The Executioner's Song (104 page)

Sometimes Brenda would feel as if cords were hooked into her flesh and pulling on her organs. Sometimes the pain would hit her when she was seated and she couldn’t stand up. Sometimes, standing, it would grab her so suddenly, she’d have to sit down. Long after she stopped going to the prison, she kept trying to call Gary, but it was awfully tricky to get through. Once, she ended up with Sam Smith. “I didn’t think,” Brenda said, “phone ca/Is were that much of an inconvenience.” Smith told her they had to bring Gary out of a cell each time. “Why don’t you put a phone in his room?” asked Brenda, “Good God, he is on Death Row.” “Well,” Sam said, “he could hang himself with the cord.” She hadn’t thought of that. “Or take the parts out and use them to cut his wrists.” She hadn’t thought of that either. “We are,” Sam said to her softly, “giving him more privileges than the average prisoner.” “I think you’ve got a tough job,” Brenda said.

Between Christmas and New Year’s, two different days in that same cold week, she tried twice, at Gary’s request, her gut pulling and aching and horrifying her, to go down to Utah State Hospital and leave a rose for Nicole. Fina//y she gave up. The hospital wasn’t going to receive it. She sent word back through Vern, and Gary was angry at her again. He had to be the most determined man in the world about working a gripe back into shape. If gripes had feathers, he’d fluff them up.

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THE EXECUTIONER’S SONG

PROVO HERALD

To Those Who Oppose

Gilmore Issues an Open Letter

Provo, Dec. 29- “An open letter from Gary Gilmore to all and any who still seek to oppose by whatever means my death by legal execution. Particularly: ACLU, NAACP.

“I invite you to finally butt out of my life. Butt out of my death.

“It does not concern you.

“Shirley Pedler, Gees, baby, lay off. I wouldn’t dare

to be so presumptuous as to presume I could impose

any unwanted thing on your life Get out of my

life Shirley.

“NAACP, rm a white man. Don’t want no uncle tom blacks buttin (sic) in. Your contention is that ff I am executed then a whole bunch of black dudes will be executed. Well that’s so apparently stupid 1 won’t even argue with that kind of silly illogic.

“But you know as well as I do that they’ll kill a white man these days a lot quicker than they’ll kill a black man.

“Y’all ain’t really disadvantaged lak (sic) ya used to be.

“As for those of you who would question my sanity, well, I question yours.

THE OCTAVE OF CHRISTMAS
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every word because it was a real book with covers, and Gary had put a little writing on every page.

This fuckin guard sittin out here just got done blowin his nose.

Took him 5 minutes. Musta really had something lodged up there. A harsh grating ungodly sound.

When he finally got done I told him: “Well, your horn works. Now try your lites.” He gave me a bleery-eyed red-nosed look.

Now the guard is pacing. Clopping back and forth in about a size a3EEE shoe that looks too tite. The boorish fucker is bored stiff.

I got a couple books in the mail about Jesus and I looked ‘em over and they were too Christian.

I mean I wouldn’t mind reading a book about Christ the man, Christ the Jew, Christ the Messiah, but not Christ the Christian.

In OUI magazine in the Openers section they always got some tomatoe who sent in four flicks of herself in the foto-booth with her boobies out. I always check ‘em out when I read OUI. I That about sending them your flicks—I mean I That about it, I’m not going to do it.

I know, tho, that they would print them.

Even if you weren’t famous they would print those flicks cause you’re so sexy and pretty and the look on your face with your tongue stickin out a little and your elf boobies just look so fuckin good.

Baby, before I die I’m going to destroy your letters. The reason is that they are simply not for publication. Not for the public.

I zvas going to try to return them to you, but I know ill did, that they would end up in the hands of Larry Schiller, movie producer.

Then Gary pasted a news clipping in the book:

“from my heart Gary Gilmore”

A couple of days after Christmas, Sundberg brought Nicole the book Gary had written. It was the kind of notebook you could buy in a drugstore with a nice hard cover. Maybe fifty empty pages. Sundberg was in a hurry and she sort of leafed through while he was there, and he promised to bring it back the next day. On that occasion, she was able to steep herself a little more. Just a simple book but she loved

SALT LAKE TRIBUNE

Gilmore Answers Query of Eastern Girl

December 4, I976 — Lisa LaRochelle, Holyoke, Mass., as part of a religion course, sent letters to a number of well-known persons asking:

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Dec. 31 Friday

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THE EXgcJTIONER’S SON6p>

“What will be the first question you ask God when

you see Him?”

“Dear Lisa,” Gilmore wrote in red ink on a legal

sized sheet, “I’m not a ‘prominent’ person. I’ve just gained some unwanted notoriety. But in answer to your question 1 don’t feel that any questions will be necessary when we eventually meet God.”

“Sincerely, Gary Gilmore.”

Miss LaRochelle wrote the same letter to Walter Cronkite, football stars O.J. Simpson and Roger Staubach and others.

These guards can sneak down the catwalk outside my cell and watch me without me knowing it. They can see me but I can’t see them. Probably a few of them are hoping to catch me jackin off so they can stand there and watch.

Love

Last nite i flew in my dream like a white bird through the window came through the night and the cool wind with a few bright stars in the darkness

And got lost. And Woke up.

Got to go for now

Love you every minet

Nicole

Dec. 3 Fri.?

Oh Darlin

i am in a place i dislike beyond words. My situation calls for me to convince a lot of intelligent important people of my desire to live and my capabilities to exist as a competent mother and human being.

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im givin it all i got rite now. Sometimes i almost have to convince myself of some things before i can attempt to convince anyone else.

Strange Lady, Me. LovEs You

New Years Eve

Oh Baby Nicole

Myself, my wife

. . a card from a lady in Holland that was very beautiful — she said: “Trust Everybody. Love All the People.”

God I’d like to be that strong.

In My last letter I told you that they are gonna shoot me Jan. 7 . . those 4.3o caliber slugs will release me. And I will come to you —little white Bird.

I have 7 days. I think of you all the time.

I think only of you.

Baby, I always knew you were a white bird, you’re the little white bird that perched on my shoulder before we were both born again into this life and we made certain vows to each other then.

Jan. 1, 1977

Mornin My Love

Hey, How bout that, Gary, it’s the new year! Happy New Year Love. Here is a little poem i wrote.

For lost is my mind

Silent by dawn

Loves away stolen

And hurting is Long

So ask me no questions

Sing me no songs

Follow me nowhere

im already gone

if ever i find a quiet moment i think there is a soft tune i would hear in my mind to go with it

Darlin. They just flipped my light, i Love you God how i You Gary.

Dream o.f me … i will be dreaming you into my dreams.

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Father Meersman, after the Second World War, had studied at the

North American College in Rome, he would ask the priest a lot about

Europe.

Baby Nicole

Father Meersman always felt that he’d come to offer his services Gary Gilmore very, very honestly, not even having a whether the condemned man was Catholic or not. It was just Gilmore had said he wished to die with dignity and that “

Father Meersman. He had gone over to visit him one night in November and said he understood such a desire and would be willin to help him with it, ff that accorded with Gilmore’s own desire. Father Meersman had assisted at other executions, and knew thing of the routine of it and the pitfalls, and as a result of this conversation, as Meersman saw it, they became good friends.

Gilmore didn’t do too much sleeping at night and enjoyed a visit. The Chaplain would come in the evening after all visitors were and the prison had quieted down. Meersman was free to see the mates at any time, but the place had to be run along the prison standards, and at Maximum Security, for instance, when it was time eat, you wouldn’t want to visit. The prison had to be occupied with one thing at a time. That was the way it ran. Since you certainly never wanted to interfere with the custody system, Meersman would drop in on Gary late.

They would talk about little things. One night, for example, ther Meersman, as was customary for him, was standing on one side of the bars out in the main corridor and Gilmore, on the other was leaning against the bars, when Father Meersman took out his Meerschaum pipe. Gary asked him what it was, and Father Meersman went into it and explained how as you smoked such a pipe, gradually mellowed. Then, another night he brought a bunch foreign coins along and Gary was very curious to look at them. He liked to learn things. He was very interested in the specifics. Since

They would talk about history and the rise and fall of different people, whether it be Julius Caesar or Napoleon, and Father Meersman could see that he liked people who rose to heights and became famous, like Muhammad All. They would also discuss what Gilmore had read in the newspapers and magazines that Father Meersman brought him. He would say, “Hey, Padre, what do you think of Jimmy Carter?” or, “Padre, what do you think of serving food on paper plates?” To each of these questions, Meersman would reply, “Oh, Gary, whatever’s fair.” If he said that once he said it a thousand times, and Gilmore would answer, “Padre, there’s nothing fair.” Then they would both laugh. He always called him Padre.

Gilmore also stayed very aware of the aura of his public image, and thanked Father Meersman each night for the newspaper. It was certain Gary liked to talk about his case. He was fascinated the night Father Meersman brought a copy of Time magazine dated right after the first of the year, first issue of I977 (although it came out a couple of days before the new year). In it were a couple of pages facing each other that said “Images ‘76,” and there you could see photographs of President-elect Carter and his mother and wife, of Betty Ford, and Isabelle Peron from Argentina, and a photograph of the body of Mao Tse-tung lying in state, together with a picture of the leg support of Viking I that had landed on Mars, and Secretary of State Henry Kis-stager holding an African sword in one hand and a shield in the other while out in Kenya, and a photograph of the young gymnast Nadia Comaneci, and yet, on the same two pages, was also a picture of Gary Gilmore in his Maximum Security prison whites. There he was grinning at the camera just after he’d received the date of his death sentence at the Board of Pardons Hearing. It didn’t fail Gilmore’s attention that in the yearly roundup of I976, he was in elevated company.

3 A I ..I .LHVd

A HOLE IN THE CARPET

Farrdl felt in no hurry to go back to Utah and deal with Moody and Stanger, for he was enjoying the work on what he had already. While Schiller was in Hawaii, Barry had begun to lay out the Playboy inter view. To make it more readable, he trimmed the dialogue, moved paragraphs around, and added relevant material from some of Gary’s written answers to the earlier interrogatories. Usually, he rewrote Moody and Stanger’s questions to smooth the flow, and offer some thing like the flavor of a Playboy interview. He did decide, however, for his own ground rules, that he would not take anything from the letters. The interview would be built out of responses, verbal or writ ten, to their .questions.

That interview of December o was what he depended on most, however. Trying to get Gilmore on record over a broad range of top ics, Farrell left a certain naivet6 to the questions. He had been hop ing for answers from which to dig out deeper questions, but figured these simple inquiries would allow Gilmore to feel superior. The re-suits were astonishing. Gary came back in surprising volume. It looked to Farrell as if Gilmore was now setting out to present the par ticular view of himself he wanted people to keep. In that sense, he was being his own writer. It was fascinating to Barry. He was being given the Gilmore canon, good self-respecting convict canon. In fact, it was good enough for Farrell to begin to wonder whether the inter view itself would ever get out of that tone.

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THE EXECUTIONER’S SONGp>

INTERVIEWER As far as we can tell from your prison record, you’ve

been locked up almost continuously since you entered reform school,

and that was twenty-two years ago. It’s as ff you never saw any

choice but to live out a criminal destiny.

GILMORE Yea, that’s kind of a way of putting it. In fact, that’s very

nicely put.

INTERVIEWER What got you started thinking like a criminal?

GILMORE Probably going to reform school.

INTERVIEWER But you must have done things to get yourself sent

there.

GILMORE Yea, I was about fourteen when I went to reform school

and, ah, thirteen when I started getting locked up.

INTERVIEWER What bad you done to get locked up at thirteen?