Executioner's Song, The - Norman Mailer [299]
What a screen star this fellow would have made, thought Schiller, and was filled with elation at the thought that he had the rights to his life, and in the next instant swallowed the misery that the right to talk personally to Gary had been cut off. From now on, he might always have to ask his questions through intermediaries.
All the same, it was natural to work on improving your relations with any human being you had to see all the time. When Stanger, therefore, made a promise to Gilmore over some small thing, he tried to carry it out. If he said he would bring pencils, he brought them, if drawing paper, drawing paper. Today in Court, however, was the first time Ron felt proud of working for the man. He hadn't known until now how Gilmore would prove under pressure. From Stanger's point of view, however, he was terrific this day, just as intelligent as hell.
Behind the dais was a blue flag and four men at a long conference table who all looked to be Mormons to Schiller, all wearing glasses and blue suits. Schiller was taking in as many details as he could remember, it was history he kept saying to himself, but he was bored until the chairman told Gilmore he had the floor. That was when Gary Gilmore began to impress Larry Schiller, too. If it weren't for the white uniform of Maximum Security, Gilmore could have been a graduate student going for his orals before a faculty of whom he was slightly contemptuous.
"I am wondering," he began by saying. "Your Board dispenses privilege, and I have always thought that privileges were sought, desired, earned and deserved, and I seek nothing from you, don't desire anything from you, haven't earned anything and I don't deserve anything either."
GILMORE I had come to the conclusion that because of Utah's Governor Rampton, I was here, because he bowed to whatever pressures were on him.
I had personally decided he was a moral coward for doing it. I simply accepted the sentence that was given to me. I have accepted sentences all my life. I didn't know I had a choice in the matter.
When I did accept it, everybody jumped up and wanted to argue with me. It seems that the people, especially the people of Utah, want the death penalty but they don't want executions and when it became a reality they might have to carry one out, well, they started backing off on it.
Well, I took them literal and serious when they sentenced me to death just as if they had sentenced me to ten years or thirty days in the county jail or something. I thought you were supposed to take them serious. I didn't know it was a joke.
Ms. Shirley Pedler of the ACLU wants to get in on the act but they always want to get in on the act, the ACLU. I don't think they have really ever done anything effective in their lives. I would like them all, including that group of reverends and rabbis from Salt Lake City to just butt out-this is my life and my death. It's by Courts that I die and I accept that . . .
CHAIRMAN Now, in spite of what you may think about us, you can rest assured that we are not cowards, and you can rest assured that we are going to decide this case on the statutes of the State of Utah and not on your desires . . . Is Richard Giauque out there?
We are going ahead with people who have asked to speak.
Richard, we have received from you a brief, and by the way, I commend you for it, it's a nicely written brief. I may disagree with some of your concepts but anyway, it was nice the way it was presented.
At this point, Schiller watched a slim, blond man with a prominent nose, rather small chin, and a look of considerable elegance, stand up. Schiller assumed the man had to be a lawyer for the ACLU or some such group,