The Executioner's Song

by Norman Mailer

  Brenda, however, decided to sail right in, so she said over the phone "Gary, you old shithead. Looks like you pulled through."

  "You haven't changed any," he said.

  Brenda asked, "Still mad at me?"

  "Well, I don't like what you did," he said. Brenda replied, "I don't give a damn. I did what I had to do. I suppose you did what you had to do." She paused for breath, and said, "I love you and I'm glad you made it." Then she added, "Are you going to do something stupid like this again?"

  "No," Gary said, "I don't think so. I have a hell of a headache."

  "You're cold assed. You really are. You wanted to stay awake long enough to find out if she was really dead, then you wouldn't have to worry she'd take another lover."

  Gary said, "I am jealous."

  "Don't you know, there's a real possibility she'll be damaged in her brain?"

  "Impossible. I don't even think of that," he said.

  "Come on, Gary, isn't that what you wanted? If she has brain damage, nobody else is going to want her."

  "You're cruel," said Gary.

  "And you're an asshole," said Brenda. At that point, she knew she'd gone too far.

  Gary said, "You have a vile and dirty mouth."

  There was a guard standing by, and he was having a conniption.

  After Brenda gave the phone back to her father, the guard walked up and said, "I wouldn't dare call him any of the names you did. He's mean. He'll kill you soon as look at you. I'd be scared to death to talk to him like that."

  "God," Brenda said, "he can't hurt you. Look at him. Locked behind a door and in a weakened state. He couldn't hurt a pussycat."

  The guard said, "Well, I wouldn't bet on it."

  Back at the window, Brenda couldn't stop herself. The guard might just as well have egged her on. "Hey, Gary," she said, "how come you didn't take enough to do the job?"

  "What makes you think I didn't?" said Gary.

  "If you had," said Brenda, "you'd have been dead."

  "What in the hell are you trying to do? You know I really meant to do it."

  Brenda said, "You know more about drugs than that. I think you knew just what you were doing."

  Gary started to tuck his lip in. Finally, he kind of snickered, and said, "Well, I might know one of my cousins would pick up on that."

  Yet, in the way he said it, she was confused. He was perfectly capable of letting her think she was right when she was wrong. Gary liked to toy with her head.

  It made Brenda mad. She said, "I think you're being a selfish lover. What about those two little kids?"

  "Oh," said Gary, "somebody would have taken care of them."

  They started to stare at each other, and it got to be quite a contest.

  Even across the hallway, ten feet wide, through two panes of glass, Brenda could feel the heat coming out of his eyes, and she thought to herself, I'm not going to let him outstare me this time, not when he's half dead and there's all this protection between us. But, it went on so long, she finally remembered his favorite saying and quoted it to him on the phone: "An honest man will look you in the eye, but the soul of a man will try to convince you of his lie." At that point, Gary began to laugh, and said, "God, Brenda, you sure are a mess."

  He gave her a wink before they said good-bye. On the way out, she put her hand on the glass, and said, "I love you," and he wiggled his hand from his side.

  DESERET NEWS

  Profile of a Wasted Life

  Nov. 18—Through the study of psychodiagnostics, in which the writer has specialized, it is possible from a person's art efforts to draw some clues to the state of his personality . . . Sometimes such art will indicate brain damage, psychosis, or at least anxiety.

  In Gilmore's case, there is no such evidence. In picture after picture, we see remarkable coherent, organized, and disciplined work. In this writer's judgment, these are not the product of a crazy or psychotic mind . . . Gary Gilmore has an extremely keen mind.

  SALT LAKE TRIBUNE

  By Paul Rolly Tribune Staff Writer

  Provo, Nov. 18— . . . Dean Christensen said members of the Provo 5th Ward, where Benny Bushnell was a home teacher, are "sick to their stomachs," about the continued publicity Gilmore is receiving, and "at a loss for an explanation."

  The bishop said Benny's wife, Debbie, still writes to him, asking for his advice.

  "Of course, we cling to our religious belief that we will meet again in an afterlife and I try to reassure her, but she's taking it hard and it's difficult at times," he said.

  A police sergeant came out to Everson's house to interrogate Dennis. He was a suspect at the prison certain enough. Dennis went to Sam Smith's boss, the Head of the Board of Corrections, Ernie Wright, a big man wearing a white Texas cowboy hat, and said, "Look, Sam Smith is acting vindictive," and the Head of the Board of Corrections looked back and said, "Frankly, Mr. Boaz, we don't trust you." Stared at him like he had just squashed a fly. Then, he added, "I don't care what the Warden's doing. He can continue doing it."

  Not only was Dennis reduced to talking to Gary through a telephone across a hallway, but for all he knew, the phone was tapped.

  And Gary was considerably less friendly. "Did you say on Rivera's show that you can't work for my execution anymore? I don't appreciate that." Dennis was feeling embarrassed over all that emotionality himself. "Well, I'm sorry," he said, "I still feel I can help you, you know."

  He was damned if he was going to say, Go ahead and fire me, Gary.

  Now, Gary started to query Dennis about expenses. He had found out $500 had come in from the London Daily Express, and $500 from a Swedish interview, and wanted to know why Dennis had told him his half was $250, not $500. Dennis tried to explain. "You said you were reckless about money, and I should be your financial manager, so I held back $250 and only gave you $125 from the English interview. Then you asked me to give another $125 to Nicole. That took care of your half."

  Yes, but what about the other $500 from Sweden?

  "Gary," said Dennis, "everything went to expenses. There are a million things. I haven't cheated you." It wasn't good between Gary and himself.

  Outside the prison, Dennis had never felt more like talking to the press. "I'm a character in this thing I'm writing," he said to them, "so I don't plan out everything I do. I'm being acted upon by the real author of these events. Whoever or whatever that is. In fact, I almost got fired today! Whew! It was close."

  "What do you think of the suicide now?"

  "Nonviolent," Dennis said. "Really mellow. Like Romeo and Juliet, they took a poison." Dennis thought the tragic aspects of this relationship, if properly presented, could raise Gary and Nicole into a kind of democratic Romeo and Juliet. Then every card he played would have more value. He could get them connubial rights yet.

  "Don't you think," said Barry Farrell, "that if Gilmore isn't executed, he'll slip right back in with four hundred and twenty-four other condemned men and women? A lot of them may have more tragic stories than Gilmore."

  "Gary is the only one," said Boaz, "who has the courage to face the consequences of his act."

  "How," asked another reporter, "is Susskind going to do the film?"

  "Susskind," said Dennis, "has chosen a sensitive, dignified screenwriter, Stanley Greenberg, to write it. Ask them."

  "Is Schiller still in the bidding?" Farrell wanted to know.

  "Schiller," said Boaz, "went around me and sent a telegram.

  Now Gary feels I'm not telling him about all the offers. I don't have to wonder where some bad vibrations are coming from."

  "Dennis," said another reporter, "you were fighting for Gary's right to be executed, and now you are trying to save his life. Square that realistically, will you?"

  "The Declaration of Independence guarantees the right to life, but only if you haven't been brutalized by the system. Gary was, Gary wants to die. But only because he can't have Nicole. Gary would love it," said Boaz, "if he could be with her. Get him into a place where they
could be together, right?"

  "Name one American prison with connubial rights."

  "Since their story has become international," said Dennis, "transfer them to Mexico. The real obstacle is to convince Gary to live. He's depressed right now. But if I can keep going on Geraldo Rivera and Tom Snyder and get people thinking in a new way, they might start demanding that Gary live. Legislators will have to listen."

  "Will Gilmore listen?"

  "If he knows that he's going to be with Nicole eventually, he'll do it. We're winning people's hearts with this case. When you get into their emotions, you've got them. Definitely, definitely. It's heavy."

  "Are you saying that Gary will be living with Nicole in Minimum Security?"

  "Or Medium Security," said Dennis. "A year at the outside. With the profits from the story, he'll be able to pay his own way, too. That will please the taxpayers. You see, it's not as preposterous as you think. Look at today's news. Patty Hearst's father has bought her a private prison on Nob Hill. Give Gary a little space, like that."

  "You're tooting, Dennis," said Barry Farrell.

  "You watch."

  "I'll watch," said Farrell.

  "What do you really think of Schiller?" Farrell now asked. It was a bad question for Dennis to answer—he had nothing to gain by the reply. He didn't like, however, to disappoint Barry Farrell. Boaz was impressed with him. Farrell was very Scotch in appearance for a man with an Irish name. Tall, good looking. Tall enough so Dennis could talk to him comfortably. Wore tweeds. Nearest thing to a British gentleman among the press corps. Well-trimmed pepper and salt beard, and those old Life credentials. Dennis vaguely remembered reading Barry Farrell's column in Life on alternate weeks with Joan Didion.

  Life must have been trying to bring some literary class to the people.

  He decided to use Farrell as a superpipeline. So he said, "Schiller is a scavenger, a snake."

  Susskind had just gotten a phone call from Stanley Greenberg telling him that he had decided to leave Salt Lake City.

  "It's getting to be a terrible mess," said Stanley.

  Then Boaz called. "Listen," he said to David Susskind, "I'm being wooed by a lot of people, and I think I was too easy with you. Monetarily, I can do much better with somebody else. Do you wish to revise your bid?" Susskind said, "No, I don't, but who are you dealing with?" Boaz said, "A guy named Larry Schiller." "Well," said Susskind, "I know Mr. Schiller as an entrepreneur who put together a project that became a book about Marilyn Monroe, that's the only way I know him. I don't know him as a producer of films and television, but if he looks better than me, do it with him. I'm not raising the price." The story was getting to be, in Susskind's view, a very sensational, malodorous, exploitative mess.

  Nonetheless, he called Schiller. Susskind was not in love with the idea of working with the man, but he called anyway and said, "You're throwing money and figures around, and that poor guy, Boaz, is dazzled. I don't understand it. Are you now in the film business?"

  "Yes," said Schiller, "I am."

  "Look," said Susskind, "you're not a producer. Somebody, some day, is going to have to make this film. That's not your cup of tea."

  "I am a producer," said Schiller. "I don't consider myself in your league, but I've produced some movies you don't even know about."

  "Well, I think you're being unrealistic," said Susskind. "Of course, maybe you'll be lucky. Maybe you'll get the whole thing."

  "I certainly hope so," said Schiller.

  When Susskind spoke again to Greenberg, Stanley said, "I wouldn't feel too badly. It's not what we hoped it would be." Susskind agreed. "I don't think I'm going to bid anymore. Everybody's getting kind of crazy there. It's no longer a story about the breakdown of the criminal justice system, it's a farce, the girl's suicide, poison being slipped in." They agreed they didn't like the smell of it. Stanley said, "I think anybody who does the story now is jumping on a dead and putrefying body, It's bizarre and sick." They agreed. One of those to-hell-with-it conversations.

  Still, they didn't really want to let go. Once some dust settled, the story might still have a lot to offer. They decided Stanley would try to keep himself available in case the right arrangements could yet be made.

  Chapter 9

  NEGOTIATIONS

  Next day, Gary brought it up again. "Are you ready, Vern, to take Boaz's place?" he asked.

  "I don't know," said Vern. "Am I supposed to feel ready?"

  "I'm going," Gary said, "to turn everything over." He nodded. "I just want a few thousand dollars to pay off a couple of people, and a couple I want to help."

  "I don't know yet," said Vern, "who to make a deal with. A lot of people are ringing my phone these days."

  "Vern, it's your decision."

  "Well, if you think I can handle it," said Vern.

  "Being a businessman in town," said Gary, "you know the way."

  "This is a different type of business."

  "Hell," said Gary, "I've seen you operate in your own store. You can do it better than Boaz."

  In the afternoon, Vern got a call from Dennis. "Did you know Gary is talking of firing me?" he asked.

  "Well, why did he do that?" asked Vern. "You mean he came right out and said it?"

  "Between us," asked Dennis, "do you think you can take my place?"

  Vern said softly, "I think I can do as well as you have."

  After this conversation, Vern spent a couple of hours in thought.

  Then he called a few friends in Provo to ask advice about a lawyer.

  That evening around ten, he phoned one fellow at home that they all recommended, a lawyer named Bob Moody. Vern could practically hear Moody think about the proposition. Then he answered, "I would be happy to take the case. I'll help you all I can. Do you want to get together tonight, or tomorrow morning, or Monday?"

  "Monday's good enough," said Vern.

  He felt as if he were moving an immense weight. Nothing was ever going to be the same again.

  Nicole's cigarettes were becoming a problem. They had a lot of oxygen tanks around in Intensive Care, and wouldn't let her strike a match. She kept complaining, "I want a cigarette." They couldn't do much with her. "You had one a few hours ago," they would tell her.

  "Well, I want another."

  Finally, they let Kathryne take her out to the utility room where, among the laundry sinks and old dirty cloth mops soaking in the bowl, Kathryne could sit with Nicole while she smoked. There they would relax. Once Nicole even said, "Maybe I'm glad I'm here. I don't know." Nicole never admitted it exactly, but Kathryne decided she hadn't really wanted to die, just had to prove to Gary she loved him enough. Finally, Nicole did say right out loud, "I thought it was wrong to take my life, and if God thought so also, then I'd stay alive. But if it wasn't a sin, I would die." Kathryne felt close to her then.

  Naturally, next thing, this awful jumbled-up mess had to begin.

  The doctors wanted Kathryne to sign papers putting Nicole in Utah State Hospital. In the administrator's office, Kathryne tried to argue, but the man there said, "It isn't going to make any difference. There are already two physicians' signatures that she's incompetent and suicidal, and Nicole has also signed." Kathryne didn't know what to do. She didn't think Nicole was ready to come home. Come home to where? On the other hand, she was afraid that once they put Nicole in the nuthouse, she might never get out. Kathryne was afraid of state hospitals. Anyway, they pulled out the paper, and Kathryne wrote her name under Nicole's. She was shaking.

  The moment Nicole had put her signature on the page, she knew it was an awful mistake. "Why didn't I just walk out of this motherfucker?" she asked herself. All the way to the ambulance she kept telling herself, "The reason you didn't, girl, is because you got nothing but hospital pajamas and a blanket." They had wrapped her good and she couldn't move her arms or legs. A bug all trussed up. As they drove, she couldn't see out of the ambulance, but there was something about the whine of the gears as the vehicle went up one long grade tha
t sounded like the end of the trip. She was on the long approach road to Utah State Hospital. Oh God, the nuthouse they had had Gary in.

  She was familiar enough with that. Same feeling. Even the same ward. It was shaped like a U, with the boys in one wing, the girls in the other, and a social room connecting them. The halls were long and narrow, with bedrooms and cells, and bright linoleum on the floor. Goddamned asshole paintings all over the place. Thoroughly stupid stuff like COMMUNITY IS US! painted in pastel watercolors that had caked and gone dead. Orange couches, yellow walls and plastic cafeteria chairs and tables. It depressed the hell out of her—like she was condemned to live in a visiting room forever. Everybody looked all tranked out. It would take you 150 years to die. Everything so god damned cheerful and phony.

  John Woods had had an upset stomach the night before, coughed up some blood, and thought, Jesus, now I'm getting an ulcer. He decided to stay home from the hospital, but a frantic call came in from the ward. They said, "Nicole Barrett's on the way to us."

  "Like hell she is," said Woods.

  He went over the Superintendent's office and first thing Kiger said was, "I sent her to your unit. That's where I want her."

  Woods said, "Nicole oughtn't to be in Maximum Security. This is just another indication that the rest of the hospital can't carry their share. Thera-Mod should be able to take her." Kiger agreed. He started to interrupt, but Woods was so mad, he said, "Let me finish."

  He revered Kiger, thought he was the only man who had had a new idea in treating psychopaths since they coined the word, and so it got to him whenever he thought Kiger was doing something for less than the noblest motive.

  Of course, Woods's unit was the only one with enough security to protect Nicole from the press. As Kiger said, "This is going to be sticky, newswise." Every wire service, major newspaper and magazine was going to try every trick to interview Nicole. That meant heavy pressure. The media would squeeze the politicians, and they in turn would squeeze the hospital. If Nicole pulled off another attempt, all their heads were on the block. It irritated the hell out of Woods how much this was going to interfere with the therapy of everyone else on the ward. His job had shifted, Now he was there to keep Nicole alive.