The Executioner's Song (45 page)

She picked up on that bit by bit. There was a crazy system. Different from when she was here. They cal/ed it the program. A bunch of dudes were facing prison sentences, and were mixed in with real psychos and zombies. These kids, right out of prison and Reform School, had been put together with the true nuts, and they all wrote a constitution and had elections and a patient-run government.

Gary explained, right in that yellow room, with these four dudes monitoring Gary’s hand every time it touched her tit, he spoke out on this hospital system where the doctors let the patients control everything, why they could even elect their own President of all the patients. It was the hottest kind of horseshit. That was what the patients controlled. The horseshit.

Gary had always told her stories about prison, but now he got into the nitty-gritty. Spoke of the way prison was supposed to work. It Was a war. It was supposed to be a war. Convicts might do a job on

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other convicts, convicts might even kill other convicts, but they on the same side. They were against the guards. It was a.war there was nothing worse than a snitch.

The guards and the Warden did everything they could to an intelligence system. So they depended, for what they snitches. A snitch, said Gary, would even suck your cock and I run to the Warden with what you said. So the convicts did all could to wipe out such inmates. In a good prison where the had it down, there weren’t too many snitches. Prison, after’all, city where convicts lived, and had the real colatrol. Guards passed through for eight-hour shifts. That was the way it

work.

Here they had it inside out. There were no guards. Just a aides. The inmates supposedly had the power. But the inmates got elected to the posse became the new guards. They worked doctors. “They are in the throes of brainwash,” said Gary, the posse. She wanted to giggle at the way he told them their faces. “Self-seeking snitches,” he said. “Not a spark of them. Nobody looks at anybody. They just have agenda

He would say this while she sat on his lap, say it while he feeling her, and the four dudes were looking, boiling, hurting, what he said. Then he and she would just hold each other per and talk of other things. He would want to know how Peabody were getting along. He would speak of how sorry he that he used to yell at them and let them get on his nerves. In they were remarkable children. Right in front of the posse talked.

Then he would get mad again. The way they worked this tal, he said, was worse than student government. Everybody always taking everything up at a meeting. Committees for thing. A committee to sweep the hall. A committee to pick straws from the brooms of the fuck-up committee who swept thei Each committee ran around snitching on the other doing a bad job. A punk could go into a real prison, Gary and if he had balls, he could come out a convict. In this hospital, came in as convicts, and got released as punks. “This place I’ve never seen the like.” The posse listened.

After a few visits, Gary gave up riding them. It was as if the hour was too valuable for such talk. They would sit and hold hands and be silent. They would think of places they used to go to, and live in the breath that went back and forth. Sorrow would visit from one to the other. Not a flood of waters, not the way she would cry on Tom Dynamite’s naked shoulder for what she had done to Gary, or cry with Cliff because the high-school sweetheart he had married wouldn’t even let Cliff’s son talk to him now, no, sorrow lifted out of her heart and passed into Gary’s chest and returned with the breath of his sorrow. It was as if they stood on a ledge and sorrow was as light as all the air below the fall.

Then they would feel loving again and he would grope her until she wouldn’t have minded taking off a thing or two. Something new for the posse! Then, time up, feeling truly horny for Gary, she would get ready to go out in the street and start the long walk down to a part of town where she could hitch a ride.

Sometimes, the doctor who seemed to be the head guy around the ward, a fellow named Dr. Woods, would ask her into his office. He would talk about her feeling that she was to blame for Gary’s acts. Nicole would wonder if the posse had reported what she said to Gary. Anyway, Woods would try to tell her that she didn’t have to keep that thought in her head. Gary was a complex individual, and not the sort to say, I care for Nicole, so I’m going to kill somebody.

Nicole would listen. Dr. Woods had the power to say Gary was insane, and then they wouldn’t give him the death perralty. In fact, if Gary could get to a mental hospital, he might be able to escape. So she wasn’t going to insult the doctor. Still, he was the weirdest for a psychiatrist. He was tall and very well built, and looked like Robert Redford in Downhill Racer, except he was maybe better looking and maybe even bigger — he was one of the best-looking men Nicole had ever seen. Yet she thought he was kind of wimpy in his manner and never came down hard on one side or the other. She certainly felt funny talking to handsome Dr. Woods, when she was horny as hell from being with Gary and the posse.

She would leave John Woods’s office and hitch a ride, and the World that was outside Gary and herself would come slowly back to

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her, and she would feel a little less like a space ship, and begin think of supper for the kids, and annoyance that her car was on blink, and Barrett had not yet fixed it. Her problems would start ing again, and so by the time she got home, it would be truly weird find a letter from Gary.describing the very nuthouse she had seen him at. It was like waking up from a dream to answer a on the door but the knock came from the person you had just in the dream.

August A posse member’s supervising me because I have a pencil — broke it in half then tore the eraser out-I asked them what fuck that was for and they told me so that I wouldn’t stab an Unbelievable! …

Nicole, what the fuck kind of journey am I on?

Three nuts are having an argument outside my door because of them emptied my urinal an hour ago and forgot to chart it. first loony is accusing the second loony of gross negligence and liction of duty in his failure to properly chart on the log hanging side my door the time of day that he emptied my urinal. The loony is bouncing from foot to foot trying to get a word The second loony is becoming quite excited and is trying to me to settle this national disaster. I don’t know what the luck to but I’d hate to see this poor buffoon lose his T.V. privileges or thing — he’ s the same chap who sat so patiently outside my door other day while I wrote a letter-so I tell ‘em “Hey, it’s okay everything is really cool, this guy is on the ball. Didn’t spill a and brought that urinal back clean as a whistle!” Now they know what to say but it appears to have settled the They’re getting a pen to make the required chart entry.

Oh, Nicole, I’m so lonesome. I miss the life we had. I miss in the same bed with you, holding your pretty face in my ing into your charming alarming eyes. Coming home to you nite —how slowly the days went when I was at work!

God, Nicole! You’re the most important person in the world.

I remember one time when we were fucking and we were bucking up against each other. Hard. Wild. How I’d love to do

SILENT DAYS
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August 14 The drinking fountain is across from my cell and it is really

funny the way some of these guys drink water. This one dude sucks up the water for 2 or 3 minutes at a time! He ‘bout got in a fight cause of it yesterday — this other cat got impatient, pushed him and said, “You don’t need to drink so long.” Another dude really slurps, I’ve never heard anything like it, he sounds like a sump pump. A truly startling noise.

What a bum life.

There’s a one man band parading up and down the hall making strange tuneless lip farts.

August 17 Man, I’m sitting here really feeling like an idiot! It’s about 7:3°

in the morning. I missed a nice opportunity yesterday, didn’t I? Would you believe that it just now became clear to me? I missed a swell chance to touch you on your sweet little cunt. You said something like ‘you won’t get another chance’ but I didn’t quite hear you, like I sometimes don’t. Now this morning it fell into place-the fucking posse had momentarily turned their heads and I just sat there like a bump on a log. God, Baby, my mind was elsewhere… I’m really kicking myself in the ass right now. I’m so dumb.

August i8 There’s a guy washing his face in the drinking fountain-I hope nobody sees him; I’m sure that must be some kind of offense. A couple women from the ladies side just came over to the office here asking for a plunger. This one dude told ‘em: “I got a plunger, pucker up.” I thought that was pretty cute.

August These are some of the most silent days I’ve ever spent.

August 2O What a bunch of punks. I’ll bet I could take any one of them posse punks and fuck him in the ass and then make him lick my dick clean.

I was interviewed by a couple of psychiatrists today. They wanted lurid details …

crazy.

THE SILVER SWORD

After the accident, early in August, Nicole’s car was a mess. First, would only go in one gear, then something slipped into place and she had all three forward gears operating, but reverse was Sometimes, none of the gears would shift. The clutch was

She had. stopped sleeping with Barrett about the time of this cident. Barrett never said a word but moved up to Wyoming, came back every week or so to the room he kept in Springville. in a while, he would drop around and ask if she needed any help. he had money, he sure wasn’t showing it, but one day he did offer fix the car. Considering she still wouldn’t go to bed with him couldn’t have been nicer about it. So she did give him something night.

Next day when she came back from visiting Gary, the car gone. Barrett had towed it away. His rooming house wasn’t that from her place in Springville, so she walked over, and there he working on the car in the back lot with friends. She kind of had helping get it up on the blocks. Then progress stopped. There something, the bell housing, or whatever he called it, that welded together from her driving it too hot. Then, after Barrett the transmission out, sitting on the ground, he discovered she a new main clutch plate. There was no money for that. It problem she could resolve, but she did not like to think about

Nicole went and saw Albert Johnson who was the manager of a food store in the area. He was about twice her age, just a pleasant-looking family man, and she used to shop at his store a couple of years ago and buy a couple of things she would pay for, while shop lifting with the other hand.

One day they stopped her out front. She was caught with a pound of margarine and some jars of baby food in her purse. When they brought her up to the office, she said she was stealing ‘cause her kids were hungry, but he let her think he was going to call the police, anyway. She sat and sweated it out, and got scared real good, began to cry. She had been picked up on something like that a year before in another store. This time she thought for sure they would send her away.

After fifteen minutes, however, of hearing her story, Johnson told her she was a nice young girl, with all kinds of bad breaks, and that she’d never had an opportunity really to climb the ladder. He was going to let her go. They got friendlier and he explained to her that his store might look like a shoplifter’s paradise because it was long and narrow with short aisles across, but the losses got so big, they had put a walkway up in the attic with one-way mirrors looking down. Tell her friends to beware.

He talked quite a bit. He noticed, he said, she was on food stamps, and he told her he wasn’t always that fond of such people. He thought food-stamp people were extravagant and didn’t shop the bargains. The guy that had to earn the dollar was going to look for the steak on sale, but kids like herself just picked up the $2.79 cut, and ate too many convenience foods, potato chips, soda pop. Then they’d get irate and damn the government if their welfare checks didn’t come in on time one week. He liked her, however, he said, and went out of his way to explain he had a daughter her age and could understand her problem. If she ever needed anything, let him know.

Next time she came into the store, he said he’d like to trade with her, you know? Said it in a nice way and told her how pretty she was, and that he really liked her. She joked back. “Nothing to trade this

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week,” she said. Then, after a while, she moved out of Pmvo Spanish Fork and rarely got to shop there.

Now, about a year later, she started seeing Albert Johnson He was the only store manager she knew who would give her for her food stamps. To get him to agree, she had had to tell about Gary and her new troubles but he sympathized enough to eighty bucks for that much worth of stamps. This time, however, was out and told him she just needed fifty. He gave it to her conditions. She heard herself saying that she didn’t like leaving unpaid.

Afterward, Johnson said he wished to Christ he hadn’t done to her. Begged her not to turn professional. She wasn’t that way. was a family man, and felt real bad.

She told him not to worry. It was only because she was car and needed wheels so desperately. It was really an story in her own ears, all that stuff about the transmission out, hitching to see Gary.

Albert Johnson hadn’t been bad to her, but it was an u ence. With all she had mentioned to Gary about her life, she never tell him about the store manager.

Anyway, she had the cash, fifty dollars. And gave it to He got in his car and went off to get the main clutch plate. She home. Next thing she learned Barrett had split for Must have been a week before he returned. Then she went look at her car, and he still hadn’t done a damned thing. Mustang was sitting wide open with the parts on the ground to rust, and the body on blocks like a corpse. She could feel angry Barrett was. So she did no more than leave word she’d there. Sure enough, three in the morning, he showed at her ment, stoned out of his head.