The Executioner's Song (44 page)

                The only thing to be said for these present hours under the heat of the sun and the airless night of the trailer was that heat never made her feel as alone as the winter damp. Winter was the time when she felt so cold she had need of all the life she had lived. But now at the age of 63, Bessie could feel old as 83 in the cold snowbound cemetery of all those feelings that had frozen in the middle of July by the word that Gary had killed two boys. She kept seeing the face of Mr. Bushnell whose face she did not know, but it did not matter, for his head was covered with blood.

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

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

       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 "Y" 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 gossip in Grandview Ward, where they would talk of how she came back from long trips with fine dresses and jewelry. It gave her no pleasure that most of those fine dresses had been cut and sewed by Bessie Brown herself, and if she had a little jewelry, it was on the strength 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 he lived there, and did housework for an old lady who kept a large house, and lived in a small hotel room by herself. When the love affair was over, she didn't date. It was a year when she lived alone and was still too young to suffer from being alone. She rather liked it.

                She had a friend named Ava Rodgers who drank too much and lived around, and was staying with a man she called Daddy. Daddy sold ads for Utah Magazine for $100 a page and got 25 percent commission. Ava was very much in love with him, she said. He had something that sure got women.

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

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

                "Congratulations," she said.

                When she saw him next in the street, she asked, "How's married life?"

                "It's over with," he said.

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

                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 command them like she was waving a wand. Never tried it with Betty, however.

       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, The Bourbons. "When you have children," Fay said, "the royal blood of France will flow in their veins."

                Fay's maiden name was another matter. Betty never learned it. 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 La Foe didn't tell you what she didn't want to.

                Maybe once a week, Fay would give a séance. Sometimes forty 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 that matter, you could be talking to Fay, and there would be a knock on the wall, or a thump on the ceiling. At night, Betty could feel presences walking over her bed. When they were married by Fay (who had a clergyman's license and was called a Spiritualist) Betty always wondered which spirits were in and around Fay's bed.

                She and Frank began to travel. At the time she met him, Frank had lived in Salt Lake for more than a year, but that wasn't common. He liked to go state to state selling space in special magazines. They were as-yet-unpublished magazines that often did not get published.

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

                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 Jewish 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, 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 handcuffs 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 of wedlock, of course. Before Fay died, she showed Betty where a lot of 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. Just told Betty to be sure to be around her deathbed. "I don't want anybody else to get them," Fay said mysteriously.

                They were in San Diego, when Fay passed away in Sacramento. Somebody back east was notified. The papers went east. Before Frank and Betty even received the news, the funeral was over.

                The boys grew up, however, knowing something of the subject. Gaylen, the third son, didn't like Houdini exactly, but he sure was fascinated, for he used to celebrate the anniversary of his death on October 31, Halloween. He lit candles and had a little ceremony. It always came the day after Frank Jr.'s birthday on October 30. Frank Jr. became an amateur magician and, at 15, belonged to the Portland Magician Society. Gary never made much of it.

                Sitting in the trailer through the heat of July and August, Bessie could hear Brenda teasing him. "Well, cousin, here you are in jail. Houdini should have taught you how to escape!"

Chapter 20

SILENT DAYS

Cliff Bonnors, who worked at Geneva Steel, dropped in at the Silver Dollar one night after work. A little later, Nicole and Sue Baker came through the door, and that made Cliff's night. He started talking to Nicole.