Executioner's Song, The - Norman Mailer [349]
"We are," Sam said to her softly, "giving him more privileges than the average prisoner." "I think you've got a tough job," Brenda said.
Between Christmas and New Year's, two different days in that same cold week, she tried twice, at Gary's request, her gut pulling and aching and horrifying her, to go down to Utah State Hospital and leave a rose for Nicole. Finally she gave up. The hospital wasn't going to receive it. She sent word back through Vern, and Gary was angry at her again. He had to be the most determined man in the world about working a gripe back into shape. If gripes had feathers, he'd fluff them up.
PROVO HERALD
To Those Who Oppose
Gilmore Issues an Open Letter
Provo, Dec. 29-"An open letter from Gary Gilmore to all and any who still seek to oppose by whatever means my death by legal execution. Particularly: ACLU, NAACP.
"I invite you to finally butt out of my life. Butt out of my death.
"It does not concern you.
"Shirley Pedler, Gees, baby, lay off. I wouldn't dare to be so presumptuous as to presume I could impose any unwanted thing on your life Get out of my life Shirley.
"NAACP, I'm a white man. Don't want no uncle tom blacks buttin (sic) in. Your contention is that if I am executed then a whole bunch of black dudes will be executed. Well that's so apparently stupid I won't even argue with that kind of silly illogic.
"But you know as well as I do that they'll kill a white man these days a lot quicker than they'll kill a black man.
"Y'all ain't really disadvantaged lak (sic) ya used to be.
"As for those of you who would question my sanity, well, I question yours.
"from my heart
Gary Gilmore"
A couple of days after Christmas, Sundberg brought Nicole the book Gary had written. It was the kind of notebook you could buy in a drugstore with a nice hard cover. Maybe fifty empty pages. Sundberg was in a hurry and she sort of leafed through while he was there, and he promised to bring it back the next day. On that occasion, she was able to steep herself a little more. Just a simple book but she loved every word because it was a real book with covers, and Gary had put a little writing on every page.
This fuckin guard sittin out here just got done blowin his nose. Took him 5 minutes. Musta really had something lodged up there.
A harsh grating ungodly sound.
When he finally got done I told him: "Well, your horn works. Now try your lites." He gave me a bleery-eyed red-nosed look.
Now the guard is pacing. Clopping back and forth in about a size 13EEE shoe that looks too tite. The boorish fucker is bored stiff.
I got a couple books in the mail about Jesus and I looked 'em over and they were too Christian.
I mean I wouldn't mind reading a book about Christ the man, Christ the Jew, Christ the Messiah, but not Christ the Christian.
In OUI magazine in the Openers section they always got some tomatoe who sent in four flicks of herself in the foto-booth with her boobies out. I always check 'em out when I read OUI. I thot about sending them your flicks-I mean I thot about it, I'm not going to do it.
I know, tho, that they would print them.
Even if you weren't famous they would print those flicks cause you're so sexy and pretty and the look on your face with your tongue stickin out a little and your elf boobies just look so fuckin good.
Baby, before I die I'm going to destroy your letters. The reason is that they are simply not for publication. Not for the public.
I was going to try to return them to you, but I know if I did, that they would end up in the hands of Larry Schiller, movie producer.
Then Gary pasted a news clipping in the book:
SALT LAKE TRIBUNE
Gilmore Answers Query of Eastern Girl
December 4, 1976-Lisa LaRochelle, Holyoke, Mass., as part of a religion course, sent letters to a number of well-known persons asking:
"What will be the first question you ask God when you see Him?"
"Dear Lisa," Gilmore wrote in red ink on a legal sized sheet,