Shot in the Heart - Mikal Gilmore [133]
As George was cooking the hot dogs, Gary talked to Frank. He said: “I think I’m going to have to go back to jail soon, Frank. Let’s face it, I’m institutionalized, plus I miss my friends. That’s where all my real friends are: in jail. Also, if I don’t go back soon I’m going to wind up hurting somebody. Hell, I’m going to have to hurt somebody. I miss my friends.”
Frank said: “Don’t you think it’s time, Gary, for you to start thinking about a career?”
Gary replied: “I already have a career. I’m a professional criminal.”
Frank was trying to take all this in when a man seated on a stool a few feet away—a biker—turned to Gary and asked him to pass the ketchup. “Get the goddamn ketchup yourself,” Gary snapped back. “You’ve got two arms. I’m not your fucking waiter.” The man stood up, hefting his muscles, and Frank tried to step between the two of them. Punches flew and Frank got knocked down. He woke up a minute or so later with George pouring cold water in his face and talking furiously. “What the hell happened here? Your brother and this guy get in a fight, tear the place apart, and run out. Who’s going to pay for all this? What am I going to do, call the police?” Frank got up and felt his lip. It was split open. He dug into his pockets and gave George some money. “You a good boy,” said George. “You welcome here. Tell your brother never to come back. I don’t like him anymore.”
Frank stumbled out to the street, still reeling from the hard blow he had taken. He felt as if he needed a drink. He made his way to the bar on the corner. When he looked inside, he saw Gary and the biker seated at the bar, drinking beers and laughing together. Later, Frank learned, Gary and the biker visited the biker’s girlfriend, and they ended up having a three-way. “I looked at the two of them in there drinking beer,” Frank said, “and I just turned around and walked away. I was fed up. When I got back home, I talked to Mom about it. I told her, ‘I’m really finished with him now, this is it. I’m finished.’ As it turned out, that was the last thing I ever did with Gary in public.”
MY FATHER, MY MOTHER, AND I went back to Seattle in early June 1962. My father felt the need to catch up with his business. His illness had been holding up the book’s production schedule and was now jeopardizing the family’s income.
One morning two weeks later, Gary showed up at the front door. He said he had come to help my father with his work. It was obvious from his slurry speech and blazing eyes that he was on one drug or another. My father had not forgotten their last fight, and he wasn’t welcoming Gary’s offer. My mother could tell that Gary was seeking some sort of last-chance reconciliation, but because he was loaded, she was afraid he might blurt out something about my father’s fatal condition. She took my brother aside, told him she thought he should return to Portland, and gave him a hundred dollars.
I remember the look on Gary’s face as he walked out the door. I could tell he wanted to embrace my father one last time, to give him a kiss good-bye. But neither man could easily cross the lifetime barrier of damage that separated them. They could not move toward each other. Gary walked out of the apartment with a look of loss that I would not see again on his face until the last few days of his life, when he knew he would die without getting to say good-bye to the woman he loved.
That night, we got a call from Frank Jr. Gary had been arrested in Vancouver, Washington, for driving without a license. Also, there was the matter of an open bottle of liquor in the car. My father put his head down on his desk and cried, long and hard. “Why,” he said between sobs, “are they always picking on my son?”
After that, my father began to deteriorate rapidly. He took to his bed one night, and never got up again. He lay there, coughing sputum into a nearby bowl. I can still remember the smell of it: sickly-sweet, like a spoiled flower. That surprised me, that death would end up smelling fragrant.