The Executioner's Song (67 page)

“I love you, Bessie,” the Mormon boy would tell her through the door, and leave on his rounds to help another old lady even as Benny Bushnell once had done.

“Gary cannot want to die,” she would say to herself in the dark.

Nov. 2 — 76 Milw. Oregon

Gary Gilmore No. 3871 Dear Gary:

I heard the news at noon, and Gary, my dear, I could hardly stand it. I love you & I want you to live.

Gary, Mikal loves you and he is your.friend & you know I wouldn’t lie to you. He took this real hard but he will try very hard to help you.

If you have 4 or 5 people who really love you, you are lucky. So please hold on.

Here is a picture of me and Mikal taken in Salt Lake City years

ago.

I love you, MOTHER

Mikal had never told Bessie how much rage Gary amused in him by his murders. It could’ve been me, was his thought back in July when he first heard the news.

Mikal worked in a record store. While he was the envy of his friends for being able to pick up new releases at 30 percent off, he also had to throw dope peddlers and ass peddlers out of the store. He wasn’t necessarily ready for that. One time, a shoplifter pulled a knife on him. Another time he almost got wasted by a big drunk who was urinating in the doorway. The violence of Portland licked right up to the edge of the store and left a spew like that yellow foam on city beaches where old rubber dries out with jellyfish and whiskey bottles and the dead squid.

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THE EXECUTIONER’S SONG

If Mikal’s life was seen by some as the attempt of one Gilmore bey to get out from the family hex, that was not necessarily Mikal’s attitude. He had a simpler view. He had just been afraid of Gary for years. Mikal, reading the headline on that one terrible July night,

OREGON MAN HELD IN UTAH SLAYING, felt shame. “It could have

been me.” He could have been the same victim of the same mindless robbery. He hated his brother then. His brother had no respect for the horrors of waste. His brother did not know that when you robbed a house, you ruined it for the people who were living there.

Next day, Bessie had said to Mikal, “Can you imagine what it feels like to mother a son whom you love, when he has deprived two other mothers of their sons?” Mikal did not know how to tell her he was frightened of the violent and capricious impulses of his brother, did not know how to face them, and had been glad, ever since 972, that he did not have to see him again.

That was when Gary had been granted what they call a “school release” from Oregon State Penitentiary to a halflvay house in Eugene. They were letting him out to study art. Mikal had been told of this coming event by Bessie, but was nonetheless startled to see Gary turn up at his college room on the day after his release in the fall of x972, six-pack in hand, and the happy information that he could still register tomorrow. The school at Eugene was a couple of hundred miles away, but Gary seemed in no hurry. Just wanted to see how Mikal was getting along.

Next day, Gary was at the door again. Wearing the same clothes. His blue eyes stared at Mikal out of a bloodshot field of white, and there was yellow in the corners. He was ready to take Mikal to lunch, but only in a cab. He did not want to be seen on the streets.

Mikal began to feel steeped again in the dread he had always felt on those rare occasions he visited Gary in prison. It was not only Gary but the lost lives of the other prisoners in that visiting room, the depression, the apathy, the congealed rage, the bottomless potential for violence in those halls. After a while, Mikal stopped visiting. It created too much disturbance when he walked in wearing his long hair. It was like protesting the war in Vietnam in front of a barracks of Marines.

OLD CANCER, NEW MADNESS

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On this day, for lunch, they went to a topless bar. Mikal thought Gary was in a trance. He just kept studying the breasts of the girl on the dance floor. After a while, Mikal got up his courage and said, “It’s obvious you’re not going to school.”

Gary answered in a slow deliberate countrified way. Phony as hell, Mikal always thought, more Texas than Oregon. “Man,” said Gary, “I’m not cut out for school. They can’t teach me anything abeut art I don’t know already.” Then he changed the subject. He needed a gun. A friend in Oregon State Penitentiary was going to be brought out for dental work next week. Ward White was his name. He wanted to spring him.

Mikal protested. “You’re throwing away your life.”

“It’s a matter of dignity,” said Gary and looked at Mikal’s eyes. When he took in the knowledge that there was no gun forthcoming, Gary said, “I’d do it for my brother.”

He dropped Mikal off in a taxi, and went on.

Mikal only saw him twice more that month. Once Gary stopped by to hear some Johnny Cash records. He was charming and sober. Another day, Gary picked him up at school, took him to a rich friend’s house, showed him the swimming pool, then showed him a pistol. “Think you could ever use one of these?” he asked.

It was like a bigger dude squeezing your machismo to see if it leaked. “I could use a gun if I had to,” said Mikal, “but I hope you’re talking about survival.”

Gary put the gun away and ruffled Mikal’s hair. “C’mon,” he said, “I’ll drive you home.”

On the way, Gary started to honk at a car that was going too slow, and when the driver slowed down a “little more, to spite him, Gary whipped around a turn on the wrong lane and went right into the path of an approaching van. At the last instant, he escaped colli sion by driving their car up on the sidewalk.

“You almost got us killed,” Mikal shouted.

Gary was breathing deeply. He lay his forehead on the steering wheel. “Sometimes,” he said, “you have to be able to face that.”

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A couple of nights later, Mikal heard over the news that Gary had been arrested for armed robbery. Back he went to prison. Months later, Bessie and Mikal attended his trial. Just before sentencing, Gary made a speech to the Court. Mikal never forgot it.

“I would like to make a special appeal for leniency. I’ve been locked up for the last nine and a half calendar years and I have had about two and a half years of freedom since I was fourteen years old. I have always gotten time and always done it, never been paroled. I have never had a break from the law, and I have come to feel that justice is kind of harsh, and I have never asked for a break until now. Your Honor, you can keep a person locked up too long just as you can keep them long enough. What I am saying is there is an appropriate time to release somebody or give them a break. Of course, who is to say. Only the individua/himself really knows, it’s more a matter of just convincing somebody. There have been times when I felt if I had had a break, right then I would probably never have been in trouble again, but like I said, I don’t feel that I have ever had a break from the law. Last September, I was released from the Penitentiary to go to school in Eugene at Lane Community College and study art, and I had every intention of doing it. One day I’m in the pen for nine years, and the next day I’m free, and I was kind of shook. I had a couple of drinks and I realized that this was a pretty stupid thing to do. I just got out, and I was afraid to go to the halfway house with booze on my breath. I thought I would be taken back to the pen immediately and to be honest, I guess I kind of wanted to continue drinking, it tasted kind of good. Well, anyway, I split. It wasn’t long before I was broke, and I spent a couple of days looking for a job, but I couldn’t find one. I didn’t have any work background. When you are free, you can afford to be broke for a few days, and it doesn’t matter, but if you are a fugitive you can’t afford to be broke at all. I needed some money. I am not a stupid person, although I have done a lot of stupid and foolish things, but I want freedom enough to realize at last that the only way I can have it and maintain it is to quit breaking the law. I never realized it more than I do now. If you were to grant me probation on this sentence, you wouldn’t be turning me loose right now. 1 still have additional time, but like I said, I have got

OLD CANCER, NEW MADNESS [ 503

problems, and if you give me more time, I’m going to compound them.”

The Judge sentenced him to nine additional years. “Don’t

WE “

try, said Gary to his mother, “They can’t hurt me any more than

I’ve hurt myself.” Mikal shook hands with him through the handcuffs, and Gary said, “Do me a favor. Put on some weight, okay? You’re too goddamned skinny.” Mikal would not hear his voice again for close to four years, not until he made a call to Utah State Prison in the middle of November I976. By that time, Gary Gilmore was a household name to half of America.

In the Reign oj Good King Boaz

FEAR OF FALLING

On November I, the day that Gary Gilmore first stated in Court that he did not wish to appeal his conviction, Assistant Attorney General Earl Dorius was at his desk in the Utah Attorney General’s office, in the State Capitol, Salt Lake City. It was a monument of a building with a golden dome, a rectangular marble palace whose interior had a parquet marble floor from the center of which you could look up to the stories above with their polished white balustrades. Earl liked working in all that marble. He was not averse to working there for the rest of his responsible life.

That afternoon, Earl received a call from the Warden of Utah State Prison. Since Dorius was legal counsel for the prison, the Warden talked to him frequently, but this time Sam Smith seemed nervous. His transportation officer had just taken an inmate, Gary Gilmore, to Pmvo for a Court hearing, and Gilmore apparently told the Judge that he didn’t want to appeal his death sentence. So the Judge confirmed the execution date. It was only two weeks away. The Warden was concerned. That didn’t give a lot of time to get ready. Could Dorius verify the story?

Earl called Noall Wootton and they had quite a conversation. Wootton said it was not only true, but he was trying to figure Gilmore’s angle. The statute called for execution in not less than.thirty and not more than sixty days. Now that Gilmore had no appeal in, what would happen ff they didn’t execute him by December 7, sixty

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THE EXECUTIONER’S SONG

days after October 7, the last day of his trial? Gilmore could ask for an immediate release. The only sentence he had received, after all, was death. That was not a prison term. Technically, they would have nothing to hold him on. He could get out on a Writ of Habeas Corpus.

Of course, Gilmore wasn’t going to get loose that easy, the lawyers agreed, but it sure could prove embarrassing. The State would look ridiculous and incompetent holding him in jail on one pretext or another while the law was straightened out in the Legislature and the Courts.

Earl Dorius called Sam Smith back and said, “You better start preparing for an execution.” The Warden was awestruck.

Nonetheless, Sam Smith started asking some good questions. How many members of the firing squad would there be, he inquired? From where could he draw them m out of the community at large or from the ranks of police officers?

The Warden had also looked up the appropriate statutes and they’ left something to be desired. They didn’t, for example, tell the Warden whether it was possible to conduct the execution outside the prison walls. They were not precise on a host of matters. A lot would have to be decided Gilmore, for instance, wanted to donate a few of his body organs to the University Medical Center. Could Earl look up the law on that?

simply told him I expect to be executed as scheduled Nov. 5 and that the only request I have to make is that l be allowed to see you more.

. . I told him that you and me have a real good understanding and that we don’t depress each other with our visits in spite of the circumstances I’m in. I sorta felt it mite be good to say that cause you know how these people sometimes think

Baby you said in a letter a couple of days ago that no woman ever loved a man more than you love me. I believe that. I feel blessed with your love. And Angel no man ever loved a woman more than I love you. I love you with all that I am: And you keep making me more than I am.

Early on the morning of the znd, Election Day, Earl got a telephone call from Eric Mishara of the National Enquirer. He had cMled the Warden who referred him to the prison’s legal counsel. Mishara said he wanted to interview Gilmore right away.

He was too forceful for Dorius’s taste. The moment Earl tried to slow him down, Mishara began to talk about what he was going to do to the prison if they attempted to keep him out.

A case came right into mind: Pell v. Procunier. It was a United States Supreme Court decision which said that members of the news media had no special right of access to inmates. The prison, Dorius told Mishara, would be taking that position — Gary Gilmore could not be interviewed.

Dorius was excited. He realized he was sitting on a very hot case, and started going around the office telling people, “You won’t believe this, but we have a potential execution on our hands.” He went down to the Attorney General’s office, but the A.G. was out, so he had to tell the secretaries. Earl was a little disappointed with the reaction. It was as if they really didn’t get the import of what he was saying. First execution in America in ten years! You couldn’t exactly shout that at people.

Immediately, Mishara said, ‘I’ll sue.” He started to talk about high-powered attorneys in New York. Dorius said, “I don’t care where your attorneys are from. You have them look up Pell versus Procunier. I think they’ll agree with me.”

Earl didn’t hear from Mr. Mishara for some time after that.