Executioner's Song, The - Norman Mailer [401]
Tang and Kool-Aid and cookies and coffee. Then, Father Meersman procured a TV set and plugged it in. Somebody had managed to bring a portable stereo with a few records, and what with the three or four guards circulating through the kitchen and dining room and visiting room, and, at various times, Father Meersman and Cline Campbell and the two lawyers and the cousins and Vern and Toni and Ida, it was almost enough people for a party. Not to mention the guard on duty all through the night in the bulletproof glass-enclosed booth that overlooked the visiting room.
Every couple of hours somebody would come from the pharmacy with medication. As the evening went on, Bob Moody came to recognize they were giving Gary some kind of speed. Doubtless, the pharmacists saw it as a blessing and kept it coming, and in the early hours of the evening, Gary did keep getting happier and happier. In the beginning, he was so delighted to see Toni, and held her for so long, and kissed her with such cousinly gusto, that Bob and Ron and Vern and the others just sat back and waited, didn't want to interrupt when Gary was so obviously delighting in her visit. Besides, there were chores to accomplish. The guards had brought in a couple of cots with mattresses, and provisions were being laid out for the evening, and then Toni was hardly there very long before Ron and Bob had to take her down between the barbed-wire fences into the swarm of press. It was practically an operation. Until they got her into the track, it felt like their eyes were being seared with strobe lights and their souls with the general mania. For they were magical to the press tonight. They had seen the man and could report on him.
They kept saying "No comment," and looked for Schiller, and talked enough to keep the media close up with their microphones and tape recorders. That gave Vern time to slip around and have a talk with Larry.
Moody and Stanger might have been temporarily satisfying the majority of these reporters, but there was a great deal of press, and Larry and Vern also became the center of a swarm. In the squeeze, Vern could only whisper, "Have you got the liquor?" and Schiller said, "Yeah." "How," whispered Vern, "am I going to get it in?" "Put the little bottles under your armpits," said Larry, "and keep your elbows close." "Fine," said Vern, "but how do I get it under my coat?"
The press was surrounding them as tightly as a crowd packed around two players of the winning team caught on the field after the game.
Schiller turned and shouted, "Can't you let this man have a little privacy? You're hounding him. Get back." Physically he pushed on the press a little, not laying on rough hands so much as using the mixture of pressure and slight hysteria that worked best with reporters, "Give him a little privacy," he repeated. They retreated two feet, maybe three, room enough for Vern to do something with the liquor. By the time Larry turned around, Vern was ready to go back to the glare of the lights in the visiting room with the record player going and the TV set, and Gilmore beginning to spend his last night on earth.
4
The little bottles went fast. Gary would dip into a back room and take a nip, then come out with a wink. Moody thought it was appropriate.
If that was what the man wanted, then he ought to be able to enjoy a drink. It had been years since Moody had tasted alcohol, but this was a social event. If some corner of Moody's mind could hear the criticism that Gilmore was going to meet his maker in the morning, and that might be wiser on a sober head, still Moody thought, this is more like a last meal. If he wants to go out drunk, he has a right. He thought of how Gary had deliberately not requested his six-pack of Coors at the end because he did not want the world to think he would be unable to face it without something to help him. But now, the