The Executioner's Song (21 page)

All the while, he watched them real close. He had to see their action. They felt they better have a reaction.

Weren’t you afraid, Gary? they would ask. Didn’t you somebody would catch you?

He did a lot of boasting. Sounded like he was banging

boat from rock to rock. When he left, he thanked them for being sociable.

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Nicole heard about the lunch. Them was a piece of him, she decided, that liked to tell crazy stories to grown-ups. It must have gotten locked in at the age of eight.

Then she thought of the night up hn the hi//s behind the nuthouse when she wondered if he was a magnet to evil spirits. Maybe he had to act that nasty to keep things off. The idea didn’t cheer her. He could get meaner and meaner if that was the truth.

Around midnight, Nicole was feeling awfully cooped up with Gary. She found herself thinking of Barrett. It kept working away in her. There had also been a letter from Kip that afternoon but she kept thinking about Barrett and Rosebeth.

She hadn’t even wanted to open Kip’s letter, and when she did, he wrote that he wanted her to come back. The letter left her feeling crowded. It was like the past was coming back. Hampton, of all people, was going around with her sister April. Everybody Nicole decided, was fucking with her head. ‘

All the while she was having these thoughts, Gary had been sit ting at her feet. Now he had to pick this moment to look up with all the light of love shining in his eyes. “Baby,” he said, “I reatly love you all the way and forever.” She looked back. “Yeah,” she said, “and so do seven other motherfuckers.”

Gary hit her. It was the first time, and he hit her hard. She didn’t feel the pain so much as the shock and then the disappointment. It always ended the same way. They hit you when they felt like it.

Soon enough, he apologized. He kept apologizing. But it did no good. She had been hit so fucking many times. The kids were in bed, and she looked at Gary and said, “I

Fie kept trying to make want to die” It was how she felt.

up. Finally, she told him that she had felt like

dying before but never did anything about it. Tonight, she wouldn’t

mind.

THE EXECUTIONER’S SONG

Gary got a knife and held the point to her stomach. He asked her if she still wanted to die.

It was frightening that she wasn’t more afraid. After a few min utes, she finally said, “No, I don’t,” but she had been tempted. After he put the knife away, she even felt trapped. She couldn’t believe the size of the bad feeling that came down on her then.

They had one more marathon. Up all night about whether to fuck. In the middle, around midnight, he took off. Not too long laterl he came in with a bunch of boxes. There was a pistol in every box.

She got over it a little. She had to. The guns hung around.

picked them up. Only thing, the glasses were a present from Gary to Sterling.

Gary came on strong. “I want them glasses back,” he told Jimmy, “they’re mine.” Jimmy got kind of upset and left. Nicole started shrieking. “You’re fucking up the party,” she shouted at Gary. “All this horseshit over a stupid pair of glasses.”

Jimmy came back to the party with a couple of friends. As soon as he walked in the yard, Gary was on his feet and heading toward him. They were throwing fists before you could stop it.

Maybe Gary was too drunk, but Jimmy split his eye with the first punch. Blood was running all over Gary’s face. He got hit again and went down to his knees, got back up and started swinging.

Sterling Baker had a birthday party the last Sunday afternoon June, and the party went on in Sterling’s apartment and out in backyard, fifteen or twenty good people. A lot brought bottles. had cutoffs on, and a halter top, and knew she was looking Gary was sure showing her off. A couple of dudes began to tell what a hot lady he had. Gary would say, “Know it,” and grab her both breasts, or pull her into his lap.

Well, it was Sterling’s birthday, and Nicole still had this crush on her cousin. So Nicole started kidding him about a kiss and Sterling said he’d take her up on it. She asked Gary okay. He gave her a look, but she went and sat on Sterling’s anyway. Gave him a long kiss that would tell a lot about her.

When she opened her eyes, Gary was sitting with no

on his face. He said, “Had enough?”

They were keeping a keg of beer out in the back. The fellow stairs had also invited his friends, and one of them was a guy Jimmy, a Chicano. He picked up a pair of sunglasses that had laid on the roof of a broken-down old car out in the he was tapping a keg. Nicole figured maybe Jimmy didn’t know.

About that time, everybody broke the fight up. Sterling walked Jimmy around the front of the house and got him to leave. Just as Jimmy was walking off, Gary came up holding a gear knob that he’d taken off the beat-up car in the backyard. Sterling stepped in front of him. “Gary, you’re through with that, you’re not going to hit him,” he said. Just talking in a normal tone of voice. But he had a big fellow standing next to him to back what was said. Nicole got Gary out and took him home.

She hated to see her man have his ass whipped. Especially when he started it. She thought he was a fool all the way. A cheater, too. Like when he arm wrestled her brother.

He wanted to go back and find Jimmy. By keeping her mouth shut about how disappointed she was in his fighting, she managed to get him to Spanish Fork. She had hardly, ever known a guy who hated to lose a rumble as much as Gary. That softened her feelings somewhat. After all, he had taken a beating from a very tough dude, and hadn’t quit.

After she washed him off, Nicole discovered that the cut was bad. So she took him next door to her neighbor Elaine, who had just gotten through taking this emergency course on being an ambulance driver and Elaine said he definitely needed stitches. Nicole started to

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worry. She had heard that oxygen in the air could enter a cut near the eye, go right to the brain, and kill you. So she did take him to the doctor. Through the rest of the night she kept ice packs on his face and babied him, and kind of enjoyed it, considering how things had been lately. In the morning, when he tried to blow his nose, his cheeks blew up right around his glands and sinuses.

Gary kept repeating himself like a record with a scratch. “I don’t want that Mustang,” he said to Val.

“Then let’s get closer to the truck, buddy. We’re not near it. Come in with a cosigner or with money.”

Gary stalked away. Nicole hardly had time to gather the kids and follow. Outside the showroom, Gary was swearing like Val had never heard him swear before. Through the showroom window Val could see the Mustang, and it wouldn’t start. Gary sat there pounding the wheel as hard as he could.

Spencer said, “Gary, it doesn’t make much sense putting your body up to be abused.”

“They can’t hurt me,” said Gary.

“Oh, no? Your eye is cut and it’s turning black, and you’ve got a lump on your forehead and he gave you a good one on the nose. Don’t stand there and put that stuff on me, Gary. I just can’t believe

you keep getting the best of these deals.”

Gary said, “I sure did, you know.”

Spencer said, “What’s going to happen one night is some little guy about five foot six”—which was around Spencer’s height- “is going to stuff a mudhole right in the middle of your face. Because that’s what happens. A guy doesn’t have to be seven feet tall to be mean.”

“I’m Gary Gilmore,” Gilmore said, “and they can’t hurt me.”

In the evening, driving around with Nicole and Sunny and body, he stopped at V.J. Motors to talk to Val Conlm about the Even got to take it out for an hour. Gary was that happy up behind the wheel with something like a real motor in front of them. All the while she could feel him thinking of the guns. They shining like $$$ in his eyes.

When he got back, he talked to Val about the size of a payment. Nicole was hardly listening. It was bering to sit in showroom with all the freaks and deadbeats who were waiting to some piece of a car. One girl was wearing a turban and had a swipe of eyeshadow under each eye, and her blouse just about ing out of her belt. She said to Nicole, “You have very beautiful “Thank you,” said Nicole.

“Jesus,” said Harper, “this time, he is really hot.”

“I don’t give a shit,” said Val, and walked through the people sit-ring around with their debts on different cars. Yeah, I’m right on top of the mountain, thought Val, and went outside and said to Gary, “What’s the matter?”

“This son of a bitch,” said Gary, “this goddamn car.”

“Well, now, hold it. Let’s get some jumper cables, we’ll get it started,” and, of course Val did, just needed the boost, and Gary took off in a spray of gravel like he had a switch to his hind end.

By the following night, Gary had a guy who would sell the guns. But they had to meet him. That meant carrying the guns in the car. Gary didn’t have a license and her Mustang still had last year’s hcense plates. Both cars had the crappy kind of look a State Trooper would pull over for nothing. So they had quite an argument before they finally put the pistols in her trunk and started out. They brought the kids along. The kids might be insurance against a State Trooper waving them over for too little.

On the other hand, Sunny and Jeremy made her awfully aware of his driving tonight. That definitely got Nicole nervous. He finally swung into the Long Horn Cafe, a taco joint between Orem and Pleasant Grove, to make a phone call. Only he couldn’t get ahold of the guy who was to peddle the guns. Gary was getting more and more upset. It looked like the evening was going to get totally squandered. A sweet early summer night.

He came back out of the Long Horn and looked in the car for another phone number, then started tearing pages out of the book.

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THE EXECUTIONER’S SONG

By the time he finally found the number, his guy was out. Sunny and Jeremy were beginning to make a lot of noise. Next thing she knew, Gary spun out of the Long Horn and headed back toward Orem. He was going 8o. She was petrified for the kids. Told him to pull over.

He slammed to the shoulder. A screeching halt. He turned around, and started spanking the kids. They hadn’t even been mak ing a sound the last minute. Too scared of the speed.

She started hitting Gary right there, hit him with her fists as hard as she could, hollered for him to let her out of the car. He grabbed her hands to hold her down, and then the kids started screaming. Gary wouldn’t let her out. Then this really dumb-looking guy walked by. She must have sounded as if Gary was killing her, but the fucker just stopped and said, “Anything wrong?” Then walked

on.

Nicole wouldn’t stop hollering. Gary finally wedged her into the space between the bucket seats and got his hand over her mouth. She was trying not to pass out. He had his other hand on her throat to hold her down. She Couldn’t breathe. He told her then that he would let her go if she promised to be quiet and go home. Nicole mumbled, Okay. It was the best she could get out. The moment he let go, she started yelling. When his hand came back to her mouth, she bit real hard into the flesh near his thumb. Tasted the blood.

Somehow, she didn’t know how, she got out of the car. She couldn’t remember later if he let her go, or if she just got away. Maybe he let her go. She ran across the street to the middle of the highway divider, a kid in each hand, and started walking. She would hitchhike.

Gary began to follow on foot. At first he let her try to bum a ride, but a car almost stopped for her, and so Gary tried to pull her back to ,the Mustang. She wouldn’t budge. He got smart and tried to yank one of the kids away. She wouldn’t let loose, hung on with all she had. Between them, it must have been stretching the kids. Finally a pickup truck pulled over and a couple of guys came over with a chick.

The girl happened to be an old friend Nicole hadn’t seen in a year. Pepper, her first girl friend ever. Yet, Nicole couldn’t even think of the last name, she was that upset.

Gary said, “Get out of here, this is a family matter.” Pepper looked at Gary, just as tall as she could be, and said, “We know Nicole, and you ain’t family.” That was all of it. Gary let go and walked up the street toward her car. Nicole got the kids into the truck with Pepper, and they took off. The moment she remembered how once she had wanted everything to be good for Gary, she started crying. Nicole couldn’t help it. She cried a lot.

He got back into her Mustang, drove down to Grand Central Super market, picked up a tape deck off the shelf, and started to walk out. At the door, a security guard took one look at his black eye and asked for a receipt.

“Get fucked,” said Gary and threw the carton into the guard’s arms. Then he ran to the parking lot, jumped in Nicole’s car, backed up, and slammed into a car behind him. He careened out of the space he was in, banged another car, and took off.

He zipped through Provo and got out on the back highway to Springville. There he stopped at The Whip. In the parking lot, he hid the pistol boxes under an oil drum, entered the bar, went to the men’s room, put Nicole’s car keys in the tank over the toilet, and came out to have a beer. While he waited, he called Gary Weston to come and pick him up.

Sirens came along the highway and wound down outside the door of The Whip. Two cops came in, and wanted to know who Owned the blue Mustang. They asked everybody. Took down the name on every I.D. The revolving lights of their car kept flaring through the window of the bar. After they took off, Gary left with Gary Weston. Nicole’s car, however, stayed behind. The cops had im pounded it.