Executioner's Song, The - Norman Mailer [5]
"Don't pick my brain," said Gary.
"Okay," said Brenda, "but do you hate him?"
"God, yeah," said Gary, "wouldn't you?"
"Yeah, I would," said Brenda. "Just checking."
Half an hour later, driving home, they went by Point of the Mountain. Off to the left of the Interstate a long hill came out of the mountains and its ridge was like the limb of a beast whose paw just reached the highway. On the other side, in the desert to the right, was Utah State Prison. There were only a few lights in its buildings now. They made jokes about Utah State Prison.
Back in her living room, drinking beer, Gary began to unwind. He liked beer, he confessed. In prison, they knew how to make a watery brew out of bread. Called it Pruno. In fact, both Brenda and Johnny were observing that Gary could put brew away as fast as anyone they knew.
Johnny soon got tired and went to sleep. Now Gary and Brenda really began to talk. A few prison stories came out of him. To Brenda, each seemed wilder than the one before. Probably they were half true, half full of beer. He had to be reciting out of his hind end.
It was only when she looked out the window and saw the night was over that she realized how long they had been talking. They stepped through the door to look at the sun coming up over the back of her ranch house and all her neighbors' ranch houses, and standing there, on her plot of lawn, in a heap of strewn-about toys, wet with cold spring dew, Gary looked at the sky and took a deep breath.
"I feel like jogging," he said.
"You've got to be nuts, tired as you are," she said.
He just stretched and breathed deep, and a big smile came over his face. "Hey, man," he said, "I'm really out."
In the mountains, the snow was iron gray and purple in the hollows, and glowed like gold on every slope that faced the sun. The clouds over the mountains were lifting with the light. Brenda took a good look into his eyes and felt full of sadness again. His eyes had the expression of rabbits she had flushed, scared-rabbit was the common expression, but she had looked into those eyes of scared rabbits and they were calm and tender and kind of curious. They did not know what would happen next.
Chapter 2
THE FIRST WEEK
Brenda put Gary on the foldout couch in the TV room. When she began to make the bed, he stood there smiling.
"What gives you that impish little grin?" she said after a pause, "Do you know how long it's been since I slept on a sheet?"
He took a blanket but no pillow, Then she went to her room. She never knew if he fell asleep. She had the feeling he lay down and rested and never took off his polyesters, just his shirt. When she got up a few hours later, he was up and around.
They were still having coffee when Toni came over to visit, and Gary gave her a big hug, and stood back, and framed her face with his hands and said, "I finally get to meet the kid sister. Man, I've looked at your photographs. What a foxy lady you are."
"You're going to make me blush," said Toni.
She certainly looked like Brenda. Same popping black eyes, black hair, same sassy look. It was just that Brenda was on the voluptuous side and Toni was slim enough to model. Take your pick.
When they sat down, Gary kept reaching over and putting his arm around Toni, or taking hold of her hand. "I wish you weren't my cousin," he said, "and married to such a big tall dude."
Later, Toni would tell Brenda how good and wise Howard had been for saying, "Go over and meet Gary without me." She went on to describe how warm Gary made her feel, not sexy, but more like a brother. He had amazed her with how much he knew of her life. Like that Howard was six foot six. Brenda kept herself from remarking that he had not learned it from any letters Toni had written, since Toni had never written a line.
Before Brenda took Gary over to meet Vern and Ida, Johnny showed a test of strength. He took the bathroom scale and squeezed it between his hands until the needle went up to 250 pounds.
Gary tried and reached 120. He went crazy and squeezed the scales until he was shaking. The needle