Executioner's Song, The - Norman Mailer [449]
14
Nicole had found out that Gary was going to be executed today, but she had no idea of the time. In the morning, walking back from the ward dining room, she suddenly felt a great need to lie down on her bed. They started making a big thing of it, but she just walked toward her room. Nobody said anything more. Then she lay there, and tried to think about Gary. For days she had been dreaming of the moment he was shot and falling back. She always saw Gary standing up when he got it. Now, in her mind, she saw nothing but those red blocks they gave the patients to put together into a cube.
They were in her head, and she was trying to push them away, when suddenly Gary's face came to her out of the darkness, came in fast with a look of pain and horror. He didn't fall back, but right up toward her. Her body flipped around on the bed, her eyes opened, and that was all. She kept trying to feel him again that day, but couldn't. He wasn't near her at all for a few days.
15
After Gaylen was dead, Bessie thought she would never get over it. But this was going to be worse. When she called the prison and said goodbye to Gary on this last night, he had said, "Don't cry."
"I'm not going to cry, Gary," she had told him, but she had wanted so much to say, "Don't die, Gary, don't. Please, please, don't."
Only it would hurt what he was building up-whatever it might take of him to go out there. So she had to be careful. It was a nightmare.
Listening to the clock through the hours Bessie could not keep from thinking, "His nightmare will be over, but mine will never be."
When Mikal got the paper early that morning, it said the execution had been stayed. They turned on "Good Morning America." A little earlier, Bessie had said, "Don't put it on." She didn't want to hear it. If it happened, she didn't want to know about it for hours.
She certainly didn't want to hear about it on TV. Yet after Mikal brought in the paper, somebody-was it Frank Jr., or Mikal, or his girl friend: she could never remember for fear she would not forgive-one of them said, "It is safe now. There's a Stay. We can turn on 'Good Morning America.' " They did. A voice stated, "Gary Mark Gilmore is dead." It sounded like it came from above. Bessie cried into the sore flesh of her heart.
Maybe half an hour later, Johnny Cash called and gave Mikal his condolences.
By the time Doug Hiblar came by, Bessie had turned bitter. She had the look on her face of a woman who had just had her home bombed. "Get out," Bessie said, "you people have killed my son."
"What do you mean, Bessie," stammered Doug, "I didn't even know him."
"You people in Utah killed my son."
He did not say, "I'm from Oregon."
"Mountain, you can go to hell," said Bessie to herself. "You're not mine anymore."
Outside, around the court, photographers were gathered with their cameras at the door of Bessie's trailer.
Chapter 40
THE REMAINS
On the drive home, Stanger asked, "What are you going to do now?"
"I don't know," said Moody. "I can't go to the office."
Stanger laughed. "Need a default judgment to occupy your afternoon?"
"No," said Moody devoutly, "I couldn't stand it."
They had to talk to somebody who had been a part of it. Even though they were going to go on a week's vacation with their wives in a couple of days and so now had to run around like hell to leave their affairs in some kind of order, they couldn't go back to the office now.
Instead, they said, "Let's go to Larry's place," but when they got to the Orem TraveLodge, Schiller hadn't come back yet, so they talked to Barry Farrell. It was important to keep talking.
While driving, they had been getting flashes. Stanger had seen Gary's hand rising and falling, and the blood on his pants. Stanger couldn't keep that out of his head. He wanted to extirpate such thoughts. Put his hand right inside his mind, grab the thought and flip it out.
They were happy to talk, therefore, to Barry Farrell. While they had never gotten along that well before, Ron could see how under all his professionalism,