The Executioner's Song (8 page)

Court had about eighty people on parole or probation, and he got to see thirty or forty a week, each for five to fifteen minutes. It meant you had to take chances. He had taken one yesterday by gambling that Gilmore would come back on his own from Idaho.

On the other hand, if he had been kept in jail in Idaho, Court would have had to refer him to the Oregon authorities, which is where his parole originated. It would have been difficult in the ex treme to find any members of the Oregon Parole Commission on Sunday afternoon. In fact, it might even take a few days before they

THE FIRST MONTH
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could meet to decide on Gilmore’s violation. Gary would be sitting in a Twin Falls jail aJ1 that time. Right there, a lawyer could spring him on a Writ of Habeas Corpus, and Gilmore could take off. The more he was realy in trouble, the more he’d look to get himself lost real fast. Whereas, GiLmore, coming back on his own, would be fortifying the positive side of himself. He would know Court had been right to trust him. That would give a base on which to work. The idea was to get a man into some kind of positive relationship with authority. Then he might begin to change.

Court had been a Mormon missionary in New Zealand and he was a believer in the power of authority to be a change-agent, that is, be able to effect a few real changes in people’s personalities. Of course, a person had to be willing to accept authority, whether it was Scripture, the Book of Mormon, or in his case, just accept the fact that he, Mont Court, a probation officer, was neither a hardnose, nor superheat, but a man willing to talk openly and take a reasonable chance on you, He was there to help, not to rush a man back to an overcrowded prison for the first minor infraction.

Of course, he laid it out. Gilmore had certainly been in violation of his parole agreement. Any more violations would jeopardize his parole. Gilmore nodded, Gilmore listened politely. He was looking old. They were about the same age, but Gilmore, Court was thinking,

• looked much older. On the •other hand, if you put up a profile of what

an artist of 35 might look like, Gthnore could fit that physical Profile.

Court had seen some of his artistic work. Before he met him, Brenda had shown Mont Court a couple of Gary’s drawings and Paintings. The prison information he was receiving from Oregon made it clear that Gilmore was a violent person, yet in these Paintings Court was able to see a part of the man simply not reflected in the Prison record. Mont Court saw tenderness. He thought, Gilmore can’t be a evil, all bad. There’s somethingthat’s salvageable.

After the session with Mont Court, Gary decided to talk to Spencer McGrath about a new job. Brenda took him out to Lindon for the meeting, and took a liking to McGrath. He was really okay, she thought, just a little guy with rough features, a dark mustache, and a

down-to-earth manner, who you could think was a plumber when

you first looked at him. The kind who would walk around and say to

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his people, “Okay: guys, let’s get this done.” She thought he was ter rific even ff he was short.

A couple of days back, Gary had been to see a man with a sign-painting company but had been offered only $I.5o an hour. When Gary said that wasn’t even minimum wage, the man replied, “What do you expect? You’re an ex-con.” Spencer agreed it wasn’t fair. If Gary was doing the same work as somebody else, he should be paid the same money.

It turned out, however, that Gary did not have much experience applicable here. He was good at painting but they didn’t do much sign-painting, just covered machinery with a paint gun. “Still,” said Spencer, “you impress me as intelligent. I figure you can learn.” He would put Gary on at $3.5o an hour. The government had a program for ex-cons and would pay half of this salary. Next day, he would start. Eight to five with breaks for coffee and lunch.

It was seven miles and more from Vern’s home in Provo to the shop in Lindon, seven miles along State Street with all the one-story buildings, The first morning Vern drove him there. After that, Gary left at 6 to be sure of getting to work by 8 A.M. in case he wasn’t able to find a hitch. Once, after catching a ride right off, he came in at 6:30, an hour and a half early. Other times it was not so fast. Once, a dawn cloudburst came in off the mountains, and he had to walk in the rain. At night he would often trudge home without a ride. It was a lot of traveling to get to a shop that was hardly more than a big shed with nothing to see but trucks and heavy equipment parked all over a muddy yard.

He was real quiet those first few days on the job. It was obvious he didn’t know what to do. If they gave him a board to plane, he just waited after he cleaned it off. They had to tell him to turn the plank over and plane the other side. One time the foreman, Craig Taylor, a medium-size fellow with big arms and shoulders, discovered that Gary had been working an electric drill for fifteen minutes with no results. Couldn’t get the hole started.

Craig told him he had been running the drill on reverse. Gary shrugged, “I didn’t know these things had a reverse,” he said.

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So the word Spence McGrath got about him was that he was all right, but knew no more than a kid out of high school. Polygrinders and sanders and paint guns all had to be explained. He was also a loner. Brought his lunch in a brown paper bag and took it himself the first few days. Just sat on a piece of machinery off to the side and ate the food in all the presence of his own thoughts. Nobody knew what he was thinking.

Night was different. Gary was out just about every night.

Rikki was getting a little in awe of him. He knew be didn’t want to mess with Gary. At the poker game, Gary told them about the Idaho fellow he left in a hospital after a fight.

Now, Gary also told everybody about this black dude he killed in jail who had been trying to make a nice white kid his punk. The kid asked Gary for help, so he and another buddy got ahold of some pipes. They had to. The convict they were taking on was a bad nigger, and had been a professional fighter, but they caught him on a stairway and beat him half to death with the pipes: Then they put him in his cell and stabbed him with a homemade knife 57 times.

Rikki thought the story was talk. By telling it to everybody, Gary was just trying to make himself look big. Still, that didn’t leave Rikki feeling comfortable. Any fellow that wanted to live on such a story couldback. hardly back down if he started to lean on you, and you pushed

There were times Gary seemed almost simple, however. Run ning after the girls in Rikki’s GTO, Gary sure hadn’t learned much. Rikki kept trying to explain how you talk to girls, soft and easy like Sterling Baker, instead of big and mean, but Gary said he wouldn’t play those games. It wasn’t no trick for Rikki to get a couple of girls to pull over and talk awhile, but Gary was sure to scare them off.

One night, Rikki started idling next to a pickup with three girls. The truck was on Rikki’s left and he just talked through the open

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window until they could feel he was all right and good looking enough. Then the girls cut down a dark street, and he followed and parked behind. The girl driving came over to talk to Gary, and Rikki got out and walked up to their truck. He was talking nice to the other two girls about moving over to their place for a party, but not a couple of minutes gone, the driver came back looking scared. She said, “You ought to do something with that guy you’ve got along.” She got into her truck fast and took off.

“What happened?”

“Well, I came right out and asked her for it, said, ‘It’s been a long time and I’d like some right now!’” Gilmore shook his head. “I’ve had enough. Why don’t we just grab a couple of bitches and rape them?”

Rikki chose his words carefully. “Gary, that’s something I just couldn’t go for.”

They drove around until Gary said he knew a girl named Margie Quinn. “Real nice.” Now, he wanted to go to her place, only to her place. She lived on the second floor of a two-story building with sev eral apartments on each landing. Looked like a small motel.

Gary pounded on her door for ten minutes. Finally, Marge’s sis ter came to answer. She opened just a crack, and whispered, “Marge has gone to bed.”

“Tell her I’m here.”

“She’s gone to bed.”

“Just tell her I’m here, and she’ll get up.” “She needs her sleep.” The door closed. “Cunt,” Gary shouted.

Then he got mad. On the way down the stairs, said to Rikki, “Let’s tip her car.”

Rikki was pretty drunk himself. It sounded like it might be kind of fun. Rikki had never tipped a car.

She was just a little old foreign job, but heavy. Put their backs into it, and gave what they had, but couldn’t do more than rock her. So Gary grabbed a tire iron out of the GTO’s trunk, ran up to Marge Quinn’s car and busted the windshield out,

THE FIRST MONTH

The sound of glass breaking scared Rikki enough to go flying over to his car. It was only as he took off that Gary opened the door on the run, and jumped in. Rikki had to laugh at how Gary would have busted all her windows ff they hadn’t got moving.

They decided to visit Sterling. On the way, Gary said, “Help me rob a bank?”

“That’s something I never done.”

A bank was easy, Gary said. He knew how to do it. He would cut Rikki in for 15 percent ff Pdkki would sit in his cm” and drive it off when he came out. Rikki, he said, would make a good getaway man.

Gary said, “You wouldn’t have to come into the bank.”

“I couldn’t do it.”

Gary got inflamed. “You’re not supposed to be afraid of any thing.”

“I wouldn’t do it, Gary.”

They went the rest of the way to Sterling’s house in silence.

Once there, Gary cooled enough to get working on an acceptable story in case Marge Quinn called the cops. They could say they drove up to Salt Lake for the night and didn’t get back till morning. The sis ter had them mixed up with two other guys.

Friday morning, Marge found the window smashed. Gary did it, was the first thing to come to mind, but she hoped it wasn’t true. The neighbor downstairs said, “Yeah, that really loud car with those two drunk guys, they pulled up right next to your car. I don’t know what happened after that.”

She let it go. It was one more unhappiness at the bottom of thingsl

The same morning, Gary called up Brenda. He would be. getting his treatPaY thatyounight.guys,,,HiShe firSttold cheCkher, from Spence McGrath. “Hey, I want to

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They decided to go to a movie. It was a flick he had seen before. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. He had watched them film it down the road from the penitentiary, watched it right from his cell window, Besides, he told her, he had even been sent over to that very mental institution a couple of times from the prison. Just like Jack Nicholson in the film. Brought him in the same way, with handcuffs and leg irons.

Since the movie was at the Una Theatre in Provo, Brenda and Johnny drove over from Orem and by the time they picked him up at

Vern and Ida’s, Gary had had about four or five beers to celebrate his paycheck.

In the truck, he smoked a joint. Made him happier than hell. By the time they covered the few blocks to the theatre he was giggling. Brenda said to herself: This is going to be a disastrous evening.

Soon as the movie went on, Gary started to give a running commentary. He said, “You see that broad? She really works in the hospital. But the guy next to her is a phony. Just an actor. Hey!” Gary told the movie theatre at large.

After a while, his language got to be God forbid! “Look at that fucker over there,” he said. “I know that fucker.”

Brenda could have died. No pain. “Gary-there are people trying to hear the show. Will you shut up?” “Am I offensive?” “You’re loud.”

He spun around in his seat and asked the people behind, “Am I being loud? Am I bothering you folks?”

Brenda slammed her elbow into his ribs.

Johnny got up and moved over a space or two.

“Where’s Johnny going?” asked Gary. “Does he have to take a piss?” More people started to move.

Johnny slid down in his seat until no one could see his head. Gary’s narration of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest continued. “Son of a bitch,” he shouted, “that’s just the way it was.”

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From the rear rows, people were saying, “Down in front. Shhh!” Brenda grabbed him by the shirttail. “You’re obnoxious.”

“I’m sorry.” In a big whisper, he said, ‘TI/hold it down.” But his voice came out in a roar.

“Gary, all kidding aside, you’re really making me feel like a turd sitting here.”

“All right, I’ll be good.” He put his feet up on the back of the chair in front and started rocking it. The woman who was sitting there had” probably been holding out on every impulse to change her

seat, but now she gave up, and moved away.

“What’d you do that for?”

“My God, Brenda, do you have to ride herd all the time?” “You made that poor lady move.” “Her hair was in my way.” “Then sit up strmghter.

“Not comfortable sitting up straight.”

Going back to Vern’s, Gary looked pretty smug. Brenda and Johnny didn’t go in with him.

“What’s the matter?” asked Gary. “Don’t you like me ymore.

an 9”Right now? I think you are the most insensitive human being I’ve ever known.”

“Brenda, I am not insensitive,” said Gary, “to i ” ” being called insen S rive.

He whistled all the way up the steps.

At breakfast, his mood was fine. He saw Vern watching him eat