Executioner's Song, The - Norman Mailer [46]
It didn't bother her if somebody looked over. A big truck, for instance, pulled alongside at the light, and the guy up in his cab looked down into their car, but Gary and Nicole both laughed because they didn't give a fat fuck. Gary lit a stick of pot and said it was going to be the best lid ever. As they took a toke, Gary said, "God created it all, you know."
One night they went to the drive-in early and discovered they were the first ones there. Just for the fun of it, Gary began to ride over the bumps between each row. Damn if this fellow from the management didn't come chasing out with a truck and tell them in a rude voice to quit riding around like that. Gary stopped, got out, walked over to the guy and told him off so bad, the fellow whined, "Well, you don't need to get that mad."
But Gary was. After dark, he took his pliers and clipped off a couple of speakers. Made a point of picking up a couple more next time they went to the drive-in. Those speakers were good things to have around. You could hook one up in every room, and they would give you music throughout your house. They never got around, however, to installing them. Just left them in the trunk of her car.
Sometimes they went wandering in the grass between the nuthouse and the mountains. The idea of being up on the big hill behind the loony bin gave Nicole a charge. What the hell. This was the same nuthouse where they put her six years ago.
Sunny and Peabody didn't always like it too much, and would get scared at night when a funny chill would swoop in like a wind, and the mountains above looked cold as ice. She and Gary would go there alone then.
Once she was running around the place and he called to her. Something in his voice made her tear all the way down and she couldn't stop and banged into him, hitting her knee so hard it really hurt. Gary picked her up then. She had her legs wrapped around his waist, and her arms over his neck. With her eyes closed, she had the odd feeling of an evil presence near her that came from Gary. She found it kind of half agreeable, Said to herself, Well, if he is the devil, maybe I want to get closer.
It wasn't a terrifying sensation so much as a strong and strange feeling, like Gary was a magnet and had brought down a lot of spirits on himself. Of course, those psychos behind all those screened windows could call up anything out of the night ground in back of the nuthouse.
In the dark, she asked: "Are you the devil?"
At that point, Gary set her down and didn't say anything. It really got cold around them. He told Nicole he had a friend named Ward White who once asked him the same question.
Years ago, when Gary was in Reform School, he walked into a room unexpectedly and Ward White was being butt-fucked by another kid. Gary never said a thing about it. He and Ward White were separated for years, and then ran into each other again in jail. They still never spoke of it. One day, though, Gary came into the prison hobby shop and Ward told him he had just received some silver from a mail house and asked Gary to turn it into a ring. Out of a book of Egyptian designs called The Ring of Osiris, Gary copied something called the Eye of Horus. When it was done, Gary said it was a magical ring and he wanted it for himself. Never mentioned the old memory. He didn't have to. Ward White just gave him the Eye of Horus.
Nicole always thought of that ring as being taken from the kid who got butt-fucked.
Now Gary wanted to give it to her. He told her that the Hindus believed you had an invisible eye in the middle of your forehead. The ring might help you to see through it. When they got home, he had her lie on the floor. He said she should wait for the third eye to appear in the space between her closed eyes. She had to concentrate until it opened. If it did, she would be able to look through.
Nothing happened that night. She was laughing too much. She kept expecting a pyramid, and saw nothing.
But on another night, she believed she did see something open. Maybe it was the good pot. She could see her