The Executioner's Song (62 page)

There were also the prisoners. Some looked like the downtrodden, to say the least. They were simpleminded, or misshapen in body or posture, furtive, or stolid, or cowed, or stupid. They were men who looked like they had grown up in barnyards and had the logic of louts.

Then there were men who carried themselves as if they were true figures of interest. They looked as ff they belonged to an exclu-

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sive society. They would have a little smile on their faces as if they knew more about life, living, and the world, than the people who came to visit. They were usually lithe in appearance or downright powerful. Moved with the skill of tightrope walkers. They were arm-gant as hell in the mocking way they had of looking at visitors and tourists. It was as if they were accustomed to being looked at, and were worth being looked at. They would keep such expressions on their faces until they sat down with their visitors. Then other looks might appear. Half an hour later, one could see vulnerability, or tenderness, or just plain misery.

Later, when she got to know Gary better, he explained carefully that there were two kinds of prisoners: inmates and convicts. The way he said it indicated that the second category was the superior one and he belonged to it. Grace would have put him there herself. He wore his clothes that way. Very neat in his pale blue shirt and light blue prison dungarees. Convicts, as opposed to inmates, wore their shirts as if they were tailored. After a while, the difference in the two groups was apparent. She could compare it to a high school where all the class leaders, athletes, and attractive kids always formed an in-group. Then there was the general population.

Gary, however, was never arrogant around his mother. He would talk to her with great seriousness. They would be so deep in their conversation that Grace would look around the room so as not to be too much on top of them. Then Bessie or Gary would say something funny. They would both laugh in absolute merriment. They laughed an awful lot in that visiting room.

He always devoted a few minutes to Grace. He would be gentle in his talk, but with a touch of irony. Would always want to know which Spock Grace had met in her thoughts this week, and then they would talk about spooks. He would also ask Grace’s opinion of the books he was reading, The one he liked most was The Ginger Man by J. P. Donleavy. Once she bought Gary a subscription to Art Today. She thought his pictures of children were worthy of superlatives.

The only time she saw him get angry was on the day Bessie told him she had definitely lost the house. He was so angry at the Mormon Church that even the recollection of his wrath years later made

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Grace think, “I’ll bet a nickel he knew those boys were Mormon before he killed them.”

He would also ask how Mikal was getting along in college. Mikal the Mysterious, he would call him, because he never came to visit. Grace could hear him say, “I just don’t know Gary,” and that was true, considering that Mikal had only been four years old when his brother went to Reform School. Grace also thought Mikars long hair might have something to do with it. He would be uncomfortable in that visiting room under the eyes of. the convicts.

At such times, Bessie would divert Gary with funny stories of his father. It was impossible not to recognize that the father and son never got along, but now, somehow, it was funny stories about Frank Sr. that would make Gary laugh the most.

Frank had been bragging of the somersault he used to do off the top of some piled-up chairs into the orchestra pit, and once in Denver, Frank decided to show her. Bess told him she didn’t think he should try it. He was too drunk. “I’ve done this all my life,” he told her, “I know how.” He got up, and the chairs fell, and he knocked the wind out of himself so badly she thought he was dead. “I kept ting to give him mouth-to-mouth whatever-youcall-it.”

Or the time with the sheep. Gaylen had a black sheep, and Mikal cried, “I want one.” What Mikal wanted, Mikal got. “Sure, sure,” she said, “sheep, horse, cow, whatever, get it for the kid.” Frank came back from the stockyards with a white sheep who had a black face and pulled it out of the back of the station wagon. Bess was angry. She didn’t like animals, and the back of the car would have to be cleaned. That damned sheep.

The lady next door had three yapping dogs. As Frank came around the corner, the sheep turned unmanageable. All the boys began to scream, “Help Father get the sheep in the pen.” It went on for a half hour. Bess stayed up on the porch. She cried out, “Twist his

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tail, Frank, and he will go right ahead of you,” but Frank couldn’t hear what she was saying, and told Gaylen, “Kick the damned thing in the ass.” Gaylen would go to launch his foot, the sheep would turn around and get kicked in the face. Frank would say, “Don’t you know the goddamn face from the butt?”

All at once the animal turned. Frank got his foot caught in the rope, fell, and the sheep began to drag him. That sheep laid a slide of green diarrhea, while Frank was pulled across the lawn, the sidewalk, and the gravel in the shoulder of the road. Before they got Frank up, he had one sore bottom. “Look at me,” he said, brushing himself, “grass all over.”

“Frank,” Bessie said, “it isn’t grass.”

Between her sobs of laughter, she would say, “That was the one funniest thing I ever watched.”

“Remember,” said Gary, “how Dad was the worst driver in the world?” He turned to Grace. “My father caused more wrecks. When people would start honking at him, he’d put his thumb to his nose. Or he’d let go of the steering wheel and wiggle all of his fingers next to his ears like Bullwinkle the Moose. They’d go crazy till he put his hands back on the wheel. We kids used to think he was hot stuff. We’d wiggle our fingers at the other cars, too.”

After the laughter, in all the thought that followed on memories, Gary said, “I wish Dad was still alive. He would have gotten me out of here years ago.”

“I know that, Gary,” Bessie said, “but I can’t get you out. I don’t have the money and the know-how. I don’t have the bearing your father had.”

“Well,” said Gary, “I have laid awake a lot of nights wishing my dad was still here.”

“They were two bulls locking horns,” Bessie said to Grace on the way home, “but, Gary is right. His dad would never have let him stay in prison. Frank would have known the people to see and what to say. I just grew up on a stupid farm back in stupid Utah. All I ever knew was cows, pigs, chickens, goats, horses, and sheep, so I’m no use to Gary.” She sighed. “I just wish Frank had gotten closer to that boy while he was living.”

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They would take the drive forward and back, forty miles each way, every other Sunday, and the echoes of the past would reverberate like the slamming of the steel doors. Bessie had a fund of stories and passed them out like confections. It was as if she naturally preferred tasty little stories to the depth of those echoes that came up from the past.

She explained to Grace how she and Frank had been traveling through Texas by bus when Gary was born on an overnight stop at the Burleson Hotel in McCamey. They couldn’t move until he was six

weeks old. Enough to make him think of himself as a Texan forever. “Did you like to travel with two babies?” asked Grace.

No, she didn’t, but her attitude remained: she would love Frank as he was. Not .try to change him. So they traveled. She kept waiting for trouble.

In Colorado, Frank got arrested for passing a bad check and was sentenced to three years. Bessie went back to Provo and waited. There was no money to go anywhere else.

She thought it was the end of everything. Her family was not friendly. She had been away a couple of years and came back with two kids and a husband in jail. But she waited. She never thought of another man. It was a long wait, but it wasn’t the end. Frank got out in eighteen months and took her to California and worked in a defense plant and then they traveled again. By the time the boys were six and seven and Gaylen was born, she managed to talk Frank into buying a house on the outskirts of Portland. That was a lot better than letting the boys sleep nights in bus depots and feast on hot dogs.

Frank started rewriting the Building Code digests of cities like Portland and Seattle and Tacoma. He would put them into clear language so that by buying his manual, people could understand how to build or renovate their house in accordance with the city codes. Then he sold advertising for the manuals. Over the years it got profitable. There was a time when Frank had checks rolling in every day.

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The boys went to Our Lady of Sorrows parochial school, and Gary thought he’d be a priest. Bess loved their house on Crystal Springs Boulevard. It was small but she did her best cooking and sewing there. Then Frank had to move to Salt Lake for a year. That was the time, she told Grace, when an apparition attached itself to Gary.

She blamed it on the house in which they lived. Even Frank agreed it was haunted, and he was not a man partial to such ideas; but one time they were in the bedroom feeding Mikal, who had just been born, and they could hear somebody talking and laughing in the kitchen. When they ran down, nobody was there.

Then a flood came, and the safety valve in the basement heater failed to turn off after the fire went out. Gas started bubbling up along the walls. Frank said, “That’s it, We’re getting out.” It was as if they saw a picture of themselves in the newspapers. Father, Mother, Four Sons Dead.

She had been happy to say goodbye to the house, but not to her neighbor, Mrs. Cohen, who was a sweet old lady. Bess met her because Mrs. Cohen’s bedroom window was right across from the boysl, and Gary would shoot his water pistol right through the window-pssst. Mrs. Cohen talked to him and said: Don’t you do this. I’m an old lady, and you shouldn’t be doing this. Finally, she said to her brother, Well, I’m going to tell his folks. Mrs. Cohen’s brother said, “They’re Gentiles. Stay away.” She said, “I’m going over.” When visited with the complaint, Frank said, “I can tell you, they will never do it again.” At that point, Mrs. Cohen made him promise he wouldn’t spank the boys. The kids fell in love with her for that, and Mrs. Cohen stayed over at their house for so long on this visit her brother came over. “He thought we’d killed her,” said Bess, “and put her in the basement. I said, ‘No, no, we’re too busy to kill people.’ Oh, I really liked that lady. She said, ‘I’ll never forget you. You’re my only Gentile friends.’ “

Frank was aecer good with the boys again, and Gary certainly changed, an later they would fight all the time.

Back in

came out of D°gtland’ Gary used profane language in abundance. It

Lira in a sulfurous streak. It sounded to Bessie as if some

foul and abo.hi#able demon was just walking out of his mouth. So she started afaOaflygame- “You won’t have to use such language,” she told the y, ,,ff you have a big vocabulary.”

One of te#l would open the dictionary and pick a word. Then another would give the meaning and spell it. Through the years they developed a lqoccledge of words to stump their teachers.

She was h lenient mother. If she promised they could go to the show on Satt

‘

:daY they got to go, even ff they had knocked the house

down. Their fther was the opposite. Tip over a glass of milk, that did

it. So they livl #nder two systems.

Of course, more than half of Frank’s business was in Seatde. He

would come bcg only every other weekend to fight with Gary:

w°nld,taI.t over nothing. Shut the door behind you, Frank wousavSy. ht it yourself, Gary would reply. They would be up and yelling. Yuh could cut the air with a knife. Bess knew the meaning of those wq[#.

Yet the first tine Gary got in trouble, Frank was there to bail him out. Hired a l],ate detective a couple Of times to prove that Gary

hadn’t done wlj3ess knew very well he had done. She spoiled Gary on his good side, snd Frank on the bad.

After Gary Was caught stealing a car, they put him in Reform School. Once a Month Bessie and Frank went to visit, and would picnic on the grak liacLaren didn’t seem any worse from the outside than a couple qt’ ,,rivate schools she’d seen on her travels, nice red tile roofs and el’ow stucco two-story buildings. A large green campus.

The day they left, Mrs. Cohen and she cried as they said goodbye, and Mrs. Cohen said, “You’re lucky not to stay in that house. It’s an evil house.”

He had be bad boy when he went in; he was a hard young man when he crng out. It was like a void had entered the house. His

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teachers reported that he had no interest in studying. Slept through the days,

At night, Bessie would ask him, “Where are you going?” “Out to find trouble,” Gary would reply, “find some trouble.”

Once or twice he came back badly beaten up. He had a very bad temper, and it screeched right at you. She just prayed he would learn to curb it. He got so scarred in his fights she couldn’t stand it. Came home one night at dawn and collapsed on the doorstep. His eye was almost out of his head. They had to take him to the hospital.

He was twenty years old before he came close to being actually violent with his father. By then Frank was too sick to pursue it. Bess had to ask Gary to leave the house for the night.

All through that visit, prisoners kept saying, “Steady, boy!” Gary kept trying to talk to Bessie and Grace, but his lips moved like a man with stones in his mouth, Grace could only think of getting Bessie out of there, but she would not leave until they saw an Assistant Warden.