The Executioner's Song (45 page)

                About the time Cliff figured they were going to hit it off pretty good, he asked if Nicole wanted to ride over to his house while he cleaned up. He was feeling extra dirty because she was looking so neat. She didn't really have a lot of fancy clothes on her back, but what she had was fresh and cool. It made him feel the grease on his own self even more when she didn't want to go along. He only talked her into it by agreeing to drive her to the jail. She had a letter to drop off there for Gary.

                That kind of bothered Cliff. He'd heard about Gilmore on the news, but hadn't known the dude was connected with this girl. Then Cliff said to himself, "What the hell, he can't do nothing. He's locked up." So they rode the truck over to Cliff's house and he took a shower, and then went down to the jail and stopped in the dirty old cinder lot by the railroad siding. She knocked and gave the guard a letter to pass on to Gary. Then they rode around for a while in the foothills before they parked.

                Cliff thought she really knew how to enjoy it the first time. It was no short quick thing but pretty liberal. They were there for a while. Then he took her back to the Silver Dollar, and got her address.

                After that, Cliff would go to her place in Springville every few nights and stay over. Being divorced from his wife hadn't ended his marriage altogether. Some of the roots were cut but not all. Even if he was seeing a few girls, there were still a lot of twinges in his feelings. It was all the nicer, therefore, what he and Nicole had, since they didn't ask too much of each other. He could see whoever he wanted to see, and Nicole had her friends—in fact, once or twice when he knocked on the door, she had to tell him there was company.

                He always said, "I'm not going to butt into your business." Never really questioned her. On the other hand, there were times he went over and didn't make love or nothing, just talked out what she was bothered about. Nicole would say she liked somebody with her. Anybody could see she hated to be alone.

                It was a nice friendship. If she was out of cigarettes, he'd get her a pack. If she had her period, he'd ride to the store, bring Tampax back. Wasn't really rich, but tried to help her. Besides, he never got too curious about the guy with the motorcycle—on those times Cliff came and there was company, the same bike always sat in the parking lot.

Same story as Cliff. Nicole met Tom while out with Sue. One night, she was feeling so depressed she actually fell asleep in the car and Sue drove her to a truck stop, dragged her in fact, and there was Tom eating in the next booth. Tom Dynamite, who worked in a gas station. He was coming down off acid, and they got to talk a little. Although they never had much to say, he took her home on his motorcycle, and they became very good friends. Never talked too much, but close. Quite a closeness.

                Sometimes, when Cliff would go over, she'd be sitting in the dark. Meditating, she said. There were letters on the table in front of her. It would look like she had been reading before she turned off the lamp. Gary was writing her two letters a day, she would explain, and they were long letters. Looked to be five or ten pages on long yellow sheets.

                Did she read all of them, Cliff wanted to know.

                Well, nearly all. He wrote so much. Maybe she didn't read every last word religiously if you got down to it. There were a few she just scrounged through.

                Then she shook her head. No, she said, she really read all of them.

August 4

Will you send me a picture of you. I want one real bad. In color 'cause you have such beautiful color to you. Hope I see you again. I get choked up sometimes when I look at you. The last few times I've seen you that's happened to me. I kind of lose my sense of time and place. It's like shifting into another awareness almost sorta going blank and being aware only of a Love (capitol L) that can't adequately be put into words. I look into your eyes and I can see for at least a thousand years. I see no evil in you, or menace. I see beauty and strength and love that doesn't have any bullshit to it. You're just you and you're real and you're not afraid, are you? I haven't seen you show any fear. That's remarkable. Fear is an ugly thing. I haven't seen any in you. It's like you've passed your test in life and know it. Like you've been up to the edge. And looked over. You're precious, Nicole. These things I write here are things I know are true and they make up part of the reason that I love you so utterly. I love that vein in your forehead. And I love the vein in your right tit. Didn't know I loved that one, did you?

Saturday, August 7

I can hear a radio in the background and they're playing "Afternoon Delight." We had a few afternoon delights, didn't we? I made you come one time in the afternoon and we were both covered with sweat. I could have held you forever then.

                When I thought I had lost you—Nicole, that Monday nite, the next day, and the days that followed, I felt like a man whose flesh had been stripped. I've never felt such pain. And it kept building. I couldn't drown it and I couldn't shake it. It shadowed all of my hours. I once thought that I'd really been through some rough things, that I was immune to pain. One time I was chained to a bed for two weeks spread-eagled hand and foot, flat on my back. When they came in to laughingly ask me how I was doing, I spit on them and got punched out for it. And they shot me with that foul drug Prolixin and made a zombie out of me for four months. I was virtually paralized. I couldn't stand up without help and when I was raised to my feet I'd wonder what the fuck I wanted to stand up for and I'd sit back down. When it was driving me the worst I went for three weeks without sleep. I just sat on the corner of the bed—I hallucinated to the edge of insanity. I wondered if I'd ever be the same again, if I'd ever be able to draw and paint again. I lost about 50 pounds. I just couldn't get the food to my mouth. Getting up to take a piss was a major effort, I dreaded it, it would take me about 15 to 20 minutes I couldn't get the pants buttoned. After a while I could barely see, my eyes had filled with some kind of white discharge that dried real thick on the lashes and I couldn't reach up to wipe it away and I couldn't see through it. Every 3 days or so they'd take me out of my cell to shower and shave. I hated that, it was such an effort! They'd hand me this electric razor and stand me in front of a mirror. I'd just stand there. There was no way on earth I could get that razor to my face, Sometimes they'd talk bad to me, say, "well, you're one of them tough guys, huh? Can't button your pants. . ." shit like that. I just had to look at them and take it. Sometimes I'd reply, "Fuck your mother, you pig." They'd get pretty pissed about that but it wasn't really much consolation to me . . . I never begged them and I never cried not even when I was alone and I was completely alone. I knew that it would pass, eventually, and it did. I was able to shake it.

                That was a bad experience. I've had others—unpleasant experiences of a long duration. I've always shaken them off and felt strong for it.

                But I've never felt the kind of pain I felt when I thought I'd lost you. I couldn't shake that off—I only wanted you back, that's all I knew. I stayed at your house a few nites, and it was so lonely. Nicole. I was depressed. I'd walk those rooms and wonder where you were. When you called me that Thursday at work to tell me you were moving I felt my heart breaking. Really. It's a physical pain—it's not just in the mind. It was something I could feel. And it felt bad. Friday I looked for you but I didn't know where to look. Your mother wouldn't tell.

                I felt so alone and depressed. Like I was a void. And it didn't lessen any. I had lost the only thing of real value I'd ever had or known.

                My life had lost meaning, it had become a gulf, empty and void but for the shadows and the ever-present ghosts who have followed me for so long.

                I don't ever want to feel that pain again. I am so completely in love with you, Nicole. I miss you so much, Baby. When I read your two letters and picture your pretty face the darkness rolls back and I know that I am loved. And that's a beautiful thing. The hurt stops. We were together for only two months but it's the fullest two months I've known in this life. I wouldn't trade it for anything. Just two months but I believe that I have known you, that we've known each other, for so much longer—a thousand, two thousand years?—I don't know what we were to each other before, I will know, as you will also when it becomes ultimately clear one day—but I feel we were always lovers. I knew this when I saw you that first nite, May 13th, Thursday, at Sterlings. There are some things you just know. And it went so deep so fast—it was a recognition, a re-newal, a reunion. Me and you Nicole, from a long time ago. I have always loved you Angel. Let's don't ever hurt each other again.

Cliff Bonnors was great because he always brought his mood around to meet hers. They could travel through the same sad thoughts never saying a word. Tom, she liked, for opposite reasons. Tom was always happy or full of sorrow, and his feelings were so strong he would take her out of her own mood. He wasn't dynamite but a bear full of grease. Always smelled full of hamburgers and french fries. He and Cliff were beautiful. She could like them and never have to worry about loving them one bit. In fact, she enjoyed it like a chocolate bar. Never thought of Gary when making love to them, almost never.

                It certainly wasn't like sex had been with Gary. The moment something good happened with him, when it did, why it traveled to her heart and started to build, as if she was some goof-ass bird making a nest. When she went to visit Gary, therefore, she never thought of Tom or Cliff, or Barrett, or any incidental party. One life on Earth, another on Mars.

                It wouldn't have been the worst way to live if not for those horrible depressions. Sometimes it would get real what she had done to Gary, and what he had done. Whenever she let herself think of the death penalty, everything started to get unreal.

                Death would sit in her thoughts. Except it was more as if she was sitting in death, and it was a big armchair. She could sit back. The chair would begin to go upside-down, but slowly, until she felt the kind of nausea you get on one of those twisty carnival rides where you can't tell if you're excited or ready to throw up. Even when the thoughts stopped, she still felt as if she was spinning.

Sure I miss the sunlite and the air! I'm already losing my tan. Before long I'll be paler than a ghost. In fact, before long, I may be a ghost.

After a couple of weeks, they began to move Gary back and forth from the jail to the mental hospital. It was a two-mile transfer. He would be taken from the west end of town up Center Street past the hardware stores and clothing stores, and ice-cream parlors, to the east end, where you got nearer to the mountain, and the road came to an end in those foothills in which Nicole had run naked in the grass. Now he was at her old nuthouse, Utah State Hospital. A different ward, of course.

                One thing was better there. They could have contact visits. Not the way it was at the jail, where he was taken to a little room and she stood on the other side, trying to see him through a thick mesh tough enough to keep minks and raccoons from breaking out. Their fingertips could hardly touch through the tough mean little holes. All the while they were talking, every noise of the jail was going on behind her. She would stand right out in the dirty old entrance with guards and trustees and delivery men and what-all yelling back and forth, straining to hear Gary's voice, a loud radio or TV always on. One prisoner or another was usually shouting in the main tank. It was like you had to fight for what you could hear.

                At the hospital, it was different. They were in a little room together. She would sit on his lap and he would grip her, and they would kiss for five minutes, far out on the other side of sex, as if it was her soul taking the trip rather than any juice starting to flow. They were kissing from one heart to the other—not sex, but love. Right on the wing.

                Then they would land. They were in a bare room, cement-brick walls painted yellow, four inmates looking at them. Trying not to look at them. That was the posse, Gary would explain. He would say it in a clear voice, his snottiest voice, clear enough for the inmates to hear, say that they had put him among a flock of sheep who were hell-bent on policing each other. "A herd mentality," he would say. "The posse can't even talk to you unless there's two of them around. One to snitch on what the other just said."

                The four fellows in the posse took it different ways. One might grin like an asshole, another would look as if he was measuring Gary for some lumps, the third was depressed, and the fourth real eager, like he wanted to explain to Nicole how the patient program worked in this hospital.

                She picked up on that bit by bit. There was a crazy system. Different from when she was here. They called it the program. A bunch of dudes were facing prison sentences, and were mixed in with real psychos and zombies. These kids, right out of prison and Reform School, had been put together with the true nuts, and they all wrote a constitution and had elections and a patient-run government.

                Gary explained, right in that yellow room, with these four dudes monitoring Gary's hand every time it touched her tit, he spoke out on this hospital system where the doctors let the patients control everything, why they could even elect their own President of all the patients. It was the hottest kind of horseshit. That was what the patients controlled. The horseshit.