The Executioner's Song

by Norman Mailer

  Toby was her neighbor. It was like having your own private police force.

  Then they locked the doors, and Johnny got out his .22 rifle. They had no more than done this, when the phone rang. It was Gary. "Brenda," he said, "is Johnny home? Can I talk to him?" Brenda thought, "That's different. He usually wants to talk to me first."

  "Johnny," he said, "I need some help."

  "What's the matter?"

  "I've been shot," said Gary. "I'm hurt real bad, man. I'm over at Craig Taylor's, and I need your help."

  At the hospital Glen Overton was trying to keep Debbie's mind on other things, so he got her to call her uncle in Pasadena. It seemed to give her a desire to inform other people, for when Chris and David Caffee walked in with Benjamin, Debbie asked Chris right off to contact Ben's bishop, Dean Christiansen. That took doing.

  There were a slew of Christiansens in the Provo-Orem phone book, and they all had different spellings. It was one super-Mormon name. Besides, Chris didn't know if Dean was the first name or title.

  They finally put Debbie in a little office. She sat there thinking she had to believe in something. So she kept thinking Ben was going to be all right. Then she realized that the doctor had come into the room with Bishop Christiansen, and they had both been sitting there. Why wasn't the doctor with Ben? Then another doctor came in. They were all sitting there. It came in on her slowly. They were get up their nerve.

  Bishop Christiansen looked at her, and whispered gently. She didn't hear it. She kept looking at his silver hair. The doctor said that if Ben had lived, he would have been a vegetable. That thought went all the way in. That thought cleared her head. Debbie said, "If Ben had lived, he would have been warm, and I could have fed him and taken care of him." She had never felt more certain about what she knew. "At least," she said, "I would have had him with me."

  She had met Ben at the Mormon Institute at Pasadena City College when she was twenty-one. She had never dreamed of going out with him. He was big and very good looking with a high pompadour of nice dark hair, and she was just a pint-sized ex-tomboy with a big broad turned-up nose and a slightly receded chin. Still, she made a point of sitting behind him. She wanted to keep her eye on him.

  It took a while for Ben to ask her out, but on Christmas Eve of 1972, he did, and they went to church. Debbie didn't remember any of the Bishop's talk, she just sat by Ben. They saw each other every night after that. Took their happiness from looking at each other. They hadn't been going together a week before they decided to get married.

  Glen Overton happened to be with Debbie when they brought her in to see Ben. That was the hardest part of the evening for Glen. He was looking at a person he had spoken to three hours previously. Now that person was stretched out, face blue, mouth open. Glen had seen a boy killed in an avalanche. This was worse.

  A sheet covered Ben up to his neck, but Debbie walked forward, put her arms around him and hugged him. She really threw her arms around him. They had to sort of pull her away. She held on. They let her stay for thirty seconds more before they asked her to come out. Then they had to pull her away after all.

  A doctor took Chris Caffee aside. "Would it be all right if Debbie went home with you? She doesn't have anyone in Provo."

  Chris said, "Well, yeah, if the police'll check my house every minute on the minute all night long." They certainly hadn't found the murderer yet.

  On the way out of the hospital, a nurse followed them to the car and handed over a paper bag with Ben's bloody clothes, his valuables and his watch. The nurse said, "Do you want his wedding band?" Debbie looked at them and asked, "Do I want it?" David said, "Well, why don't you take it?" Chris said, "If you decide you don't want it, you can have it put back on him." They stood there waiting while the nurse went in, and came back out, and said, "We can't get his ring off. He's too fat. Do you want us to cut it off?" She was terrible. They said, "Leave the ring." Debbie was getting wimpy now. She wasn't crying hysterically or anything, but she kind of collapsed.

  Julie Taylor had come home from the hospital that day, and sleeping with Craig in their double bed, when the knock came. Craig went to the window and looked. Gary was standing on the porch. Just like that he said, "I've been shot." He made a point of showing a bleeding hand to Craig, and said he was in a lot of pain.

  Gary didn't ask if he could come in the house and Craig didn't feel exactly ready to let him in. Didn't know why, just didn't want to ask him. Julie being out of the hospital he didn't want blood all over the house, and her having to clean it.

  Gary, however, didn't seem to care. Just said he needed help. He had to have a set of clothes. He wanted Craig to take him to the airport.

  "I'll take you to the hospital if you like," Craig told him.

  "No," Gary said from the other side of the screen door, "I can't do that." He wasn't the least bit boisterous. Just moved his mouth, then said, "Call Brenda, then."

  When Craig heard her voice, he passed the phone out the window to Gary on the porch. Julie was really tired. From the corner of his eye, Craig could see that she had already gone back to sleep.

  While Johnny was talking to Gary, Toby Bath and his partner, Jay Barker, drove up and motioned for Brenda to come out. Just as she reached the patrol car, she heard an All-Points Bulletin on their radio. A voice said, "Gilmore is considered armed and extremely dangerous. Be prepared to shoot on sight."

  She started to bawl. "Come on in," she managed to say, "Gary's on the phone."

  Johnny needed a pencil to write down the address that Gary was giving him, so he handed the phone to Brenda. She got herself together and said, "How are you doing, Gary?"

  He told some story about a man robbing a store and there he was getting shot in the attempt to prevent it. It was a shitty story and he was a shitty liar. He really was.

  "Will you come to me?" Gary asked.

  "Yeah," she said, "I'll come to you. I've got some codeine and I've got bandages. Where are you?" He gave the address. She said it out loud for Johnny to write down. Toby Bath and Jay Barker stood there in their uniforms and also wrote it down.

  It hardly improved matters that Gary was at Craig Taylor's. Craig had a wife and two children. Brenda could see the shoot-out. But as soon as she hung up, the cops proposed that Johnny go in his truck. They would hide in the back.

  If Gary discovered he had brought the cops with him, everybody was going to get wasted. Johnny found himself lighting one cigarette right after putting the previous one, just lit, in the ashtray, and he said, "I don't want to go over." It was about as good a fear as Johnny ever felt. On reconsideration, the police agreed it was too risky.

  Brenda said, "I'll go. I don't think Gary will hurt me. Just let me take care of his hand."

  Johnny said, "You're not going."

  The cops said no. Flat-out.

  Brenda didn't know if she were relieved or miserable.

  Johnny went down to Orem Police Headquarters with Toby Bath and Jay Barker to see what the plans might be. Meantime, the Orem Police Chief called Brenda and said, "Stall Gilmore as much as you can. We need time." They agreed that Brenda would communicate with the police through her CB, and so be able to keep her telephone line open for Gary.

  Before long, Craig was calling again. He said, "Hey, Gary's getting kind of nervous. How long has Johnny been gone?"

  "Tell Gary," Brenda said, "that as usual, Johnny's out of gas again." This might pacify him for a few minutes. Johnny was famous as the family character who always delayed everybody while he got gas. On the street outside her house, police cars were screaming around the corners.

  Craig called again. Brenda told him she hadn't heard from Johnny but he'd probably gotten lost. People who lived in Orem, she explained, only had to deal with a checkerboard arrangement for their streets and that was easy. It got them spoiled. They didn't know what to do with the weirdly curved roads in Pleasant Grove where Fourth North didn't mind getting its ass skewed around Third South.

  She called the police to
tell them that Gary was getting impatient. Brenda felt like a traitor. Gary's trust was the weapon she was using to nail him. It was true she wanted to nail him, she told herself, but she didn't want, well, she didn't want to have to betray him to do it.

  Craig had gone outside to be with Gary. They sat out in the dark on the bungalow porch. Having been asleep, Craig didn't know about any killings this night. He was still worrying over last night's, but didn't feel ready to ask Gary outright. Did say, "Gary, if I knew you had anything to do with that fellow Jensen's murder, I'd turn you in right now."

  Gary said, "I swear to God I didn't shoot the guy." Looked him straight in the eye. He had a powerful knack of staring right into you. Again, Gary asked him to call. Craig went inside, picked up the phone, talked to Brenda once more. She was nervous. Craig could more or less sense she had called the police. She didn't say anything such to Craig, she just asked if he and his family were all right, and if Gary was being decent, and Craig said, "We're all right. He's fine."

  He went back to the porch.

  Gary said he had friends in Washington State, and he believed he would go underground. He mentioned Patty Hearst. Said he could connect with her old network. Craig didn't know if Gary really knew her, or was bragging. Craig asked once more if he wanted to go to the hospital. Gary said he was an ex-con, and the hospital wouldn't understand.

  They sat out there half an hour. Gary spoke about April. Said she was a slick chick. Said she was "Real nice." The longer they sat out there, the calmer Gary got. He almost got despondent. Then he said that when he was settled, he would send Craig a painting. He also said, "I'll write you my new address. You can mail my clothes and stuff." He had brought his paintings, his poems, his manila envelope full of snapshots and his other belongings over from Spanish Fork. He said, "Send me all them things when I get settled."

  To himself, Craig kept saying, "Come on, Johnny, you son of a bitch, get here."

  When the Caffees got home, they discovered that Debbie was covered with blood. Chris had to take her into the other room to change. Then Debbie wanted to make phone calls. She telephoned her mom, and Ben's sister, and all her own brothers and sisters, and Ben's friend, Porter Dudson, up in Wyoming. She just called and called. She would start crying and say, "Ben's been shot and he's dead." It was like a recording.

  Chris opened their sofa bed in the living room, and she and David lay there while Debbie sat in the rocking chair and rocked Benjamin.

  Now, it was Gary on the phone. "Where's John?" he asked.

  "He should be there by now," said Brenda.

  "God, man," said Gary, "he's not."

  "Well, honey, calm down," she said.

  "Cousin, is Johnny really coming out?"

  Brenda said, "He's coming, Gary."

  She had a flash. "Gary, what was the house number, 67 or 69?"

  Gary said, "No, it was 76."

  "Uh-oh," said Brenda, "I gave him the wrong one."

  "Will you get it right this time?" he snapped.

  "Okay, Gary," she said meekly. "Johnny's got the CB in the truck, and I have one here. I'll plug him into the right address. Just hang tight." She took a breath, "If you feel kind of faint," she said, "or kind of badly from the wound, why don't you go out on the porch where the air is cool and take some deep breaths. Turn the light on so Johnny can find you."

  "How stupid," said Gary, "do you think I am?"

  Brenda said, "Excuse me, stay inside."

  "All right," he said. He still must trust her.

  Soon as she hung up, she began to bawl again. It seemed so wrong to do it this way. But she called the police department, and told them, "He's getting very impatient."

  To Gary, who soon called again, she said, "Listen, I know you're in pain. Hang loose. Just stay put."

  Brenda was now patched in with the Provo, the Orem, and the Pleasant Grove Police Chiefs, and she could tell from what the dispatchers were saying that the houses around Craig Taylor's were being quietly evacuated. The police were moving into position. One of the Police Chiefs wanted to know which room Gary was in and she told them, she thought he was in the living room. Was the light on? he wanted to know. She said she didn't think so.

  Just then Gary called back again. "If John ain't here in five minutes I'm splitting."

  "My God, Gary," she said, "are you on the run or something?"

  Gary said, "I'm leaving in five minutes."

  She said, "Be careful, Gary. I love you."

  He said, "Yeah." Hung up.

  To the police, she said, "He's coming out. I know he's got a gun, but for God's sake, try not to kill him." Brenda added, "I mean it. Don't fire. He doesn't know you're there. See if you can surround him." She didn't know if she was reaching anybody.

  After the last call, Craig just talked to Gary through the screen in the window, until finally Gary said, "Stick your head out through the screen and let me see your face."

  Now, Gary shook hands with Craig and said, "Well, they're never coming, so I'm leaving." They shook hands, thumbs up, pretty good handshake, Gary still looking Craig in the eye. Then he went out to his truck. Craig turned the porch light off and watched him go down the road.

  For a while, Brenda got the play-by-play over the special channel on the CB a voice said, "Gilmore's leaving. I can see the truck. He's pulling out now. He has the lights on." Then she heard he was heading down to the first roadblock. She didn't know what happened next. He seemed to have driven around that first roadblock. He was out. He was loose in Pleasant Grove.

  She heard somebody from the police say, "I've got to cut you off now." Cut her off, they did. For an hour and a half. It was all of that before she knew what had happened.

  Craig called Spence McGrath and said Gary was in trouble and might try to get over to his place. Craig thought the police were after him. Spencer said, "Wow, that's kind of wild," and got out his deer rifle, and had it lying right next to the door.

  Lights shone through the window, and the cops were shouting at Craig Taylor, "Come out with your hands up." They searched the house. Julie appeared in her bathrobe, but the cops weren't all that courteous. They found Gary's clothes, told Craig to drive down to Provo and give a statement. He was up all night.

  A SWAT team from Provo, five officers from Orem, and three from Pleasant Grove, a couple of County Sheriffs and some Highway Patrol had all met at the Pleasant Grove High School where an impromptu command post was established. Since there was every chance of a shoot-out, they had started cleaning out the area around Craig Taylor's house. It meant tiptoeing from door to door, waking people up, leading them out of the neighborhood—it took time. In the meanwhile, they set up roadblocks,

  When the word came down that somebody was driving away from Craig Taylor's in a white truck, everybody expected a vehicle to come barreling through. What fooled them was that the white truck drove at a moderate rate of speed, slowed down, and went right around. It hadn't been that heavy a roadblock. Just a barrier across one-half of the two-lane, with a police car parked to the side.

  When the guy in the white truck had gone past, it was reported that he had a goatee. Then it registered. That was him. Two of their vehicles took off.

  A couple of the cops stayed right where they were. They were thinking this fellow might have been a decoy passing the in hopes everybody would chase him. Then Gilmore could walk right on out.

  One trouble with a roadblock is that it could start a lot of firing. So Lieutenant Peacock, who was running the operation at the command post at the Pleasant Grove High School, had told people that if there was any doubt, they were to let a white vehicle through. Next thing, he got the news. The driver in the white did fit Gilmore's description. Then Peacock could actually see the truck, just a few hundred yards away from the high school, headed east toward the mountains on a street called Battle Creek. Going along at no great speed, in fact. Maybe five or ten miles over the speed limit, which was only 25 miles an hour there.

  He radioed for a car to
follow the truck, but when he heard that vehicles in the vicinity were tied up, he got into his unmarked car, a plain four-door '76 Chevelle, and proceeded after it. Within a few blocks he got near enough to see the truck again.

  While he had been radioing in his position, another car driven by cops fell in behind.

  The white truck made a right-hand turn and started going down an empty country road at the edge of Pleasant Grove.

  There were just a few houses on either side, but he was heading back toward population. At that point, still another patrol car had gotten in line, and Peacock decided he now had sufficient assistance to make a stop on the truck. While the road they were on was not real wide, it would still be broad enough for three cars to get abreast. So, at that point, he radioed for the other two to come up on his left-hand side, and soon as they did, all three turned on their spotlights at once and their overhead revolving red lights.

  On the PA system, Peacock cried out: "DRIVER IN THE WHITE TRUCK, STOP YOUR VEHICLE, STOP YOUR VEHICLE." He could see the truck waver, slow down, come to a halt.

  Peacock opened his door. He had a Remington 12-gauge shotgun in the front seat, but, instinctively, he came out with his service weapon.

  The white truck had stopped in the center of the road. Peacock stood behind the protection of his open door. He could hear Ron Allen commanding Gilmore to put his hands up. Right there in the driver's seat he was to put his hands up. Lift them so he could be seen through the rear window. The man hesitated. Allen had to give the order a third time before he finally raised his hands. Next Allen told him to put those hands outside the driver's window. The driver hesitated again. Then he finally obeyed. Now he was told to open the door by the outside latch, Once that door was open, he was told to get out of the truck.

  By now, Peacock had walked around in back of his Chevelle, and was standing behind the headlights, on the right-hand side of the road where it was dark. He had his weapon ready. He knew the suspect couldn't see him. The man's eyes would be blinded by the lights of the car, In turn, the other officers were standing back of the open doors of their patrol cars.