Executioner's Song, The - Norman Mailer [448]
8
On Monday morning, at seven o'clock, Lucinda was typing Gary's last tape with Larry. She could hear Gilmore's voice coming in over the earphones, and it was pathetic the way he kept telling Larry how badly he wanted to die, and she felt so sorry for him.
The television was on in the office. There was Geraldo Rivera saying, "Well, we're here in front of the prison." All of a sudden it hit her that the whole world was watching, and the voice of the condemned man was in her ear, this little voice coming out.
She and Barry and Debbie had stayed up all night and were really drained. Now they were switching the channels. Game shows like "Jeopardy" kept coming in-at seven in the morning, in Orem, they were getting "Jeopardy." Then one game show after another.
They couldn't get the news. The most chaotic jumble trying to find out if he'd been shot or not. Barry was freaking out. He began to curse the TV screen. Incredibly literary and obscene language. The TV was just so awful, Lucinda thought, a blast of awful things, and here they were waiting to find out. All those images flashing, just mumbo jumbo, then a voice saying "Gary Mark Gilmore is dead." Squawk!
9
It was a beautiful sunny day, and Julie Jacoby had been up early, watering the plants, feeling good about the Stay, thinking, Thank God.
She was just loving the winter sunlight. Then a call came from a man with the Catholic News Service in Washington. "It's happened," he said. She didn't know what to do with herself and went around in circles. Only later did she feel a little relieved that she had not given herself totally to this thing, which she had always known would not change the world.
Further along that morning, she saw a news clipping in the Salt Lake Tribune that got her name wrong. She had been one of the four people whose names had been on the taxpayers' suit in Judge Ritter's Court, but the Salt Lake Tribune had printed it as "Mulie Jacobs" rather than Julie Jacoby, and she laughed when she saw it, for she knew that her twelve-year-old son would never fail from now on to call her Mulie when it would be of use to him. She would also be spared the hate mail and telephone calls full of compressed murder that were rendering Shirley Pedler so thin.
10
Shirley was alone in the office when the word came over the radio, and it hit her as if she felt the shot. Her head went down on the desk and she started to sob.
Later that morning, she made several statements. It was incredible-it was really an affront-the press had all of a sudden vanished. Shirley found that the most horrifying aspect of the whole thing. It was as if these reporters were saying, "He's blown away, so there's no news anymore." God, press from all over the country had dominated every good restaurant in Salt Lake, and now they were gone. She sat in her office the day of the execution and was not hounded at all.
12
Gibbs had been sitting in jail all day every day in the week leading up to Gary's execution, and was in a pretty drugged state because of his leg the night before the execution. In the morning, when he heard the news on the radio he just felt dumb and groggy.
13
Dennis Boaz had been out in Iowa for a couple of days in December and got into a symposium on a TV program where he heard that President Ford might commute Gary's sentence before retiring from office. So, he sent a telegram saying that if capital punishment was going to be applied, it should be applied equally. No executions until there was one law for everyone. Never heard from Ford.
On the day of the execution, he felt a kind of silent sadness and tears came to his eyes. Gary died on January 17, a day whose number came to 6, which was the motherhood of brothers, and, of course, that made him think of Cain and Abel. In the period Dennis was working with Gilmore, he had sprouted a red mark above his right brow, not a pimple, but a mark signifying death. First discovered it toward the end of November. It was round and it was red, but not a pimple. It was there nearly two months, and then faded away after Gary died. Interesting,