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Executioner's Song, The - Norman Mailer [390]

By Root 9655 0
the initials to those four hundred Mormons, and then said to the fellow who asked the question, "You are a journalist, because you have turned one thing into another, and that is journalism." The rest of it was simple, very simple and very placid. He wouldn't call the students bright or intelligent, so much as in their own world. They were hostile to Gilmore, of course, but hostility in a Mormon was so reserved, you didn't even see it. It just showed in the questions. "Why," they would ask, "don't you do the story about Ben Bushnell rather than Gary Gilmore?" and Schiller would answer that at this point in the realm of the United States, Gary Gilmore was making history. Fair or not, Benny Bushnell and his death never would. The kids didn't like it, but he was very straight on. Told them he was not there to please them, but to show the other side of the coin. "I'm not going to hide what I am," had been one of his first remarks. So it went. They asked. He answered.

Two hours out of his life.

Back at the motel, Schiller had an interesting conversation with one of the police officers, Jerry Scott, that he had hired on Moody's recommendation. Scott was a great big fellow with dark hair, reassuring in appearance, and had taken a leave of absence from his cop job to work for Schiller. He obviously knew the name of the game. Since he could only protect one entrance of the motel building at a time, he generally parked his police car on the back side to scare off anybody coming from that direction. On the near side, there was Scott waiting.

This afternoon, right after BYU, Larry discovered Scott was the same policeman who had driven Gary Gilmore from Utah County Jail to Utah State Prison on the day his trial ended. What a bonus. It gave Schiller the idea that Jerry Scott was bringing good luck. Just as well.

Scott was getting paid about five hundred bucks a week.

By Saturday evening, Schiller decided that he ought to have a 16mm movie camera in action. So he made arrangements with CBS for one of their crews and explained he would need long shots of the prison with snow on the ground, and all the atmosphere they could find. It would cost another three thousand bucks, but he had hopes. Later, when he saw the film, it was lousy. The crew didn't know how to shoot anything but newsreel footage. Blew all the opportunities for mood building.

He also made one last attempt to get Stephie to come in from New York. Again she refused. First, he asked her, then he begged.

She would not come. It was a long and heated argument, and he didn't often lose such discussions, but she was adamant. He was really mad.

"You're always criticizing me," he said.

"Don't you see," she cried out, "I criticize you because I love you, and I want to help you."

In certain ways, he felt as close to breaking up with her as he ever had. Yet he knew he wouldn't. That could be the reason in a funny way it was going to work. Maybe, he told himself, he had to understand that Stephie did not see herself as a total go-down-the-road-with-him-gambler-which is what he'd always demanded of his first wife. Rather, Stephie had a nervous system, and it was delicate, and she wished to protect it. She had been in a terrible car accident just a few years before and scarred by it. Her beauty was delicate, it was vulnerable beyond his understanding, and at that moment, maybe it was the weight of every emotion he had been carrying, but he felt a great tenderness toward her, even if she wouldn't join him.

6

Shirley Pedler had been called down to a studio by ABC News and ran smack into Dennis Boaz. "You're going to get what you want'" she said to Dennis, "I hope you're happy." Boaz looked at her, and said, "Gee, Shirley, can't we be friends?" "I don't want," she told him, "to be your fucking friend." He stood there a little taken aback, and finally turned to the people with him. "Oh, she says she doesn't want to be my fucking friend," he said, and tried to laugh it off. Away he went, away she went, and she was furious. That was one man who had come in to gratify prestige needs.

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