The Executioner's Song (43 page)

Those twins had been ten years younger than Bessie, and was her favorite. Bootie, Bess would call her. Little Bootie, like boots. Now she was married to a man with fists as large as

Maybe she couldn’t sing, but she was Queen of the Golden Gree Ball at church. There were fifteen girls ehgible from the ten or twelv families in Grandview Ward north of Provo, south of Orem, but Bes. she was chosen, and college students came out from Brigham’Young to teach them ballroom dancing. It was like a film.

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Bess never liked the movies, however. She would walk in her parents, and the picture would flicker over her eyes like a in a closet, except it was high up on the wall at the end of a long mal hall, and an organ was racing away in the dark. You had become a speed reader or you’d miss what the actors were saying, Being rushed gave her the shivers.

The darkness of the movies would remind her of the Ion Christmas when her sister Alta was killed after her horse bolted her sleigh hit a tree. They buried Alta with the snow deep on ground, and had to leave her up in the cemetery under the family never really did have another happy Christmas. kept coming into the celebration like memories out of the ground.

That was the worst Christmas, until she thought of the one

‘55 when Gary was away at MacLaren, and they tried to get nile authorities to let him home for a couple of days. First they they would, then he had an infraction and they wouldn’t. Since and Frank couldn’t get out to MacLaren Christmas Day because the other kids, there was Gary with nothing. On December 26 took over his gifts.

The only thing to ,be said for these present hours under the of the sun and the airless night of the trailer was that heat made her feel as alone as the winter damp. Winter was the when she felt so cold she had need of all the life she had lived. now at the age of 63, Bessie could feel old as 83 in the cold cemetery of all those feelings that had frozen in the middle of July the word that Gary had killed two boys. She kept seeing the face Mr. Bushnell whose face she did not know, but it did not matter, his head was covered with blood.

“Oh, Gary,” whispered the child that never ceased to live in remains of her operations and twisted joints, “Oh, Gary, how you?”

Yes, the memory of one’s life might be one’s best and only It was certainly the only touch to soothe those outraged bones would chafe in the flesh until they were a skeleton free of the

So she thought often of sweet evenings in the past and breezes along the hill on warm summer twilights, thought of how she loved Provo once, and could sit for hours looking at the beautiful peak she called Y Mountain because the first settlers had put down flat white stones on its flank to make a great big white “Ľ” for old Brigham young. Once, when she was a child, she was looking at Y Mountain and her father came over and Bess said, “Dad, I’m going to claim that for my very own,” and he said, “Well, honey, you’ve got just as much right as anyone else, I guess,” and walked off, and she thought, “He gave me his consent. That mountain belongs to me.” Sitting in the trailer, she said to the good friend who was her memory, “That mountain still belongs to me.”

Bessie studied dresses in the rotogravure before sewing her own, and went ballroom dancing at the Utahma Dance Hall in Provo when they brought orchestras in. She had a girl friend, Ruby Hills, and Ruby’s brother drove them in a Model A Ford. He drove carefully. The roads had ruts as deep as the cracks in a rock.

She had girl friends whose names after marriage would become Afton Davies Atkins and Eva Daball Brickey. Bess dated a boy who went to Brigham Young and gave every promise of being the big boat to catch, but she couldn’t stand him. Bess was interested in whatever else it was.

Others saw her as restless. She was on her way. She went hitchhiking with girl friends to Salt Lake City and beyond. She went hitching, at last, to California. She would go and work awhile and then come back. Her parents did not ask that many questions, there were so many gifts. You were raised to know what was right, and then free to do wrong. Since you were a Mormon, you had been taught exactly how to act, but Christ gave you free will to work out your destiny. Bess would do what she wanted to do, and she left home more and more.

Those were years that belonged to her, and she would never tell anybody about them. It irked her that she became the subject of gos-

sip in Grandview Ward, where they would talk of how she from long trips with fine dresses and jewelry. It gave her no that most of those fine dresses had been cut and sewed by Brown herself, and ff she had a little jewelry, it was on the of her fine fingers that could model rings. So she told them.

She was in love with a man, and lived in Salt Lake because lived there, and did housework for an old lady who kept a house, and lived in a small hotel room by herself. When the love fair was over, she didn’t date. It was a year when she lived alone was still too young to suffer from being alone. She rather liked it.

She had a friend named Ava Rodgers who drank too much lived around, and was staying with a man she called Daddy. sold ads for Utah Magazine for $ioo a page and got 25percent mission. Ava was very much in love with him, she said. He something that sure got women.

“Daddy bought me a new typewriter today,” Ava told and invited her to their room. Bessie didn’t drink- “one of she would always say — but Ava had a couple of beers while ing for Daddy. Then she tried to pick up the and bounced on the floor, and of course it broke. A brand-new writer. This happened just as Daddy walked in. He was not tall, he was rugged, and he wore spats. He sure had confidence, and sure had a temper. Poor Ava. It was not her typewriter, Bess learned. Just another lie, just another sob. Daddy had a look on face like Ava had ninety-five items on her unpaid bill, and this the ninety-sixth. “Pack your things, and get out,” he said.

The next time Bess met Daddy was on the street and his she learned, was Frank Gilmore. “I’m getting married tomorrow. said.

“Congratulations,” she said.

When she saw him next in the street, she asked, “How’s life?”

“It’s over with,” he said.

She liked him. He was worldly-wise, and she was just a erette. He always knew where he was going. They could shop

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dime store or an expensive place, they could even have stood in a soup line, what with it being ‘37, but she felt comfortable. Even felt comfortable when she was yelling at him.

He was a very factual man and tough. He told her he had been a lion tamer and had scars on his face. Had been an acrobat and a tightrope walker, he said, and had a limp. Once, in vaudeville, he told her, he had been so drunk while doing his act that he fell into the orchestra pit from a height. Broke his ankle. Now he was in his late forties, and had gray hair but he” still had a look that seemed to assume every woman he met was carrying his mattress on her back. Betty loved the way women were attracted. First man she ever wanted to chase.

She never knew that he really proposed to her. One day they were walking out of a movie, and he said, “Let’s get married.” To get down on his knees would have killed him. He would have died right there. So he asked her coming out of Captains Courageous.

He was sober, too. The kind of man who stayed that way until he decided to take a drink. Then he went on until petrified. A few years later, in their travels, he would get kicked out of a hotel or two.

For their wedding, they decided to hit Sacramento. It turned out he had a mother lived there who had been in show business all her life.

When Betty asked what his father did, Frank also said show business.

Before they left Salt Lake, they stopped in Provo to see her folks. Having seven girls, her mother and dad weren’t going to sit down and cry when they heard the news. On to Sacramento.

Frank hadn’t told anything about his mother being beautiful. Betty was surprised. Fay had a scintillating smile. She was petite, her hair was white, and her eyes were so blue you couldn’t believe it. Her skin was flawless. Her teeth were to perfection. She had no wrinkles.

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Even at her advanced age, which must have been close to 70, she acted like a most regal queen.

Her stage name had been Baby Fay. Now she was a medium and rarely left her bed. Just lived in it, in the big bedroom of a big house in Sacramento, and ordered people around. She would them like she was waving a wand. Never tried it with Betty,

All the same, Fay could carry things off. She let it drop that she was connected by blood to a very large and royal family in France, S, The Bourbons. “When you have children,” Fay said, “the royal of France will flow in their veins.”

Fay’s maiden name was another matter. Betty never learned its’. She had been in vaudeville around the turn of the century and when she hadn’t used Baby Fay, she was Fay La Foe. That was it. Miss Foe didn’t tell you what she didn’t want to.

Maybe once a week, Fay would give a seance. Sometimes people would gather in chairs around her bed, and pay $5 apiece, Betty didn’t go. She didn’t want to get too near such things. For matter, you cou.ld be talking to Fay, and there would be a knock the wall, or a thump on the ceiling. At night, Betty could feel ences walking over her bed. When they were married by Fay had a clergyman’s license and was called a Spiritualist) Betty wondered which spirits were in and around Fay’s bed.

She and Frank began to travel. At the time she met him, had lived in Salt Lake for more than a year, but that wasn’t

He liked to go state to state selling space in special magazines. were as-yet-unpublished magazines that often did not get

He had different names. Seville and Sullivan and Kaufman Coffman and Gilmore and La Foe. Once he told her that his name was Weiss and he was Jewish on that side although he thou of himself a a Catholic since Fay had put him in Catholic and brought him up that way. Nonetheless, he had a Jewish wife Alabama, and wives in other places. They were named Dolly and and Babs and Millie and Barbara and Jacqueline and there was who had been a famous opera singer. So far as Betty knew, he divorced from them all.

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But he sure had been in show business. Theatre people recognized him everywhere. They had free theatre tickets everywhere they traveled. One day they even drove across Salt Lake City. Never stopped. Just a quick minute across the wide, wide, forever wide streets. They must have traveled over the years through every state but Maine and New York. Stayed in hotels with names like Carillo Hotel and Semoh Hotel, Semoh for Homes spelled backwards. He had several birth certificates, but she never asked why they lived that way. He would have said, “If I thought it was any of your business, I would have told you years ago.” Still, she was probably as strange to him as he was to her. She had been raised so root straight down that they never understood each other. No matter. She never tried. She thought you had to love people as they were. If you could change them, you would probably leave them anyway.

Frank drove a big car. Always put his short burly body in clothes where everything was big and loose and comfortable. If he didn’t use suspenders, his pants were sure to hit the floor. She thought he looked like Glenn Ford. Years later, considering how chewed up his face had been by the lions, she decided he looked more like Charles Bronson. Short of the devil, he was certainly afraid of no one.

He also spoke the Jewish language. Had a knack for making friends with Jewish people. Spoke their language. He could Jew them down and they loved it. One time Betty was in this place and bought something expensive. When Frank found out what it cost, he said, “You mean he charged you the full price? …. Well, of course.” Took Betty over to the owner and the Jevcish man apologized because he didn’t know Betty was Frank’s wife,

That visit where Fay married them was the first Frank had seen of his mother in twenty years. Now, he and Betty would go back to Sacramento once in a while. On such trips, Betty couldn’t help noticing how often Frank and Fay got to talking about Houdini. He was a favorite topic. They sure hated the man, and could get their blood up calling him ugly names. He had been dead for more than ten years,

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but they labeled Houdini a pip-squeak and a cheap tramp. It didn’t upset Betty. She had never enjoyed reading about Houdini in the newspapers anyway. In fact, when Houdini had pulled his favorite stunt of escaping from a sealed casket underwater while wearing handcqffs and chains, it had given Betty an uncomfortable, even a frightening feeling.

Fay and Frank talked about the man, however, like they knew

him intimately. Listening to their conversation, Betty had to conclude

that Houdini had given Fay the money to send Frank to private

school. Then she remembered that Houdini was killed by a boy who

hit him in the stomach with a baseball bat, and Frank had told her

that his Jewish father, whose name was Weiss, had been killed by a

blow to the belly. Then she learned that Houdini’s original name was

Weiss, and he was Jewish too.

;

By then, Fay didn’t bother to conceal it. Frank was out

lock, of course. Before Fay died, she showed Betty where a lot papers were locked in her desk, and said they would prove Frank’s parentage. Of course, she didn’t take them out and show them. told Betty to be sure to be around her deathbed. “I don’t want any: body else to get them,” Fay said mysteriously.