The Executioner's Song (25 page)

By the time she got in, Gary was already back from work and looking at the motor of his car. She sat down on the front step. There was a silence between them you could push.

He finally asked her what she’d been doing. I, Nicole said, have been sitting on my ass over at my mother’s. I didn’t have enough gas to come back, so I had to stay there all the goddamn day. “Yes,” she told him, “I’ve been sitting on my ass.” Well, he told her, something feels different in the house than when I left this morning. Were you back here today?

Yeah, I got back here today, she answered. I thought you were sitting on your ass over at your mother’s all day, he said. She gave a smile and said, That’s exactly what I said.

Gary walked over from the car, looking as casual as if he was going into the house, and when he passed, he slapped her front-handed across the face. Pretty sneaky. Her head was ringing like an alarm clock.

Nicole felt like she deserved it. Rudeness that came out of nowhere was something he couldn’t handle. Still, this was the second time he had hit her. She could feel a lot of ugliness beginning to collect in her.

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Next day, she was able to let some of it out. Since she didn’t always have money for diapers, or laundry soap, and there wasn’t always clean underwear, she liked to let the kids play naked in the summer. Some of the neighbors must have gotten uptight.

On this day, while Jeremy was on the grass of somebody’s lawn, and the rest of the kids were sitting on the edge of the ditch between the sidewalk and the street, their feet in the water, a cop car up and hollered something. Nicole couldn’t believe what she seeing. The cop drove no faster than a walking pace right up to house, and came to her door, and started laying down some lievable shit, like you know, your kids are in danger of their playing in the ditch down there. Your little boy could drown. said, “Mister, you don’t know what you’re talking about. My little wasn’t anywhere near that water. He doesn’t have one drop on body.” He didn’t.

The cop started to say the neighbors had been phoning in plaints about her not taking proper care of the kids. “Get erty,” said Nicole, “get your fucking ass down the road.”

She knew she could say anything so long as she stayed in house. The cop stood outside making threats about welfare, and shut the door in his face. He hollered, I better not see those kids side. She swung the door open again.

Nicole said, “Those kids are going to play outside all the

day, and you better not touch them, or I’ll shoot you.”

damn

The cop looked at her. He had an expression like, “Now

I do?” In the middle of her anger, she could see his side —it such a crazy situation for a cop. Threatened by a lady. Then closed the door, and he drove off, and Gary got up from bed. hot days the bed had been moved up right by the living-room dow.

Suddenly she realized what those last couple of minutes have done to him. She had completely forgotten about the guns. sight of that cop stopping at their house was going to add up to a more beer and Fiorinal.

Next morning, he was over at Kathryne’s house. She thought he was real abrupt. “Come outside,” he said. Kathryne felt scared. “Can’t you tell me here?” “No,” he said, “outside.”

She didn’t like the way he was acting, but it was daylight. So she went out and Gary said, “I’ve got something in my car I want to leave here for a little while,” and he went over to the Mustang and took a diaper bag out of the trunk and moved it over to the back of her car. Kathryne said, “What have you got, Gary?” and he answered, “Guns.”

“Guns?” she said. “Yes,” he said, “guns.” She asked where he got them. “Where do you think? I stole them.” Kathryne just said, “Oh.” Right there on the back deck of her car he started bringing them out for examination. “I’d like,” said Gary, “to leave them here.” “My God, Gary,” said Kathryne, “I don’t think you better. I can’t keep them here.”

“I’ll be back,” Gary said, “when I get off work. I just want to leave them in a safe place for a little while.”

She couldn’t believe the way he had set them out on the trunk of the car. If any of the neighbors looked through the window, they wouldn’t believe what they were seeing.

Deliberately, he took each gun and described it to her like it was a rare beauty. One was a .357 Magnum this-or-that, another was a .22 Automatic Browning, then a Clan Weston .38 something-or-other.

Kathryne just said, “Gary, I don’t know much about guns.”

“How do you like this one?” he asked.

“Oh, they’re nice, they’re all nice, you know.” She said, “What are you going to do with them, Gary?”

“A couple of dudes are going to buy them,” he said.

By now, all the guns were unwrapped. He said, “I gave Nicole one to protect herself. Pretty little over-and-under Derringer. I .want you to have this one.”

“I don’t need it, Gary. I really don’t want it.”

“I want you to,” he said. “You’re Nicole’s mother.”

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“God, Gary,” said Kathryne, “I’ve already got a gun.”

“Well,” he said, “I want you to have this Special. It’s just not safe for two women living out here alone like you and your sister.”

She tried to explain that she already had her husband’s Magnum. But Gary said, “That’s too big a gun. You shouldn’t even attempt to shoot it.”

Now he laid the guns in her car trunk. Kathryne let him know that she definitely didn’t want to be driving around with them. So he said, “Let me leave them in the house.” Told her he’d return at five o’clock. Well, she declared, she wouldn’t be home then.

That was all right, he’d just come and get them. With that, carried the diaper bag into the house, and put the guns behind thei couch, all seven or eight of them. Then he wrapped the Special old cloth, and put it under her bedroom mattress.

That evening when she and Kathy got home, they ran to behind the couch and yes, the guns were gone.

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Next, he wanted to stop off and see Craig Taylor. That was the dumbest. Craig’s wife, Julie, was in the hospital. Now Nicole’s kids and the Taylor kids were carrying on all over while Gary got to play chess with Craig. Whooped when he beat him.

Then Gary started to tee off on Val Conlin for making him wait on the truck. “I’ll wreck the place and a couple of his cars too,” he said. “I’m going to kick them windows in.” It was like opening a bottle that smelled awful

Craig just listened like an owl. He had the biggest shoulders she’d ever seen for a guy with an owl’s face. Never said anything. Just blinked.

Gary said he hated to watch TV. He especial/y hated the police shows. Nicole yawned.

As they were leaving, Gary asked Craig, “What do you think of

“Well, it seems like you’re trying,” said Craig. “Just have a few breaks and you’ll be all right.”

Going up from Craig’s to Kathryne’s, right on the long road to her mother’s house, dam if the Mustang didn’t stall again. Gary got so pissed he broke the windshield.

During the day, while Gary was at work, Barrett came by in his and Nicole drove up with him to the Canyon. Sunny the pickup and went out to play. Before they could even lght a his pants were off, hers were off— they were getting it on. She herself say, “Gary is crazy. We might end up dead.” Then she Jim, “If anything happens, I want you to know that I love you.” really did as she said it.

Gary came home in a sloppy old windbreaker with the

cut off. His pants were a mess, and he was half drunk. He told her go over with him to Val Conlin’s to examine the truck. She asked to get cleaned up first. She didn’t really want to be seen with him. looked like he slept out in the yard.

Simply reared back with his feet and kicked the windshield. It cracked.

That got the kids upset. Nicole didn’t say two words. She got out and helped him push the car to get it started. It still didn’t go. Then somebody came along to give them a shove. They drove in silence for a couple hundred yards.

For a week she had been trying to say that they could live in separate places and see each other time to time. Now, when it came to it, Gary spoke. “I’m taking you to your mother’s house,” he said, “I don’t want to ever see your face again.”

Gary kept talking to that man Conlin as if he had the was a real irritant.

He dropped her off with the kids as easily as going down to the grocery for a six-pack. She thought she’d be glad, but she wasn’t. It didn’t feel like it was over in the right way.

In twelve hours, Gary showed up at Kathryne’s house. Just ahead of lunch. He wanted her to come back. He was drunk even as he asked her. She said she wouldn’t. She said, I want to think about it awhile.

He didn’t want her to think. He wanted her to agree. Still, amazed her. He didn’t force a thing. After he left, though, she cided it had been too easy. By tomorrow he would be coming every few hours. So she called Barrett and asked if she could stay his pad. Nicole made it clear she didn’t want to hang in. wanted a bed for a couple of days.

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If she was going to disappear from Gary, there had to be places than Barrett’s. She went looking for an apartment. The day, Barrett found one in Springville. Hardly anybody knew the dress, and she made him swear to keep it secret.

Now she was living five miles from the house in Spanish Fork. Gary took the back highway to Provo instead of the Interstate, would pass two streets from her place.

Barrett wanted them to try one more time. One more trip mind. When she was young and used to read animal stories Kathryne had told her about reincarnation. Made it sound like a tale. That was when Nicole made the choice to come back as a white bird. Now she thought that if she didn’t straighten out the she lived with men, she was going to come back ugly and no would ever want to look at her.

Barrett had this tendency to think of himself as small. In fact, his mom and dad used to tell him that when he was born, he looked no bigger than a kitten you putin a shoebox. Now he was five-ten and might weigh i45, but he never had the habit of thinking of himself as other than small-sized and self-sufficient. Like a kitten. During the stretch when he had his first romance with Nicole, he remem bered spending one week all by himself in a yellow cell in the nuthouse. Painted pale yellow like a kid’s nursery, only it was a cell. He remembered taking his socks, rolling them up, and throwing them at the wall, throwing them and catching them. It was the only thing he had to do. He got along.

On the other hand, he wasn’t built for the heaviest punishment. Not with his long pointed nose and his fine pale brown hair, soft as a girl’s. His hair could pick up bad vibrations from a stranger he passed on the highway. So Barrett had some idea usually what to expect. That was just as well considering the horror right now on his hands of helping Nicole hide out from that old scroungy madman, Gary Gil more. Here was one love affair caught Barrett by surprise. He was horrified by Nicole’s bad taste. Only once before had he seen her ex hibit such real lack of judgment.

Barrett had been through everything with Nicole. Seen a lot of dudes come and go, studs, jocks, freaks, animals, characters you could almost call cripples, but they always had something. If they

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weren’t good looking, strong, well hung, then they had something you could relate to, some good trick. Barrett knew Nicole was a beau tiful person and really independent, and if you had the misery to be stuck in love with her like Barrett, then you had to live with who she would come up with next. Had to be there when she was ready to quit the guy.

Barrett wasn’t built for heavy encounters. That was part of his understanding of himself. Yet the bravest, heaviest things he’d done in his life happened because of Nicole. For example: helping her move out of Joe Bob’s house was scary. All those hours with a bor rowed truck outside-why, Joe Bob could have come back from work to check on her. Barrett had a gun that day, but Joe Bob was heavy enough to walk through a gun.

Yes, all those hours moving her furniture (which was Barrett’s furniture when they had lived together) was some of the tightest time Barrett ever put in, but he got her away, every last lamp shade, and Sunny and Jeremy up in the front seat with them, yes, saved Nicole’s buns one more time, and she even went back to living with him when he found the house in Spanish Fork.

He had been working then. Concrete pumping. Had been look ing for an occupation to get him out of dealing. Thought concrete pumping might be it, but found it a hard attitude to keep loyal to. Straight people only had to take one look at him and his flowing pie threads, suede buckskin-style jacket with fringe, long hair, mustache, and they would categorize him right at the bottom. It hard to drive somebody else’s truck, and get paid a couple while making the other fellow a couple of hundred bucks. always got Barrett down. Dealing, you were your own businessman least.

Still, he had been trying to make a straight living and prove point to Nicole. Driving from Spanish Fork and working at pumping in American Fork, he was thereby damn well from one end of Utah County to the other, close to 6o miles a Commuting in morning traffic was as straight as you could get. was the point he wished to make. But Nicole and him

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hassling about all the things in the past. Her sexual relations with other men bothered him. Couldn’t get them out of his head.