Executioner's Song, The - Norman Mailer [45]
In fact, if he did tell a story it was usually about when he was a kid. Then she would enjoy the way he talked. It was like his drawing. Very definite. He gave it in a few words. A happened, then B and C. Conclusion had to be D.
A. His seventh-grade class voted on whether they should send Valentines to each other. He thought they were too old. He was the only one to vote against it, When he lost, he bought Valentines to mail to everybody. Nobody sent him one. After a couple of days he got tired of going to the mailbox.
B. One night, he was passing a store that had guns in the window. Found a brick and broke the window. Cut his hand, but stole the gun he wanted. It was a Winchester semiautomatic that cost $125 back in 1953. Later he got a box of shells and went plinking. "I had these two friends," Gary told her, "Charley and Jim. They really loved that .22. And I got tired of hiding it from my old man-when I can't have something the way I want it, then I don't really want it. So I said, 'I'm throwing the gun in the creek, if you guys have the guts to dive for it, it's yours.' They thought I was bullshitting until they heard the splash. Then Jim jumped and hurt his knee on a big old sharp rock. Never got the gun. The creek was too deep. I laughed my ass off."
C. On his thirteenth birthday his mother let him pick between having a party or getting a $20 bill. He chose the party and invited just Charley and Jim. They took the money their folks gave them for Gary and spent it on themselves. Then they told him.
D. He had a fight with Jim, Got angry and beat him half to death. Jim's father, a rough-and-tumble fucker, pulled Gary off. Told him, "Don't come around here again." Soon after, Gary got in trouble for something else and was sent to Reform School.
When his stories got too boiled down, when it got like listening to some old cowboy cutting a piece of dried meat into small chunks and chewing on them, why then he would take a swallow of beer and speak of his Celestial Guitar. He could play music on it while he slept. "Just a big old guitar," he would tell Nicole, "but it has a ship's wheel with hand spokes, and in my dreams, music comes out as I turn the wheel. I can play any tune in the world."
Then Gary told her about his Guardian Angel. Once when he was 3, and his brother was 4, his father and mother stopped to have dinner in a restaurant in Santa Barbara. Then his father said he had to get some change. He'd be right back. He didn't come back for three months. His mother was alone with no money and two little boys. So she started hitchhiking to Provo.
They got stuck on the Humboldt Sink in Nevada. Could have died in the desert. They had no money and had not eaten for the second day in a row. Then a man came walking down the road with a brown sack in his hand, and he said, Well, my wife has fixed a lunch for me, but it's more than I can eat. Would you like some? His mother said, Well, yes, we'd be very grateful. The man gave her the sack and walked on. They stopped and sat down by the side of the road, and there were three sandwiches in the bag, three oranges, and three cookies. Bessie turned to thank him but the man had disappeared. This was on a long flat stretch of Nevada highway.
Gary said that was his Guardian Angel. Came around when you needed him. One winter night of his childhood, standing in a parking lot, snow was all over the ground and Gary's hands hurt from cold. It was then he found new fur-lined mittens on top of the snow. They fit his hands exactly.
Yes, he had a Guardian Angel. Only it left a long time ago. But on the night Nicole walked into Sterling Baker's place, he found his angel again. He liked to tell Nicole this when her legs were up on the dashboard of the car and her panties were off, and they were