The Executioner's Song (141 page)

On Monday morning, at seven o'clock, Lucinda was typing Gary's last tape with Larry. She could hear Gilmore's voice coming in over the earphones, and it was pathetic the way he kept telling Larry how badly he wanted to die, and she felt so sorry for him.

                The television was on in the office. There was Geraldo Rivera saying, "Well, we're here in front of the prison." All of a sudden it hit her that the whole world was watching, and the voice of the condemned man was in her ear, this little voice coming out.

                She and Barry and Debbie had stayed up all night and were really drained. Now they were switching the channels. Game shows like "Jeopardy" kept coming in—at seven in the morning, in Orem, they were getting "Jeopardy." Then one game show after another.

                They couldn't get the news. The most chaotic jumble trying to find out if he'd been shot or not. Barry was freaking out. He began to curse the TV screen. Incredibly literary and obscene language. The TV was just so awful, Lucinda thought, a blast of awful things, and here they were waiting to find out. All those images flashing, just mumbo jumbo, then a voice saying "Gary Mark Gilmore is dead." Squawk!

It was a beautiful sunny day, and Julie Jacoby had been up early, watering the plants, feeling good about the Stay, thinking, Thank God.

                She was just loving the winter sunlight. Then a call came from a man with the Catholic News Service in Washington. "It's happened," he said. She didn't know what to do with herself and went around in circles. Only later did she feel a little relieved that she had not given herself totally to this thing, which she had always known would not change the world.

                Further along that morning, she saw a news clipping in the Salt Lake Tribune that got her name wrong. She had been one of the four people whose names had been on the taxpayers' suit in Judge Ritter's Court, but the Salt Lake Tribune had printed it as "Mulie Jacobs" rather than Julie Jacoby, and she laughed when she saw it, for she knew that her twelve-year-old son would never fail from now on to call her Mulie when it would be of use to him. She would also be spared the hate mail and telephone calls full of compressed murder that were rendering Shirley Pedler so thin.

Shirley was alone in the office when the word came over the radio, and it hit her as if she felt the shot. Her head went down on the desk and she started to sob.

                Later that morning, she made several statements. It was incredible—it was really an affront—the press had all of a sudden vanished. Shirley found that the most horrifying aspect of the whole thing. It was as if these reporters were saying, "He's blown away, so there's no news anymore." God, press from all over the country had dominated every good restaurant in Salt Lake, and now they were gone. She sat in her office the day of the execution and was not hounded at all.

Gibbs had been sitting in jail all day every day in the week leading up to Gary's execution, and was in a pretty drugged state because of his leg the night before the execution. In the morning, when he heard the news on the radio he just felt dumb and groggy.

Dennis Boaz had been out in Iowa for a couple of days in December and got into a symposium on a TV program where he heard that President Ford might commute Gary's sentence before retiring from office. So, he sent a telegram saying that if capital punishment was going to be applied, it should be applied equally. No executions until there was one law for everyone. Never heard from Ford.

                On the day of the execution, he felt a kind of silent sadness and tears came to his eyes. Gary died on January 17, a day whose number came to 6, which was the motherhood of brothers, and, of course, that made him think of Cain and Abel. In the period Dennis was working with Gilmore, he had sprouted a red mark above his right brow, not a pimple, but a mark signifying death. First discovered it toward the end of November. It was round and it was red, but not a pimple. It was there nearly two months, and then faded away after Gary died. Interesting, at any rate. He noticed things like that.

Nicole had found out that Gary was going to be executed today, but she had no idea of the time. In the morning, walking back from the ward dining room, she suddenly felt a great need to lie down on her bed. They started making a big thing of it, but she just walked toward her room. Nobody said anything more. Then she lay there, and tried to think about Gary. For days she had been dreaming of the moment he was shot and falling back. She always saw Gary standing up when he got it. Now, in her mind, she saw nothing but those red blocks they gave the patients to put together into a cube.

                They were in her head, and she was trying to push them away, when suddenly Gary's face came to her out of the darkness, came in fast with a look of pain and horror. He didn't fall back, but right up toward her. Her body flipped around on the bed, her eyes opened, and that was all. She kept trying to feel him again that day, but couldn't. He wasn't near her at all for a few days.

After Gaylen was dead, Bessie thought she would never get over it. But this was going to be worse. When she called the prison and said good-bye to Gary on this last night, he had said, "Don't cry."

                "I'm not going to cry, Gary," she had told him, but she had wanted so much to say, "Don't die, Gary, don't. Please, please, don't."

                Only it would hurt what he was building up—whatever it might take of him to go out there. So she had to be careful. It was a nightmare.

                Listening to the clock through the hours Bessie could not keep from thinking, "His nightmare will be over, but mine will never be."

                When Mikal got the paper early that morning, it said the execution had been stayed. They turned on "Good Morning America." A little earlier, Bessie had said, "Don't put it on." She didn't want to hear it. If it happened, she didn't want to know about it for hours.

                She certainly didn't want to hear about it on TV. Yet after Mikal brought in the paper, somebody—was it Frank Jr., or Mikal, or his girl friend: she could never remember for fear she would not forgive—one of them said, "It is safe now. There's a Stay. We can turn on 'Good Morning America.' " They did. A voice stated, "Gary Mark Gilmore is dead." It sounded like it came from above. Bessie cried into the sore flesh of her heart.

                Maybe half an hour later, Johnny Cash called and gave Mikal his condolences.

                By the time Doug Hiblar came by, Bessie had turned bitter. She had the look on her face of a woman who had just had her home bombed. "Get out," Bessie said, "you people have killed my son."

                "What do you mean, Bessie," stammered Doug, "I didn't even know him."

                "You people in Utah killed my son."

                He did not say, "I'm from Oregon."

                "Mountain, you can go to hell," said Bessie to herself. "You're not mine anymore."

                Outside, around the court, photographers were gathered with their cameras at the door of Bessie's trailer.

Chapter 40

THE REMAINS

On the drive home, Stanger asked, "What are you going to do now?"

                "I don't know," said Moody. "I can't go to the office."

                Stanger laughed. "Need a default judgment to occupy your afternoon?"

                "No," said Moody devoutly, "I couldn't stand it."

                They had to talk to somebody who had been a part of it. Even though they were going to go on a week's vacation with their wives in a couple of days and so now had to run around like hell to leave their affairs in some kind of order, they couldn't go back to the office now.

                Instead, they said, "Let's go to Larry's place," but when they got to the Orem TraveLodge, Schiller hadn't come back yet, so they talked to Barry Farrell. It was important to keep talking.

                While driving, they had been getting flashes. Stanger had seen Gary's hand rising and falling, and the blood on his pants. Stanger couldn't keep that out of his head. He wanted to extirpate such thoughts. Put his hand right inside his mind, grab the thought and flip it out.

                They were happy to talk, therefore, to Barry Farrell. While they had never gotten along that well before, Ron could see how under all his professionalism, Barry was having a strong reaction, so he felt good about the conversation. So did Moody.

                And Farrell, who had ranted through many a night at how these guys, Moody and Stanger, had such a paucity of humanity that they could not pursue a question profitably, did not indeed have even the curiosity of a lawyer, felt a reason now to temper his outrage. For they were so moved at Gary's death. They really did understand that somebody has gotten killed, thought Farrell.

                Besides, he was eager to hear every detail and wanted to communicate to them how appreciative he was feeling toward Gilmore for approaching his death with this much integrity, my God, absolutely as much as his intellect could muster. Barry couldn't imagine what Gilmore might have done better. That helped, to relieve him of his own doubts about his own involvement in these last days, this whole obscene, niggling business of translating the best thoughts of one's soul and conscience into one more rotten question, one more probe into the private parts of a man as protected from self-revelation as a clamshell from the knowledge of a caress.

                When Schiller came in, they babbled, and recounted, and asked each other questions, and sputtered it out of them, until they ran down and then Moody and Stanger went home. Ron was thinking that the only event which had ever come close to having this kind of continuing reaction on him was the day President Kennedy was killed, Now, arriving at his house, he felt exhausted and immediately went to bed, but couldn't sleep. When he closed his eyes, he would see all the sights again and his skin hurt to the touch.

                When they were alone, Farrell said to Schiller, "Have you had breakfast?"

                "No," said Schiller.

                "Any interest?" asked Farrell.

                "I'm all diarrhea," said Schiller and thought he might go to sleep. At that point, Barry looked up and said, "Oh, yes, listen, your mother called."

                Schiller hadn't spoken to her in two weeks. He picked up the phone and learned she had seen the press conference on television after the execution, and wanted to make sure he was all right. She didn't like the way he looked. A little worn out, she thought.

                Schiller assured her that he was still among the living. When the call was done, he went upstairs and actually fell asleep, and was awakened a few hours later by a girl from the New York Times to whom he'd promised to give an interview, but now, he said, he wouldn't do it. Time was calling. Newsweek was calling. The phone was ringing, They wanted to know if he had pictures of the execution.

                Wanted to come over and interview him. Schiller had to go into his speech about how he would not be a punching bag. "Your editors are asking for pictures," he said to Newsweek and to Time, "so, if you want to talk to me, we will have to discuss what you're going to say. You are not going to call me an entrepreneur. I want to make sure you're going to call me a journalist." Really started to lay down the law. "Two weeks ago, you called me an entrepreneur, called me a promoter. Now, you want pictures. Want me to give you more about the execution. Well, I'm taking offense," he said. "We got to lay out a few ground rules. If you want to say that I hustled interviews from Lenny Bruce's widow, then I also want you to write about Minamata which is a book I'm proud of. If you want a picture of Marilyn Monroe, then also put in a picture from the story I published on mercury poisoning." He said, "If you're going to slant the story one way, balance it the other," and he banged it back, and he banged it forth and could feel his blood flowing through his veins again, instead of all that shit.

DESERET NEWS

Silent Majority No Longer Silent

By Ray Boren Deseret News staff writer Jan. 17—According to a nationwide Louis Harris survey last week, Americans favored by a margin of 72-9 percent Gilmore's death before a firing squad.

DESERET NEWS

Emotions High Before Sunrise

By Tamera Smith Deseret News staff writer Utah State Prison, Jan. 17—Anticipation, resignation, anger, disappointment, frustration and confusion were emotions that followed close upon each others' heels during the early morning hours today in Gary Mark Gilmore's prison quarters.

                At 4:07 P.M., Gilmore's last meal was brought to him in his cell. It consisted of steak, potatoes, bread, butter, peas, cherry pie, coffee and milk. He had only coffee and milk.

                Between 8 and 9 P.M., he asked prison staff members to call Radio Station KSOP and request two of his favorite songs—"Valley of Tears" and "Walking in the Footsteps of Your Mind."

                Two switchboard operators spent the night taking calls from all over the world.