Executioner's Song, The - Norman Mailer [57]
Later, around 1970, dissatisfied with his life and searchings, he was staying with a friend in Seattle and working as a security guard for Boeing. He happened to be listening one night to a religious station where people dialed in to ask for prayers. Pete didn't know about the program but when he called, he did mention the Mormon Church and his beliefs, and some Mormons happened to hear the show and informed Pete's Branch President who quickly told him not to phone the program anymore. The Church didn't want Galovan to go public. He was not delegated to that kind of work. It hurt Pete's feelings. He was only trying to help people. So he put in a written request to be excommunicated. Didn't want the Mormon Church limiting his desire to aid.
He worked with the Jesus Movement, and lived in the House of Joshua north of Seattle and went on television and spoke out against the Mormon Church. His father was even called by the prophet, Spencer Kimball himself. "What are you going to do with your son?" the prophet asked. His father said, "Leave him alone. It's the work of God. He'll come back stronger than ever."
Pete went over to Hawaii and met Pat Boone, and tried to live in a commune with about twenty-five people and answered the hot line for addicts. He saw suicides and he saw healings. Worked with all kinds of religions. Decided his mission was to help reform the Mormon Church.
But he crashed. They put him in the hospital and gave him group therapy and lithium. He felt the spirit of Elijah in the heart of his body, and knew the world could come to peace. He returned to Utah and got a job as a janitor. Going back to the Church gave energy to all he did. He ended up running the janitorial shop plus a cleaning business, and it got to where he had contracts to clean a number of grocery stores and as many as twenty people were working for him. Out of the strength of his worldly success, however, he fornicated with a number of women, and was disenfranchised. Then he met Elizabeth.
She had managed to live by herself, earn a living and take care of her seven kids. Pete told her, "I'm a big businessman; I can handle it for you." She kept saying, "I don't feel right." It wasn't, she explained, the overwhelming thing you should have. Finally, she agreed to marry him.
There was tension between Pete and the kids. He had a temper, Elizabeth had a temper, the kids had tempers. The cleaning business was done at night, and in the daytime, Pete slept. The kids couldn't make noise. One day, Elizabeth's son Daryl put his fist through the window. One of the kids said, "Mother, that's it. If you stay with him, we'll take off." She had to explain that Peter was paying for the food.
They got married in July of '75. In October, he threw one of the kids across the room. The police got called. The kids were crying, Peter was crying-they separated.
Since the Church had disenfranchised Pete, his business in Ogden had begun to come apart. His customers had been Mormons in good standing and now he lost them, one grocery contract, then another. He came close to having another nervous breakdown.
He went to see Elizabeth, who had moved to Provo, and stayed the night with her. Next day, he moved into the Hotel Roberts around the corner from Vern Damico. Later, he moved over to Vern's basement. He was hired by the Provo School District, got a job, got other jobs, made money enough to help support Elizabeth.
On May 14, 1976, however-the day after Gary met Nicole-Pete and Elizabeth got divorced. They were still friends but she kept saying it wasn't fair. He really wanted to be in love with who would love him, she said, not this circus of working nights and weekends.
5
Now he sat on the bed of his little cottage room feeling dirty and stale from of sleep and exhausted from the way he needed his sleep. Before him was the face of this girl Nicole who was