Shot in the Heart - Mikal Gilmore [44]
“He has not been in prison,” Bessie said, the old anger returning to her face. “Frank’s had a hard life. He was abandoned by his father at birth and his mother had to work in show business to keep him in school. He was forced to fend for himself a lot over the years, and he had to grow up tough. But my husband is not a criminal. How dare you say that.”
Bessie’s protests, though, didn’t count for much. The Browns didn’t warm to Frank, and her younger sisters seemed almost terrified of him. More than ever, Bessie felt the judgment and scorn of her family. In fact, she felt it descend on her in the worst possible way. In the Mormon world, there was nothing more important than the bond of marriage—it was the rock on which you built your family, and it was a key element to eternal blessings. Bessie was now made to feel that she had failed in this matter of utmost consequence. She believed that the disdain she was now experiencing had nothing to do with Frank Gilmore. She could have married Franklin Roosevelt and it would have made no difference. The whole message she had got from her family for years, she thought, was that she was worthless—she counted for nothing in their world, and in God’s estimation. Now, it was as if that message were being sent with the finality of condemnation.
As Bessie and Frank drove away from the Provo farm, Bessie sat in the front seat of the Pontiac with both hands cupped over her face, crying as hard as she had ever cried. She felt like she didn’t care if she never saw any of those people again. Frank put his arm around her and drew her close to him, pressing her head to his shoulder. “What the hell can you expect,” he said, “from a bunch of damn Mormons.”
THAT WAS WHEN THE WANDERING STARTED. In the next few months Bessie would see small towns and back highways all over Southern California, Nevada, Arizona, and Colorado. They would move into a place, spend a couple of weeks, then move on. Rarely did they stay anyplace for as long as a month or two. And when the time came to leave, it was almost always in a hurry. Frank would tell Bessie not to bother with packing the things they had accumulated. It was always just get in the car and go. “We’ll buy new things in the next place,” he would say. He wasn’t about to be slowed down by possessions.
As it turned out, there were often good reasons for moving on quickly. Frank’s main career, Bessie began to see, was scamming. The first thing he would do when they hit a town was get a phone installed in their hotel room or apartment, under one of his names. Then he would make the rounds to various businesses, selling advertising for a forthcoming magazine or specialty publication. He would show a sample of what the magazine would look like, leave a business card, then go back to the hotel and wait for the merchants to call and place their ads. Sometimes, he’d have Bessie answer the phone, posing as his secretary. “Hello, this is Mr. Collier’s office.” Or: “Hello. Miller Publications. Frank Collier’s office.” Then Frank would return to the merchants, collect the material for the ads, and full payment or partial payment for the ad. The publication, of course, would never materialize. Frank would take the money and move on. This approach to ad-selling was called “hundred-percenting,” because the seller took all the profit and ran.
Activities like that were reason enough for putting a few hundred miles between yesterday and tomorrow, but the scams weren’t the only thing that kept them moving. To Bessie, it seemed that Frank was always trying to keep ahead of some unknown phantom that might be coming up close behind. She could practically feel it in his sleep, the way he would lie tensed, or would sit bolt upright at the sound of late-night footsteps in the hallway. Soon, Bessie took on Frank’s breathing patterns as her own. She began to feel