The Executioner's Song (9 page)

                The worst story Gary ever told came back to her now. One night in Brenda's living room, he couldn't stop laughing as he told about a tattoo he put once on a convict named Fungoo.

                "He was strong and dumb," said Gary, "and he loved me. One time when we were in Isolation, Fungoo was on the cleaning detail, so he was able to walk past my cell. Damn if he didn't ask me to do a rosebud on the back of his neck. I took out my needle and my india ink, and instead of a rosebud, tattooed a real skinny little dick on him and peanut-sized balls.

                "Well, his mother and dad was coming next day. When he found out what I'd done, he went crazy. He had to see his folks with a towel wrapped around his neck. It was over a hundred that morning. Told them he liked to wear a towel in the heat," said Gary. Now, he laughed so hard he almost fell off the couch.

                "But Fungoo was so dumb he wouldn't get mad at me. Came back and said, 'Gary, I can't go around with a pecker on my neck.'

                " 'Okay,' I told him, 'I'll make it into a snake.' Only I got inspired and made it into a big three-headed cock. It had the ugliest warts you ever laid eyes on. I couldn't hardly keep from laughing all the while I was doing it. 'Make sure it's a nice snake,' Fungoo kept saying." Gary was laughing uncontrollably. Right in their living room the memory was still living in his veins. " 'Oh,' I said, 'I believe this is the most beautiful thing I've ever seen.'

                "When Fungoo finally got to see it with a mirror, he went into shock. Couldn't even hit me. We'd had some hash smuggled into Isolation, and he decided I was bombed out of my head. He blamed the weed, not me. The last time I saw him, he had tattooed a giant rattlesnake all over his neck to cover the three pricks. He didn't trust anybody by then so he done it with soot and water." Brenda and Johnny's smiles had become as congealed as the grease on a cold steak.

                "Guess that's an ugly story, huh," said Gary. "Yeah," he said, "a couple of times I got to feel bad about it. It sure fucked up Fungoo's world. I guess I must have racked up real bad karma on that one . . . but couldn't resist." He sighed.

                It was exactly five weeks and two days since he had come to them from prison. Now she could believe the story. "God, how can he be so horrible?" she asked Johnny now. "How could he have done that to a man who trusted him?"

                "I guess he was saying a man will do anything in prison to amuse himself. If you can't, you're gone."

                She loved Johnny for saying that, loved her big strong whale-heart of a husband who could have compassion for possible rivals, which was more than she could say for herself. "Oh, Lord," said Brenda, "Gary loves Nicole."

PART TWO

Nicole

Chapter 4

THE HOUSE IN SPANISH FORK

Just before the time her mother and father split up, Nicole found a little house in Spanish Fork, and it looked like a change for the better. She wanted to live alone and the house made it easier.

                It was very small, about ten miles from Provo, on a quiet street at the start of the foothills. Her little place was the oldest building on the block, and next to all those ranch bungalows lined up on each sidewalk like pictures in supermarket magazines, the house looked as funky as a drawing in a fairy tale. It was kind of pale lavender stucco on the outside with Hershey-brown window trim, and inside, just a living room, bedroom, kitchen and bathroom. The roof beam curved in the middle, and the front door was practically on the sidewalk—that's how long ago it had been built.

                In the backyard was a groovy old apple tree with a couple of rusty wires to hold the branches together. She loved it. The tree looked like one of those stray mutts that doesn't get any attention and doesn't care—it's still beautiful.

                Then, just as she was really settling in, getting to like herself for really taking care of her kids this once, and trying to put her head together so her thoughts wouldn't rattle when she was 'alone', why just then Kathryne and Charles chose to split, her poor mom and dad married before they were hardly in high school, married for more than twenty years, five kids, and they never did get, Nicole always thought, to like each other, although maybe they'd been in love from time to time. Anyway, they were split. That would have dislocated her if she hadn't had the house in Spanish Fork. The house was better than a man. Nicole amazed herself. She had not slept with anybody for weeks, didn't want to, just wanted to digest her life, her three marriages, her two kids, and more guys than you wanted to count.

                Well, the groove continued. Nicole had a pretty good job as a waitress at the Grand View Cafe in Provo and then she got work sewing in a factory. It was only one step above being a waitress, but it made her feel good. They sent her to school for a week, and she learned how to use the power sewing machines, and was making better money than she had ever brought in before. Two-thirty an hour. Her take-home came to $80 a week.

                Of course, the work was hard. Nicole didn't think of herself as being especially well coordinated, and certainly she was not fast—her head was too bombed-out for sure. She would get flustered. They would put her on one machine and just about the time she started getting the hang of it, and was near the hourly quota, they put her on another. Then the machine would fuck up when she least expected.

                Still it wasn't bad. She had a nest of a hundred bucks from screwing welfare out of extra money they'd once given her in some mix-up of checks, and put another $75 together from working. So she was able to pay out in cash $175 for an old Mustang that she bought from her next-door neighbor's brother. He had wanted up to $300, but he liked her. She just got a little lucky.

                On the night Nicole met Gary, she had taken Sunny and Jeremy for a drive—the kids loved the car. With her was her sister-in-law. While she and Sue Baker weren't tight exactly, they did spend a lot of time together, and Sue was in the dumps at this point, being pregnant and split up from Rikki.

                On the drive, Nicole passed about a block from her cousin's house, and Sue suggested they drop in. Nicole agreed. She figured Sue liked Sterling and must have heard that he had also split up with his old lady, just this week, baby and all.

                It was a cool dark night, one of those nights in May when the mountain air still had the feel of snow. Except not that cold because Sterling's door was open a little bit. The girls knocked and walked in. Nicole wasn't wearing anything but her Levi's and some kind of halter, and there was this strange-looking guy sitting on the couch. She thought he was just plain strange looking. Hadn't shaved in a couple of days, and was drinking a beer. What with saying hello to Nicole and Sue, Sterling didn't even introduce him.

                Nicole made a pretense of ignoring the new fellow, but there was something about him. When their eyes met, he looked at her and said, "I know you." Nicole didn't say anything in reply. For a split second, something flashed in her mind but then she thought, No, I've never met him before, I know that. Maybe I know him from another time.

                That started everything off. She hadn't been thinking in such a way for quite a while. Now that feeling was around her again. She knew what he meant.

                His eyes looked very blue in a long triangular face and they stared at her and he said again, "Hey, I know you." Finally Nicole kind of laughed and said, "Yeah, maybe." She thought about it a moment more and looked at him again and said, "Maybe." They didn't talk anymore for a while.

                She gave her attention to Sterling. In fact, both girls were clustered around Sterling, the easiest man in the world to get along with. Nicole always liked him for he was gentle and warm and very hospitable, and sure sexy. He soothed everything.

                What with Sue liking him too, the night was sort of exciting. As they were talking, Nicole finally confessed to Sterling that she had a crush on him for years when she was a kid. He told her right back that he'd always been crazy about her. They just laughed. Cousins with a crush. This other fellow sat in his chair and kept looking at her.

                After a while Nicole decided the new fellow was pretty good looking. He was much too old for her, looked like he could be near 40.

                But he was tall and had beautiful eyes and a pretty good mouth. He looked intelligent and yet bad at the same time, like an older guy who could fit into a motorcycle gang. She was a little fascinated, even if she wasn't about to admit to much interest.

                Sue wasn't saying anything to him either, in fact she pretended he wasn't there. In compensation, Sunny started being a real bad 4-year-old and carried on in front of the stranger, as ornery and bossy as she could. She began ordering Nicole to do this and do that. Soon Sunny got flushed and pretty looking, and now was flirting with the man. Just about then, he looked at Nicole and said, "You're going to have a lot of trouble with this little girl. She could end up in Reform School."

                That gave a twinge. It was one remark to get under you. Maybe she had been the kind of mother who could do that to her kids. Nicole knew those words might stick in her like a hook over the next couple of years.

                She began to think this guy had some kind of psychic power, and could really see what was going to happen. As if he were a hypnotist or something of that ilk. She hardly knew if she was about to like that.

                Anyway, he seemed to think that was enough to start a conversation. Before long, he was talking to her in a very persistent way. He wanted to go to the store to get a six-pack of beer and kept bugging her to go with him. She kept shaking her head. Sue and she had been getting ready to leave and she didn't want to go to the store with this man now. He was too strange. There wasn't any sense to it any way since the store was just a little down the road.

                What worked in his favor, however, was that Sue didn't look ready to leave yet. She was just beginning to get off on talking to Sterling, and obviously wouldn't mind being alone with the guy for a little while. So Nicole said, Okay, and took Jeremy for protection. Sunny was asleep by then.

                When they got to the store, it was closed. They continued down town. Nicole didn't even get out of the car. She stayed while the tall dude went in and got a six-pack or two of beer, and brought back a banana for Jeremy. That was his idea.

                It was odd, but he had a Mustang just like hers, same model, same year. Just the color was different. So she felt comfortable in it.

                When he returned with the beer, she was leaning against the door, and he put the six-pack on her knee. She joked and said, Oh, that hurts. He started rubbing her knee. He did it decently; not too personal, but it felt pretty good in a nice simple way, and they went on home. When they got to the end of Sterling's driveway, before she got out of the car, he turned around and looked at her and asked if she would kiss him. She didn't say anything for a minute, then said, Yes. He reached across and gave her a kiss and it didn't do any harm at all to what she thought about him. In fact, to her surprise, she felt like crying. A long time later, she would remember that first kiss. Then they went back to the house.

                Now Nicole didn't ignore him quite so much, although she still made a point of sitting across the room. Sue obviously couldn't stand the fellow, and was paying even less attention in his direction. In fact Nicole was surprised how indifferent he seemed that Sue disliked him. Sue might be obviously pregnant now, but in Nicole's opinion she was a beautiful-looking blond. Maybe even the more spectacular of the two of them. Yet he didn't care, seemed ready to sit by himself. Sterling was also quiet. After a while, it began to seem as if the evening would all go nowhere.

                With the down drift, Nicole and Sue started talking to each other. Nicole often had the feeling that Sue, when things were all right with Rikki, didn't think too good of her because of all the guys she dated, in fact Sue and Rikki told on her when she took a dude into bed once at her great-grandmother's house, and she never trusted Sue completely after that. She certainly didn't want Sue to think she was still that easy. So Nicole got a little stiff when just as she was getting ready to take the kids home, Gary said he wanted her phone number. She certainly felt funny about looking so available in front of her sister-in-law, after all the remarks she'd made tonight about living a new kind of life, so she told him that he couldn't have it. He was amazed.

                He said, It just doesn't make any sense for you to walk out of here and never see you again. It would be a waste of a good thing, he said. He even got a little mad when she kept saying no. Sat there and looked at her. She stared into his blue eyes and told him she wouldn't give it to him, and then what with the kids, and Sue saying goodbye to Sterling, it took a while to leave. By the time they were out of the house, Nicole felt like screaming, she had wanted to give him that phone number so bad.

                She didn't even have a phone. All she could have given was her address, or the next-door neighbor's number.

                On the ride, Nicole didn't like the way she was feeling at all. She took Sue home, drove all the way out to Spanish Fork, pulled up to the house, and didn't move from the car. Then she said, To hell with it, and started back to Sterling's after all. On the way she decided she was an idiot, and the guy wouldn't even be there anymore. Or else, he might be trying to make out with another girl. Sterling could have called one over for him.