The Executioner's Song

by Norman Mailer

Though the news had been in the papers, he had not yet received official word. So he was worried. If Sam Smith refused him at the gate, there would have to be last-minute legal maneuvers. The statutes might be all on his side, but such a situation would still be horrendous with tension.

  In five minutes, the phone rang again. Deputy Warden Hatch was saying, "Warden Smith has asked me to advise you to appear tomorrow morning at six AM. at the prison gate with no cameras and no recording devices, if you wish to witness the execution of Gary Mark Gilmore." Schiller said, "Thank you. Will you please deliver this message to the Warden. The statement I made to Gus Sorensen is correct. I do not intend to violate any rules and regulations that he has set up. Please assure him that I will conduct myself in the manner in which he would want me to conduct myself."

  In that last phone call with Moody, he had been told that Gary wanted liquor brought in, and they had discussed how to do it.

  Schiller told Debbie to go to the Pharmacy and buy a couple of curved bottles. "If the pharmacy doesn't have them for sale," he told her, "just buy cough syrup, and pour it out."

  Debbie wanted to know why the bottles had to be curved. He had to explain they were like a hip flask, and made less of a bulge under your coat. Then he decided the amount would be insufficient, so he sent Tamera over to Western Airlines to purchase, if she could, some 1 1/2-ounce bottles of the sort they served on airplanes. In Utah, however, Western wouldn't go near liquor on Sunday. He called the Hilton and found out they didn't sell or serve until late that day. Finally, he heard of one Salt Lake bar where individual-drink bottles were sold, so he had Tamera call the Deseret News to send somebody over. Schiller figured they'd call a high-level meeting about it.

  Meanwhile, Tamera had come to feel sentimental about getting this liquor to Gary. Of course, by now, everybody was liking him.

  Even the people that didn't like him, liked him.

  Schiller could smell it in the air. Everybody was starting to think, What are we killing Gilmore for? What's the death going to accomplish?

  Breslin was walking around the office, cursing up a streak, "How dare they shoot the fucking guy, these fucking people?" Breslin was even furious at Gilmore for wanting to be offed.

  Larry decided to relax at the Xerox machine. It was agreeable to work at some mechanical activity. Then, Tamera came up to say her newspaper wouldn't go for the liquor. "I don't care who does it," said Schiller, "get somebody." Tamera called Cardell, who had to be one of the most active Mormons in Salt Lake, and would you believe it, he agreed to go over and get it as a Christian act? Thought a dying man ought to be able to have his last request. That was something. Tamera's brother was straight arrow like you wouldn't believe.

  Schiller called Stanger, and asked, "Will the Warden let me see Gary before the execution?" When Stanger said he didn't know Larry called the prison. The Warden still wouldn't talk to him.

  Schiller told himself, "If they do change their mind, I want to be right at the front door."

  Now, he studied the prison plan for the media, and decided it was very professional. "I don't believe the Warden made this out," he said aloud. It was just too sensible. Through the night, public announcements would be made every thirty minutes on the speaker, and a prison representative would come out frequently to talk to the reporters. A few minutes after the execution, the Warden would make a statement. Ten minutes after that, the press would be allowed to visit the site. It showed a knowledge of how to handle the media that had not been evident before. The very layout of the language intrigued Schiller. He said to himself, "I now have a match for my intelligence," and had one of his Dream-the-Impossible-Dream ideas. Maybe he would yet meet the author of this plan tonight and be able to explain why they should let him in to talk to Gary. "Yes," he said to himself, "I'm going to enter now as a member of the press."

  Of course, he had made plans for such a contingency. John Durniak, the picture editor at Time, had told him he could use Time credentials if he wished. Lawrence Schiller, Witness to the Execution, who would not be allowed into the prison until 6:30 A.M., was now ready to enter at 6 P.M., better than twelve hours earlier, with his new press pass as Lawrence Schiller, accredited to Time magazine.

  At least an hour before six, Schiller didn't feel like waiting around Orem any longer, and he put the liquor-filled cough-syrup bottles in his pocket, and told Tamera to have Cardell meet them at the gate of the prison. Then they took off from the TraveLodge.

  When he got to the gate, a lot of press was already going in. If they had been calling it a circus before, it looked now like a gypsy caravan.

  A great many television vans were lined up on the access road outside, plus all the vans for the movie-reel people and second crews and remotes, in addition to several hundred members of the press who were jammed into every conceivable kind of vehicle, all going one by one through the main gate. What hit Schiller was that everybody was drinking.

  The prison press release had not stated whether the press could bring liquor or beer, but, of course, this omission was no flaw in the master plan. Who had ever heard of the world press staking out a place for twelve hours without liquor? Besides, it was so bitter cold that without booze, they would all freeze. Schiller flashed to six in the morning and three hundred newsmen stiff on the prison grounds.

  What a shot! Not a stringer alive to send out word. Yes, this was truly a master plan. Any demonstrations that took place would be off on the access road, well outside the prison. The objectors would be shouting their opposition from 1,500 feet away. If not for this plan, some of the best men in the media might have been looking right now for interviews with the demonstrators, even encouraging them to come up with scorching remarks. By morning, there would been numerous stories of what was said by spokesmen hostile to execution. So this was brilliant. The press might be livid, but they had a beautiful concept: lock up the press.

  Of course, next day, the stories would be vindictive, but then the press had been rough on the State of Utah all the way. At least, the execution would take place without a mob scene in the dawn and everybody trying to get into the prison grounds at once. Now the scene would take place at six o'clock the night before, and the antagonism of the press might even wear out by morning. Drinking all night, they would be stupefied at dawn. By the time Gilmore was transferred from Maximum to the cannery, these reporters would be so happy to come in from the cold, they would probably wait grumbling in whichever room they were penned. This plan, they believed, had to come from Washington. Somebody in the FBI, Department of Justice, at least.

  When Schiller went through the outside gate, they only asked, "Who are you?" "Larry Schiller." "Who with?" "Time magazine." They gave him the go-ahead. He started down the hill to the parking area but the guard standing there was Lieutenant Bernhardt, who had let Schiller in that first time close to two months ago when he had said he was an estate consultant. Now, Schiller drove by, looking straight ahead, but out of his rear-view mirror, he could see Bernhardt getting into a vehicle to chase after. So, Schiller stopped and got out. Bernhardt came up saying, "Get the hell out of here. You're not supposed to be in until six-thirty in the morning." Bernhardt even started screaming, which called attention to Schiller, last thing he wanted.

  Bernhardt got on the radio and called someone. Then he said, "All right, you're in. But you're staying until six the fuck in the morning. Just remember that. You're not getting to see Gilmore." He shouted it all out in front of any number of the press. Whatever small cover Schiller might have had, was blown. He was going to be waylaid for the next few hours by microphones.

  Later, Tamera slipped him the mini-bottles she had picked up at the gate from Cardell. Reporters milled around, talking and stamping their feet. Soon, everybody was back in their vans. Six o'clock came, and that was it. They were locked in. The long winter night came down off Point of the Mountain, passed over the parking lot and the prison, and chased the last of the evening pale across the desert.

  PART SIX
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  Into the Light

  Chapter 31

  AN EVENING OF DANCING AND LIGHT REFRESHMENT

  Julie Jacoby went out early to the vigil, and with her in the first car was Reverend John Adams who was an old hand at demonstrations and wanted to speak to the Salt Lake County Sheriff about protection for the vigilants.

  Only trouble is they were not let inside the grounds. The State Police steered them over to an access road. After a while, they learned that very few reporters were available to cover them. It got dark, it got cold, but they conducted a religious service.

  Forty or fifty people had turned out, and they read a litany by the illumination provided by a television crew who were kind enough to tilt their lights until the group making the responses could see the print.

  At John Adams's suggestion, Julie had scoured her house for heavy clothing and brought it along for people who might show without enough protection. Then the minister borrowed her Subaru and kept ferrying new vigilants out from the Howard Johnson Motel in Salt Lake, a rendezvous point. Through the night he brought people back and forth.

  At five in the afternoon when Toni went in to visit with Gary, the press already collected in the parking lot crowded around her at the gate leading to Maximum. It would be a lot worse when she came out. More press. Walking down that corridor between the wire fences over the snow with the wind coming in off the mountain, Toni was thinking of the first time she'd gone to see Gary at the prison, two days before his birthday. She hadn't known then whether she was ready to forgive him or never would but after seeing how tickled he was at her visit, she asked what she could send, and he wanted two dark sweat shirts with the sleeves cut off, extra large with the shoulders reinforced so that they would peak without sleeves. She had gone to visit him again after that. He would always greet her by saying "God, you're beautiful," which had her blushing.

  This Sunday, however, was different. It was, of all coincidences, her own birthday, and Howard's family was coming for supper. So all the while that Toni had been planning her visit to the prison on this last evening, she also had been cooking the meal for the evening party, and worrying how she could visit Gary early enough so she could get back by seven for Howard's folks.

  It was ten of six before they even let her into the visiting room and then she had to wait twenty minutes with the other guests. When they opened the door for Gary, he saw her first and put his arms around her and gave a hug as if he were cracking all the ice of winter with one squeeze, held her so hard and long, she didn't think he would ever let go. Her mother was right with her, and said, "Now, it's my turn." So Gary released Toni with one arm, and hugged Ida, but he never let go completely. In fact as soon as Ida stepped back, he lifted Toni till her feet came off the floor, and gave her a great big kiss on the lips. He was still holding her fifteen minutes later when she absolutely had to leave.

  Gary said then, "You are coming back, aren't you?" That was the first Toni considered it. It was the look in his eyes. "Go home," he said, "and take care of your family, then come back." But it was going to be complicated. Not to mention her in-laws, this was also the solitary day Toni would have with Howard all week. He was working on a construction job in southern Utah and only got home on Sundays.

  Before she could say yes or no, Gary gave her another big birthday kiss. Then Moody and Stanger took her mother and herself out along the corridor through the wire fences and the crowd which was now massive. Toni knew why they called them the press. They almost squeezed her to death. But that was no more weird than leaving this prison to go back to her birthday party.

  Sunday had started for Bob Moody at six in the morning with a High Council meeting. That lasted until eight. At nine-thirty, he went to Priesthood meeting, came back to take his family to church, went out to the prison, and came back to pick up his family when Sunday School concluded at 1 P.M. Then, all of the Moody family went home to dinner. By 4 P.M. Ron Stanger and he were ready to drive to the prison.

  In the parking lot were Vern and Ida, then Toni, and two middle-aged cousins of Gary's named Evelyn and Dick Gray. All of them, together with Father Meersman, were taken over to Maximum Security, and Lieutenant Fagan was cordial on this night and showed the facilities. The prisoners had been fed early, and the gates between the visiting room and the main dining room for Maximum Security were open so that they could pass back and forth between the two rooms during the evening. A considerable space altogether.

  Perhaps so much as a hundred feet of movement in the longest direction, half of that the other way, plus a couple of smaller extra rooms adjacent for more private conversations. Lieutenant Fagan's office was open, and the kitchen, and the booth with the glass window where formerly they talked with Gary.

  All this was at the front of Maximum Security just back of the two sliding gates that separated them from the exterior. At the rear of the visiting room, also barred by a gate, was the long hallway through Maximum off which were set the various cell rows. Moody had never been back there, and was not familiar with the area, so much as respectful of it. It was like the hallway that led to the cellar stairs in a large oppressive old house. Just as you imagined you could hear groans in those old cellars, so from the cell blocks came cries and shouts and moans and slamming sounds clear up to the visiting room, but muted, as if under the rock.

  Since they planned to be there through the night and wanted to save their good clothes for morning, Moody and Stanger had come with a change. They had also brought crackers and soft drinks which proved unnecessary, for the prison offered light refreshments all evening.

  Tang and Kool-Aid and cookies and coffee. Then, Father Meersman procured a TV set and plugged it in. Somebody had managed to bring a portable stereo with a few records, and what with the three or four guards circulating through the kitchen and dining room and visiting room, and, at various times, Father Meersman and Cline Campbell and the two lawyers and the cousins and Vern and Toni and Ida, it was almost enough people for a party. Not to mention the guard on duty all through the night in the bullet-proof glass-enclosed booth that overlooked the visiting room.

  Every couple of hours somebody would come from the pharmacy with medication. As the evening went on, Bob Moody came to recognize they were giving Gary some kind of speed. Doubtless, the pharmacists saw it as a blessing and kept it coming, and in the early hours of the evening, Gary did keep getting happier and happier. In the beginning, he was so delighted to see Toni, and held her for so long, and kissed her with such cousinly gusto, that Bob and Ron and Vern and the others just sat back and waited, didn't want to interrupt when Gary was so obviously delighting in her visit. Besides, there were chores to accomplish. The guards had brought in a couple of cots with mattresses, and provisions were being laid out for the evening, and then Toni was hardly there very long before Ron and Bob had to take her down between the barbed-wire fences into the swarm of press. It was practically an operation. Until they got her into the track, it felt like their eyes were being seared with strobe lights and their souls with the general mania. For they were magical to the press tonight. They had seen the man and could report on him.

  They kept saying "No comment," and looked for Schiller, and talked enough to keep the media close up with their microphones and tape recorders. That gave Vern time to slip around and have a talk with Larry.

  Moody and Stanger might have been temporarily satisfying the majority of these reporters, but there was a great deal of press, and Larry and Vern also became the center of a swarm. In the squeeze, Vern could only whisper, "Have you got the liquor?" and Schiller said, "Yeah." "How," whispered Vern, "am I going to get it in?" "Put the little bottles under your armpits," said Larry, "and keep your elbows close." "Fine," said Vern, "but how do I get it under my coat?"

  The press was surrounding them as tightly as a crowd packed around two players of the winning team caught on the field after the game.

  Schiller turned and shouted, "Can't you let this man have a little privacy? You're hounding
him. Get back." Physically he pushed on the press a little, not laying on rough hands so much as using the mixture of pressure and slight hysteria that worked best with reporters, "Give him a little privacy," he repeated. They retreated two feet, maybe three, room enough for Vern to do something with the liquor. By the time Larry turned around, Vern was ready to go back to the glare of the lights in the visiting room with the record player going and the TV set, and Gilmore beginning to spend his last night on earth.

  The little bottles went fast. Gary would dip into a back room and take a nip, then come out with a wink. Moody thought it was appropriate.

  If that was what the man wanted, then he ought to be able to enjoy a drink. It had been years since Moody had tasted alcohol, but this was a social event. If some corner of Moody's mind could hear the criticism that Gilmore was going to meet his maker in the morning, and that might be wiser on a sober head, still Moody thought, this is more like a last meal. If he wants to go out drunk, he has a right. He thought of how Gary had deliberately not requested his six-pack of Coors at the end because he did not want the world to think he would be unable to face it without something to help him. But now, the speed was coming in, and the booze.

  Yet, at the sight of Gary's pleasure, and the way he enjoyed the feeling of slight intoxication, for he didn't get very drunk, it began as a nice evening. Gary even took one of the guards into one of the back offices and gave him liquor from the curved medicine bottles Schiller had also sent in.

  Bob, himself, loved the idea that he was able to go up to Gary, shake hands with him, hold him, look at him for a second, face to face—it was unexpected how great a need had developed to do something as simple as that after all these weeks. In fact, this was the first face-to-face meeting without urgent business to discuss. So, it was a pleasure to see Gary become loose and grow to enjoy the night.