Executioner's Song, The - Norman Mailer [331]
Finally Larry convinced them by saying "I could make a sale in Germany or Japan, and you'd never know a thing. Nobody could ever point to me as the man who sold them." It was the subtlest kind of threat. After all, they knew he had six Xeroxes. How could they be certain he had not made seven? They never gave any hard fully acknowledged consent, but from that moment he had the go-ahead.
After lunch, when Ron Stanger saw Gary again at the prison, it was like talking to steel. Worse than the pits of the hunger strike.
Gary was as cold and hard and icy-fevered as Ron had ever seen him.
It burned your eyes to look into his rage. Man, Gary was triggered.
Call it possessed.
On the drive back, Ron tried to make a joke of it. "Christ," he announced to Moody, "it was like a horror film. I could almost see his teeth getting longer."
5
DESERET NEWS
Gilmore Attempts Suicide Again
Salt Lake, December 16-Convicted murderer Gary Mark Gilmore was in a coma at the University Medical Center today after another suicide attempt.
Gilmore, frustrated in his efforts for a quick execution, was in critical condition.
He entered the hospital at 10:20 a.m., after being found unconscious in his prison cell at 8:15 a.m . . .
The second time, Gilmore really tried to do it. That was Dr. Christensen's opinion. Gilmore had taken phenobarbital at a 6 milligrams per cent level. Any phenobarb greater than 10 milligrams per cent proved fatal for more than half the people who tried it. Gilmore had been well into the lethal range.
This time, when he came out of it, he wasn't obscene. One of the nurses even commented, "Gee, he seems a little nice." In fact, he acted subdued. There was a difference. There really was.
Stanger got to the hospital as soon as he heard the news, and ran into a bizarre episode. An old friend who had shared an office with Ron in Spanish Fork years ago, an optometrist named Ken Dutson, was now dying in the same emergency room where they were working on Gary. Stanger practically bumped into Dutson's wife and family. They were really upset. As soon as Gary was brought in, the hospital gave their main attention to him. Stanger was sure poor Dutson had reached the point where he couldn't be kept alive, but you could hardly expect his family to be happy that a killer was rushed in, and all of a sudden, personnel were swarming around that case.
Gilmore's recovery seemed crazy, it was so fast. He had been at the honest brink of death, Stanger learned from the doctors, but his system seemed to have learned how to get rid of the poisons quickly.
It was a joke the way they kept him only one day at the hospital before rushing the man back to Maximum Security as if afraid Gilmore would get loose and prowl the streets. Of course, he did look terrible. When Stanger went to see him back at the prison, Gary was still so intoxicated from the phenobarbital that he couldn't even sit on the stool. He'd just start tilting. And slurred his words slow as molasses running uphill. Even while talking, he slowly keeled over until he fell right to the floor.
"Did you hurt yourself?" asked Vern.
"I'm all right."
"You sure?"
"I'm all right even when I'm not all right," said Gary.
Schiller sent a couple of urgent questions:
WHEN YOU ATTEMPTED SUICIDE, DID YOU SEE ANYTHING OF WHAT IT IS LIKE ON THE OTHER SIDE?
I can't tell you exactly whether it was light like daybreak or sunshine, or like a break in the darkness, but it was light. I felt I was talking to people, meeting people. That's the memory I came back with.
WHAT IS GOING TO HAPPEN WHEN YOU MEET BUSHNELL AND JENSEN ON THE OTHER SIDE?
Who knows that I will? It could be that with death you pay all your debts. But they have their rights, just like I do, and they have privileges, like I guess I have privileges too. I wonder do they have any more right to do something than I do