Executioner's Song, The - Norman Mailer [310]
At the top she had written December second, but put a question mark after it. She was uncertain of the date. Beneath it, therefore, she wrote, Wednesday nite. Later she found out it was Thursday night.
Gary i love you More than life.
i think about you constantly. You never leave my mind. Before i got your letter i felt as if i was only half alive no knowing how you were. They won't tell me nothin here. When i awoke in U.V. hospital i was only told that you had also awaken, i tryed callen you then-Next thing i knew i was being escorted here. And here is like being buried alive. Cut off from life. You. Oh, Baby, i miss you-i've read your letter every chance i get. Your words touch my soul.
i love you
As you said in your letter, you do not need my life for yourself.
i am yours through all things and time. All Things and Times. i was thinking of the best nite we had . . . that was a nite of ecstacy and Love more tender than mere words can speak on. I call it Sweet Apprehension.
I despise this place. This place despises me. it is all you said it to be. Sheep, rats.
Darlin lites are out. i can jest barely see these lines.
Touch my soul with your truth . . .
Forevermore NICOLE
Chapter 14
THE NEXT FRIEND AND THE FOE
Mikal had not spoken to his brother since that moment in Court four years ago when Gary was sentenced to nine more years in jail, but he heard his name often enough these days. Ever since November, the syllables of Ga-Ry Gil-More came in over the radio with increasingly hypnotic interest in the voice of the announcer, and the leads on top of news stories leaped out from the paper until they were front-page headlines. It wasn't far into November before Mikal made a phone call to Utah State Prison.
On the line, Gary was perfunctory. He spoke tersely. Mikal was informed that Gary had just hired a lawyer named Dennis Boaz and would appear with him at the Utah Supreme Court next morning. At that time he would ask for the execution to be carried out.
"Are you serious?" Mikal asked.
"What do you think?"
"I don't know."
"You never knew me," said Gary.
Mikal could only request Gary to ask Dennis Boaz to give a ring.
That night the lawyer called and brought Mikal up to date on a few details, but it was not much of a conversation. As soon as the Utah Supreme Court made its decision, Mikal asked, would Boaz phone again?
"Is it okay if I call collect?" said Dennis, "I'm a poor man."
Boaz never did call. Mikal learned the outcome by watching TV.
When Mikal phoned Boaz to complain, the lawyer said he'd been swarmed with calls. When Mikal wanted to know where Boaz had practiced in California, Dennis said he found Mikal's attitude "belligerent." After that call, Mikal had to recognize that Gary had cut the family off. He decided to wait.
A few days later, a lawyer named Anthony Amsterdam phoned Bessie to express his interest in the case, and said he would soon be talking to her son. Mikal was ready, therefore, when the call came.
He had already looked into Amsterdam's credentials. They certainly seemed prestigious. The man was a professor of law at Stanford University and an expert on capital punishment. A friend of Mikal's who was going to law school said Amsterdam had won a famous Supreme Court case called Furman v. Georgia which showed that black prisoners on Death Row were being executed in numbers far out of proportion to white prisoners with the same sentences. The case had produced a landmark decision by the Supreme Court that ruled out capital punishment for a while.
Over the phone, Tony Amsterdam now explained to Mikal that he was associated with an organization called the Legal Defense Fund and they had contacts with a nationwide network of lawyers willing to cooperate on death cases. When one