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We go out to a field. It is sunrise. I am handed a rifle, and a target is pinned above Gaylen’s heart. He is watching me, his dark brown eyes wide open. They seem to be pleading for me to get this over with, to do it fast and clean.

I don’t think I can do this, I say to myself, and yet I know I have to—that whatever other way Gaylen would have to die would be so much worse. I take a careful bead on my brother’s heart, and I hold my aim steady. For a moment I think I’ll just hold the aim, then close my eyes and pull the trigger. But I know that would run the risk of a missed or botched shot, which would only make his suffering worse. This is why they have firing squads, I tell myself: in case somebody loses his nerve or misses his aim. It is a great responsibility, I realize, to put a man to death.

And so I aim at Gaylen’s heart—a careful, steady aim. I tell myself that after I’ve done my duty, the moment I have pulled the trigger, I can wake up from this awful dream. So I pull the trigger. I see the bullet enter Gaylen’s chest. But before I can awaken, I see his heart burst out from him and fall to the dry dirt, pulsing blood onto the dust. It is then that I remember my mother’s often-repeated admonition to my brother Frank about Gary’s death in Utah: “They shot your brother’s heart out, onto the ground.”

Blood is our only permanent history, and

blood history does not admit of revision.

— HARRY CREWS.

Fathers, Sons, Blood

There is no crime of which I cannot

conceive myself guilty.

— GOETHE

I dreamed that love was a crime.

—O. V. WRIGHT,

Eight Men and Four Women

AFTER GAYLEN’S DEATH, GARY SEEMED TO CHANGE. He had lost two members of his family without the opportunity for some final reconciliation, and he wanted desperately to be free. He and I started writing each other more frequently. In his letters, Gary began to express more concern for me, more curiosity about what I was doing, who my friends were. He was trying to be my brother.

The supervisors at the prison were also taking note of this change in Gary. One day a few months after Gaylen’s death, the warden allowed Gary a supervised home visit with my family. An armed guard drove him in a car from the prison in Salem to my mother’s trailer in Oak Grove. Gary, my mother, my brother Frank, and I sat around the whole afternoon, eating snacks, talking about old memories and future hopes. I brought along my guitar and Gary and I played and sang some Johnny Cash songs together. It would be hard to say who had the worse voice, but it hardly mattered. Gary and I then got into a discussion about music. We shared a lot of the same favorites: Duke Ellington, Hank Williams, Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, Little Richard, Chuck Berry. It was nice to realize we had a few things in common. As we talked, the armed guard sat in an easy chair close by, reading magazines, keeping a quiet eye on Gary.

We later heard from the prison that the warden and others had been heartened by Gary’s behavior on this day. They thought he might be hungry enough for freedom to try calming down and living a more sensible and productive life. Gary had recently started working in the prison art shop, and the warden and a few of the guards had liked his work so much, they bought some of it for themselves. The warden also encouraged Gary to enter some art contests, and in the fall of 1972, after he had won first place in’ several, the prison supervisors granted Gary a school release to attend a community college in Eugene and study art. All in all, it was a great opportunity: If Gary did well under the terms of the program—if he attended his classes, got fair grades, followed the rules of the campus and the halfway house where he would live during weekdays, and if he would never leave the Eugene area without the consent of his counselors—then the chances were good that at school’s end he might receive an early release from prison and would probably also receive a job placement at a Portland-area