The Executioner's Song (11 page)

                Still, Nicole had had a change of luck. So maybe there was a chance for herself as well. Maybe something terrific could come into your life any night at all.

                After they dropped Sue off, Nicole showed Gary a pillow she had brought. To get close to him, Nicole always sat near the hump of the front seat rather than on the seat itself, and that was not very comfortable in the Mustang with its two bucket seats. She had finally gotten smart enough to bring a pillow today. Not only was it more comfortable, but she could sit with her hips raised, and so be tall enough to put an arm around his neck. He drove with his free hand in her lap, holding hands.

                This day, as they pulled up to the store for shopping, he didn't get out but began to talk to her of his mother. He hadn't seen her for a long time, he explained, and she had arthritis bad and couldn't hardly walk. Gary stopped talking and tears came to his eyes. Nicole was amazed that he felt something so strong for his mother. She was amazed he could cry. She thought he was harder than that. She didn't say anything but sat close to him and touched his tears. Usually when she saw men cry it was disgusting. She'd had guys cry when she left them. She was good at turning herself off when they got like that, thought it was a weakness to cry over a girl. With Gary, she wasn't thinking about weakness. Wanted to do something for him. Snap her fingers, so to speak, and have his mother there.

                They began to talk about going up to Portland for a visit. Maybe they could save a little, and make the drive in her car, or maybe his could last for the ride. Then, they got to talking about islands they could lease for 99 years. Gary said he didn't know that much concerning the subject but was going to get some information on it.

                On workdays, he had to get up early, but he was used to that. She found it really okay to have him hugging her in the early morning dark and whispering he loved her. They both slept nude but he still had to lay hands on her to be sure she was there. Of course, that could be a problem. Nicole hardly enjoyed to kiss him then. He didn't smoke and his breath was good, but she smoked a lot and her mouth tasted awful at 5:30 A.M.

                Before too long, she would get out of bed, go in the kitchen, fix him sandwiches, and set the coffee on. She had a real short little bathrobe which sometimes she wore, or she'd run around nude. He'd sit and drink his instant breakfast of Carnation with a handful of vitamins. He was a vitamin freak and believed them good for energy. Of course, if he'd done a lot of drinking after work, he was tired in the morning. Still, he was good company. He'd sit with her over coffee as long as he could, and keep looking at her, and would tell her she was beautiful, and that she amazed him. He had never believed a woman could be as fresh and sweet smelling as she, and indeed Nicole was willing to hear all of that, for she liked her bath, and no matter how the house or kids might look at times, she really cared about being dainty.

                Without makeup, her face was fresh as dew, he told her. She was his elf, She was loveliness, he said. After a while, Nicole got the impression that he was just like her and could hardly comprehend what was happening. The feeling of something beautiful next to you all the time.

                Then, just before he was ready to leave, he would get up and lock himself in the bathroom for twenty minutes. Nicole supposed he combed his hair and did his thing. Afterward, they'd spend five minutes at the front door, and she would watch from there while he got in the car. A lot of times he'd have trouble starting it. Sometimes, after slipping on her Levi's, she'd come out to push. Sometimes he would have to take her car. It was dependent on which Mustang had the most gas. They got pretty broke sometimes.

                She didn't regret, however, quitting her job. After the day she played hooky from the sewing factory to have a picnic with Sue, she knew she wasn't going to keep working. She needed time to think. It was hard to stay serious about a sewing machine when you wanted to dream all the time about your man. Besides, they had his paycheck, and her welfare, and Gary was just as happy if she quit.

                While he was away, she'd piddle around, clean the house, feed the kids. She'd work in the garden a lot, and drink coffee. Sometimes she would sit and drink coffee for a couple of hours and think about Gary. Sit there and smile to herself. She felt so nice she couldn't believe some of the things she felt. A lot of times she would drive over with his lunch just to be with him, and he'd come sit in the car.

                She began to visit her mother a lot because Kathryne's house wasn't far from where he worked, and Nicole could have coffee with Kathryne, then leave the kids, and be alone with Gary. She really enjoyed such time. She'd go back to her mother's for an hour or so, then back to Spanish Fork to straighten out the house and wait. It was the first time in her life she felt like a lady of leisure.

                One Sunday while she was digging away in her garden, Gary carved their names on the apple tree. He did it with a pocket knife, real nice, really neat: GARY LOVES NICOLE. Nobody had ever done that before.

                Next day she had a lot of things to do, and kept wanting to get back. When she finally reached home, she cleaned his car out first, then climbed up the tree to a place above where he had done it, and carved out: NICOLE LOVES GARY. Then she went into the house just in time to meet him.

                He came out in the backyard with a beer and she told him to look at the apple tree. He didn't see anything and she finally had to point it out to him. Then he was happy as a kid, and said she had done hers better than his. Told her it was a beautiful heart she had carved around the names.

                Maybe a week after Gary came to live with her, she found a big yellow folder in his stuff with a bunch of papers about a dispute he had with a prison dentist. The arguments were all typed up in prison language and seemed so funny she just sat there and laughed. All those big words about a set of false teeth. When she told Gary, however, he got upset. He had never mentioned he had false teeth. Bothered the hell out of him that she found out.

                Of course it wasn't new to her. She had discovered it the first night. She had lived before with a guy who had a plate and knew how they felt. You could always tell when kissing a man because they never wanted you to put your tongue in their mouth, whereas they were always putting their tongue in yours. She went so far as to tease him about the chompers, but he took it bad. Changed like somebody just turned out the lights. She still kept teasing him, as if to make him see it didn't bother her. She had no desire to compare him to other guys, or rate him in one department or another. She was ready to buy the package, string and all.

                Each day she kept coming across the realization that some of the little things he did gave her surprising pleasure. He didn't smoke, for instance, yet when he saw her rolling her own, he brought home a carton of cigarettes. It was beautiful, those little lifts.

                They would sit around and drink beer in the evening, and there was hardly time enough together. She could be as honest as she wanted, and tell him anything about her past. He would listen. He would observe everything she had to say. If another fellow would have sickened her with such constant attention, it didn't bother Nicole a bit. She was studying Gary the same way.

                All she wanted was more hours with him. She had always appreciated any minute she had to herself, but now she would get impatient with wanting him to be back. When five o'clock rolled around and he was there, the day was made. She loved opening that first beer for him.

                Sometimes, he would take his BB gun out to the back, and they would shoot at bottles and beer cans in the twilight until you couldn't tell anymore when you were hitting except by the sound of the ricochet or a plink of glass. The twilight came down slowly. It was as if you were taking one breath and then another from a cluster of roses. The air was good as marijuana then.

                In those early evenings, if they stayed home, there were always kids around. Their baby-sitter was a girl named Laurel, an adolescent who had a lot of little cousins, and they came with her. Sometimes when Gary and Nicole got back from a drive, all those kids would be around and he would play with them. He'd give them piggyback rides. They'd stand on his shoulders and touch their hands to the ceiling. He liked to play with the ones who had enough nerve to walk all the way across the room like that. They just loved the holy shit out of him.

                A lot of the time, though, as soon as he got home, they would get Laurel over, and take off for a ride alone.

                Usually they would eat at a drive-in, and a couple of times he took her to the Stork Club to play pool. There were afternoons right after work when they went to the shopping mall and selected sexy underwear for her, or picked up beer and cigarettes for the drive-in movie.

                Pretty soon after they parked, he'd want her to take her clothes off. Then they would make it in the front seat. Gary just loved to have her naked. Couldn't get over the idea he was holding a naked woman.

                Once, watching Peter Pan, they got out and sat on the rear deck over the trunk, back to back, and she was naked then. The Mustang was parked way in the outfield, but there were other cars around, and she had nothing on. God, it was the nicest feeling. After all those years in prison, Gary was insane about watching her walk about with her bootie exposed and her boobs bouncing. She dug it that he liked her without clothes. He had her right around his finger and she didn't mind it a bit.

                Yet, he didn't get arrogant. He was so touching when he asked her to do something. One night, late at night, she even took off her clothes on the back steps of the First Mormon Church, in Provo Park, practically the center of town. It was late at night. They just sat there on the steps, her clothes on the grass, and she danced a little, and Gary began to sing in a voice like Johnny Cash, although not as good, unless you were in love with Gary, and he sang "Amazing Grace"—

                Through many dangers, toils and snares, We have already come, 'Twas Grace that brought us safe this far, And Grace will lead us on—

                That way she sat beside him naked at two in the morning, on a hot spring night, with the heat pushing in from the desert instead of the cold settling down from the mountains.

                That night, very late at night, back in bed, they really made it. Just as the sex was going good, he talked of putting his rough hands on her soft warm bootie and of breathing into her soul, and she came with him then, really came for the first time.

                In the morning she sat down and wrote a letter to say how much she loved him, and that she didn't want to stop. It was just a short letter and she left it out there by his vitamins. He didn't reply when he read it, but a night or two later they were walking by the same church off Center Street, and saw a falling star. They both made a wish. He asked what hers could be, but she wasn't going to tell him. Then she confessed having wished that her love for him be constant and forever. He told her that he hoped no unnecessary tragedies would ever befall them. She had a rush of memories then like falling down in a dream.

Chapter 5

NICOLE AND UNCLE LEE

Once, when Gary asked her if she remembered the first time she fucked somebody, Nicole paused in her reply and said, "Vaguely."

                " 'Vaguely?' " Gary asked. "What do you mean, 'vaguely'?"

                "It wasn't that big of a deal," said Nicole. "I was only 11 or 12."

                Of course, she didn't tell him all her stories at once. She told him cute things first like the one about the pet raccoon when she was 6. She used to walk to school with it on her shoulder and think she was hot stuff.

                She used, she told him, to play hooky a lot. Sometimes she would just drift on up the hill above the school, sit in the middle of the pine trees and look down on all those little idiots in class. One time Nicole was being smart-ass and instead of keeping to the woods, went walking back by the road. Just then her mother drove around the corner. There Nicole was. She could remember her mother saying, "All right, girl. Get in the car."

                Or the time her mother cut her hair so short you could see the skin behind her ears. People used to think she was a boy. One time some kids in the playground said so, and she proved to them she wasn't.

                Gary laughed. That sped things up.

                She remembered, when she was 10 or 11 writing a pornographic letter to a very nasty little boy who had a very dirty mouth.

                Now she didn't know why she wrote it, just that when she finished, she took one look, and tore it up. Kathryne fished it out of the garbage and taped it together. Then her mother told her how horrible she was. Especially since she had written: Okay, you talk about it so much, let's do it.

                There came moments when Nicole thought her mother was very intelligent, for Kathryne could pick up on what other people were thinking. Nicole never believed Kathryne listened much to her own soul, but she could sure hone in on others. If you lived around her long enough, you didn't have to think about something before her mother would mention it. That sure gave her a way of bending you out of shape. Kathryne was a tiny woman, but she would tell her big handsome husband with his beautiful black mustache that he was nothing but a slob. Tell him to go fuck the lady he had just been with. When Charley came home from work, which was usually late, because he'd stopped off to have a few at a bar, it wasn't that he walked drunk, or his speech was slurred, but he'd have a half smile on his face like Clark Gable, and Nicole could tell he was feeling good. Then Kathryne would start to fix his mood. She wasn't about to forgive him for a lot.