The Executioner's Song (64 page)

October 7 I was once deprived almost totally of my dreams for about 3 weeks. It was when I was on that Prolixin and couldn’t sleep. Luck ily, I knew the importance of dreams.

So, I compensated the best I could. I would let my mind wander into the hallucinations that were imposing themselves on me but never enough that I couldn’t pull out of it. I believe I learned something that few people could ever really understand: what a terrible thing it would be to be insane.

It is a fact that I was on trial for my life and my lawyers simply did not defend me. It’s true that they didn’t have a hell of a lot to work with —but they were never curious either. They never really tried to look beneath the surface. They assume that like everybody else who ever gets a death sentence, I will allow them to keep me alive with appeals.

I mean they simply don’t know a lot of things — those two puppets Snyder & Esplin Fuck them.

I s’pose they got paid pretty good. They earned it. The State paid them and they did what they were s’posed to do for the State.

October 18th

The lieutenant . . said we gonna have to cool it a little with the “lovemakin” in the visitin room. l told him we was just glad to see each other (an understatement). He said he can understand that.—he’s human, too, I didn’t know, but rules are rules and he don’t wanna have to warn us too many times.

Here’s some verses from The Sensitive Plant. It’s by Percy Bysshe Shelley.

And the leaves, brown, yellow and gray, and red and white with the whiteness of what is dead, like troops of ghosts on the dry wind passed; Their whistling noise made the birds aghast.

I dare not guess; but in this life

Of error, ignorance, and strife,

Where nothing is, but all things seem,

And we the shadows of the dream.

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THE EXECUTIONER’S SONG WILD WIND BLOWING
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October 9th I ain’t got anything against Sue but you said in one of your letters that she’s always tryin’ to get you to go out with her boyfriend’s boyfriend and that fucking Hawaiian probably came over because of Sue. I don’t know why you even let that Hawaiian even stay in your house that long —Jesus, baby, luck that. Just make it clear to the motherfucker that he’ s gotta go. And I wish you’d make it clear to Sue that you don’t need boyfriends.

You don’t have to let some asshole set in your living room while he’s waiting for his friend to come get him —let him go sit in the gutter.

The reason you couldn’t find the word in the dictionary is because you read it wrong—or I didn’t write it right—anyhow it’s TAUTOLOGIC not TANTOLOGIC. Look again.

I’ve considered outright asking you to commit suicide. I’ve That of telling you that I would assume all the debt, i, f there were any to be paid if you did commit suicide. I would if I could. But how can I make an offer like that when I don’t know what it would cause if you were to do that. Angel, are we now being given a chance to relive something that we’ve fucked up in an earlier life???

That could easily be what is happening as anything else.

Look, I’ve told you I ain’t much afraid about any of this —well, I am afraid of making the wrong choice. I’m afraid of hurting us, l don’t want to hurt us.

Sue was seeing all the changes in Nicole. In the beginning, when Gary had first been in the county jail, Nicole really wanted to go out. Maybe she was in love with Gary as much as she said, but she was also enjoying that nobody was on her all the time, nobody. She and Sue started going out together. Sometimes, after Sue. had the baby, they’d party at Nicole’s house.

Then it started. Nicole didn’t want to see guys anymore. After the trial, Nicole would read letters all night long. Or else, the girl was constantly writing. That impressed Sue Baker. One time Sue even saw her writing at four in the morning. She couldn’t stop. It was like smoking.

Sometimes Nicole would laugh at the funny things in his letters. Some would make her cry. She would try not to let Sue know she was crying, but you could see her reading with red eyes. Tears would come down her cheeks. Then she would sit up, stop crying, and go on with her letters.

A couple of weeks after the trial, Nicole became really excited. “Yes,” she said to Sue, “he’s not going to fight it. He wants to die.” Sue started to say what she thought of that and Nicole said, “If he wants to, he’s got the right.” You couldn’t tell Nicole otherwise.

October 2oth Fuch me in your mind and in your dreams Angel come to me and wrap it around me warm and wet and hot and sticky and sweet and take my cock in your mouth and in your cunt and in your bootie and lay on me and lay under me and lay beside me with your head so close and your pretty legs so high and rite around me and put your cunt in my mouth for me to kiss and lick and probe and suck and love and feel you explode and moan and sigh and run wet and warm into my mouth.

One day, hearing Sue talk about her Valiums of which Sue had one hundred, IO mg. each, Nicole asked, “How many do you take if you want to kill yourself?” Just asked it one night calmly as hell. Sue never thought nothing of it. Said, “Well, I don’t know. I don’t want to try, so I don’t know.” Never gave it thought, but as the days went by, and Nicole got moodier, Sue began to worry now and again.

October 2o I am reminded constantly of tfe almost awesome unreal situation we are in. I have to accept it I have no choice you choose to accept it. You amaze me, the utter strength and beauty, you show. It would be so easy for me to die; I have but to fire those two idiot lawyers drop all appeals walk out of here Monday Nov. I 5 at 8 AM

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THE EXECUTIONER’S SONG

and quickly and easily be shot to death. If you choose to join me it would be much harder for you would have to do it yourself by whatever means you decide on: sleepin pills, gun, razor blade whatever—it would have to be by your own hand—and that’s hard, I know. I’m also not blind to the fact that you believe a heavy debt is incurred when a person commits suicide. I’m also not unaware of Sunny and Peabody. Oh, Jesus! There’s no reason why you should acquire a debt that I may not if I am simply shot to death. Baby I’m not asking or telling you to go with me. I just can’t do that. But I’ve told you that’s what I want —if that’s a contradiction well, 1 can’t help it. I’m just trying to be honest.

October 2i I’ve felt fucked up and shitty all day. Depressed. Down. This fuckin cell is too small.

When I was a little kid I used to sing all the time. I’d go down to Johnson Creek, this was in Portland and this was a real neat creek, all woods and swimmin holes where I used to swim naked and when I was alone I’d sing my little ass off!

October Oh Baby. You said in your letter that sometimes you can’t feel my love. Baby it’s here! It’s there every second, every moment, every hour of every day. I send it all to you —

I want to give you all that I am. I want you to know all of me. Even the things that I don’t particularly like about myself and have always sort of hidden or altered, changed a little, in my own mind so they wouldn’t seem so bad —I would willingly show to you.

Goddam, this is a noisy place. Some fool ass fool is in the background screaming, screaming for no other reason than to scream. I’d like to put one of my size 11’s right in his ass. This is football season and there seems to be a game on every nite. I hate football and I hate to listen to these nuts screechin everytime some sonofabitch gains a couple yards.

Well, luck that. I just never was one to make a lot of noise and I can’t understand how other dudes can make all that noise all day and fite. I don’t even like to talk from these cells-it’s weird carryin on a conversation with someone you can’t see-think of a

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whole gang of motherfuckers locked in cells all day and nite and about io different conversations going on at once—some of them clear from one end of the building to the other.

I was hopin’ it would stay quiet in here for a while. But it never does. These doors, Jesus, how they clang and bang. The motherfuckin’ TV blasts all day. I hear those guys all day long takin’ votes about what to watch — it takes five or ten minutes — some fool reads the whole TV Guide hourly, loud as he can, then they vote on each idiotic show. Insane. The Boob Tube.

I’ve done a lot of time-and it ain’t never been any different than it is now.

Nicole wrote Gary about a girl hitchhiker who was raped and then knifed twenty or thirty times by some guy in a white van. She wrote how she wasn’t afraid of that creep or any other. If she was ever in such a situation, nobody was going to make it with her body, unless she was not in it.

Gary didn’t say much in answer, and Nicole was glad. She realized it was her way of trying to apologize for the ex-president of the Sundowners.

Sometimes while hitchhiking, she would have a flash on her death. In her mind she would see the car she was in jumping off the freeway. She would wonder then what would happen in the next moment when she was dead. The thought was like an echo. She would keep seeing the car going off the freeway. Then she would feel the worry, What if death was a mistake? What if in that last moment, just as it was happening, she realized her action was truly a mistake? It was the only concern she had. That she might not have the right to die.

Now in the visits, Gary began to talk about pills. You faded out under them. It was peaceful, he said. Not at all like the nausea she felt, and the cold in the tunnel. Pills were gentle.

She still didn’t know if it was okay to die. All through this month, she couldn’t come to a decision. She went back and forth in her mind about the kids, and finally decided she would do it rather than be without him. Sooner or later she would have to take a shot at it. That was cool.

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THE EXECUTIONER’S SONG

Of course, Gary kept writing to her about it. A couple of times she got mad and told him he pushed the subject too much. Then he would get apologetic and say he was only expressing how he felt. But his talking about it would get her wondering if she wanted to go ahead.

Gary woke up in a panic, and sent word to the Mormon Chaplain in the prison, Cline Campbell, that he had to see him. Campbell came by a little later, and Gary told of a dream he had. Pure paranoia, he said. Nicole was hitchhiking and the driver started to molest her. It was crucial that he see her today. Would Campbell bring her to the prison? Campbell would.

The first time Cline Campbell visited Gary, he mentioned that years ago Nicole used to be his student in seminary class. He had spent hours counseling her. The news seemed to go well with Gary. After that, they got along. Shared a few conversations.

Campbell believed the prison system was a complete socialist way of life. No wonder Gilmore had gotten into trouble. For twelve years, a prison had told him when to go to bed and when to eat, what to wear and when to get up. It was absolutely diametrically opposed to the capitalist environment. Then one day they put the convict out the front door, told him today is magic, at two o’clock you are a capitalist. Now, do it on your own. Go out, find a job, get up by yourself, report to work on time, manage your money, do all the things you were taught not to do in prison. Guaranteed to fail. Eighty percent went back to jail.

So he was curious about Gilmore. Looked forward to counseling him. Took the first opportunity, in fact, a few days after the man came to the prison. One evening Campbell just walked into his cell and said, “I’m the Chaplain, my name’s Cline Campbell.”

, Gilmore was dressed in the white clothing they wore in Maximum Detention, and he was sitting on his bunk engrossed in his drawing. He had a pencil in his hand and a half-finished pencil por—

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trait before him, but he got up, shook hands, said he was happy to meet Campbell. They got along fine. The Chaplain saw him often.

Until now, Cline Campbell had never been involved with counseling a person who was going to be executed. The men on Death Row were always there, and Campbell had chatted with them, and joked with them, but did not have serious counseling sessions. Those men were not close to being executed —their appeals had gone on for years — and their conditions were depraved. But then all of Maximum was a zoo, a flat one-story zoo with many cages.

At right angles to the main hall were the regular units. Behind a gate would be a series of five cells facing another five cells. Each prisoner had a full view therefore of the prisoner across from him, and partial views of the remaining prisoners On the other side. Sometimes all ten men could be speaking at once. It was a bedlam of cries, and sound reverberated from steel and stone. Echoes crashed into one another like car collisions. It was close to living on the inside of an iron intestine.

Most men were in Maximum Security for three months, no more. But prisoners on Death Row were there forever. Other men could leave their tier at mealtime to move to the cafeteria, or go to the yard. On Death Row, your meals were served in your cell. You never went to the yard. One at a time, each man could leave his cell for a half hour a day and walk up and down the tier. You could talk to the other men, take out-as Campbell had seen—your God-given penis, or invite the other man to stick his through the bars. You could be threatened — and Gilmore was the man to issue such a threat — to get away from the bars, or you’d catch a cup of urine in your face. That was exercise on Death Row.

Compared with other convicts there, Gilmore was relaxed. In fact, Campbell marveled at this ability. Campbell would make a point of going to the kitchen first to bring him a cup of black coffee, and Gilmore would grin, “How you doing, preach?” and Speak in a quiet voice.

Sometimes they would talk in Gilmore’s cell. More often, Campbell would have him called out, and they would go into a counsel room in Maximum Security in order that nobody overhear their con