Executioner's Song, The - Norman Mailer [452]
Of course, Jerry was always thinking about getting shot himself. It could happen any time on duty. He had to keep wondering what it would be like. Now, looking at the heart, he repeated, "He didn't feel anything, did he?" The doctor said, "No, nothing." Jerry said, "Well, did he move around after he was shot?" The doctor said, "Yes, about two minutes." "Was that just nerves?" Jerry asked. The fellow said, "Yes," and added, "He was dead, but we had to officially wait until he quit moving. That was about two minutes later."
After this, it got really gruesome. Jerry had to admit it. They started removing different parts of Gilmore's body. Took his plumbing out, stomach, entrails and everything, then cut little pieces out of each organ. One guy was up at the head just working away. Next thing you knew, he had Gilmore's tongue in his hand. "Why take that?" asked Jerry Scott. He didn't know whether his questions bothered the doctors or not, but since he had to witness, he thought he might as well find out what was going on. The dissectionist answered, "We're going to take a sample of it." Put the tongue down on the slab, cut it in half and sliced out a piece. Put it in a bottle of solution.
Jerry Scott had seen a lot of bodies, and gone to a lot of plane wrecks, and he knew what a person dismembered could look like, but just sitting there, watching them cut away, got to him. These fellows were really good at it, and kept talking back and forth, but they couldn't have been less excited if they were in a meat stall doing a job on a quarter of beef Once in a while they'd call across to some other medics working on that woman who had drowned. She was so fat, that when they cut her open, her stomach hung over her thigh. Kept working like it was nothing.
Now, the fellow who was at the head of Jerry's table made an incision from behind Gary's left ear all the way up across the top of his head and then down below to the other ear, after which he grabbed the scalp on both sides of the cut, and pulled it right open, just pulled the whole face down below his chin until it was inside out like the back of a rubber mask. Then he took a saw and cut around the skull.
Picked up something like a putty knife, and pried the bone open, popped the top of the head off. Then, he stuck his hand inside the cavity and pulled the brain out, weighed it. Pound and a half, it looked like to Jerry Scott. Then they removed the pituitary, put it aside, and sliced the brain like meat loaf. "Why are you doing that?" asked Jerry Scott. "Well," said one of the doctors, "we're looking for tumors." They started explaining to him about the different areas of the brain, and how they were looking to see if there were any problems in Gary Gilmore's motor system. Everything however, looked to be just fine.
Then they took pictures of his tattoos. "Mom" had been written on his left shoulder, and "Nicole" on his left forearm. They took his fingerprints, and then they took all the organs they did not need for dissection and put them back into the body and head cavities, and drew his face up, pulled it right back taut over the bones and muscles, like putting on the mask again, fit the sawed-off bone-cap back on the skull, and sewed the scalp, and body cavity. When they were all finished, it looked like Gary Gilmore again.
During all of this, Jerry Scott noticed that Gilmore only had two teeth on his bottom gums and none on the top. Then they put his false teeth back. Looking at him now, reconstituted, Jerry Scott was amazed to see he had quite a layer of body fat for a fellow as skinny as he was. Still, he looked in pretty good shape, practically the build of an athlete, but for that belly fat.
Jerry looked at his watch then. It