The Executioner's Song (25 page)

                Craig just listened like an owl. He had the biggest shoulders she'd ever seen for a guy with an owl's face. Never said anything. Just blinked.

                Gary said he hated to watch TV. He especially hated the police shows. Nicole yawned.

                As they were leaving, Gary asked Craig, "What do you think of me?"

                "Well, it seems like you're trying," said Craig. "Just have a few breaks and you'll be all right."

                Going up from Craig's to Kathryne's, right on the long road to her mother's house, darn if the Mustang didn't stall again. Gary got so pissed he broke the windshield.

                Simply reared back with his feet and kicked the windshield. It cracked.

                That got the kids upset. Nicole didn't say two words. She got out and helped him push the car to get it started. It still didn't go. Then somebody came along to give them a shove. They drove in silence for a couple hundred yards.

                For a week she had been trying to say that they could live in separate places and see each other time to time. Now, when it came to it, Gary spoke. "I'm taking you to your mother's house," he said, "I don't want to ever see your face again."

                He dropped her off with the kids as easily as going down to the grocery for a six-pack. She thought she'd be glad, but she wasn't. It didn't feel like it was over in the right way.

                In twelve hours, Gary showed up at Kathryne's house. Just ahead of lunch. He wanted her to come back. He was drunk even as he asked her. She said she wouldn't. She said, I want to think about it awhile.

                He didn't want her to think. He wanted her to agree. Still, he amazed her. He didn't force a thing. After he left, though, she decided it had been too easy. By tomorrow he would be coming every few hours. So she called Barrett and asked if she could stay at his pad. Nicole made it clear she didn't want to hang in. Just wanted a bed for a couple of days.

                If she was going to disappear from Gary, there had to be places other than Barrett's. She went looking for an apartment. The same day, Barrett found one in Springville. Hardly anybody knew the address, and she made him swear to keep it secret.

                Now she was living five miles from the house in Spanish Fork. If Gary took the back highway to Provo instead of the Interstate, he would pass two streets from her place.

                Barrett wanted them to try one more time. One more trip of the mind. When she was young and used to read animal stories Kathryne had told her about reincarnation. Made it sound like a fairy tale. That was when Nicole made the choice to come back as a white bird. Now she thought that if she didn't straighten out the way she lived with men, she was going to come back ugly and no would ever want to look at her.

Chapter 11

EX-HUSBANDS

Barrett had this tendency to think of himself as small. In fact, his mom and dad used to tell him that when he was born, he looked no bigger than a kitten you put in a shoe box. Now he was five-ten and might weigh 145, but he never had the habit of thinking of himself as other than small-sized and self-sufficient. Like a kitten. During the stretch when he had his first romance with Nicole, he remembered spending one week all by himself in a yellow cell in the nut-house. Painted pale yellow like a kid's nursery, only it was a cell. He remembered taking his socks, rolling them up, and throwing them at the wall, throwing them and catching them. It was the only thing he had to do. He got along.

                On the other hand, he wasn't built for the heaviest punishment. Not with his long pointed nose and his fine pale brown hair, soft as a girl's. His hair could pick up bad vibrations from a stranger he passed on the highway. So Barrett had some idea usually what to expect. That was just as well considering the horror right now on his hands of helping Nicole hide out from that old scroungy madman, Gary Gilmore. Here was one love affair caught Barrett by surprise. He was horrified by Nicole's bad taste. Only once before had he seen her exhibit such real lack of judgment.

                Barrett had been through everything with Nicole. Seen a lot of dudes come and go, studs, jocks, freaks, animals, characters you could almost call cripples, but they always had something. If they weren't good looking, strong, well hung, then they had something you could relate to, some good trick. Barrett knew Nicole was a beautiful person and really independent, and if you had the misery to be stuck in love with her like Barrett, then you had to live with who she would come up with next. Had to be there when she was ready to quit the guy.

                Barrett wasn't built for heavy encounters. That was part of his understanding of himself. Yet the bravest, heaviest things he'd done in his life happened because of Nicole. For example: helping her move out of Joe Bob's house was scary. All those hours with a borrowed truck outside—why, Joe Bob could have come back from work to check on her. Barrett had a gun that day, but Joe Bob was heavy enough to walk through a gun.

                Yes, all those hours moving her furniture (which was Barrett's furniture when they had lived together) was some of the tightest time Barrett ever put in, but he got her away, every last lamp shade, and Sunny and Jeremy up in the front seat with them, yes, saved Nicole's buns one more time, and she even went back to living with him when he found the house in Spanish Fork.

                He had been working then. Concrete pumping. Had been looking for an occupation to get him out of dealing. Thought concrete pumping might be it, but found it a hard attitude to keep loyal to. Straight people only had to take one look at him and his flowing hippie threads, suede buckskin-style jacket with fringe, long hair, mustache, and they would categorize him right at the bottom. It was hard to drive somebody else's truck, and get paid a couple of bucks while making the other fellow a couple of hundred bucks. It always got Barrett down. Dealing, you were your own businessman least.

                Still, he had been trying to make a straight living and prove a point to Nicole. Driving from Spanish Fork and working at pumping in American Fork, he was thereby damn well from one end of Utah County to the other, close to 60 miles a day. Commuting in morning traffic was as straight as you could get. That was the point he wished to make. But Nicole and him

started hassling about all the things in the past. Her sexual relations with other men bothered him. Couldn't get them out of his head.

                Right from the beginning in Spanish Fork their sex life wasn't like it used to be. Not that feeling of love anymore. Times he'd say to her, "You don't even want me." He might just as well have had an open hole in him. To be without Nicole was living in the pits. She didn't realize how he felt—if she could just now and again feel his pain. She didn't know how beautiful it could be with her, if she was in the mood to have it beautiful. Nobody could give you a feeling you were wanted, like Nicole could give it. Like she was the seducer, and it was heavenly places when you got that goodness from her. When she cut it off, Barrett knew the pits.

                So even with the house in Spanish Fork—$75 a month—he couldn't help it, he split. Went up to Wyoming for a few weeks, and did what he always did on a split, which is, try to enjoy his free, make the most of life without daily hassles. But he couldn't get on the good side of his free where you could feel kind of dapper. Instead he carried Nicole around like a load. So, first opportunity, he hit her up with a surprise visit from Wyoming, and pulled in front of the house in Spanish Fork about eleven o'clock on a cold February night.

                Since another fellow's car was out front, Barrett came in by the back. Nicole and the dude were in the bathroom together naked. The fellow was sitting on the laundry hamper, a weird-looking dirty guy, Clyde Dozier. Barrett knew him in passing. A disgusting non-entity. Barrett didn't get violent, you know, he just went in the kitchen adjacent, and Clyde came and put his clothes on, and started to apologize and say it wasn't Nicole's fault. Barrett said, "Save yourself some problems, Clyde. Get out of here before I get mad." Barrett might not be that tough, but he had a few connections after all. Clyde left, and Nicole started saying, like, "I'm not your old lady. You went to Wyoming and left me, you know. I can do whatever I want to do."

                Well, she had a bed made up on the kitchen floor and Barrett got it on. Didn't know why he wanted to have sex at that point, but he figured she gave it to him because he'd get violent if she resisted. Next morning, he wasn't mad. It was just funny more than anything else, you know, there on the kitchen floor with his old lady, saying, "God, couldn't you pick somebody a little better than Clyde?" He really wanted to get together with her. So he gave up Wyoming and took a place in Lindon. Dropped over two or three times a week until she told him to stay away. One time he went over and another low scroungy dude was there, Freson (what a name!) Phelps. Barrett stayed away a long time before he went over to Spanish Fork again.

                On this occasion, different things were around, Different furniture. Somebody new had moved in. He sat and had a cup of coffee with her. Before he could even start talking, Gilmore came in. The first time he heard about the fellow was when she introduced them.

                Barrett's impression was that here was one more old scroungy dude. He didn't look right. More bad taste! He was wearing cutoffs and his legs were too white. Gilmore looked a lot older than her. Barrett didn't feel hurt or anything, just kind of disgust, you know, like I don't believe this.

                He went on talking with Nicole. Gilmore never said a word, sat at the kitchen table. He seemed bothered. In a little while he up and went to the front room. At that point, Barrett nodded at Nicole, and they went outside. Sunny and Jeremy were playing, they sat near them, and Nicole said Gilmore was an ex-con. Nicole went back to the house. Barrett was left outside playing with the Pretty soon, the kids started saying the same things over and over. It was like they had a crowbar in your collarbone and were prying open. "Pop, poop, pop, poop," they'd say, and giggle.

                He went down to his truck, and took off. He could really feel his skinny butt bouncing in the cab.

                Then he met Gilmore the second time. Dropped over to visit while Gary was out to the store. While Barrett was talking to Nicole by the apple tree, Gilmore came back. Didn't say, Get the hell out, but sure acted like his return was the good cue to leave. So Barrett got up, and Nicole went right into the house. That left Barrett to walk to the street alone. Just then Gilmore came through the front door to confront him on the sidewalk.

                He said, "I want to tell you something. I accept the fact that you're Sunny's father, but Nicole is mine." Barrett said, "Look, buddy, you can have her. I don't want her." These words gave Gilmore a bad look, a real bad-dog look. Gilmore said, "You don't have to insult her."

                At that point Barrett got a scared feeling. He was used to seeing Nicole with other men. He'd watched her with other men. What else was there to say? You can have her. He certainly couldn't keep them from having her.

                Besides, it would do no good for Gilmore to know his true feelings. That would wake Gilmore up. Barrett said, "I wasn't trying to insult her. Nicole don't want me, and I don't want her. I just wanted you to know." He got in his truck, and right there on the road, cruising along, he felt hope. It was the sound of Gilmore saying, "Nicole is mine." They got to talking like that, and they lost her. She didn't want to be owned for long.

                After that, riding around, wheeling high off a Thai stick, Barrett might drive by her house. If Gary's car was out in front, he would not stop. If the scene was right, he would visit a little with Nicole, feel her out.

                One time, Rosebeth answered the door and said Gary was at work, and Nicole was away with the kids. It was the first time Barrett ever saw Rosebeth, but he walked in like it was his house. After all, everything he owned was in there. Gary and Nicole, said Rosebeth, would be gone the whole day for sure. There was nice warm weather in the room.

                Jim was sitting in the chair, and the girl was lying on the living-room bed that served for a couch. He thought she was pleasantly plump, had a real sweet baby-fat, but too young and virgin to fool around with. When she got up, however, to lift a blanket off the bed, he decided to get beside her, and they started to kiss. Didn't take a minute for her to say, "Now, let's get undressed." "Okay," he said "I'll go for that." They took off their clothes and lay on the bed, she said, "Let me suck it." Barrett said, "Don't let me stop you."

                All her doing, you know. Barrett laid back and she spun around and popped it right on his face—he had no choice. She didn't really know how, actually hurt him with her teeth. All same she got pretty warm. But her clit wasn't sensitive, you know, couldn't make her flinch.

                Still, she got pretty warm. He turned her around and she had expectant look. Only he couldn't get in. She was a virgin, he found out, and he was hurting her.

                "Gary only wants me to do things with him, you know," she was saying, "Gary wouldn't like this, you know." Told him how the three of them fooled around. Barrett just kept flicking her clit.