. Schiller didn't know if they were going to get along, for Ron Stanger impressed him as too lippy on one side, and too casual about important details on the other, but right now Ron's boyish middle-aged fraternity man's face was loaded with expression. He was acting very solicitous toward Gary.
Stanger was, in fact, enjoying it. Up to that point, Gary had always been highly suspicious of him. That was fine with Stanger.
He didn't believe in the death penalty, and wasn't convinced Gilmore was serious either. The action interested Stanger more than the merits of Gilmore's position. The action was beautiful. Something new every day. That was fun. Since Gilmore could-although Stanger didn't believe it-end up dead one day, he didn't want to get too close to his client.
Everybody in that crowded, steaming, incandescent room fixed on him. He drew all eyes,