Executioner's Song, The - Norman Mailer [8]
"This is your home," Vern said. "You don't have to ask permission."
Gary came back from the kitchen with the glass in his hand. "I'm beginning to get onto this," he said to Vern. "It's pretty good."
"Yeah," said Vern, "come and go as you want. Within reason."
About the third night, they got to talking about Vern's driveway. It wasn't wide enough to take more than one car, but Vern had a strip of lawn beside it that could offer space for another car provided he could remove the concrete curb that separated the grass from the paving. That curb ran for thirty-five feet from the sidewalk to the garage. It was about six inches high, eight inches wide, and would take a lot of work to be chopped out. Because of his bad leg, Vern had been holding off.
"I'll do it," said Gary.
Sure enough, next morning at 6 A.M., Vern was awakened by the sound of Gary taking a sledgehammer to the job. Sound slammed through the neighborhood in the dawn. Vern winced for the people in the City Center Motel, next door, who would be awakened by the reverberation. All day Gary worked, cracking the curbing with overhead blows, then prying chunks out, inch by inch, with the crowbar. Before long, Vern had to buy a new one.
Gary didn't like television. Maybe he'd seen too much in prison, but in the evening, once Vern went to bed, Gary and Ida would sit and talk.
Ida reminisced about Bessie's skill with makeup. "She was so clever that way," said Ida, "and so tasteful. She knew how to make herself look beautiful all the time. She had the same elegance about her as our mother who is French and always had aristocratic traits." Her mother, said Ida, had a breeding that she gave to her children. The table was always set properly, not to the stiffest standards-they were just poor Mormons-but a tablecloth, always a tablecloth, and enough silverware to do the job.
Bessie, Gary told Ida, was now so arthritic she could hardly move, and the little trailer in which she lived was all plastic. Considering the climate in Portland, that trailer had to be damp. When he got a little money together, he would try to improve matters. One night Gary actually called his mother and talked for a long time. Ida heard him say he loved her and was going to bring her back to Provo to live.
It was a warm week for April, and pleasant talking through the evenings, planning for the summer to come.
Those thirty-five feet of curbing took one day and part of the next. Vern offered to help but Gary wouldn't allow it. "I know a lot about pounding rocks," he told Vern with a grin.
"What can I do for you?" asked Vern.
"Well, it's thirsty work," said Gary. "Just keep me in beer."
It went like that. He drank a lot of beer and worked real hard and they were happy with the job. When he was done, he had open blisters on his hand as large as Vern's fingernails. Ida insisted on bandaging his palms, but Gary was acting like a kid-a man don't wear bandages-and took them off real quick.
Doing the work, however, had loosened him up. He was ready to do his first exploring around town.
Provo was laid out in a checkerboard. It had very wide streets and a few buildings that were four stories high. It had three movie theaters. Two were on Center Street, the main shopping street, and the other was on University Avenue, the other shopping street. In Provo, the equivalent of Times Square was where the two streets crossed. There was a park next to a church on one corner and diagonally across was an extra-large drugstore.
During the day, Gary would walk around town. If he came by the shoe shop around lunchtime, Vern would take him to the Provo Cafe, or to Joe's Spic and Span which had the best coffee in town. It was just a box of a joint with twenty seats. At lunchtime, however, people would be waiting on the street to get in. Of course, Vern told him, Provo was not famous for restaurants.
"What is it famous for?" asked Gary.
"Darned if I know," said Vern. "Maybe it's the low crime rate."
Once Gary started in the shoe shop, he would be making $2.50 an hour. A couple of times