Baby I'm not asking or telling you to go with me. I just can't do that.
But I've told you that's what I want—if that's a contradiction well, I can't help it. I'm just trying to be honest.
October 21
I've felt fucked up and shitty all day. Depressed. Down. This fuckin cell is too small.
When I was a little kid I used to sing all the time. I'd go down to Johnson Creek, this was in Portland and this was a real neat creek, all woods and swimmin holes where I used to swim naked and when I was alone I'd sing my little ass off!
October 23
Oh Baby. You said in your letter that sometimes you can't feel my love. Baby it's here! It's there every second, every moment, every hour of every day. I send it all to you—I want to give you all that I am. I want you to know all of me.
Even the things that I don't particularly like about myself and have always sort of hidden or altered, changed a little, in my own mind so they wouldn't seem so bad—I would willingly show to you.
Goddam, this is a noisy place. Some fool ass fool is in the background screaming, screaming for no other reason than to scream. I'd like to put one of my size 11's right in his ass. This is football season and there seems to be a game on every nite. I hate football and I hate to listen to these nuts screechin every time some sonofabitch gains a couple yards.
Well, fuck that. I just never was one to make a lot of noise and I can't understand how other dudes can make all that noise all day and nite. I don't even like to talk from these cells—it's weird carryin on a conversation with someone you can't see—think of a whole gang of motherfuckers locked in cells all day and nite and about 10 different conversations going on at once—some of them clear from one end of the building to the other.
I was hopin' it would stay quiet in here for a while. But it never does. These doors, Jesus, how they clang and bang. The mother-fuckin' TV blasts all day. I hear those guys all day long takin' votes about what to watch—it takes five or ten minutes—some fool reads the whole TV Guide hourly, loud as he can, then they vote on each idiotic show. Insane. The Boob Tube.
I've done a lot of time—and it ain't never been any different than it is now.
Nicole wrote Gary about a girl hitchhiker who was raped and then knifed twenty or thirty times by some guy in a white van. She wrote how she wasn't afraid of that creep or any other. If she was ever in such a situation, nobody was going to make it with her body, unless she was not in it.
Gary didn't say much in answer, and Nicole was glad. She realized it was her way of trying to apologize for the ex-president of the Sundowners.
Sometimes while hitchhiking, she would have a flash on her death. In her mind she would see the car she was in jumping off the freeway. She would wonder then what would happen in the next moment when she was dead. The thought was like an echo. She would keep seeing the car going off the freeway. Then she would feel the worry. What if death was a mistake? What if in that last moment, just as it was happening, she realized her action was truly a mistake?
It was the only concern she had. That she might not have the right to die.
Now in the visits, Gary began to talk about pills. You faded out under them. It was peaceful, he said. Not at all like the nausea she felt, and the cold in the tunnel. Pills were gentle.
She still didn't know if it was okay to die. All through this month, she couldn't come to a decision. She went back and forth in her mind about the kids, and finally decided she would do it rather than be without him. Sooner or later she would have to take a shot at it. That was cool.
Of course, Gary kept writing to her about it. A couple of times she got mad and told him he pushed the subject too much. Then he would get apologetic and say he was only expressing how he felt. But his talking about it would get her wondering if she wanted to go ahead.
Gary woke up in a panic, and sent word to the Mormon Chaplain in the prison, Cline Campbell, that he had to see him. Campbell came by a little later, and Gary told of a dream he had. Pure paranoia, he said. Nicole was hitchhiking and the driver started to molest her. It was crucial that he see her today. Would Campbell bring her to the prison? Campbell would.
The first time Cline Campbell visited Gary, he mentioned that years ago Nicole used to be his student in seminary class. He had spent hours counseling her. The news seemed to go well with Gary.
After that, they got along. Shared a few conversations.
Campbell believed the prison system was a complete socialist way of life. No wonder Gilmore had gotten into trouble. For twelve years, a prison had told him when to go to bed and when to eat, what to wear and when to get up. It was absolutely diametrically opposed to the capitalist environment. Then one day they put the convict out the front door, told him today is magic, at two o'clock you are a capitalist.
Now, do it on your own. Go out, find a job, get up by yourself, report to work on time, manage your money, do all the things you were taught not to do in prison. Guaranteed to fail. Eighty percent went back to jail.
So he was curious about Gilmore. Looked forward to counseling him. Took the first opportunity, in fact, a few days after the man came to the prison. One evening Campbell just walked into his cell and said, "I'm the Chaplain, my name's Cline Campbell."
Gilmore was dressed in the white clothing they wore in Maximum Detention, and he was sitting on his bunk engrossed in his drawing. He had a pencil in his hand and a half-finished pencil portrait before him, but he got up, shook hands, said he was happy to meet Campbell. They got along fine. The Chaplain saw him often.
Until now, Cline Campbell had never been involved with counseling a person who was going to be executed. The men on Death Row were always there, and Campbell had chatted with them, and joked with them, but did not have serious counseling sessions. Those men were not close to being executed—their appeals had gone on for years—and their conditions were depraved. But then all of Maximum was a zoo, a flat one-story zoo with many cages.
At right angles to the main hall were the regular units. Behind a gate would be a series of five cells facing another five cells. Each prisoner had a full view therefore of the prisoner across from him, and partial views of the remaining prisoners on the other side. Sometimes all ten men could be speaking at once. It was a bedlam of cries, and sound reverberated from steel and stone. Echoes crashed into one another like car collisions. It was close to living on the inside of an iron intestine.
Most men were in Maximum Security for three months, no more. But prisoners on Death Row were there forever. Other men could leave their tier at mealtime to move to the cafeteria, or go to the yard. On Death Row, your meals were served in your cell. You never went to the yard. One at a time, each man could leave his cell for a half hour a day and walk up and down the tier. You could talk to the other men, take out—as Campbell had seen—your God-given penis, or invite the other man to stick his through the bars. You could be threatened—and Gilmore was the man to issue such a threat—to get away from the bars, or you'd catch a cup of urine in your face.
That was exercise on Death Row.
Compared with other convicts there, Gilmore was relaxed. In fact, Campbell marveled at this ability. Campbell would make a point of going to the kitchen first to bring him a cup of black coffee, and Gilmore would grin, "How you doing, preach?" and speak in a quiet voice.
Sometimes they would talk in Gilmore's cell. More often, Campbell would have him called out, and they would go into a counsel room in Maximum Security in order that nobody overhear their conversation. Several times, Gilmore would say, "I really appreciate rapping with you. I can't talk with anybody else here."
Once in a while they got into deeper conversations. Gilmore would say, "This is stuff I wouldn't even tell the shrinks," and mentioned a time when he first went to MacLaren and a couple of boys held him and he was raped. He hated it, he said, but would admit that as he got older, he participated in the same game on the other side. They nodded. There was the old prison saying, "In every wolf is a
punk looking for revenge."
One time, Gilmore made a statement Campbell did not forget.
"I've killed two men," he said, "I want to be executed on schedule." Then he added, "I want absolutely no notoriety." His voice was emphatic. He told Campbell he didn't want news coverage, TV, radio interviews, nothing. "I just believe I ought to be executed, I feel myself responsible."
Campbell said, "Well, that can't be all of your motive for wanting to die, Gary, just responsibility?" Gary answered, "No, I'll be honest with you. I've been in eighteen years and I'm not about to do another twenty. Rather than live in this hole, I'd choose to be dead."
Campbell could understand that. Generally, the LDS Church did believe in the death penalty. Campbell certainly did. He thought to watch a man become more debased, more hateful, more resentful and mean, both to himself and to others on Death Row, was absolutely cruel. The man was better off, and would change less, and be more himself after he was executed, than right here. It was wiser to pass into the spirit world—and await resurrection. There a man could have a better chance to fight for his cause. In the spirit world, one would be more likely to find assistance than degradation.
Campbell had been an LDS missionary in Korea, then a Chaplain in the Army with an airborne outfit. He taught seminary for six years after he got out. Also worked as a weekend cop. He would pick up a patrol car at six on Friday night, and turn it back in Monday at 8 A.M.
Since he had grown up in the boonies on a Utah ranch, he never needed any training in firearms. He had carried a gun as a boy, and was pretty quick with it. From the hip, he could hit a gallon can fifty feet away in a quarter of a second. Grew up thinking of himself as a second Butch Cassidy.
He was not too tall, but he would have considered it on the side of sin not to be in good shape and well groomed. He stood real straight, shoulders back, and looked like a marksman. He had the patina of finely machined metal. During those weekends when he used to work as a cop, he was on for 24 hours a day, taking all calls. Of course, it was a small town, and he usually had time to go to church, but he carried a beeper so he could always be contacted and actually made more arrests in Lindon City than the other two officers put together, since on the weekend you had to handle every drunk and fracas.
The last time he had seen Nicole was one of those weekends, at two o'clock in the morning. He was driving down a road in Lindon and there she stood hitchhiking. He said, Get in the car, what are you doing out here? It's dangerous.
He had heard she had a child, and now she was obviously loaded on drugs. He had every reason to take her to jail, but she trusted him, and he saw that she got home. He kept thinking of all the times he had counseled her once a week from five to thirty minutes, and knew what a bad situation she had at home. She had told him about Uncle Lee. It was a touchy thing, however. He could not really get her to go into it. Sometimes she would sit in his seminary class looking dreamy, and have no idea she was there.
Now, on this morning that Campbell went over to find Nicole for Gary, she was asleep on the couch and her two children were asleep on the floor with a blanket over them. After she kind of combed her hair a little, she let Campbell in. Didn't even know who it was.
Cracked the curtain. Didn't recognize him. He said, "How are you, Nicole, do you remember me?" She looked hard and she said, "Sure, come on in." He said, "I'm Brother Campbell." She said, "Yes, of course, come in." They exchanged a few courtesies, and he said he'd come because Gary wanted to see her.
She dropped the children off with her ex-mother-in-law, Mrs. Barrett, and on the way out to prison, Campbell discussed her situation. She just said to him without any particular ado, that if Gary died, she might also.
It was quite a remark for Campbell to keep to himself, yet he could hardly turn it in. His life at the prison consisted of holding secrets.
Sometimes a convict would come in and say a particular man was after him. Campbell wouldn't go to the Warden and discuss what the man had said. The action taken would enable other inmates to pick up that the man was snitching. They'd be after him even more.
So Campbell didn't disclose a thing unless it was a matter of life and death. Then he would get the man's permission.
Now, even though he knew Gary and Nicole were thinking of suicide, he could not speak. That would only increase the pressure.
There'd be a guard sitting in Gilmore's cell every minute after that.
He could hardly pretend his mind was easy, however. The quiet way Nicole had discussed it worried him most of all. Except for those occasions when he was angry, Gary had the most relaxed eyes Campbell had ever seen—they looked at everything with no strain, graceful as a good outfielder sitting under a fly ball he would never fail to catch. Nicole's voice had something of the same. It never stumbled when she told the truth.
October 26
Remember the nite we met? I had to have you, not just physically but in all ways, forever—there was a wild wind blowing in my heart that nite.
It will remain forever the most beautiful nite of my life. I love you more than God. I'm glad you understand the way I mean that Angel. It still feels a little awkward to say. But I mean no offense to anything by a statement like that. I just love you more than anything—I think God would smile. In one of your early letters you talk of climbing in my mouth and sliding down my throat with a strand of your hair to mend the worn spot in my stomach. You write good.
Last Friday you told me you would like us each to think of the other at a certain hour of the day, that we might become closer. But I never know what time it is here. I can't see a clock and I just have a general idea of the time. I know they feed at about 6 or 7 or so in the morn and about 11 or 12 for lunch and around 4 for dinner but I don't even know if that's always the same—they might rotate and feed one section first one day and another—the next. Fuck, in short I just don't know what time it is.
Now darlin we come to something that can't be avoided discussing.
The rest of your life. I don't want any man to have you. I don't want any man to have you in any way but especially I don't want any man to steal any part of your heart.
If I was to look from the other side and see another man with you I can't say right now what I would do.
I believe that I would seek a way to have my soul, my very being, extinguished forever from existence.
!f a thing like that is not possible I would consider hurtling my soul into the center of the planet Uranus, that most evil of places, that I might become forever such that I could not change.
October 28
Baby I would love to be able to meditate. I already can to some degree. I do, but not real deeply, you know? Even when it's quiet there's always the expectation of noise. I know you can get the right answer to anything through meditation, but I ain't, because of my surroundings, very deep into it. It's more than the noise, you just can't let yourself go in a place like this—there is an atmosphere of tension, a climate of violence, in prison—all prisons—and it's in the air. Lot of paranoid motherfuckers in these places and they walk around putting out negative, hostile paranoid vibes.
I like it a lot that you meditate. I don't know if I'm too crazy about the automatic writing. I think with things like automatic writing, Ouija boards, it's possible to open doors that are better not opened. I think that there are many lonely lost forlorn spirits seeking an inroad into a human mind. All spirits are not benevolent. Many are merely lonely, but many are malevolent, too.
Baby, if you mess with spirits you must beware, i ain't trying to sound dark and foreboding and I don't know just how I know this as certainly as I do, but I do know that you got to remain in control.
You gotta be stronger than the thing that you are communicating with. Weigh carefully the "Messages" you receive, and if after a while you begin to feel a pull, something that ain't right, if it makes you feel sad or strange or in some way not good—then you should back off. Like about everything else in life, you gotta remain in control. Be stro
ng, don't fear.
Baby, I don't know just what happens when you die except that it will be familiar. It's just an awful strong feeling I have—it's something I've thought of, known really, for years. The thing about dying is that you gotta remain in control. Don't be sidetracked by lonely forlorn spirits who call to you as you pass by—they may even reach and clutch.
Whenever this does occur to us we must each keep the other in mind. Somehow, Angel eyes, this is one of those things that I KNOW.
When you die you will be free as never before in life—be able to travel at a tremendous speed just by thinking of some place you will be there. It's a natural thing and you adjust—it's just consciousness unencumbered by body.
Hey, this guy next door to me lets the goddamdest farts I've ever heard! That that Gibbs was a fartin mother fucker—but he don't hold a candle to this fool! Loud, harsh, rumbling, angry sounding farts—Never heard nothin like it. Sounds worse than startin a lawn mower.
Snyder and Esplin had a couple of postmortems with Noall Wootton over the case. They would run into each other in the corridors or the coffee shop, and sometimes bring up questions they had about the other side's strategy: having won, Wootton did needle them a little, but didn't think he was too bad about it. His tone went: "Are you sure you suckers got all the cooperation you could from your client?" Or, "Why in Christ didn't you put his girl friend up there?" "He wouldn't let us,' they would answer. All agreed it was quite a question. As long as a defendant was sane and competent, he probably had the right to run his defense.
The Executioner's Song Page 48