The Executioner's Song (4 page)

                Lu Ann replied, "Yes, you're in my car, but you're not going anywhere, unless you're going on foot." She had the feeling he would get out at this point if he knew where he was.

                Gary said, "I don't want to hear any more." "Well, you're going to." Suddenly, he raised his fist.

                She said, "You want to hit me?" She didn't really think he would. Still, she felt his rage pass over her like a blast of air.

                Lu Ann leaned forward and said, "I can hear that switch on the side of your head going click. Gary, turn it back on, and listen to me. I offer you friendship."

                "Let's drive home," he said.

                She took him back to Vern's and they sat outside in the car. Gary asked if he could hug her. Asked as if he needed a favor. "I'm friendly with a lot of people," Lu Ann said, "but I offer my friendship to very few." He shifted in the seat and put his arms around her and pulled her close. He hugged her very hard. He said, "It's different than I thought it would be."

                She felt that he was grabbing at everything. It was as if the world was just out of reach of his fingers. She said, "Don't rush so, Gary. You've got time. You've got so much time." He said, "I haven't. I've lost it. I can't make those years up."

                "Well," she told him, "maybe you can't, but you have to put it behind you. If you take one step at a time, you'll find yourself a woman, and some kids. You can still have it all."

                "You're not going to see me again, are you?" he asked.

                She said, "Yes, I will, if you want me to."

                He kissed her, but it was forced. Then he pushed her away and held her by the shoulders and looked at her, one hand on each shoulder.

                He said, "I'm sorry. I've messed this up, haven't I?"

                She said, "No, you haven't, Gary. I'll see you again." She took a little church key they had been using to open their beers that evening, and now gave it to him and he thanked her. Lu Ann said, "If you need someone to talk to, my phone is open 24 hours a day, Gary."

                He got out of the car and said, "I'm sorry. I've muffed it all." Added, "Vern's going to be awful mad at me."

                Vern, in fact, was up when Gary came through the door, and they talked about the evening. It was Vern's impression that Gary might have been too forceful "You just don't," Vern explained, "try to do everything the first time on a date. You find out about each other."

                Gary started hitting on the beer in the refrigerator. Vern didn't have to be told Gary had been through a few already.

                "Gary," Vern said, "are you going to shape up, or am I going to have to knock you on your ass?"

                "What are you going to do?" asked Gary.

                "I'm going to have to do it."

                "Aren't you afraid of me?" Gary asked.

                "No," said Vern, "why should I be?" In his gentlest voice, he said, "I can whip you,"

                Gary's face lit up as if for the first time he felt like they wanted him in this house.

                "Aren't you afraid?" he asked again.

                "No," said Vern, "I'm not. I hope that doesn't sound crazy." They both began to laugh.

                Gary looked around the room and said to Vern, "This is what I want."

                "Yeah," said Vern, "what do you want?"

                "Well, I want a home," said Gary. "I want a family. I want to live like other people live."

                Vern said, "You can't have that in five minutes. You can't have it in a year. You've got to work for it."

                Gary tried to call Lu Ann in the morning, but she wasn't there, and left a message.

                By the time Lu Ann called the shop, he was out.

                Sterling Baker took the call. Gary, he told her, had gone up the road to some bar.

                "Oh, Sterling," said Lu Ann, "please explain to him that I'm his friend. I really wasn't here when he called. But I did try to get back to him."

                Sterling said he'd tell Gary. Lu Ann never did hear from him.

                Gary returned to the shop for a couple of hours and seemed sober. It was payday, but Vern had advanced him money, so there wasn't anything due. When Gary said he was short, however, Vern slipped him a ten, and said, "Gary, if you don't think this job is going to be right for you, let me know. We'll find something else."

                Gary was invited to dinner that night at Sterling Baker's house. He made quite an impression on Sterling's wife, Ruth Ann, by playing with the baby for a long while. Since he liked the music on the radio, he bounced the baby in time to Country-and-Western. Johnny Cash, it came out in conversation, was his all-time favorite. One time he got out of jail and spent an entire day listening to nothing but Johnny Cash records.

                How long had he been in prison altogether? Ruth Ann wanted to know. She was small and had long hair that was so light she looked like a natural platinum blond. If she had been a boy, they would have called her Whitey.

                Well, Gary told them, if you added it up, he guessed he'd been in, on and off, eighteen of his last twenty-two years. He'd been on ice, and now he'd come out, and he still felt young. Sterling Baker felt sorry for him.

                Over dinner, Gary told stories about prison. Back in '68, he had been in some prison riots, and a local TV crew selected him as one of the leaders and had him on television saying a few words. His looks, or something in the way he spoke, attracted attention. He got some mail out of it including a beautiful correspondence with this girl named Becky. He fell in love with her through her letters. Then she came to visit. She was so fat that she had to waddle through the door sideways. Yet he still liked her enough to want to marry her.

                It was not uncommon, Gary said. You could always see fat women in the visiting room of a jail. For some reason, very fat women and convicts got along. "Once you get behind bars," Gary remarked, "maybe you need more of an earth mother."

                They were going to get married but Becky had to go into the hospital for an operation. She died on the table. That was his prison romance.

                He had other stories. LeRoy Earp, who had been one of his best friends as a kid, was sent to Oregon State Penitentiary two years after Gary. LeRoy had killed a woman, picked up a life sentence and didn't have much to look forward to. So he had a bad habit. LeRoy, Gary explained, would stay fucked-up on Valium for months.

                "He got in debt to this guy named Bill, who was dealing in prison dope," said Gary, looking at Sterling and Ruth Ann, "and Bill was always fucking with people. One time LeRoy sent word to me, Bill had come to his cell and beat him up, all that shit," said Gary, "put the boots to him while LeRoy was on the floor. Then Bill walked off with LeRoy's outfit, you know, his syringe and needle, his money, everything." Gary took down half a can of beer at a swallow. "Well," he said, "Valium can make you hallucinate, so I wasn't certain LeRoy's story was true. I talked it over with a guy who was going in the hole for seven days and he checked it out for me, confirmed it. The guy wanted to know if I needed any help with Bill.

                "I told him I would do it myself. LeRoy was my personal friend. The prison was doing some construction out in the yard, so I went over, stole a hammer and caught Bill watching a football game on TV. I bounced the hammer off his head. Then I turned around and walked off." Gary nodded, studying their reactions. "They took Bill up to Portland for brain surgery. He was pretty fucked-up."

                "What happened to you?" asked Ruth Ann.

                "There was two or three snitches in the TV room and they saw me do it and told the Warden. But the snitches were afraid to stand up in Court. So the Warden just kept me in the hole for four months. When I got out, this buddy of mine gave me a little toy hammer to wear on a chain, and nicknamed me Hammersmith."

                Gary told this story in a Texas accent, very even voice. He was kind of informing Sterling that he had a code. It went: Be loyal to your friends.

                Gary now asked Ruth Ann if she knew any girls who would go out with him.

                She didn't, offhand.

Chapter 3

THE FIRST MONTH

Gary went back to visit with Brenda and Johnny for Easter weekend. After the kids went to sleep, they spent Saturday night coloring Easter eggs around the table, and Gary had a fine time and drew beautiful pictures and wrote the names of the kids in Gothic script, and in three-dimensional letters so that, small as they were on the Easter egg, they still appeared to be cut out of stone.

                After a while, Johnny and Gary began to giggle together. They were still painting eggs, but instead of saying, "Cristie, I love you," or "Keep it UP, Nick," they were printing stuff like "Fuck the Easter Bunny." Brenda exclaimed, "You can't hide those."

                "Well," said Gary with a big grin, "guess we got to eat 'em." He and Johnny had a feast of mislabeled hard-boiled eggs.

                They spent the rest of the evening drawing maps—Take so many steps; Look under a rock; You can read the next clue only in a mirror; etc.—they were up half the night putting candy, eggs and treats all over the yard.

                Brenda had a good time watching Gary climb around in the tree—which was wet for that matter. They were having a wet Easter. Here he was looming through the branches, hiding goodies, and getting soaked right through.

                Then he put jelly beans all over his room, especially on the shelf above his couch, so that when the kids got up next morning, they would have to romp over him to get the candies.

                Little Tony, who was only four, walked across the front of Gary's chest, up on his face, mashed his nose, and slipped off, squashing his ear. Gary was laughing his head off.

                The morning went like that. It was a good morning. When it cleared up a little, they played horseshoes and Johnny and Gary got along fine.

                In the kitchen, Brenda said to him, "Hey, Gary, you see this Revere Ware pan? Your mother gave it to me."

                "Oh?"

                "Yes," Brenda told him, "it was a wedding gift when I first got married."

                Gary said, "Boy, that thing ought to be beat up by now."

                Brenda said, "Don't get funny."

                It seemed the moment for Brenda to ask Gary if he'd been to see Mont Court. Gary said he had.

                "Did you like him?"

                "Yeah," he said, "pretty good egg."

                "Gary," Brenda said, "you work with him and he'll work back with you."

                Gary gave a smile. He said a lot of men had been put in charge over him. People who worked in prison, and people who worked for the prison system. He didn't really know anyone who'd been particularly willing to work with him.

                Dinner didn't turn out as Brenda had hoped. She'd invited Vern and Ida, and Howard and Toni with their kids, and of course she and Johnny had their own brood present including Johnny's son, Kenny, by a previous marriage. Counting all the noses, they came to thirteen, and they made jokes about that. The main dish was spaghetti Italian style, promised to Gary the way Brenda's Sicilian grandfather used to make it, with mushrooms and peppers and onions and oregano and garlic bread. She had some hot cross buns for dessert with a white X of icing on the top and plenty of coffee, and would have enjoyed the meal if it hadn't been for how tense Gary looked.

                Everybody was jabbering back and forth. It was not a quiet meal, but Gary was a little out of it. Occasionally, somebody would ask a polite question of him, or he would say something like, "Boy, this is better grub than what they had at Marion," but kept his head down as he ate, and hid his silence by swallowing food in a hurry.

                Brenda came to the glum conclusion that Gary was an atrocious eater. Too bad. Table manners were one of her hang-ups. She couldn't stand to see a man shoveling and slobbering at the table.

                From his letters she had expected him to be very much of a gentleman. Now she decided she should have known his manners would be common. In prison, they didn't eat with napkins and place settings. Still, it got to her. Gary had long artist's fingers, small at the tips, nice-looking hands like a pianist might have, but he gripped his fork with his fist and bulldozed it in.

                He was, however, sitting at the end of the table by the refrigerator and so the fluorescent light over the sink was shining on his face. It lit up his eyes. Brenda said, "Wow, you've got the bluest eyes I've ever seen."

                He didn't like that very well. He said, "They're green." Brenda looked him back, "They're not green, they're blue." This went back and forth. Finally, Brenda said, "Okay, when you're mad, they're green; when you're not, they're blue. Right now, they're blue. Do you feel blue?"

                Gary said, "Shut up and eat."

                After Vern and Ida and Howard and Toni and the children left, and Johnny had gone to sleep, Brenda sat around with Gary having a cup of coffee. "Did you have a good time?" she asked.

                "Oh, yeah," said Gary. Then he shrugged, "I felt out of place. I have nothing to talk about."

                She said, "Boy, I wish we could get over that hump."

                "Come on," he said, "who wants to hear about prison?"

                Brenda said, "I'm just afraid of bringing back bad memories. Would you rather we didn't walk so lightly around the subject?"

                Gary said, "Yeah."

                He told her a couple of prison stories, God, they were crude. Gary could tell an awfully gross story. It seems there was this old boy Skeezix, who could perform fellatio on himself. He was proud of that. Nobody else in OSP could.

                "OSP?" asked Brenda.

                "Oregon State Penitentiary."

                Gary had taken a small cardboard box, painted it black, and put a tiny hole in it so it looked as if it were one of those lensless pinpoint cameras. He told Skeezix he had film in the box, and it would take a picture through the pinhole. Everybody gathered around to watch Gary take a picture of the fellow going down on himself. Skeezix was so dumb he was still waiting for the photo to come back.

                On finishing his story, Gary went off laughing so hard, Brenda thought he'd sling his spaghetti around the room. She was awful glad when he wheezed into silence and fixed her with his eye as if to say, "Now, do you see my conversational problem?"

                Rikki Baker was one of the regulars in Sterling Baker's poker sessions. Although not heavy for his size, he was tall, very tall, maybe six-five. Gary fixed on him early. He was the only fellow in the game taller than Gary. They kind of got along.

                Rikki was Sterling's cousin, and had heard about Gary before he even got out of Marion. Although Rikki had been trained by the Navy to be a diesel mechanic, he didn't get enough experience to qualify for a real job when he got out, and so had to take what came along in the way of day labor or construction. When nothing else was available, Rikki put in time at Vern's shop and Sterling taught him leather work. So Rikki happened to be around when Vern was speaking about this nephew in prison who was getting out soon. Later, Rikki met Gary at the shop, but the guy only seemed like a new worker, uncertain of himself, that's all. It was only when he saw him playing cards that he realized Gary was one hell of a relative.

                Sure had a different personality at poker than he did in the shop. Rikki could see right off that Gary wasn't too honest. He had a lot of habits that were just bad manners. Like he would lean over to see what a fellow had in his hand, and was a real lawyer about rules, always interpreting them in his favor. He also kept putting down the other players because they didn't know the poker rules that convicts used. Since it was ten-cent ante, quarter raise, a pot could go to $10.00. Gary's interest in poker was obviously the money. He was making no friends.

                After that evening, a couple of Sterling's buddies said they were going to stop coming over. Sterling told them, Fine with me. He was certainly being loyal to Gary. Yet when Rikki was alone with him, Sterling started to put Gary down. Rikki went along. There wasn't too much they would take from him, they agreed. Still, Rikki had a funny feeling about the man. Didn't want to make an enemy of him for too little. He figured if Gary gave trouble, he wouldn't be afraid to just right-out fight him, but he was a little uneasy of what Gary might pull from his pocket.

                They agreed, however, that they also felt sorry for him. Gary had a problem. No patience.

                The poker games continued. Different people. By the third night, Sterling got Rikki aside and asked if he would take Gary somewhere. The guy was really getting on everybody's nerves.

                So Rikki asked if he wanted to chase down some girls. Gary said Yeah.

                Rikki soon decided this was the horniest guy he had ever met. He was crazy.

                Rikki had split up with his wife again. He had been with Sue for six years ever since he was 17 and she was 15. They had three kids, and they knew how to fight. So Rikki now started to kid Gary. Told him how beautiful Sue was, big beautiful mean-looking blond yet a nice chick. Now that she was mad at her husband, maybe she'd like to meet Gary.

                In fact, Rikki had been so mad at her the last time he left that he took all the money in the house plus the food stamps and the welfare check. It would put her out of her mind for sure if he was to send over a steamed-up dude like Gary. So Rikki had said it, kind of half joking.

                Once the possibility was there, though, Gary wouldn't quit bugging Rikki about it. Rikki told him he had only meant it as a joke, it was his wife, man! But Gary kept asking when Rikki would take him over to Sue's house. When Rikki finally told him, No way, Gary got so mad they almost did have a fight. Rikki had to get Gary off the subject by saying they could go drag Center Street. Rikki was pretty good at chasing girls, he let Gary know.

                So they went up and down in Rikki Baker's GTO. Would pass girls cruising in their cars and try to wave them over, then circle around and go down Center Street again, see the same girls, try to wave them over a second time, just driving side by side in traffic, part of a long line of other dudes in their cars, and pickup trucks, and the chicks in theirs, everybody's radio going real loud.

                Gary got bored with the lack of positive results. When they came to a red light behind one carful of girls who'd been teasing them, he jumped out and stuck his head in their window. Rikki couldn't hear what he was saying, but when the light turned green and the girls tried to take off, Gary wouldn't get his head out of their window. Didn't care about the cars stuck behind, or anything. After the girls finally got going, Gary wanted Rikki to chase them down. "Ain't no way," said Rikki.

                "Do it!"

                With all the traffic, Rikki couldn't catch up. All the while, Gary was yelling to make a move and show he was as good as he said.

                They had started too late in the evening, however. There were a lot of cars with guys but only a few with girls, and they were just fooling around and very cautious. One had to come up on them easy, not scare them right out of the water. Gary made him promise to go out earlier next time.

                As they were saying good night, Gary had a proposition. What would Rikki think about teaming up? Make a little money at poker.

                Rikki had already heard about this from Sterling. He gave Gary the same answer Sterling had given: "Well, Gary, I couldn't cheat against my friends," he said.

                For reply, Gary said, "Can I drive your car?" Being a GTO, it was a fast automobile. This time, he said yes. Figured he'd better. Not getting his way, bent Gary too far out of shape.

                The moment he got the wheel, he almost killed them. Took a corner fast and nearly hit a stop sign. Then he didn't slow down at the intersection and went catahumping over the drainage ditch that was there to slow you down. Next he almost ran some people off the road, in fact, one car coming toward them had to go onto the shoulder. Rikki kept yelling at him to stop. It felt like an hour with a madman. Gary kept telling him all the while that it was not bad considering how long it had been since he drove, and Rikki was near to having a heart attack. Couldn't get him to stop until Gary popped the clutch without enough gas and the motor conked. Then he couldn't get it started. The GTO had a bad battery.

                That's what it took for Rikki to get behind the wheel again. Gary was awful depressed the battery had died on him. Got upset about it the way people can brood over bad weather.

                Next day around lunchtime, Toni and Brenda picked Gary up at the shoe shop and took him out for a hamburger. Sitting on each side of him at the counter, talking into his left ear and his right ear, they got right to the topic. What it came down to was that he had been borrowing too much money.

                Yes, said Toni gently, he'd been hitting Vern for a five-dollar bill here, ten there, once in a while twenty. He hadn't been going to work a full number of hours either. "Vern and Ida said this to you?" Gary asked.