Executioner's Song, The - Norman Mailer [416]
"My mother," said Gary, "worked as a buswoman. She didn't have any money, and she was trying to hold on to a beautiful house that we had with a nice swing-around driveway where you drive up and it makes a circle. She wanted that. She wanted some things. She lost it. When she did, she moved into a trailer. She never bitched about it."
"You really love her, man, don't you?" said Schiller.
"Goddammit, yes," said Gary. "I don't want to hear any fucking bullshit that she was mean to me. She never hit me."
At that moment there was an interruption on the phone. "Hello," said a voice. "Hello," said Gary. "Is this Mr. Fagan?" said the voice.
"Who's this?" asked Gary.
"This is the Warden."
"This is Mr. Gilmore," said Gary modestly, "I'm making a phone call that Mr. Fagan approved."
"Okay, thank you," said Sam Smith, "pardon me," and he hung up. There was something in the Warden's voice that sounded like he was just about holding on to himself. It gave Schiller the feeling he had better hurry.
Next to Schiller, lying on the floor under the table, was Barry Farrell listening to the conversation through an earpiece attached by a short wire to the tape recorder. Schiller wanted to see Barry's face and get his reactions, but all he could manage from the angle at which he sat was the occasional sight of Barry's hand writing on a 3 x 5 card.
Schiller took his last crack at the question they could not get Gilmore to respond to. "I believe you had rough breaks," said Schiller. "You got into trouble, and had a temper and were impatient, but you weren't a killer. Something happened. Something turned you into a man who could kill Jensen and Bushnell, some feeling, or emotion, or event."
"I was always capable of murder," said Gilmore. "There's a side of me that I don't like. I can become totally devoid of feelings for others, unemotional. I know I'm doing something grossly fucking wrong. I can still go ahead and do it."
It wasn't exactly the answer Schiller was hoping to hear. He wanted an episode. "I still," he said, "don't understand what goes on in a person's mind who decides to kill."
"Hey, look," said Gilmore, "listen. One time I was driving down the street in Portland. I was just fucking around, about half high, and I seen two guys walk out of a bar. I was just a youngster, man, 19, 20, something like that, and one of these dudes is a young Chicano about my age and the other's about 40, an older dude. So I said, Hey, you guys want to see some girls? Get in. And they got in the back. I had a '49 Chevrolet, two door, you know, fastback? And they got in.
And I drove out to Clackamas County, a very dark . . . now I'm telling you the truth, I ain't making this up, I'm not dramatizing, I'm going to be blasted out of my fucking boots, and I swear to Jesus Christ on everything that's holy that I'm telling you the truth verfuckingbatim. This is a strange story."
"Okay."
"They got back there," said Gary, "and I got to telling them about these broads, I was just embroidering how they had big tits and liked to fuck and had a party going and how I left the party to get some guys to bring out there because they were short on dudes, and these two were about half drunk, and I drove 'em down this pitch-black fucking road, it had gravel on it, you know, not a rough road, black, smooth, flat, chipped fucking concrete, that's how I remember it, and I reached down under the seat-I always kept a baseball bat or a pipe, you know-and I reached down under the seat . . . just a minute."
Schiller was not following the story. He knew they were getting it on tape, and so he leaned over the table to see if Barry had a question for Gilmore, and as he did, he was listening to something about a pipe, a baseball bat, or whatever it was, and then he heard Gary say, "Jesus fucking Christ."
Schiller could feel a shift in the silence.
"Lieutenant Fagan just told me that Ritter issued a Stay," said Gary. "Son of a bitch. Goddamn foul motherfucker."
"Okay," said Schiller, "let's just hold this shit together. You can