Shot in the Heart - Mikal Gilmore [162]
“Well… for one thing, he’s much thinner now. Something happened to him in Chicago. He got sick—something to do with his stomach. I know he had to have surgery, and it’s left him a little frail. Also, there was a bad romance. He had to leave behind the girl he loved. He’s pretty brokenhearted. I think he needs some friends. I think he needs his family.”
Indeed, something had happened to Gaylen in Chicago, and indeed, he was no longer the same man. When he showed up at my door later that night, I did not recognize him. He was so skeletal, so dark-eyed, he looked like a walking cadaver. Just as troubling, much of his sharpness was gone. His speech was slurred, and his mind seemed slower. I had seen him drunk many times before—and would again—but this was not drunkenness. I realize now that it was probably an effect of pain medication, or just the accumulated result of all his years of alcohol and drug abuse. But whatever medicine Gaylen may have been taking at this time, it didn’t help much. As we sat and talked, it was plain that he was in acute pain and that his grip on his health was not strong.
Yet despite his pain, when Gaylen heard about what was happening to Gary as OSP, he paid his brother an immediate visit. He and Gary had a good, reconciliatory meeting. What a scene it must have been: two dead men, sitting, talking to each other, renewing their bonds as brothers. I wish I had been with them.
Like my mother, Gaylen was outraged and horrified by the impact that the Prolixin was having on Gary. Gaylen stormed into the warden’s office, demanding an end to the treatment. An assistant to the warden assured him that the matter was under review.
A few days after Gaylen’s visit, the prison psychiatrist made the following notation about Gary: “This patient sustained a quite severe Prolixin reaction and was returned to [the psychiatric unit] on April 5,1971. His Prolixin was stopped, and he made a gradual improvement of his symptomatology. He is scheduled for a Parole Board hearing in May 1971. It is hoped that he will have a complete subsidence of his symptoms by that time. His Prolixin will be stopped as of this date, and appropriate medication will be restarted as his condition warrants in the future. He has no hostile or aggressive thoughts with being on Prolixin, and were he not suffering from the Prolixin reaction, I would recommend his permanent continuance on his medication. He, unfortunately, sustained a moderate severe reaction which is predictable in a certain few patients. The good effects from the Prolixin I feel have outweighed the bad side effects.”
IT WOULD BE YEARS BEFORE I LEARNED WHAT HAD HAPPENED TO Gaylen in Chicago—in fact, it was another one of those hidden family secrets I learned from reading The Executioner’s Song. But Mailer didn’t tell the full story. That’s because the only person who knew the full story was my mother, and she wouldn’t divulge all of it to anybody. To this day, despite my best efforts, I have never been able to learn the whole truth of the matter.
This much, though, I do know: Gaylen got stabbed in Chicago. Horribly, viciously, repeatedly. I have heard different accounts of how this happened. One story has it that Gaylen was drunk and was robbed in an alley late one winter night. One man held him while the other stole his money and jewelry and then rammed an ice pick into his abdomen, over and over. The other story I’ve heard fits in a little better with what I know about my brother. Gaylen had fallen deeply in love with a married woman. He should have learned his lesson from what happened to him in Salt Lake, but of course he didn’t. One day the woman’s husband discovered the affair, tracked down my brother, stabbed him in the lower gut, and left him for dead. It took several quarts of blood and two or three operations to save Gaylen’s life—and the doctors advised him that it was unlikely that he would ever again be able to use his stomach or