The Executioner's Song

by Norman Mailer

  He also wanted to give something to Gary before he left, but in fact didn't know whether to send a Christmas present. Since he was going away, and this was resented, okay, it was the wrong time to try to impress him with an expensive gift. He decided to send a telegram. Fifteen years ago, covering the Hemingway suicide in Ketchum, Idaho, for Paris Match, Schiller had written a line to go out under his photographs. It said Hemingway had not wanted to evade the greatest adventure of his life, which was death. That became Paris Match's headline for their picture essay on the funeral. Now, Schiller thought he would use it, or something like it, for Gilmore.

  Make the man think of him while he was gone. A touch of the mystical.

  DEAR GARY

  EACH MINUTE BRINGS US CLOSER TOGETHER AND I KNOW THAT WE WERE RIGHT TO EMBARK ON THIS CHALLENGE STOP I AM THOROUGHLY CONVINCED THAT AS I GO DEEPER THE MEANING OF YOUR LIFE BECOMES MORE CLEAR STOP IT IS AN ADVENTURE FOR ME AND THAT ADVENTURE CAN NEVER BE REPAID UNTIL I COME UPON THE GREATEST ADVENTURE STOP I WISH YOU A MERRY HOLIDAY AND I LOOK FORWARD TO SEEING YOU.

  LARRY

  Not an hour before plane time, there was a call from Bill Moyers.

  He was starting a TV show called "CBS Reports." First show would be on Gilmore. When he heard Schiller was on his way to Hawaii, Moyers even said, "We'll visit you there." Schiller said, "Come on, Mr. Moyers, I am not going to be photographed lying on the beach, doing checkbook journalism with my bare belly out to the sun. That's neither the way I see myself, nor the way I intend to present myself."

  Moyers began to chuckle. "You're sharp, aren't you?" he said.

  Schiller found out that the show was tentatively scheduled to air just before Gary's execution. He told Moyers he would be happy to get together with him in Provo after New Year's and might cooperate provided certain things were understood. It was his way of telling Moyers that he knew the name of the game. Off to Hawaii!

  Chapter 20

  CHRISTMAS

  On the morning of Wednesday, December 22nd, Ken Halterman appeared before the Board of Pardons. He testified that Richard Gibbs had been a witness for the State of Utah in two felony trials, the first in Provo against Jim Ross, the other in Richfield, Utah, against Ted Burr, and his testimony had helped to convict one of the largest theft rings ever uncovered in the State of Utah. It had been a million-dollar-a-year operation, stated Halterman, that dealt in stolen recreational vehicles, boats, camper trailers, horse-trailers, and trucks.

  Gibbs got out of Orem Jail around eleven, and was driven to the University of Utah Police Department where he acquired an ID in the name of Lance LeBaron, after which he picked up $400 that the Salt Lake Police was paying him, and went from there to the bank, where he withdrew the balance of Gary's $2,000.

  Next morning, Gibbs got license plates for the big 98 he had just bought, a blue and white 1970 Olds, and then went to a barber shop and got his hair cut and his mustache and goatee removed, after which he took off for Helena, Montana. He had the idea he might even push on to Canada.

  It was about noon when Gibbs left, and he stopped at Pocatello around four, filled up with gas, and went on to Idaho Falls where he stopped at the Ponderosa Motel. Downtown, he picked up a girl in a bar and got laid. No big deal. On the other hand, it didn't cost nothing.

  In the morning, he went over to see his grandmother and aunt who lived in Idaho Falls, and were 89 and 65 respectively. His grandma was going to turn 90 on January 17, Gary's new execution date, and that made him think of "psychic powers, Geebs," a bad thought.

  He spent a couple of hours with these ladies, and left a fifty-dollar bill for their Christmas, then stopped and ate, drove for a few more hours, got the car greased, the oil changed, antifreeze checked, bought a new filter and had the tires rotated. It took an hour. While he was waiting, he had a few drinks. Then he headed out, hoping to get to Helena that same night.

  About fifteen miles north of Butte, he was heading up a mountain road in the dark when a logging truck came down fast around a turn and barreled over onto his side of the road. Huge headlights.

  Gibbs had a quick choice: hit the truck or ditch. He went to the right and smacked into something in the gully.

  When he came to, his head was bleeding and his false teeth were broken. The side of his face was screaming with pain. He managed to get the car door open, but when he went to step out, he fell face down in the snow. No way could he put any pressure on his left leg, he had to crawl to the edge of the highway. The first car that went by saw him lying on the side of the road but just kept going. A few minutes later, a pickup stopped. Two men helped him in, and took him along the road to a cafe called the Elk Pack. There, they phoned the Highway Patrol. The bartender gave him a wet towel to wipe the blood off his head and Gibbs sat on a barstool so his leg could hang down without pressure while he drank three straight shots of whiskey.

  The ambulance came and put an air bag around his leg, inflated it, laid him on a stretcher, and started down the road. Then they had to stop because a wrecker was blocking the highway in order to lift Gibbs's car out of the gully. He raised his head long enough to ask if they could get the luggage from his trunk, and the officer said he would. With it all, Gibbs noticed that his headlights were still on.

  At the hospital, the doctor stitched up his scalp, and split his pants to x-ray the knee, leg, ankle and foot. Turned out his leg was shattered and his jaw fractured. The doctor also said that the tendons were torn so bad in the calf and ankle his leg would probably have to be amputated. It was certainly swollen twice its size. His foot was completely black. The rest of the limb was purple. Immediately, Gibbs said, "My leg ain't going to be taken off. Just give me a shot for pain, and I'll leave."

  Before he could get out of there he had to show the highway patrolman his identification. The cop proceeded to write two tickets, one for traveling too fast under existing conditions, one for no driver's license in his possession. They hadn't had the fake one ready in Salt Lake by the time he left. So the cop said it would be $20 bail for the first, $15 on the other. Cash. Gibbs signed the tickets, paid over the $35, and asked to be taken to one of the nicer motels. The cop got him out to the patrol car in a wheelchair, and dropped him off at the Mile High. It was about midnight. They had to wake the lady who ran the place, then help him inside to register, next wheel him to Room 3 with his luggage. The shot that doctor had given was beginning to take effect, and his pain eased, and Gibbs went off to sleep.

  When he awoke next morning, Christmas Day, his leg was killing him.

  He called the Owl Cab Company. in Butte and asked the lady dispatcher if a cab could pick him up a bag of ice, a six-pack of Coke, a fifth of Canadian Club and some cigarettes. Once the booze arrived, Gibbs managed to get out of bed by holding onto the back of a chair, hopped to the bathroom, looked in the mirror at the stitches and his black eye, then got back into bed and fixed a good stiff drink. It did nothing for the pain, so he fixed several more. Helped a little, but not much. It wasn't like taking whiskey for a toothache.

  That evening, he could stand it no longer, and called the motel lady and asked if her husband would take him to the hospital. She wasn't married, but she had two friends who had eaten Christmas dinner with her, and these gentlemen brought him to the St. James Catholic Hospital, after Gibbs asked for the best doctor in town.

  There it was. The fellow's name was Best. Dr. Robert Best. One of Evel Kneivel's own personal doctors.

  Well, Best wanted to admit him to the hospital, but Gibbs again said no. Instead, he left with a pain prescription for codeine, and one for Oral Varidase to break up the blood clots. Plus a cast. "You better hope," said Dr. Best, "that phlebitis doesn't set in." This was Gibbs's Christmas Day.

  After the second suicide attempt, Campbell said to Gilmore, "Look, if you want to talk about the firing squad, I'll be your sounding board."

  Gilmore said, "Aw, hell, we don't want to talk about that. We're just going to shoot this old half-drunk thief, you know," They would joke about
it.

  Once in a while, Gilmore would ask him what the other prisoners were thinking, but Cline did not tell him that more than a few were fed up with Gary Gilmore. It was because everything he did affected the affairs of other prisoners in Maximum. What with needing three guards for him, it even hurt the classroom schedule. Chow got delayed not once, but several times. When it was anything very big, like a suicide attempt, the place got locked up. The convicts were tired of all those hassles.

  On the other hand, they never said Gary was crazy. He'd been in prison eighteen years. Everybody empathized with that.

  Of course with Gary on death watch, that is not only on Death Row, but with a date to be executed, he had a whole three-cell section to himself. A suite. His own cell, the middle one, had solid walls on three sides and regular cell bars on the door. They let it stay open, however, and allowed him access to the short corridor facing the three cells. Of course, there was always a guard present. Gary could even walk up to the cell-block gate and look out on the main corridor and talk to any officer or prisoner walking by. Sometimes, in the late hours of the night, Father Meersman would visit, and Gilmore would bring a stool or sometimes just sit on the floor, his back against the bars, while Meersman would camp on a chair out in the main corridor.

  They would converse through the bars. Everything around them was painted in a light, pastel green.

  Whereas when Gary would be brought out to the visiting room to meet his lawyer or uncle, they would take him down the long main corridor of Maximum from which shorter corridors led off at right angles to the one-story cell blocks. At such times, as a precaution against escape, no other inmate would be in the main corridor. While Gary walked along, passing the barred gate to each cell block, the prisoners would see him coming, and call out, "Hey, Gary," or "Hang in there."

  "Stay with it," they would yell.

  Toward Christmas, Moody and Stanger went out to the prison every morning and then again every afternoon or evening. It got to the point where they had to assign the rest of their cases to other people in the office. They didn't mind that much Their feeling for Gary was definitely getting warmer. In fact, he soon had them on another mission.

  There was a murderer named Belcher in the cell block next to Gary in Death Row, and he'd been described to Moody and Stanger often enough to have a clear picture. Belcher was a heavy-set fellow, maybe six feet tall, barrel chested, short-cropped hair, dark complected, and he had a protruding forehead, an overhanging brow, big features, big arms, very muscular. Gary described how his head was always swiveling around, always suspicious. Often he wouldn't talk. Stanger heard from the guards that Belcher was an obsessive-compulsive and kept things in his cell like cans of soup, or any kind of trinket they let him retain, really one of those crazy recluses whose apartments were like junk shops. He was certainly property conscious.

  Would throw fits if you tried to take his things away. A very territorial man. From what Ron could gather, he lived like a bear, as if his cell was a cave. Yet he and Gary, of all people, got along well.

  From what Moody heard, Belcher also liked kids.

  A few days before Christmas, at Gary's suggestion, Bob got one of his law clerks to take a picture of a large group of children, holding up a big sign that said, "HI, BELCHER!" It tickled the daylights out of Gary to pass the photograph over on Christmas Day. "Here," he said to Belcher, "here's a shot of some kids rooting for you."

  Dec 23

  Oh Gary i love You So

  i miss you! God how i miss you. More than the sky and the earth. More than my freedom and more than my children .

  The lawyers gave me a letter from you today. But these scuzzy, sheep herdin Aids took it before i got to read it. The Punks shake me down even when i visit with my mother an Kids. Fuckin Looneys. Oh, Baby i wanted so bad to read your lovin' words.

  Babe, what is to become of us? God, what is happening? i need to see you. How could they let you die so alone, my love? i want so bad just to look into your eyes once again.

  God ain't it crazy? Aint it so fuckin crazy.

  i'm furious with the ways an wiles of Love Life and the Ultimate Wisdom, furious with God. And furious with myself for not being patient and doing things right the first time with jack an jill.

  Love to have that pretty white bird sitting here on my night stand. You remember that i spoke or wrote to you once of my childhood daydream of being through with this senseless life and being born once again but if the choice be mine it was to be born into the wings of a small white bird. And still would i choose the same if i could.

  Christmas Eve

  Dec. 24

  Long days waiting

  For your Love again

  Long nights restless

  Scattered thots

  Wondering whats become

  Of all our chances.

  Nicole

  Dec. 25

  it is not really a `fear jest such a great sadness to think of the uncertainty of days ahead.

  Nicole

  DESERET NEWS

  No Move for Nicole

  Provo, Christmas Day—Nicole Barrett has been ordered committed indefinitely to the Utah State Hospital in Provo.

  Fourth District Judge David Sam ruled that the mother of two young children should stay in the mental hospital . . .

  Meanwhile, a turkey dinner with all the trimmings was the highlight of Christmas Day at Utah State Prison where Gilmore is in isolation for disciplinary reasons.

  Gilmore was not allowed to receive any presents and today was a non-visiting day, so he had no visitors a prison spokesman said.

  Sterling Baker's wife, Ruth Ann, wrote a letter.

  Dear Gary, I was thinking about you and how you are going to be alone on Xmas. I wish I could be up there with you. I really love you a lot. I hope in the next world we can meat, and be able to know each other well. But please don't try to hurry it. I don't want you to die.

  Usually the Damico family would have a big Christmas party. One year they would get together at Brenda's house, next year at Toni's, then Ida's. This season, being no joy for it, they met at Toni's to exchange gifts, said a prayer for Gary, had a cup of coffee, went back to their separate places.

  Mikal came over to the trailer on Christmas Day but Bessie's mind was on other times. She remembered one Christmas when Gary was not in Reform School and was watching his baby brother unwrap the gifts. She had tended to spoil Mikal in those days. It had taken her half the night to wrap his presents, but in the morning Mikal kept saying, "This is an awful day. I've got so many things I don't want." Gary kept laughing.

  Gaylen, on the other hand, came home one afternoon that year just before the holidays and said one of the Sisters told them how there was no Santa Claus. He was very upset. Bessie said, "Gaylen, there's only the spirit of giving. That exists. You've had the good heart to believe in Santa Claus longer than anybody else."

  Then her thoughts came back to the trailer. These days all thoughts returned to the trailer. Her heart turned over, as if a great wheel had revolved. She felt a tear drop, pure as sorrow itself.

  GILMORE What is Christmas? These holidays in jail are a bummer. You don't get any mail. The routine is disrupted, the day just seems slower. They act like they're really doing something by giving you a big meal, but it ain't like the menu in the paper. You don't get it good, you know. I don't like weekends in jail, but holidays I hate.

  Shirley Pedler, Executive Director of the ACLU in Utah, had gotten her job right after college. She applied for the post, and there she was, Executive Director, with a general membership of a few hundred people. The funds to keep the office going came from membership dues, and a modest grant from the national office. Five or six Salt Lake attorneys volunteered their time on a regular basis, and as many as twenty might help once a year. It was small stuff and, right now, beleaguered. In Utah, belonging to the ACLU was like being a Bolshevik.

  Once the ACLU got into the Gilmore case, Shirley Pedler began to receive a lot of hate
mail and crank calls. For more than a month they called her at work and at home, all day, all night. She knew it would continue until Gilmore was dead. She was living by herself, and sometimes after a long day, she would dread going home to hear the phone ringing. "Something bad's going to happen to you," a voice would intone. "I hope you get shot with Gilmore," the next caller would say. Sometimes the men were obscene. One remarked that since she was good looking and single, he was ready to do this and that to her.

  They usually hung up quickly. By now, these days, she was tending to flare up. Didn't hesitate to tell her callers off. Her nerves had never been well insulated, but with the loss of sleep and the loss of weight, she had nightmares about Mr. Gilmore. A man would kick a platform out from under him. As he hung in the air, they would release gas pellets. Some of the dreams were bloody.

  Raised to be active in the Church, she was no longer a practicing Mormon. All the same, these callers were like people she had grown up with. She didn't feel betrayed so much as unable to believe what was going on. "The injustice in this case is so apparent," she would say to herself. At the Board of Pardons Hearing, she thought Chairman Latimer was totally inconsistent. "Why is there no public outcry?" she wanted to know. It had been a travesty, and in the middle was Gilmore, a terribly pale and quite attractive young man, Shirley Pedler thought. His fasting made him look ghastly, but unforgettable.

  He was so pale.

  Afterward, she became personally self-conscious about the fact that this man's life, due to the maneuverings going on, was in very uncertain circumstances. He did not know his fate from day to day, and yet she was part of those maneuverings.