The Executioner's Song

by Norman Mailer

  Here is a picture of me and Mikal taken in Salt Lake City years ago.

  I love you,

  MOTHER

  Mikal had never told Bessie how much rage Gary amused in him by his murders. It could've been me, was his thought back in July when he first heard the news.

  Mikal worked in a record store. While he was the envy of his friends for being able to pick up new releases at 30 percent off, he also had to throw dope peddlers and ass peddlers out of the store. He wasn't necessarily ready for that. One time, a shoplifter pulled a knife on him. Another time he almost got wasted by a big drunk who was urinating in the doorway. The violence of Portland licked right up to the edge of the store and left a spew like that yellow foam on city beaches where old rubber dries out with jellyfish and whiskey bottles and the dead squid.

  If Mikal's life was seen by some as the attempt of one Gilmore boy to get out from the family hex, that was not necessarily Mikal's attitude. He had a simpler view. He had just been afraid of Gary for years. Mikal, reading the headline on that one terrible July night, OREGON MAN HELD IN UTAH SLAYING, felt shame. "It could have been me." He could have been the same victim of the same mindless robbery. He hated his brother then. His brother had no respect for the horrors of waste. His brother did not know that when you robbed a house, you ruined it for the people who were living there.

  Next day, Bessie had said to Mikal, "Can you imagine what it feels like to mother a son whom you love, when he has deprived two other mothers of their sons?" Mikal did not know how to tell her he was frightened of the violent and capricious impulses of his brother, did not know how to face them, and had been glad, ever since 1972, that he did not have to see him again.

  That was when Gary had been granted what they call a "school release" from Oregon State Penitentiary to a halfway house in Eugene. They were letting him out to study art. Mikal had been told of this coming event by Bessie, but was nonetheless startled to see Gary turn up at his college room on the day after his release in the fall of 1972, six-pack in hand, and the happy information that he could still register tomorrow. The school at Eugene was a couple of hundred miles away, but Gary seemed in no hurry. Just wanted to see how Mikal was getting along.

  Next day, Gary was at the door again. Wearing the same clothes.

  His blue eyes stared at Mikal out of a bloodshot field of white, and there was yellow in the corners. He was ready to take Mikal to lunch, but only in a cab. He did not want to be seen on the streets.

  Mikal began to feel steeped again in the dread he had always felt on those rare occasions he visited Gary in prison. It was not only Gary but the lost lives of the other prisoners in that visiting room, the depression, the apathy, the congealed rage, the bottomless potential for violence in those halls. After a while, Mikal stopped visiting. It created too much disturbance when he walked in wearing his long hair. It was like protesting the war in Vietnam in front of a barracks of Marines.

  On this day, for lunch, they went to a topless bar. Mikal thought Gary was in a trance. He just kept studying the breasts of the girl on the dance floor. After a while, Mikal got up his courage and said, "It's obvious you're not going to school."

  Gary answered in a slow deliberate countrified way. Phony as hell, Mikal always thought, more Texas than Oregon. "Man," said Gary, "I'm not cut out for school. They can't teach me anything about art I don't know already." Then he changed the subject. He needed a gun. A friend in Oregon State Penitentiary was going to be brought out for dental work next week. Ward White was his name. He wanted to spring him.

  Mikal protested. "You're throwing away your life."

  "It's a matter of dignity," said Gary and looked at Mikal's eyes.

  When he took in the knowledge that there was no gun forthcoming, Gary said, "I'd do it for my brother."

  He dropped Mikal off in a taxi, and went on.

  Mikal only saw him twice more that month. Once Gary stopped by to hear some Johnny Cash records. He was charming and sober.

  Another day, Gary picked him up at school, took him to a rich friend's house, showed him the swimming pool, then showed him a pistol.

  "Think you could ever use one of these?" he asked.

  It was like a bigger dude squeezing your machismo to see if it leaked. "I could use a gun if I had to," said Mikal, "but I hope you're talking about survival."

  Gary put the gun away and ruffled Mikal's hair. "C'mon," he said, "I'll drive you home."

  On the way, Gary started to honk at a car that was going too slow, and when the driver slowed down a little more, to spite him, Gary whipped around a turn on the wrong lane and went right into the path of an approaching van. At the last instant, he escaped collision by driving their car up on the sidewalk.

  "You almost got us killed," Mikal shouted.

  Gary was breathing deeply. He lay his forehead on the steering wheel. "Sometimes," he said, "you have to be able to face that."

  A couple of nights later, Mikal heard over the news that Gary had been arrested for armed robbery. Back he went to prison. Months later, Bessie and Mikal attended his trial. Just before sentencing, Gary made a speech to the Court. Mikal never forgot it.

  I would like to make a special appeal for leniency. I've been locked up for the last nine and a half calendar years and I have had about two and a half years of freedom since I was fourteen years old. I have always gotten time and always done it, never been paroled. I have never had a break from the law, and I have come to feel that justice is kind of harsh, and I have never asked for a break until now.

  Your Honor, you can keep a person locked up too long just as you can keep them long enough. What I am saying is there is an appropriate time to release somebody or give them a break. Of course, who is to say. Only the individual himself really knows, it's more a matter of just convincing somebody. There have been times when I felt if I had had a break, right then I would probably never have been in trouble again, but like I said, I don't feel that I have ever had a break from the law. Last September, I was released from the Penitentiary to go to school in Eugene at Lane Community College and study art, and I had every intention of doing it. One day I'm in the pen for nine years, and the next day I'm free, and I was kind of shook. I had a couple of drinks and I realized that this was a pretty stupid thing to do. I just got out, and I was afraid to go to the halfway house with booze on my breath. I thought I would be taken back to the pen immediately and to be honest, I guess I kind of wanted to continue drinking, it tasted kind of good. Well, anyway, I split. It wasn't long before I was broke, and I spent a couple of days looking for a job, but I couldn't find one. I didn't have any work background. When you are free, you can afford to be broke for a few days, and it doesn't matter, but if you are a fugitive you can't afford to be broke at all. I needed some money. I am not a stupid person, although I have done a lot of stupid and foolish things, but I want freedom enough to realize at last that the only way I can have it and maintain it is to quit breaking the law. I never realized it more than I do now. If you were to grant me probation on this sentence, you wouldn't be turning me loose right now. I still have additional time, but like I said, I have got problems, and if you give me more time, I'm going to compound them."

  The Judge sentenced him to nine additional years. "Don't worry," said Gary to his mother, "They can't hurt me any more than I've hurt myself." Mikal shook hands with him through the handcuffs, and Gary said, "Do me a favor. Put on some weight, okay? You're too goddamned skinny." Mikal would not hear his voice again for close to four years, not until he made a call to Utah State Prison in the middle of November 1976. By that time, Gary Gilmore was a household name to half of America.

  BOOK TWO

  EASTERN VOICES

  PART ONE

  In the Reign of Good King Boaz

  Chapter 1

  FEAR OF FALLING

  On November 1, the day that Gary Gilmore first stated in Court that he did not wish to appeal his conviction, Assistant Attorney General Earl Dorius was at his desk in
the Utah Attorney General's office, in the State Capitol, Salt Lake City. It was a monument of a building with a golden dome, a rectangular marble palace whose interior had a parquet marble floor from the center of which you could look up to the stories above with their polished white balustrades. Earl liked working in all that marble. He was not averse to working there for the rest of his responsible life.

  That afternoon, Earl received a call from the Warden of Utah State Prison. Since Dorius was legal counsel for the prison, the Warden talked to him frequently, but this time Sam Smith seemed nervous.

  His transportation officer had just taken an inmate, Gary Gilmore, to Provo for a Court hearing, and Gilmore apparently told the Judge that he didn't want to appeal his death sentence. So the Judge confirmed the execution date. It was only two weeks away. The Warden was concerned. That didn't give a lot of time to get ready. Could Dorius verify the story?

  Earl called Noall Wootton and they had quite a conversation.

  Wootton said it was not only true, but he was trying to figure Gilmore's angle. The statute called for execution in not less than thirty and not more than sixty days. Now that Gilmore had no appeal in, what would happen if they didn't execute him by December 7, sixty days after October 7, the last day of his trial? Gilmore could ask for an immediate release. The only sentence he had received, after all, was death. That was not a prison term. Technically, they would have nothing to hold him on. He could get out on a Writ of Habeas Corpus.

  Of course, Gilmore wasn't going to get loose that easy, the lawyers agreed, but it sure could prove embarrassing. The State would look ridiculous and incompetent holding him in jail on one pretext or another while the law was straightened out in the Legislature and the Courts.

  Earl Dorius called Sam Smith back and said, "You better start preparing for an execution." The Warden was awestruck.

  Nonetheless, Sam Smith started asking some good questions.

  How many members of the firing squad would there be, he inquired?

  From where could he draw them, out of the community at large or from the ranks of police officers?

  The Warden had also looked up the appropriate statutes and they left something to be desired. They didn't, for example, tell the Warden whether it was possible to conduct the execution outside the prison walls. They were not precise on a host of matters. A lot would have to be decided. Gilmore, for instance, wanted to donate a few of his body organs to the University Medical Center. Could Earl look up the law on that?

  Dorius was excited. He realized he was sitting on a very hot case, and started going around the office telling people, "You won't believe this, but we have a potential execution on our hands." He went down to the Attorney General's office, but the A.G. was out, so he had to tell the secretaries. Earl was a little disappointed with the reaction. It was as if they really didn't get the import of what he was saying. First execution in America in ten years! You couldn't exactly shout that at people.

  November 1

  Hi Baby

  Just wrote a letter to Warden Smith asking for a little more visiting time. I told him it meant a great deal to both of us. It would probably help if you would talk to him too. I don't know what kind of guy he is, and I didn't know how to approach him in my letter. I simply told him I expect to be executed as scheduled Nov. 5 and that the only request I have to make is that l be allowed to see you more . . . I told him that you and me have a real good understanding and that we don't depress each other with our visits in spite of the circumstances I'm in. I sorta felt it mite be good to say that cause you know how these people sometimes think Baby you said in a letter a couple of days ago that no woman ever loved a man more than you love me. I believe that. I feel blessed with your love. And Angel no man ever loved a woman more than I love you. I love you with all that I am: And you keep making me more than I am.

  Early on the morning of the 2nd, Election Day, Earl got a telephone call from Eric Mishara of the National Enquirer. He had called the Warden who referred him to the prison's legal counsel.

  Mishara said he wanted to interview Gilmore right away.

  He was too forceful for Dorius's taste. The moment Earl tried to slow him down, Mishara began to talk about what he was going to do to the prison if they attempted to keep him out.

  A case came right into mind: Pell v. Procunier. It was a United States Supreme Court decision which said that members of the news media had no special right of access to inmates. The prison, Dorius told Mishara, would be taking that position—Gary Gilmore could not be interviewed.

  Immediately, Mishara said, 'I'll sue." He started to talk about high-powered attorneys in New York. Dorius said, "I don't care where your attorneys are from. You have them look up Pell versus Procunier. I think they'll agree with me."

  Earl didn't hear from Mr. Mishara for some time after that.

  DESERET NEWS

  Carter Wins Election

  Judge Orders Test of Convicted Slayer

  Utah State Prison, Nov. 2— . . . If Gilmore gets his way he will be the first person executed in Utah in 16 years.

  On November 2, the day he was driving to Utah, Dennis Boaz read in the papers about Gary Gilmore, and soon afterward, had this experience with death. That seemed a little synchronistic.

  He was moving along in the left lane and thinking about the course he was going to give at Westminster College in Salt Lake City. Dennis was into alliteration these days, so he was going to call it: Society / Symbolism / Synchronicity. Just as he said the last word to himself, a trailer truck slammed to a stop just ahead and he had to take his car around on the right. After he passed, there was this incredible sight in the mirror: a torso of a man hanging through the windshield, arms outstretched to the ground.

  Then another sight!

  A rear-mirror view of a second truck driver running toward the first truck. Dennis didn't stop. There were too many cars behind. But just before it happened, he had been thinking of the date, November 2nd. In his mind, he was writing it as 11/2. That, of course, added up to thirteen. In the major arcana of the tarot, thirteen was the card for death.

  So the word had been running through his mind even as he saw the dead man. He thought, "Wow! God! I bet the next road sign will be another indication." When the exit came up on the shoulder, it said: Star Valley and Deeth. That had to be as much synchronicity as anybody's synapses could take.

  On the evening of the second, he got to Salt Lake early enough to vote for Carter on the Independent line. Then, on the morning of the third, he woke up thinking about Gilmore. "God, here I am," Dennis thought, "right in the juncture of something really important." He could see the possibilities extending out. "It's a tremendous opportunity for a writer," he thought, "and I ought to send Gilmore a letter!"

  Boaz did. A few years ago when he had been a young prosecutor, Dennis had actually been against capital punishment, but now he had come to believe that even in an ideal society, we might still need the death penalty. Capital punishment, properly applied, could say a lot about being responsible for one's actions, and the thing was to get back to responsibility. Boaz didn't put all this in his letter, but did say he supported Gilmore in his right to die.

  On those evenings that Timber Oaks Mental Health would let April out, Kathryne would take her to Nicole's apartment for a couple of hours. Sometimes April would say, "Sissy, are they really going to shoot Gary? Why doesn't Gary want to live, Sissy?" Nicole would be real calm about it. "Oh, I don't know," she'd say. Real calm. Like it didn't even bother her. It bothered Kathryne so bad, she'd bawl at night. Couldn't stand seeing the announcer on TV talking about it.

  There, right in the middle of the commercials. It made everybody on TV look crazy.

  Sometimes, Nicole would come to Kathryne's with the kids and sleep over. She would never talk. Not even to her aunt Kathy. She would put Sunny and Jeremy to bed and then write poetry. That was all. Writing and writing at poetry. She was never abusive to the kids, just didn't pay much attention.

&nb
sp; Right in the first week of November, Kip died. Killed in a fall down a mountain. Rock-climbing. Kathryne was getting ready for work on November 4, when she heard a name on the radio, Alfred Eberhardt, and said to herself, "Oh, my God, that must be Kip." All day at work, she worried how Sissy might be taking it. In fact, she went straight over to Springville from her job, and there was Nicole with her little lamp off, writing, writing. Kathryne went in and said, "What are you doing in the dark?" Nicole said, "Oh, I hadn't noticed." She turned on the light, got coffee, was laughing and joking around. Kathryne didn't know how to ask her if Alfred Eberhardt was Kip. Finally had to pop it. Nicole just said, "Yeah, yeah." Kathryne said, "That's what I was afraid of." Nicole said, "Yeah." Kathryne didn't think Nicole was showing what she ought.

  A little later, however, Nicole looked up and said she'd like to call Kip's folks. Soon as Kathryne was all for it, Nicole said, "I don't know. What would I say to them?"

  It did hurt, Kathryne said to herself. She does care.

  Nicole was remembering back to that day years ago when she left Barrett and went out with all she owned in a pack on her back, and Sunny, an infant, on her arm. When Kip picked her up hitchhiking, their romance started right that night. He had been a stud in the beginning. A real first night.

  The next day they found themselves driving in the Colorado Rockies, and Kip stopped the car and took Nicole and Sunny on a mountain trail. At one point they could see a fellow who was trying to climb a rock wall up a cliff. There was a little ledge about three feet off the ground that this fellow kept stepping onto, but then he would lose his nerve about going higher, and step back.