Executioner's Song, The - Norman Mailer [309]
GILMORE Hey, uh, maybe the Tribune would print an open letter to my mother.
STANGER I don't see any doubt about that.
GILMORE I'll make it brief, if you want to take it down.
STANGER Go ahead.
GILMORE Dear Mom. I love you deeply and I always have and I always will. (pause) But please disassociate yourself from the Uncle Tom NAACP. Please accept the fact that I wish to be dead. That I accept it. That I accept it.
MOODY Do you want to put "That I accept it" more than once?
GILMORE Please accept the fact that I want, that I accept death. What's a better way of saying that? Please accept this.
MOODY Maybe, please accept the fact that I accept that which has been imposed upon me by law, is that what you're trying to say?
GILMORE Yeah. That would be all right. I don't want it to look like a death wish by saying I wish for death.
MOODY I just accept what the law is.
STANGER Carry out the law.
GILMORE Uh, I would like to talk to you. I'd like to see you. But I can't, so I'm sending you this letter through the newspaper. (long pause) We all die, it ain't no big deal.
MOODY Is this in the letter?
GILMORE Yeah. (long pause) Sometimes it's right and proper. (pause) Please, disassociate yourself from that Uncle Tom NAACP.
I'm a white man. The NAACP disgusts me that they even dare associate theirself with me or that they dare even, or that they dare anything. Well, read that to me and I'll think of what I want to say. . . Uh, I could have made a few disparaging remarks about niggers but I do have a few black friends you know, and, uh, very few. But, the NAACP ain't among them. I mean they're so goddamned phony. Do you know anything about the NAACP?
STANGER Oh yes.
GILMORE Every Spook I know hates them.
MOODY Is that right?
GILMORE Yeah, just like they hate Martin Luther King because he was such a pacifist, you know. The NAACP, they're nonmilitant, they're passive. They're very wealthy people that run it.
MOODY What do you think the average black man would like?
GILMORE Just some watermelon and some wine.
The prison had moved Gary back to the hospital and today they could not see him, only hear his voice over the telephone. It sounded acidulous. "Black people," he said, "learn by rote more than anything else. You show them how to do something, and they can do it." He paused as if imparting valuable information. "On the whole continent of Africa, they never found the wheel or anything more deadly than a spear. That's what I think of black people. It ain't a hatred, just fact. I don't care if one guy did something with some peanuts a long time ago."
Ron could feel the growling in Gary's empty gut and the hatred coming through the telephone wires. A dark side of Gilmore was running like a current into his ear. Man, he had an evil nature when he felt like it. Stanger was very happy at this moment that he had never belonged to the NAACP or the ACLU.
5
On her visits, Kathryne would tell Nicole that Gary had intended for her to die, not him. Nicole would think that it could be true. Gary didn't ever want her with another man. Still, it couldn't change her feelings. It wasn't like he had been trying to do it cynically. He would certainly have followed in the near future. So Kathryne's accusations never bothered Nicole. She just wanted to see Gary.
It was making her crazy not to be able to have a phone call or a letter. Sometimes she'd think of getting ahold of a gun. She would tell them if they didn't let her talk to Gary, she would blow her head off.
Ken Sundberg, who had been retained by Kathryne at Phil Christensen's advice, brought Nicole a letter. It was the first word from Gary since she had taken the pills. He just told her not to let the place get to her. Didn't talk about death or dying. Only wrote about how much he loved her. Later, Nicole found out that Sundberg, who was a nice fellow but an uptight Mormon, had agreed to bring in the envelope provided Gary made no reference to suicide at all.
After