Executioner's Song, The - Norman Mailer [343]
Once the ACLU got into the Gilmore case, Shirley Pedler began to receive a lot of hate mail and crank calls. For more than a month they called her at work and at home, all day, all night. She knew it would continue until Gilmore was dead. She was living by herself, and sometimes after a long day, she would dread going home to hear the phone ringing. "Something bad's going to happen to you," a voice would intone. "I hope you get shot with Gilmore," the next caller would say. Sometimes the men were obscene. One remarked that since she was good looking and single, he was ready to do this and that to her.
They usually hung up quickly. By now, these days, she was tending to flare up. Didn't hesitate to tell her callers off. Her nerves had never been well insulated, but with the loss of sleep and the loss of weight, she had nightmares about Mr. Gilmore. A man would kick a platform out from under him. As he hung in the air, they would release gas pellets. Some of the dreams were bloody.
Raised to be active in the Church, she was no longer a practicing Mormon. All the same, these callers were like people she had grown up with. She didn't feel betrayed so much as unable to believe what was going on. "The injustice in this case is so apparent," she would say to herself. At the Board of Pardons Hearing, she thought Chairman Latimer was totally inconsistent. "Why is there no public outcry?" she wanted to know. It had been a travesty, and in the middle was Gilmore, a terribly pale and quite attractive young man, Shirley Pedler thought. His fasting made him look ghastly, but unforgettable.
He was so pale.
Afterward, she became personally self-conscious about the fact that this man's life, due to the maneuverings going on, was in very uncertain circumstances. He did not know his fate from day to day, and yet she was part of those maneuverings.
So she wrote a letter to Gilmore. She told him that she regretted the discomfort that the ACLU was causing him and the terrible uncertainty.
She wished she had the opportunity to talk to him directly, and explain what they were doing. She knew his life was being made more difficult by her. She wanted to tell him why she thought it had to be done. She wished they could cooperate, instead of finding themselves on different sides.
She thought that if she could speak to Gary Gilmore, she would say that she was not personally out of sympathy with his wish to commit suicide. She could see how confronting life at Utah State Prison might warrant taking one's own life, and he had a right to decide whether he was going to live or die. But she did feel the State had no business participating. Capital punishment was not only wrong, but his execution would touch off others, for it would demystify the taking of life by the State. The real horror was people lining up to blow somebody away with a lack of passion, a methodical, calculated turning of the machinery of the State against the individual.
Why come to terms with it? That was what she wanted to say.
As lawyers, Moody and Stanger were able to beat the no-visitor law, and they went to see Gary late on Christmas afternoon.
GILMORE Shirley Pedler wrote me a personal letter. What does she look like anyway?
STANGER She's a slight, young woman, about thirty, not bad looking. I've never seen her in person. I've only seen her on TV. She wears a suit with pants.
GILMORE I don't know what we can do to make the ACLU butt out. The Supreme Court said they're not gonna rehear it. What else can they do? Go to the United Nations? . . .