The Executioner's Song (65 page)

                "Did you like to travel with two babies?" asked Grace.

                No, she didn't, but her attitude remained: she would love Frank as he was. Not try to change him. So they traveled. She kept waiting for trouble.

In Colorado, Frank got arrested for passing a bad check and was sentenced to three years. Bessie went back to Provo and waited.

                There was no money to go anywhere else.

                She thought it was the end of everything. Her family was not friendly. She had been away a couple of years and came back with two kids and a husband in jail. But she waited. She never thought of another man. It was a long wait, but it wasn't the end. Frank got out in eighteen months and took her to California and worked in a defense plant and then they traveled again. By the time the boys were six and seven and Gaylen was born, she managed to talk Frank into buying a house on the outskirts of Portland. That was a lot better than letting the boys sleep nights in bus depots and feast on hot dogs.

Frank started rewriting the Building Code digests of cities like Portland and Seattle and Tacoma. He would put them into clear language so that by buying his manual, people could understand how to build or renovate their house in accordance with the city codes. Then he sold advertising for the manuals. Over the years it got profitable.

                There was a time when Frank had checks rolling in every day.

The boys went to Our Lady of Sorrows parochial school, and Gary thought he'd be a priest. Bess loved their house on Crystal Springs Boulevard. It was small but she did her best cooking and sewing there. Then Frank had to move to Salt Lake for a year. That was the time, she told Grace, when an apparition attached itself to Gary.

                She blamed it on the house in which they lived. Even Frank agreed it was haunted, and he was not a man partial to such ideas, but one time they were in the bedroom feeding Mikal, who had just been born, and they could hear somebody talking and laughing in the kitchen. When they ran down, nobody was there.

Then a flood came, and the safety valve in the basement heater failed to turn off after the fire went out. Gas started bubbling up along the walls. Frank said, "That's it, We're getting out." It was as if they saw a picture of themselves in the newspapers. Father, Mother, Four Sons Dead.

She had been happy to say good-bye to the house, but not to her neighbor, Mrs. Cohen, who was a sweet old lady. Bess met her because Mrs. Cohen's bedroom window was right across from the boys, and Gary would shoot his water pistol right through the window—pssst. Mrs. Cohen talked to him and said: Don't you do this. I'm an old lady, and you shouldn't be doing this. Finally, she said to her brother, Well, I'm going to tell his folks. Mrs. Cohen's brother said, "They're Gentiles. Stay away." She said, "I'm going over." When visited with the complaint, Frank said, "I can tell you, they will never do it again." At that point, Mrs. Cohen made him promise he wouldn't spank the boys. The kids fell in love with her for that, and Mrs. Cohen stayed over at their house for so long on this visit her brother came over. "He thought we'd killed her," said Bess, "and put her in the basement. I said, 'No, no, we're too busy to kill people.' Oh, I really liked that lady. She said, 'I'll never forget you. You're my only Gentile friends.' "

                The day they left, Mrs. Cohen and she cried as they said goodbye, and Mrs. Cohen said, "You're lucky not to stay in that house. It's an evil house."

Frank was never good with the boys again, and Gary certainly changed, and later they would fight all the time.

Back in Porttland, Gary used profane language in abundance. It came out of him in a sulfurous streak. It sounded to Bessie as if some foul and abomidable demon was just walking out of his mouth. So she started a family game—"You won't have to use such language," she told the boys, "if you have a big vocabulary."

                One of them would open the dictionary and pick a word. Then another would give the meaning and spell it. Through the years they developed a knowledge of words to stump their teachers.

                She was a lenient mother. If she promised they could go to the show on Saturday they got to go, even if they had knocked the house down. Their father was the opposite. Tip over a glass of milk, that did it. So they lived under two systems.

                Of course, more than half of Frank's business was in Seattle. He would come back only every other weekend to fight with Gary.

                It would start over nothing. Shut the door behind you, Frank would say. Shut it yourself, Gary would reply. They would be up and yelling. You could cut the air with a knife. Bess knew the meaning of those words.

Yet the first tine Gary got in trouble, Frank was there to bail him out. Hired a private detective a couple of times to prove that Gary hadn't done what Bess knew very well he had done. She spoiled Gary on his good side, and Frank on the bad.

After Gary was caught stealing a car, they put him in Reform School. Once a month Bessie and Frank went to visit, and would picnic on the grass. MacLaren didn't seem any worse from the outside than a couple of private schools she'd seen on her travels, nice red tile roofs and yellow stucco two-story buildings. A large green campus.

He had been a bad boy when he went in, he was a hard young man when he came out. It was like a void had entered the house. His teachers reported that he had no interest in studying. Slept through the days. At night, Bessie would ask him, "Where are you going?" "Out to find trouble," Gary would reply, "find some trouble."

Once or twice he came back badly beaten up. He had a very bad temper, and it screeched right at you. She just prayed he would learn to curb it. He got so scarred in his fights she couldn't stand it. Came home one night at dawn and collapsed on the doorstep. His eye was almost out of his head. They had to take him to the hospital.

He was twenty years old before he came close to being actually violent with his father. By then Frank was too sick to pursue it. Bess had to ask Gary to leave the house for the night.

One year, there were riots in Oregon State, and Gary took part in them, and was interviewed on TV. A girl saw the show, started corresponding, and liked him enough to visit. According to Gary she was 26, her name was Becky and she was very fat. Nonetheless, she wrote beautiful letters. He told Bessie he was going to marry her and adopt her little boy.

                Becky, however, had an ulcer, and went into surgery, and came home from the operation, and died.

                The prison would not let Gary go to the funeral. He was not a relative. Bessie sent flowers in his name.

                Not too long after this, Gary and four other convicts in Isolation slashed their wrists. The next time Grace saw him, he was on Prolixin. Looked as if he had left his body, and come back in the hulk of a stranger. His jaw dropped, his mouth hung open, his eyes were blank as glass. He walked as slowly as a man with shackles on his legs.

                Bessie took one look and burst into tears. The visiting room stopped. There wasn't a sound. Prisoners kept calling out, "Hang in there, buddy."

                All through that visit, prisoners kept saying, "Steady, boy!" Gary kept trying to talk to Bessie and Grace, but his lips moved like a man with stones in his mouth, Grace could only think of getting Bessie out of there, but she would not leave until they saw an Assistant Warden.

                "How could you have done this to my son?" asked Bessie.

                He looked unhappy but said Prolixin was the best drug they had found for violent and psychotic people.

                Grace wanted to say, "Bullshit." Didn't.

                The prison took him off Prolixin, and the symptoms went away, but he was a different man to Grace. There was something in him now she did not trust. His talk turned shabby. His view was nasty. It was as if they were on different islands.

Gaylen Gilmore came into Grace's life. Gaylen, whom Bessie had talked about for two years. Gaylen who, of all the boys, wanted most to be a writer. He wrote beautiful poetry, Bessie said. Also wrote checks. When he was 16, he began to drink. Then he would go down to the bank and write a check with her name on it. His downfall, said Bessie, was that he was handsome. In Bessie's mind, she had never seen a more handsome boy. She laughed even more with Gaylen than with Gary.

                The worst thing Gaylen ever did was cash a check at Speed's for $100. When it bounced, she said to Speed, "I'll turn over my next check," and he said, "No, it's not your fault." Bessie said, "I have to."

                When she told Gaylen about the conversation, he got in his car and was gone for five years.

Called from Chicago and said, "Mother, this is the first time I've been away from you at Thanksgiving and I wish I was there." Bess said, "If I send the money, will you come?" Said he would, but he didn't.

Years later, he came back with Janet, his wife, and a bleeding stomach. Bess didn't know that it was not an ulcer. He had been stabbed with an ice pick. Bess was going to take him to Gary for a visit—he hadn't seen Gary for years—but Gaylen said, "I'm hung over." Bessie said, "What did you do to get so drunk last night?" He said it was the anniversary of Harry Houdini's death, and he always celebrated that.

Then one night, close after midnight, Janet called Grace to say that Gaylen was very ill, and had no money for a cab. Could she drive them over to Milwaukie Hospital? Grace did, but Gaylen could not get admitted. He had neither a welfare card nor a doctor.

                On the hospital's suggestion, they went on to Oregon City.

                There, Gaylen was told the same thing again. It was now two in the morning. The next hospital said no. Grace said she would sign for his treatment, whatever it cost, but they said he needed a doctor to admit him. Grace thought: This boy is going to die in the back seat of my car.

                At the Medical School, they were told to wait, and my God, they sat there until a quarter after five. Gaylen, in considerable pain, finally stood up and told the women he would wait no longer. Grace said good-bye at the motel. Grace said, Call me if I can help you, and went home thinking they could lay her out next to a basket case and little to choose.

A day later, Grace got a letter from Gary. There was $50 enclosed as partial payment for $100 she had advanced for a new set of teeth, but the rest of the letter was terrifying. His hatred for the prison seemed uncontrollable. He spoke of violence with a gusto she could not comprehend. It was altogether outside every conversation or understanding they had ever had of each other.

At this point, Grace said to herself, "I only have so much energy. I have children and grandchildren. I can't carry this. I am a devout coward."

                She called Bessie and said, With all the love in the world, and I will not stop the way I feel for you, I just have to pull out.

                Bessie understood. There was no bad-mouthing. Grace just very gently pulled out, and that was it. She had not seen any of them since.

                Later, she heard that Gaylen had died, and Bessie took on the costs of two guards' bringing Gary to the funeral. The officers were decent and dressed in regular clothes and stood way back. Nobody knew Gary was in custody. Afterward, Bessie went over personally and paid the guards while she was thanking them.

Chapter 31

WILD WIND BLOWING

October 7th

Angel Nicole.

                I'm at the joint now. Just got here. I seem to be in the hole. A single cell with a fucked up mattress, no pillow and somebody else's dirty paper plates on the floor . . . They gave me a pair of white coveralls to wear and I hate to wear coveralls. Too tite in the crotch.

                What is to become of us Nicole? I know you wonder. And the answer is simply: By love . . . we can become more than the situation.

                Nicole my inclination is to let them execute me. If I were to drop the appeals they would be forced to either commute the sentence or carry it out. I don't think they would commute it.

                The decision is not really mine alone to make. I cannot ask you to commit suicide. I thot at one time that I could but I can't. If I am executed and you do commit suicide well to be simply honest I guess that is what I would want.

                But Im not going to put it on you by asking you to do that.

October 8th

This morning they brought me a pillow. Wow! I'm shittin in tall cotton now!

                I was given a brief rundown on the place by a lieutenant and a caseworker. I asked them about visits and they said that you would be able to see me. Even though we are not legally married you will be able to visit me. One hour a week on Friday morning between 9 and 11 o'clock. Listed you on the visiting form as NICOLE GILMORE (BARRETT) and under "Relationship" I put common law wife—fiancee. I would like you to use my name but of course your identification says Barrett—and they will probably ask you for I.D.