The Executioner's Song

by Norman Mailer

  Noall had this bothersome feeling now. It was in the impression he had had all the way that Gilmore was more intelligent than himself. Wootton knew damned well that Gilmore was more educated.

  Self-educated, but better educated. "Jesus Almighty," Wootton said to himself, "the system has really failed with this man, just miserably failed."

  After that, people were going out and Nicole was crying in the corridor, and Nicole and Ida met, and they embraced, and broke down, and Nicole said, "Don't worry, everything is going to be all right." Vern was walking around in a state of shock. He had expected it all, but he was shocked.

  A girl, a young reporter, came up to Gary and asked, "Do you have any comments?" He said, "No, not particularly." She said, "Do you think everything was fair? Is there anything you'd like to say?"

  Gary said, "Well, I'd like to ask you a question." She said, "What's that?" He said, "Who the hell won the World Series?"

  The State Patrolman who would escort Gary back to jail and then take him up to the prison was named Jerry Scott, and he was a big, good-looking man. He had a personality clash with Gary right from the start.

  When he went into the courtroom to pick him up, Gilmore didn't have leg shackles on, or handcuffs, so Scott knelt and attached the stuff, and asked him to stand so the restraining belt could be locked.

  Scott thought it was easier and more comfortable for the prisoner if you could put on a restraining belt and hook the handcuffs through the hole in front rather than pinion a man with his arms behind his back. But when Gary stood up, he said, "You've got the leg irons too tight. I'm not going anywhere."

  Jerry Scott reached down. He could move the irons back and forth a little, so he knew they were not binding. "Gary," he said, "they're okay." At which point, Gilmore replied, "Either get those shackles off me, or you're going to carry me out."

  Scott said, "I'm not carrying you anywhere. I'll drag you out."

  Scott was disgusted. Everybody around Gilmore had been saying Yes, Sir, and No, Sir, as if committing the murder made him a special person.

  You had to be firm with prisoners was one thing Scott had decided a long time ago, and here was everybody hovering over backwards to be extra nice to this fellow. Maybe it was because he was always staring you right in the eye like he was innocent or something.

  Gilmore was really starting to act up now and using profanities in the courtroom. Scott didn't want to fight him all the way down the stairs and into the elevator with everybody watching, so he loosened the cuffs and shackles after all. Gilmore complained again, and now Scott had them really loose, and Gilmore was still complaining. Scott got suspicious, especially when Gilmore repeated, "You're going to have to carry me out of here."

  "I'm not loosening them any further," Scott said. "Just get your ass in gear. We're going down whether you like it or not, and if you don't, I'll drag you, but I won't carry you. The decision," Scott said, "is up to you."

  At this point, Gilmore started walking out with him. They had to go real slow, because he only had about ten inches of movement with the leg shackles on, and Gilmore was mad all the way down to the car, and all the way across Center Street to the jail. Scott put Gary in the front seat next to himself and had two deputies in the back. After they arrived, they took off the leg shackles, and the handcuffs, and brought Gilmore to his cell and listened to him talk to his cellmate while he gathered his personal items for transport up to Utah State Prison.

  Well, they gave me the death penalty, Gilmore said to his cellmate. He shook his head, and added, "You know, I'm going to eat first." His cellmate said he had a money order which he hadn't cashed yet, and he got $5 from one of the guards in exchange for it and gave it to Gary who said, "You're too much. I'll never be able to repay you." "It ain't no big thing," said the cellmate. "Listen, do me a favor," said Gilmore, "get these books back to the Provo Library, so Nicole won't get into any trouble. They're checked out in her name."

  "No sweat," said the cellmate. Then as Scott watched, Gilmore handed him a blue western shirt and said, "Nicole made this for me," and then he handed over a Schick Ejectable Razor and said, "I want you to have this as a remembrance." They shook hands and wished one another good luck, and the jailer undid the lock and chain on the door and Gary walked out, turned around with his thumb to his nose and wiggled his fingers. The cellmate did the same. Sheriff Cahoon came by and shook hands with Gary.

  Scott took him down the corridor, and made him strip for a shakedown. That got Gilmore upset all over again. He was being very protective about his person and his personal items. This last was just a bunch of letters and some books, but he wouldn't let them out of his sight and acted like the skin shake was a personal attack. Scott didn't feel that way at all. The fellow had just been given the death sentence. There had to be tight security.

  Once he was stripped, they ran their fingers through his hair to make sure he hadn't glued anything in there. His hair was long enough to hide a nail file. They checked behind the ear lobes, and made him hold his arms high, checked through the hair under his armpits and in the navel. They had to lift up his testicles to see if there was something taped under his sac and then had him bend over and spread his cheeks to make sure nothing was extending from the rectum area. Policy was not to give finger waves down there anymore. Finally they checked the bottoms of his feet to make sure something wasn't being held between the toes. All the while, Gilmore kept using every four-letter word he could find.

  Then they put the shackles back, and Scott made sure they were secure. Jerry Scott said, "Gary, I don't like you, and you don't like me, but let's forget that. I'm going to take you to State Prison and I don't want you trying to get away. Deputy Fox is going to be sitting right behind, and if you give any trouble, or make any fast movements, or any aggressive movements, he's going to snap your neck, snap it."

  Even after a skin search, you never knew what a prisoner could hide.

  A flat bobby pin could be slipped up under the cuffs and get them loose, Why you could open handcuffs with the refill from a ball-point pen if you knew how to do it. So, there was always a lot to worry in moving a prisoner. Scott told him to just sit in the car and they would go straight to prison and it would be all right.

  He moved in his slow shackle-step out of the jail and into the vehicle, and sitting the same way as before, they took off. For protection, Jerry Scott had arranged to have two detectives follow in another car three hundred yards behind. They would watch for any driver who might pull in behind the lead car to commence an escape plan. They were also watching for any vehicle driven by a kook who might decide he wanted to assassinate Gilmore.

  Anyway, the trip went quietly. Gilmore said something about how the air felt good and the scenery did look good out there in the evening, and Scott answered, "Yeah, the weather is fine." Gilmore took a real deep breath and said, "Can I have my window down a little bit?" Scott said, "Sure," and then said over his shoulder to the officer behind him, "Lee, I'm going to bend over and open his window some." So Deputy Fox leaned forward to cover as Scott leaned over with one hand and rolled it down. That seemed to cool Gilmore. He didn't say any more for the rest of the way . . . but he also seemed to relax.

  When they got to the State Prison, the officer in charge ushered them through different gates into the Maximum Security area. There they took the foot braces off, and the shackles, and the handcuffs and shook him down again, and took him to his cell, and he never said another word. Scott didn't say good-bye. He didn't want to agitate him, and such an attempt might seem like heckling. Outside the prison, night had come, and the ridge of the mountain came down to the Interstate like a big dark animal laying out its paw.

  That night, Mikal Gilmore, Gary's youngest brother, received a phone call from Bessie. She told him that Gary received the death penalty. "Mother," Mikal said, "they haven't executed anybody in this country for ten years, and they aren't about to start with Gary." Still, nausea came up on him as he put down the phone. All he could see
for the rest of the night were Gary's eyes.

  PART SEVEN

  Death Row

  Chapter 30

  THE SLAMMER

  Soon after high school began in September, another teacher told Grace McGinnis of a story he read in July about a fellow from Portland, arrested for killing two men in Utah. The name, as he recollected, was Gilmore. Didn't she have a friend by that name? Grace really didn't want to hear more. Certain kinds of bad news were like mysterious lumps that went away if you paid no attention.

  Now, the story was in the Portland papers again. The killer certainly was Gary Gilmore, and he had been sentenced to death in Provo, Utah. Grace thought of calling Bessie. It would be the first phone call in years. But she could hear the conversation before it took place.

  "I cannot believe," Bessie would say, "that the Gary I know, killed those two young men. He couldn't have. He had a natural sweetness to him."

  "Yes," Grace would say, "he really did."

  "I never saw that kind of cruelty in Gary," Bessie would say, and Grace would again agree, and know she was not telling the truth.

  Gary had never done anything cruel to her, certainly not, but she had seen something awful come into him after his Prolixin treatments, a personality change so drastic that Grace could honestly say she didn't know the man named Gary Gilmore who existed after taking it. It was as if something obscene had come into his mind. She was not very surprised he had killed two people. After the Prolixin, she had always been a little afraid of him.

  Grace's hand was on the phone that day, but she could not call Bessie, not yet. "I am a coward," said Grace to herself, "I am a devout coward," and thought of all of them, of Bessie in her trailer, and Frank Sr., dead before she ever met him, but known to her by each and every one of Bessie's stories, and Bessie's sons, Frank Jr., who never said a word, and Gaylen, who had almost died in Grace's car, and Mikal, and Gary. A feeling of love, and misery, and anger hot as bile, plus all the woe Grace could carry in her big body, came flooding down, memories as sad as rue, and the horror that told her once to step out of Bessie's life came back, and she thought of Bessie in her trailer.

  Mikal was the first Gilmore that Grace met. In the school year of '67-'68, she had him as a senior in Creative Writing, and he was one of the best students she ever had. Grace's maiden name was Gilmore, Grace Gilmore McGinnis, although when she and Bessie traced it out, there was no relation, but names aside, Grace was impressed with a long, intelligent conversation she had with Mikal about Truman Capote. She had assigned In Cold Blood to the class. Mikal showed a lot of insight in talking about that book.

  The first time she and Mikal became close, however, was when Grace was asked to do a World Affairs Council Program for local Channel 8, and pick four students she thought could handle a topic like the Chinese Cultural Revolution. She chose Mikal first.

  At that time, his hair was long. Milwaukie, a working-class suburb of Portland, had its share of red-necks among the teachers, and they thought no student with long hair ought to represent the school on a television program. Grace went to the principal and asked for a faculty meeting to decide the issue. She accused a few teachers of being absolutely warped. She knew she'd never win any contests for being the slenderest middle-aged lady in town, but Grace could use her height and her bulk and her voice—which was not small—to get a little liberal scorn across. Mikal went on the television program.

  He performed beautifully.

  Once in a while, Grace had a student she didn't have to teach at, as she would put it, but could teach to. Mikal was that kind of student. Grace would look up things she thought would take his interest. She would frankly confess to a bit of prejudice in his favor. It didn't seem exceptional to her, therefore, that he came to her one day and said his mother was going to lose her home for back taxes, and he didn't know anybody to go to for advice. Would she talk to them?

  Grace went over to Oakhill Road one Saturday and her first thought when she saw the house with the circle driveway was, "My God, this place is haunted." Something about the vegetation in the back creeping up.

  It was just a first impression, but she had been interested in psychic phenomena for quite a while, so the thought caused no great agitation. Grace just went in to a large dark living room, furnished sparsely in what Grace called Portland Gothic. A collection of nice postwar Philippine mahogany pieces.

  Bessie was slight, with dark gray hair tied back in a bun to show the most interesting face, the kind you wanted to know more about. She looked like a woman who, at the least, would have made an excellent housemother in a sorority. But then Grace thought Bessie really belonged in a mansion. She could have been the widow of the president of a utility company who dressed all the way down in grays as if she wouldn't give an inch to money. Grace loved her on sight. All that class and dignity, all that quietly accumulated reserve.

  Loved her more when they started to talk. The moment Grace mentioned that her maiden name was Gilmore, it commenced a conversation that went on for three hours. They covered a lot of the universe.

  After a while, Bessie got into her problems with the house. Frank had bought it outright, and there was no mortgage, but it was still hard to keep up. He hadn't left insurance and she was earning less than $200 a month working as a bus girl at a tavern called Speed's.

  She couldn't advance up to waitressing, because she was getting too slow and arthritic. At present, she was in her sixth year of arrears on taxes, and the city was going after her property. She had received a notice they were going to foreclose. Well, she didn't want to lose the house while Mikal was in school. Indeed, she wanted to keep it as the place for her boys to come back to. She wanted them to have the home they had known before they left. So, she was hoping to get the Mormon Church to pay the taxes, and she, in turn, would deed the house to the Church after she died. She hoped they would consider it a worthy investment.

  Grace couldn't help her with that. Grace knew little enough about Mormons, and the solution here had to do with the local Bishop and his attitude. So they moved on to other matters. Bessie proved a delightful conversationalist.

  She told how at the restaurant where she worked, they only gave her a little time to eat. "We have thirty minutes to order our food from an ornery chef, run to the back and try to get it swallowed. They could see I wasn't finishing, so the chef said, 'I'm going to cut you way down.' 'Please do,' I said, 'I can't eat all you give me unless you give me another thirty minutes to eat it.' Besides, I like," she said, "to leave food on my plate. I cannot clean up a plate. Never have in my entire life. The day I clean a plate will take me right out to the other side. It'll send me home—wherever home is."

  Yesterday, Bessie had said to the bus driver, "Do you know there was a dead possum right in front of my gate?" The bus driver said, "Why didn't you pick it up and make stew?" She said, "You know, Glen, I'm never going to speak to you again." He said, "The possum couldn't hurt you if it was dead." She said, "It could me. It might have fleas."

  Grace enjoyed her more and more. They talked of how they both disliked synthetic fabrics, yet who could afford wool or cotton or silk anymore? "I just go on year after year with no clothes," said Bess. "Not exactly nude, however—that would be enough to cure the country of sex."

  She came to tell Grace about Gary. At Speed's, nobody knew she had a son in the penitentiary. One lady even said, "You are a fortunate person to have lived as long as you have, and haven't had one heartbreak in your entire life."

  Grace thought Bessie had a remarkable voice. It was not exactly cultivated or grand, but it sure was unusual. Bette Davis playing a pioneer woman. Grace asked to see a picture of Bessie when young, and thought she was beautiful then. Grace decided that what had rubbed off on Bessie over the years was stoicism.

  Their conversation only ended when Bessie had to go to work.

  She left wearing a white blouse and dark skirt and navy blue sweater.

  Carried an apron over her arm. She was wearing flats, and di
d not walk like a woman who had once been told she would make a good ballet dancer. The arthritis was already in her hands and in her knees and ankles.

  Grace drove her, and had a cup of coffee, and watched her picking up plates at Speed's. She was appalled that Bess had to do such work.

  The woman stayed on her mind. Bess, living in that haunted house, and wanting to keep it. Grace would visit Bess from time to time and talk to her about taxes and the Church. Later, after it was alI lost, other stories came out, and Grace would wonder why Bess ever wanted to keep the place. "The house was haunted, Grace," she told her once, "No one but me would have stayed so long. If you were to go upstairs, you would have felt it. One night when my husband was very sick, just a few months before he died, he got up and started down the hall to the bathroom and fell down those stairs with a terrible sound. It was almost as if something grabbed him and hurled him to the very bottom. His long years of acrobatic training is all that kept him from getting killed. I screamed as I went past, and I was banging on every one of the boys' doors. 'Get up, your father's fallen down.' They came running out, and Frank Jr. picked him up and carried him back. Then, after Frank Sr. died, I and Mikal got ready to go to bed one night, and in the hallway on the ground floor, between the bedroom and the kitchen, I heard the worst noise ever in my life. It was a frightening place to live, really."

  Of course, Grace only heard those stories after Mikal was in college, and Bess was in the trailer she had bought with a little help from the Church and the sale of her Philippine mahogany furniture.