Executioner's Song, The - Norman Mailer [434]
All the while, Deamer was hoping that they would get it done close to 7:49. Bringing it in near to sunrise would make the problem cleaner. While Deamer was familiar with Earl Dorius's argument that time meant day, he also thought there was a counterargument which would claim that there had to be some degree of specificity to an order. If the other side ever raised the issue that Judge Bullock's new order had been obtained improperly because they never had a hearing on this point, Deamer didn't see any reason to beef up their argument. The closer to sunrise that Gilmore was executed, the better.
The law didn't like to make too much out of too little. There would be less exposure to counterargument if they missed execution by a few minutes rather than a few hours.
After he told Gordon Richards to go ahead, however, he realized he was sitting at the desk with Gary Gilmore's heart beating in his hands. It was a moment of truth, really. Deamer had been in the Army Reserve six years, with six months of active duty in artillery, but he had never been in combat. So he wondered now if his present feeling might be equal to the kind of emotion you might have if you were about to kill somebody right in your sights. He certainly had more of a mixed reaction than he expected. It was difficult, for instance, to stay in his seat after he hung up. Too quiet and lonely in the office. He'd worked all through the night, he told himself, was dead tired and felt awful grubby. He had a considerable growth of stubble and smelly socks. Not only tired but near used up. Sundays were a big demand. He was number-two man in Bob Hansen's office and also second counselor to his Bishop. Church activities took twenty-five to forty hours a week except when legal duties like Gilmore consumed sixty to seventy. Even so, he had spent the whole of yesterday in church, and now all this last night working into Monday dawn. It came over him that even if he was in favor of capital punishment, he had been going through a long emotional drain. Somehow he had always expected to be the one to carry out the sentence. After all, he believed in it.
Deamer felt we were here on earth to be tested on whether we could live righteously. Repentance was the key. An individual had to make restitution in his lifetime for what he'd done wrong, except for those few crimes for which you could not obtain forgiveness in this life. One was murder. You could obtain forgiveness for murder, but not in this life. It had to come in the next. To repent, you had to allow your life to be taken. Deamer didn't feel, therefore, that by giving the go-ahead, he was rendering null and void the existence of Gary Gilmore.
Rather, he was enabling Gilmore to pass on to a spiritual sphere where at some point down the read of eternity, the man would obtain forgiveness for these murders.
Sitting in his office all alone, contemplating the scruffiness of his big body, Deamer might be bone tired, but in line with his goals and ambitions, he also felt that an individual occupying his position had to be able to make a decision and stand by it. So, while he waited following that last call from Gordon Richards, he said to himself, "Maybe I've been given this job for a reason. Maybe I'm the one who is able to handle it." That was the kind of thought which occurred to him about everything he did. He liked to think he had been sent to earth as a person with a mission to do some good for the betterment of society. It was his hope he had been foreordained to be part of a larger plan.
Whenever Bob Hansen chose, therefore, not to run for Attorney General, Deamer was going to be ready. He had been active in Republican politics for years and he had his ambitions. Eventually, they would include being Governor. While the Church had a belief in free will, it did instruct that God has plans which are foreordained, and will happen, unless individuals fail