Executioner's Song, The - Norman Mailer [352]
GILMORE Yea, I was about fourteen when I went to reform school and, ah, thirteen when I started getting locked up.
INTERVIEWER What had you done to get locked up at thirteen?
GILMORE Well, I started out stealing cars . . . but, ah, I guess my first felonies were probably burglaries, house burglaries. I used to burglarize houses on my paper route.
INTERVIEWER Why? What were you after?
GILMORE Why? Well, I wanted guns, mainly. A lot of people keep guns in their homes and, well . . . that's what I was primarily looking for.
INTERVIEWER How old were you then? Eleven? Twelve? Why did you want guns?
GILMORE Well, see, in Portland, at that time, there was a gang. I don't know if you ever heard of it-probably not. But, man, I figured that, well, I would like to be in the Broadway gang. And I figured best way to get in was to go down and hang around Broadway sell 'em guns. I knew they wanted guns. I mean, I don't know if the gang existed . . . it may have been a myth. But I-I heard about 'em, you know? So I thought, I wanted to be a part of an outfit like that . . . the Broadway boys.
INTERVIEWER But instead you got caught and sent to reform school?
GILMORE Yeah, the MacLaren School for Boys, in Woodburn, Oregon.
INTERVIEWER Was that the point at which you just told yourself, From here on, I'm in for trouble?
GILMORE (laughs) I always felt like I was in for trouble. I seemed to have a talent, or rather a knack, for making adults look at me a little different, different from the way they looked at other kids, like maybe bewildered, or maybe repelled.
INTERVIEWER Repelled?
GILMORE Just a different look, like adults aren't supposed to look at kids.
INTERVIEWER With hate in their eyes?
GILMORE Beyond hate. Loathing, I'd say. I can remember one lady in Flagstaff, Arizona, a neighbor of my folks when I was three or four. She became so frustrated with rage at whatever shit I was doing that she attacked me physically with full intent of hurting me. My dad had to jump up and restrain her.
INTERVIEWER What could you have been doing to get her so mad?
GILMORE Just the way I was talking to her and the way I was acting. I was never quite . . . a boy. One evening in Portland, when I was about eight, we all went over to these people's house, and there were two or three adults there. I don't remember just what I did, giving everybody a lot of lip, fucking with everything in the house-I don't remember what all-but anyhow, this one lady finally flipped completely out. Screamed. Ranted. Raved. Threw me out of the house. And the other adults there supported her and all felt the feelings she felt. Apparently, shit like that didn't have much effect on me. I can remember just walking home, about three miles, whistling and singing to myself.
INTERVIEWER It sounds as thought you were on the course you've always followed well before you went to reform school
GILMORE Well, I always knew the law was silly as hell. But as far as courses go, you react in a certain way because your life is influenced by all the varieties of your experience. Does that make any sense?
INTERVIEWER It's hard to say. Give us an example.
GILMORE Well, this is kind of a personal thing. It'll sound like a strange incident to you, but it had a lasting effect on me. I was about eleven years old and I was coming home from school, and I thought I'd take a short cut. I climbed down this hill, a drop of about fifty feet, and I got tangled in these briar bushes, and blackberry, and thornberry. Some of these bushes were fifty feet high, I guess, down in this wild, overgrown area in southeast Portland. I thought it would be a short cut, but there was no pass through there. Nobody had gone through there before. At one point, I could have turned around and gone back, but I chose to just go on, and it took me about three hours to pick my way. All during that time, I never stopped for a rest and just kept going. I knew if I just kept going I'd get out, but I was also aware that I could get hopelessly stuck in there. I was a block or so from