Shot in the Heart - Mikal Gilmore [191]
“I didn’t tell Moody or Stanger of our conversation,” he replied.
“Who did?”
“Well, I told your Uncle Vernon a couple of things, but just because I assumed he was your main contact here and you would want to stay in touch with him. Now he may have passed some of that along to Moody or Stanger, but anything else you heard was projection on their part.” He apologized if he had violated my trust and then offered me some final advice: “Don’t call the prison before going out. Information gets passed out of there pretty easily, and a lot of people, including myself, know the minute you enter that maximum-security compound.”
After making a couple of calls, though, I learned that visits had to be authorized in advance. I made arrangements for a late-afternoon visit, then sat down and wrote Gary a long letter. It was easy to forget what I wanted to say to him when I was face to face with him and his anger. I wrote him that whatever choice I made, it was a matter of love, an issue between him and me, and not the courts or the newspapers. I told him that I thought redemption was more possible in the choice of life over death, and confessed that for years he’d frightened and confused me because of his violent whims. If time enough existed, I wanted to lift that barrier.
That afternoon at the prison was the first day Gary was officially authorized to have visitors, which meant, ironically, I had to talk to him over the phone. After looking through my letter, a guard gave it to Gary. He read it quietly, pensively. When he was finished he managed a smile. “Well put,” he said. “Are you familiar with Nietzsche? He once wrote that a time comes when a man should rise to meet the occasion. That’s what I’m trying to do, Mikal… Look,” he said, suddenly changing the subject. “I was thinking about what I said yesterday, about ‘where were you.’ I realized that was unfair. I wasn’t around much when you were a kid. I don’t hate you, although I’ve tried to act that way lately. You’re my brother. I know what that means. I’ve been angry with you, but I’ve never hated you.”
I forced myself to ask the question I’d been building up to for the last few days: “What would you do if I tried to stop this?”
He winced. “I don’t want you to do that,” he said evenly.
“That doesn’t answer my question.”
“Please don’t.”
“Gary, what would you do? All you’ve said is that you wanted the sentence of the court carried out. What if that sentence were commuted?”
“I’d kill myself. Look, I’m not watched that closely in this place, no matter what you hear. I could’ve killed myself any time in the last two weeks, but I don’t want to do that. You see, I want some good to come from all this. If I commit suicide, then I can’t be a donor—to people who have more right to life than I do—and my whole will could become suspect … Besides, if a person’s dumb enough to murder and get caught, then, he shouldn’t snivel about what he gets.”
From there, Gary talked about prison reality, telling me some of the brutality he had witnessed and some that he had fostered. He was terrified of a life in prison, he said. “Maybe you could have my sentence commuted, but you wouldn’t have to live that sentence or be around when I killed myself.” The fear in his eyes was always most discernible when he spoke about prison, far more than when he spoke about his own impending death. Maybe because one was an ever-present concrete reality and the other an abstraction. “I don’t think death will be anything new or frightening for me. I think I’ve been there before.”
We talked for hours, or rather Gary talked. I’d already missed a flight back home and had forgotten about the person waiting out in the parking lot for me. This was the first real communication we’d shared in years; neither of us wanted to let go. Gary asked me to return the next day and, in turn, I asked if he would be willing to meet with Bill Moyers, for the purpose of a conversation, not an interview. Gary readily agreed, as long as it was off the record, because of his deal with Schiller.
Later that night Schiller