Executioner's Song, The - Norman Mailer [386]
GILMORE Look . . . is this on the recorder?
MOODY Yes, uh huh.
GILMORE The Warden told me I could invite five people. I named 'em and he said, "Don't you want any clergymen there?"
MOODY The statute's very clear that you're entitled to two clergymen and in addition, five people.
GILMORE I don't want the clergymen to get barred. They've been looking forward to this all along.
MOODY Come on, as if anybody looks forward to it. I think ah . . . it would make them feel they were fulfilling their duties.
GILMORE I don't care what their motives are. They both want to come.
MOODY It's just gonna be a damn painful forty-eight hours for everybody.
GILMORE Man, I'm not in pain.
MOODY I know you're not, but others are. Your Uncle Vern, your Aunt Ida are going through hell. (pause) Others are physically ill.
GILMORE Who?
MOODY Well, I am, Rod Stanger is, Father Meersman.
GILMORE It's no big deal.
MOODY We know it's no big deal, but it's empathy for you.
GILMORE I'd like to see Nicole. The sucker won't give me an answer.
MOODY I think that's your answer, you're just not going to face reality.
GILMORE I didn't hear.
MOODY I think that's the Warden's answer. He's not going to answer you. Period. That's no reason to shut out everything else. You still have forty-eight hours to live. Well, live it.
GILMORE Shit. Up until the last hours I only had one guard, and if I didn't talk to him, he didn't have nobody to talk to. So it was quiet.
MOODY Yeah . . .
GILMORE Now they've put two of them fools out there. All they do is talk to each other and play cards.
MOODY Well, they tell us that's part of an execution.
GILMORE Man, ah . . .
MOODY When you get an execution, you get a deathwatch. That's what you're undergoing right now.
GILMORE Well, I don't like to listen to the cocksuckers right in front of me.
MOODY You may not, but it's part of your sentence.
GILMORE Well, okay then.
MOODY If you're gonna get shot, you're gonna have a deathwatch too. That's part of it.
GILMORE Yeah (pause) Okay, man.
MOODY Do you want me to send these questions in?
GILMORE I'm not really all that choked up about answering any more.
MOODY Okay.
GILMORE It, man, is so noisy. If I could have some quiet during these last fucking hours.
MOODY You doing your exercises or anything like that to pass the time?
GILMORE Yeah . . . I do all that.
MOODY You reading any?
GILMORE No, uh . . . I don't read anymore. I've real all I'm gonna read.
MOODY Draw anymore?
GILMORE No.
MOODY You going to draw that self-portrait?
GILMORE Don't have a mirror.
MOODY Well, I guess you don't have much of anything, do you?
GILMORE I've got myself. (long pause) I don't want to ah, fuck around with writing the answers to these questions. I guess he deserves answers, but God damn it I don't like the way Schiller does some things.
MOODY Well, there are lots of times we don't like the way he does things, but his is a style, and he's in a tough racket and you develop a style like his.
GILMORE Is everybody just supposed to accept that?
MOODY No, I don't think so. But he's got a damn difficult job. He's trying to do it. That's all. He's working his ass off.
GILMORE I asked him not to read those letters and he did.
MOODY Okay. (long pause) Don't you feel that you owe Larry something?
GILMORE Go ahead and read the questions. I'll answer 'em. I want Larry to understand that he don't have the right to say who the fuck I can or can't speak to. My brother asked me to talk to a friend of his, and I told him yeah. I know who Moyers is. I wouldn't have answered anything that you wouldn't have wanted me to say.
MOODY You're really splitting hairs over nothing. 'Cause there's no way in hell Moyers is going to get in to talk.
GILMORE I know that. I was pissed off because Mike was unhappy:
MOODY Okay.
GILMORE All right.
MOODY The next question has been asked a number of times. Have you ever killed anyone before Bushnell and Jensen? . . . How about this guy that you beat with the