The Executioner's Song (32 page)

                All the while he was crawling on her, giving her a back massage.

                When she closed her eyes, she saw a man flapping his arms. He had about eight limbs on each side and was flapping them, an evil force, bringing disease and everything else like Satan, the strongest, to earth.

                Now she knew there was something wrong with the back massage. Gary had changed his personality. Gary, who was always so manly around her, more manly even than her father, had turned female and was crawling on her from behind with this back massage.

                If she would turn around and look at his face, she would see a woman. He was feeling her in order to feel his own breasts, his own belly. April could feel a woman behind her. That turned her off cold, man.

                "Let's go to sleep," she said. He didn't fight. He got into his bed and she got into hers, and he turned out the lights and she lay down in the dark and looked up at the ceiling. The spackled plaster had sparkles of glass embedded to look like a thousand stars. She couldn't stand the smell in the room and turned on the lights. On the wall just back of her was a landscape running all over the wallpaper of palm trees and the ruin of a stone arch, and on a hill, an old Italian house.

                Long skinny people wearing capes were walking around that countryside. Gary said, "Turn off the light. I need my sleep."

                She lay there some more, and he came over to her bed in the dark and tried to make her. She didn't know if he was serious or not. They just scuffled in the dark and he tore her underwear but she held the pieces together, and said, "No." She said, "Gary, I don't feel like doing this." She said, "Gary, you're losing your mind." She said "Sissy. Sissy. Sissy wouldn't think this is very good." At last he gave up and she lay there in the dark. The room started coming back to her. She saw the room very clearly like she was looking through a magnifying glass. "It's just one more night in a prison cell," she said to herself, "and I've been in prison all my life."

                Out in the foyer, as they left, was a small rubber pad on the wall. It kept the knob of the door to 212 from denting the plaster. She didn't know why but it reminded her of the cord to the TV set that was all coiled up and tied neatly by a white plastic wire. In her head that was like a snake strangling another snake.

Deep down in sleep, the first thing Colleen knew was that somebody was knocking lightly on her door. It left her startled. She didn't know what time it was until she got up and passed the kitchen clock and saw it was two in the morning and Max was still away. Then she turned on the porch light and looked out the little window that was set in the door. What she saw made her very scared.

                Outside the window were five men, and the first of them was President Kanin of her Stake.

                He put his arm around her shoulder, "Colleen," he said, "Max won't be home tonight."

                She received a feeling that Max might never be home again.

                "Is he dead?" she asked.

                All five nodded.

                She cried for a minute. It wasn't real to her.

                At this point, one of the two men she didn't know, said to President Kanin, "Will she be okay with you?" When the answer was yes, these two strangers left. She realized they were plainclothes police men.

                President Kanin helped her dial home. No one answered. She remembered her parents were camping and had left that morning, so she dialed Max's parents. The lady who answered said Mr. and Mrs. Jensen had also gone camping, but she would get in touch with them. President Kanin now asked if there was somebody else one could call and Colleen thought of her cousins who lived across the street from her parents in Clearfield. They were home and said they'd drive right over. That would take an hour and a half.

                President Kanin now asked her if there was somebody who could stay with her until the cousins arrived. She said there was a girl in the Ward who lived two trailers down. They called and she came over. The three men left.

                The girl stayed nearly two hours. They lay down beside each other on the bed and talked. Monica stayed asleep and Colleen was numb. She had no desire to see where they had taken Max's body.

                She did not feel like saying "Let me go to him." She just sat and talked to her neighbor and it all seemed unreal. They would talk for a while, and then it would come back. It was a quarter to five when her relatives knocked on the door.

April had taken out her earring, and in the dark she was using it to stick herself. She had this dream that one day she was going to take an injection and end it all. She wanted to know what it felt like. So she kept trying the point of the earring post against her neck.

                In the morning while it was still kind of dark, Gary moved over to her bed again, and tried one more time. Not that hard. Then he drank more milk. It certainly was love he needed more than sex, but April knew she could not let Sissy down cause Sissy still loved him.

By 6:30 when Monica awoke in the dawn, Colleen was saying to herself that she was still alive, and her baby was still alive, and the baby had to be nursed. It would be terrible to totally upset the baby.

                So she went in and greeted Monica with "Good morning" and picked her up and loved her and gave her a bath and got her ready for the day.

When the light came through the window, April and Gary dressed and he drove her home. As he dropped her off, he said, "April, whatever last night was like, I want you to remember that you'll always be my friend and I'll always care about you."

                She went in the house and nobody was there. Kathryne was off driving Mike to work and April started sweeping the floor. Right in the middle of it she said out loud, "I'll never get married, never."

                Kathryne had stayed up all night waiting for Gary and April. By five, she must have fallen asleep, and then the alarm went off not long after. She had to take her son Mike up the Canyon every morning to where he worked for the Forest Service, a twenty-mile trip up twisting roads, and after a day and night of cigarette smoke, the fear in her lungs felt ready to whistle up a storm with every breath. Then she came back down the Canyon to her house, walked in the door and there was April enthroned like a zombie in the kitchen chair.

                "Where in the hell have you been?" April did not answer. She just sat and stared. "Were you," Kathryne asked, "with that dirty crumb all night?" For all the easing of her fear, there was still no relief. She just felt sick. My God, April was in a trance. "Damn it," Kathryne shouted, "Did you stay with Gary all night?"

                Suddenly April screamed. "Leave me alone! Can't you leave me alone? I know nothing." She ran in the bedroom. "You're nosey," she cried from the other side of the door.

                "I can't do anything about it," Kathryne said to herself. She was just thankful the child was home. It was one more wall Kathryne was holding up with her life.

Chapter 15

DEBBIE AND BEN

Debbie was feeling a little off one day and Ben kept wanting to take her to the doctor. She was pregnant, after all. But there were eleven kids over from the Busy Bee Day-Care Center, and Debbie didn't have the time. Ben finally raised his voice a little. At which point she told him he bugged her. That was the worst fight they ever had.

                They were proud that was the worst fight. They saw marriage as a constant goal of making each other happy. It was the opposite of that song, "I Never Promised You a Rose Garden." They kind of promised each other. They weren't going to be like other marriages.

                Debbie was five feet tall and didn't weigh a lot more than a hundred pounds. Ben was six-five and weighed one hundred and ninety when they were married. Two years later, he weighed two-ninety, and looked big and fat and fine to Debbie. He was always going on a diet or splurging. He would lift barbells to try to keep in shape.

                For a young Mormon couple, they lived well. They had steaks in the freezer, and loved to go out and get pizzas. They learned to make even better pizzas at home. Ben would cover every square inch with meat and cheese. They also dressed well and they managed to meet a $I00 payment each month on their Pinto. Ben could have been the huge man who gets out of the little Pinto in the TV commercial.

                They worked hard, however. Ben kept trying to get back to his courses in business management at BYU, but it took two to three jobs a day, plus Debbie managing the day-care center, in order to keep abreast with what they spent living happily with each other. So they hardly needed friends. They had their baby, Benjamin, who was their first priority, and they had each other. That was all of it. It was enough.

                Debbie didn't know about matters outside the house. She knew a lot about plastic pants and disposable diapers and just about anything to do with children in the day-care center. She was terrific with kids and would rather mop her kitchen floor than read.

                Since she didn't have a driving license, however, she couldn't go to the grocery store, the laundromat, or anywhere without Ben.

                She also didn't know their bank accounts nor their debts. She lived in a world of two-year-olds and four-year-olds and took wonderful care of Ben and Benjamin, and their house, and they went out to eat five nights a week. Except when Ben was on a diet, that was their entertainment. They would share one of those deluxe eight-dollar pizzas.

                Ben always had to carry two or three jobs. Before Benjamin was born, there was one stretch when Ben used to get up at four in the morning and drop Debbie at the day-care center at five. She would get play materials ready for the children who would start coming in at seven, and by then, Ben would have driven to Salt Lake where he managed a quick-food restaurant. That work began at 6 A.M., and he wouldn't get home until eight at night. Then he got another job where he didn't have to drop her off at the day-care center till 10 A.M., but had to go to Salt Lake for a stint that began at noon in a chain called Arctic Circle. (It later changed its name to Dandy Burgers.) He would get home at 2 A.M. In the winter it was rough when the roads were icy. Ben began to get a bad feeling about doing that forty-five-mile drive in each direction day and night.

                Of course, he had other sources of income. He would work at BYU on the maintenance crew, plus whatever cleaning jobs he picked up. In turn, Debbie kept Benjamin with her at the Busy Bee and even had a crib in the office. Sundays, and whatever spare time Ben found, he would work as a home teacher for Bishop Christensen.

                If a widow needed some electrical work or handyman plumbing, if her walk required shoveling, or her windows cleaned, why, Ben would do it. He must have checked on the needs of five or six such families a month.

                When the position of Manager at the City Center Motel came open, Ben leaped to take it. The job paid a minimum of $150 a week plus an apartment, but the business might be there for him to build.

                It was not a large new motel, and not on a highway, but at capacity, he could end up drawing as much as $600 a week. In addition, they could have all the time they wanted together.

                Their clientele was mostly tourists, or parents coming up to visit their kids at BYU. Most people who stayed at the motel were quiet. If occasionally a couple looked like they weren't married, Debbie didn't exactly approve of it, and tried to give them a nice, noisy, dirty room.

                The busiest time was at 9:00, getting the maids out to work.

                They used to keep four chambermaids who each had a certain number of rooms to do in a given time. If it took six hours but should have taken two, they got paid for two. When they began, Ben and Debbie did a little such work together to learn how long it took.

                While a lot of other motels paid girls by the hour, Ben did it by the room. Of course, if there was an extra mess, Ben made an adjustment.

                He was always fair.

                After a while, Debbie began to enjoy motel work more than she'd expected. There was lots of time together. Nothing much would happen after the morning rush until evening when the majority of people checked in. Ben began to talk of going back to school.

                The work, however, was a little confining. They couldn't, for instance, leave the motel together unless they made arrangements in advance. That interfered with going out to a restaurant. It also rushed their dinner hour. Sometimes they had to eat a little too early.

                They never felt any need to mix with other people, and time went by well. Ben got what social life he needed by going around town to drum up business. He wanted to get the name of the City Center Motel well known, so he worked out special arrangements with a few of the larger motels. He had an understanding where the clerk would receive a dollar for each overflow guest sent Ben's way.

                City Center was always the first small motel to put out a NO VACANCY.