The Executioner's Song

by Norman Mailer

  Shirley was alone in the office when the word came over the radio, and it hit her as if she felt the shot. Her head went down on the desk and she started to sob.

  Later that morning, she made several statements. It was incredible—it was really an affront—the press had all of a sudden vanished. Shirley found that the most horrifying aspect of the whole thing. It was as if these reporters were saying, "He's blown away, so there's no news anymore." God, press from all over the country had dominated every good restaurant in Salt Lake, and now they were gone. She sat in her office the day of the execution and was not hounded at all.

  Gibbs had been sitting in jail all day every day in the week leading up to Gary's execution, and was in a pretty drugged state because of his leg the night before the execution. In the morning, when he heard the news on the radio he just felt dumb and groggy.

  Dennis Boaz had been out in Iowa for a couple of days in December and got into a symposium on a TV program where he heard that President Ford might commute Gary's sentence before retiring from office. So, he sent a telegram saying that if capital punishment was going to be applied, it should be applied equally. No executions until there was one law for everyone. Never heard from Ford.

  On the day of the execution, he felt a kind of silent sadness and tears came to his eyes. Gary died on January 17, a day whose number came to 6, which was the motherhood of brothers, and, of course, that made him think of Cain and Abel. In the period Dennis was working with Gilmore, he had sprouted a red mark above his right brow, not a pimple, but a mark signifying death. First discovered it toward the end of November. It was round and it was red, but not a pimple. It was there nearly two months, and then faded away after Gary died. Interesting, at any rate. He noticed things like that.

  Nicole had found out that Gary was going to be executed today, but she had no idea of the time. In the morning, walking back from the ward dining room, she suddenly felt a great need to lie down on her bed. They started making a big thing of it, but she just walked toward her room. Nobody said anything more. Then she lay there, and tried to think about Gary. For days she had been dreaming of the moment he was shot and falling back. She always saw Gary standing up when he got it. Now, in her mind, she saw nothing but those red blocks they gave the patients to put together into a cube.

  They were in her head, and she was trying to push them away, when suddenly Gary's face came to her out of the darkness, came in fast with a look of pain and horror. He didn't fall back, but right up toward her. Her body flipped around on the bed, her eyes opened, and that was all. She kept trying to feel him again that day, but couldn't. He wasn't near her at all for a few days.

  After Gaylen was dead, Bessie thought she would never get over it. But this was going to be worse. When she called the prison and said good-bye to Gary on this last night, he had said, "Don't cry."

  "I'm not going to cry, Gary," she had told him, but she had wanted so much to say, "Don't die, Gary, don't. Please, please, don't."

  Only it would hurt what he was building up—whatever it might take of him to go out there. So she had to be careful. It was a nightmare.

  Listening to the clock through the hours Bessie could not keep from thinking, "His nightmare will be over, but mine will never be."

  When Mikal got the paper early that morning, it said the execution had been stayed. They turned on "Good Morning America." A little earlier, Bessie had said, "Don't put it on." She didn't want to hear it. If it happened, she didn't want to know about it for hours.

  She certainly didn't want to hear about it on TV. Yet after Mikal brought in the paper, somebody—was it Frank Jr., or Mikal, or his girl friend: she could never remember for fear she would not forgive—one of them said, "It is safe now. There's a Stay. We can turn on 'Good Morning America.' " They did. A voice stated, "Gary Mark Gilmore is dead." It sounded like it came from above. Bessie cried into the sore flesh of her heart.

  Maybe half an hour later, Johnny Cash called and gave Mikal his condolences.

  By the time Doug Hiblar came by, Bessie had turned bitter. She had the look on her face of a woman who had just had her home bombed. "Get out," Bessie said, "you people have killed my son."

  "What do you mean, Bessie," stammered Doug, "I didn't even know him."

  "You people in Utah killed my son."

  He did not say, "I'm from Oregon."

  "Mountain, you can go to hell," said Bessie to herself. "You're not mine anymore."

  Outside, around the court, photographers were gathered with their cameras at the door of Bessie's trailer.

  Chapter 40

  THE REMAINS

  On the drive home, Stanger asked, "What are you going to do now?"

  "I don't know," said Moody. "I can't go to the office."

  Stanger laughed. "Need a default judgment to occupy your afternoon?"

  "No," said Moody devoutly, "I couldn't stand it."

  They had to talk to somebody who had been a part of it. Even though they were going to go on a week's vacation with their wives in a couple of days and so now had to run around like hell to leave their affairs in some kind of order, they couldn't go back to the office now.

  Instead, they said, "Let's go to Larry's place," but when they got to the Orem TraveLodge, Schiller hadn't come back yet, so they talked to Barry Farrell. It was important to keep talking.

  While driving, they had been getting flashes. Stanger had seen Gary's hand rising and falling, and the blood on his pants. Stanger couldn't keep that out of his head. He wanted to extirpate such thoughts. Put his hand right inside his mind, grab the thought and flip it out.

  They were happy to talk, therefore, to Barry Farrell. While they had never gotten along that well before, Ron could see how under all his professionalism, Barry was having a strong reaction, so he felt good about the conversation. So did Moody.

  And Farrell, who had ranted through many a night at how these guys, Moody and Stanger, had such a paucity of humanity that they could not pursue a question profitably, did not indeed have even the curiosity of a lawyer, felt a reason now to temper his outrage. For they were so moved at Gary's death. They really did understand that somebody has gotten killed, thought Farrell.

  Besides, he was eager to hear every detail and wanted to communicate to them how appreciative he was feeling toward Gilmore for approaching his death with this much integrity, my God, absolutely as much as his intellect could muster. Barry couldn't imagine what Gilmore might have done better. That helped, to relieve him of his own doubts about his own involvement in these last days, this whole obscene, niggling business of translating the best thoughts of one's soul and conscience into one more rotten question, one more probe into the private parts of a man as protected from self-revelation as a clamshell from the knowledge of a caress.

  When Schiller came in, they babbled, and recounted, and asked each other questions, and sputtered it out of them, until they ran down and then Moody and Stanger went home. Ron was thinking that the only event which had ever come close to having this kind of continuing reaction on him was the day President Kennedy was killed, Now, arriving at his house, he felt exhausted and immediately went to bed, but couldn't sleep. When he closed his eyes, he would see all the sights again and his skin hurt to the touch.

  When they were alone, Farrell said to Schiller, "Have you had breakfast?"

  "No," said Schiller.

  "Any interest?" asked Farrell.

  "I'm all diarrhea," said Schiller and thought he might go to sleep. At that point, Barry looked up and said, "Oh, yes, listen, your mother called."

  Schiller hadn't spoken to her in two weeks. He picked up the phone and learned she had seen the press conference on television after the execution, and wanted to make sure he was all right. She didn't like the way he looked. A little worn out, she thought.

  Schiller assured her that he was still among the living. When the call was done, he went upstairs and actually fell asleep, and was awakened a few hours later by a girl from the New York Time
s to whom he'd promised to give an interview, but now, he said, he wouldn't do it. Time was calling. Newsweek was calling. The phone was ringing, They wanted to know if he had pictures of the execution.

  Wanted to come over and interview him. Schiller had to go into his speech about how he would not be a punching bag. "Your editors are asking for pictures," he said to Newsweek and to Time, "so, if you want to talk to me, we will have to discuss what you're going to say. You are not going to call me an entrepreneur. I want to make sure you're going to call me a journalist." Really started to lay down the law. "Two weeks ago, you called me an entrepreneur, called me a promoter. Now, you want pictures. Want me to give you more about the execution. Well, I'm taking offense," he said. "We got to lay out a few ground rules. If you want to say that I hustled interviews from Lenny Bruce's widow, then I also want you to write about Minamata which is a book I'm proud of. If you want a picture of Marilyn Monroe, then also put in a picture from the story I published on mercury poisoning." He said, "If you're going to slant the story one way, balance it the other," and he banged it back, and he banged it forth and could feel his blood flowing through his veins again, instead of all that shit.

  DESERET NEWS

  Silent Majority No Longer Silent

  By Ray Boren Deseret News staff writer Jan. 17—According to a nationwide Louis Harris survey last week, Americans favored by a margin of 72-9 percent Gilmore's death before a firing squad.

  DESERET NEWS

  Emotions High Before Sunrise

  By Tamera Smith Deseret News staff writer Utah State Prison, Jan. 17—Anticipation, resignation, anger, disappointment, frustration and confusion were emotions that followed close upon each others' heels during the early morning hours today in Gary Mark Gilmore's prison quarters.

  At 4:07 P.M., Gilmore's last meal was brought to him in his cell. It consisted of steak, potatoes, bread, butter, peas, cherry pie, coffee and milk. He had only coffee and milk.

  Between 8 and 9 P.M., he asked prison staff members to call Radio Station KSOP and request two of his favorite songs—"Valley of Tears" and "Walking in the Footsteps of Your Mind."

  Two switchboard operators spent the night taking calls from all over the world.

  From Munich, Germany, one woman called 17 times.

  "My husband died in a concentration camp," she said. "The same thing is happening there. America's no better than that," was her repeated contention. Another woman caller cried, saying she had a dream three weeks ago that Gary should not die.

  Schiller had reassigned Jerry Scott from watching over the office to meeting up with Gary's body in Salt Lake. Jerry was to make certain no kooks tried something while the autopsy took place.

  On the drive from Orem to the hospital, Jerry Scott was mulling over how he had been the one to take Gary to Utah State Prison from the County Jail right after his trial, and now, he'd probably be the last one to view the remains. That was a large enough coincidence to occupy your mind.

  The autopsy room on the fifth floor at the University of Utah Hospital was good sized with two slabs and Jerry, by way of his police work, was familiar with it. Postmortems for the State were held there.

  This morning, they had just brought in the body of a woman who had drowned in a river north of Salt Lake, and they had her beside Gary, the two tables about ten feet apart.

  At first, it was hard to tell who were the doctors what with three males and three females all around the tables, and a couple of them busy removing Gilmore's eyes, and then another team on the organs for the transplants. They all seemed to be working in a great rush, and obviously had to get everything out pretty quickly. All the same, another doctor, watching, kept saying, "Can you hurry? I have a lot of work to do," and just a little later, "Aren't you done with him yet?"

  Finally, the last of the special doctors said, "Yes, he's yours," and the regular autopsy crew took over.

  Jerry Scott stood only three or four feet away. He was curious to see what was going on, and the medical examiner told him he could be a witness to the postmortem, and took his name, plus the name of Cordell Jones, a Deputy Sheriff whom Jerry Scott was glad to see there, because Jerry expected trouble later with the people outside when Gary's body would be transported from the hospital to the crematorium. In fact, he asked Cordell Jones to help on crowd control.

  Jerry had counted at least twenty people down below at the hospital door of which only a couple were bona fide newsmen, and, more than a good dozen, oddballs and thrill-seekers. So, at the least, Jerry was expecting problems and a confrontation, possibly with agitators.

  The doctor who had been getting the transplants had left Gary open from above the pubic hair to his breastbone. Now, the autopsy crew washed him down and the examiner took a scalpel, and continued the incision up the breastbone to the neck, and continued the cut on out to the shoulder on each side. Then, he started pulling up.

  He skinned Gilmore right up over his shoulders like taking a shirt half off, and with a saw cut right up the breastbone to the throat, and removed the breastplate and set it in a big, open sink with running water. Then, he took out what was left of Gilmore's heart.

  Jerry Scott couldn't believe what he saw. The thing was pulverized.

  Not even half left. Jerry didn't recognize it as the heart. Had to ask the doctor. "Excuse me," he said, "is that it?" The doctor said, "Yup."

  "Well, he didn't feel anything, did he?" asked Jerry Scott. The doctor said, "No." Jerry had been looking at the bullet pattern earlier, and there had been four neat little holes you could have covered with a water glass, all within a haft inch of each other. The doctors had been careful to take quite a few pictures. They numbered every hole with a Magic Marker, and turned Gary over to photograph where each bullet exited from his back. Looking at those marks, Jerry could see the guys on the firing squad hadn't been shaky at all. You could tell they'd all squeezed off a good shot.

  Of course, Jerry was always thinking about getting shot himself. It could happen any time on duty. He had to keep wondering what it would be like. Now, looking at the heart, he repeated, "He didn't feel anything, did he?" The doctor said, "No, nothing." Jerry said, "Well, did he move around after he was shot?" The doctor said, "Yes, about two minutes." "Was that just nerves?" Jerry asked. The fellow said, "Yes," and added, "He was dead, but we had to officially wait until he quit moving. That was about two minutes later."

  After this, it got really gruesome. Jerry had to admit it. They started removing different parts of Gilmore's body. Took his plumbing out, stomach, entrails and everything, then cut little pieces out of each organ. One guy was up at the head just working away. Next thing you knew, he had Gilmore's tongue in his hand. "Why take that?" asked Jerry Scott. He didn't know whether his questions bothered the doctors or not, but since he had to witness, he thought he might as well find out what was going on. The dissectionist answered, "We're going to take a sample of it." Put the tongue down on the slab, cut it in half and sliced out a piece. Put it in a bottle of solution.

  Jerry Scott had seen a lot of bodies, and gone to a lot of plane wrecks, and he knew what a person dismembered could look like, but just sitting there, watching them cut away, got to him. These fellows were really good at it, and kept talking back and forth, but they couldn't have been less excited if they were in a meat stall doing a job on a quarter of beef Once in a while they'd call across to some other medics working on that woman who had drowned. She was so fat, that when they cut her open, her stomach hung over her thigh. Kept working like it was nothing.

  Now, the fellow who was at the head of Jerry's table made an incision from behind Gary's left ear all the way up across the top of his head and then down below to the other ear, after which he grabbed the scalp on both sides of the cut, and pulled it right open, just pulled the whole face down below his chin until it was inside out like the back of a rubber mask. Then he took a saw and cut around the skull.

  Picked up something like a putty knife, and pried the bone open, popped the top
of the head off. Then, he stuck his hand inside the cavity and pulled the brain out, weighed it. Pound and a half, it looked like to Jerry Scott. Then they removed the pituitary, put it aside, and sliced the brain like meat loaf. "Why are you doing that?" asked Jerry Scott. "Well," said one of the doctors, "we're looking for tumors." They started explaining to him about the different areas of the brain, and how they were looking to see if there were any problems in Gary Gilmore's motor system. Everything however, looked to be just fine.

  Then they took pictures of his tattoos. "Mom" had been written on his left shoulder, and "Nicole" on his left forearm. They took his fingerprints, and then they took all the organs they did not need for dissection and put them back into the body and head cavities, and drew his face up, pulled it right back taut over the bones and muscles, like putting on the mask again, fit the sawed-off bone-cap back on the skull, and sewed the scalp, and body cavity. When they were all finished, it looked like Gary Gilmore again.

  During all of this, Jerry Scott noticed that Gilmore only had two teeth on his bottom gums and none on the top. Then they put his false teeth back. Looking at him now, reconstituted, Jerry Scott was amazed to see he had quite a layer of body fat for a fellow as skinny as he was. Still, he looked in pretty good shape, practically the build of an athlete, but for that belly fat.

  Jerry looked at his watch then. It was one-thirty in the afternoon.

  He had been there four hours. Then the fellow from Walker Mortuary came over, and they put Gilmore on a rollaway-type bed with sheets covering him and a nice blanket over the top, and scooted him out to the street and loaded him in a hearse where they took him over to the Shriner Crematorium in Salt Lake. Maybe because of the four hours it took, there was no crowd waiting outside the hospital, and although they had two other police to meet them when they arrived, no crowd was at the crematorium either.