The Executioner's Song Read online

  Doing the work, however, had loosened him up. He was ready to do his first exploring around town.

  Provo was laid out in a checkerboard. It had very wide streets and a few buildings that were four stories high. It had three movie theaters. Two were on Center Street, the main shopping street, and the other was on University Avenue, the other shopping street. In Provo, the equivalent of Times Square was where the two streets crossed. There was a park next to a church on one corner and diagonally across was an extra-large drugstore.

  During the day, Gary would walk around town. If he came by the shoe shop around lunchtime, Vern would take him to the Provo Cafe, or to Joe's Spic and Span which had the best coffee in town. It was just a box of a joint with twenty seats. At lunchtime, however, people would be waiting on the street to get in. Of course, Vern told him, Provo was not famous for restaurants.

  "What is it famous for?" asked Gary.

  "Darned if I know," said Vern. "Maybe it's the low crime rate."

  Once Gary started in the shoe shop, he would be making $2.50 an hour. A couple of times after lunch he hung around to get the feel of it. After watching Vern wait on a few people, Gary decided he'd like to concentrate on repair work. Didn't know if he could handle rude customers. "I'm going to have to sneak up on that," he told Vern.

  Looking around, Gary decided to get out of his polyesters and buy some Levi's. He borrowed a few more bucks from Vern, and Brenda took him to a shopping mall.

  He told her that he had never been to anything like this before. It was mind-stopping. He couldn't keep his eyes off the girls. Right in the middle of goggling at them, Gary walked into the ledge of a fountain. If Brenda hadn't grabbed his sleeve, he'd have been in. "You certainly haven't lost your eye," she told him. He had only been gawking at the most beautiful girls. He was nearly all wet, but he had very good taste.

  In the Levi's department at Penney's, Gary just stood there. After a while, he said, "Hey, I don't know how to go about this. Are you supposed to take the pants off the shelf, or does somebody issue them to you?"

  Brenda really felt sorry for him. "Find the ones you want," she said, "and tell the clerk. If you want to try them on, you can."

  "Without paying for them?"

  "Oh, yeah, you can try them on first," she said.

  Gary's first working day in the shop was good. He was enthusiastic and Vern was not displeased. "Look," Gary said, "I don't know anything about this, but tell me and I'll catch on."

  Vern started him on a bench jack, tearing down shoes. The jack was like a metal foot upside down, and Gary would put the shoe on, pry off the sole, take off the heel, remove the nails, pull out the stitching, and generally prepare the top for the new sole and heels. You had to watch not to rip the leather or make a mess for the next man.

  Gary was slow, but he did it well. The first few days he had an excellent attitude, humble, pleasant, nice fellow. Vern was getting to like him.

  The trouble was to keep him busy. Vern wasn't always able to be teaching. There were rush jobs to get out. The real difficulty was that Vern, and his assistant, Sterling Baker, were used to moving the work between them. It was easier to do it themselves than show a new man how to accomplish something. So Gary had to wait when he really wanted to move on to the next step. If he took a heel off, he wanted to put the new one on. Sometimes twenty minutes would go by before Vern could get back.

  Gary would say, "I don't like this standing around and waiting. I feel like a dummy, you know."

  The problem, as Vern saw it, was that Gary wanted perfection quickly. Wanted to be able to fix a pair of shoes like Vern could. It just wasn't going to come that way. Vern told him, "You can't learn this immediately."

  Gary took it fine. "Well, I know that," he said, but his impatience didn't take long to come back.

  Of course, Gary did get on well with Sterling Baker who was about twenty, and the nicest fellow. He didn't raise his voice, had nice looks, and didn't mind talking about shoes. The first couple of days he was there, Gary kept bringing the conversation back to footwear as if he was going to learn everything there was about it. The only time Gary had trouble concentrating was when pretty girls came into the store. "Look at that," he'd say. "I haven't seen anything like that for years."

  The girls he liked best, he said, were around twenty. It occurred to Vern that Gary wasn't much older when he said good-bye to the world for thirteen years. He certainly was comfortable becoming friends with a kid like Sterling Baker.

  Still, Gary's first date was set up by Vern and Ida with a divorced woman near his own age. Lu Ann Price. When she heard, Brenda said to Johnny, "This has got to be good."

  Brenda didn't see Lu Ann as a feasible date for Gary. She was skinny, she had a few kids, and she was awful sure of herself. Her eyes had pink lids. That was a piss-poor combination.

  All the same, she was a redhead. Maybe Gary would go for that.

  The Damicos had decided Lu Ann was worth a try. There was nobody else they could think of right now, and Lu Ann, after all, had heard a little about Gary after Brenda picked up her correspondence with him again. When she heard that Gary didn't know how to meet people and could hardly take care of himself, Lu Ann felt ready to befriend him. "Why not," she said. "He's lonely. He's paid a terrible debt." Maybe a friend could explain things that a family couldn't.

  On Thursday evening, therefore, not a week from last Friday night when Gary had been flying from St. Louis to Salt Lake, Lu Ann called to ask Vern if Gary would like to go out with her for a cup of coffee.

  "I think that's a super idea," said Vern. Gary, being called to the phone, was quick to say yes.

  About nine, she came over. Gary looked stunned when he met her. It was as if he hadn't expected her to look like that. Still, as Lu Ann would tell friends later, she couldn't decide whether he was pleased or disappointed. He stammered while saying hello, and then sat in a chair across the room from her.

  He had on a pair of old-fashioned slacks that were not only too short, but without wide bottoms. He wore a jacket that looked like it'd been borrowed from Vern, big in the chest, hiked up at the hips. All the same, he was overdressed for Lu Ann who, on this warm night, was in Levi's and a peasant blouse.

  Since he stayed silent in his chair, Vern and Lu Ann kept talking until it got like work. "Gary, do you want to go out for that cup of coffee or stay here?" she asked at last.

  "Let's go," he said. He went to his room, however, to emerge with a fisherman's hat that Vern used to wear as a joke. It was red, white and blue with stars all over it. Vern had given it to him after Gary said he liked it. Now he wore it everywhere. "How do you like the hat?" he would ask Vern.

  "Well," Vern would reply, "it don't do anything for you."

  Lu Ann thought it contrasted abominably with his other clothes.

  When they walked out to her car, he neglected to open the door for her. Soon as she asked if he had a particular place in mind for coffee, he winced. "I'd rather have a beer," he said.

  Lu Ann took him to Fred's Lounge. She knew the people who ran it and so was sure nobody would hassle him. The way he was dressed, it would not be hard to get into trouble in a strange place. One difficulty was that there were no nice cocktail lounges around. Mormons didn't see any reason for public drinking to take place in agreeable surroundings. If you wanted a beer, you had to get it in a dive. For every car parked outside a bar in Provo or Orem were three or four motorcycles.

  At Fred's Lounge, Gary kept looking around the room. His eyes didn't seem able to take in enough.

  When the bartender came up, Lu Ann said, "Gary, you have a choice." He looked bewildered. The bartender was a lady, a nice meaty well-set-up lady.

  After a little thought, he said, "I want a beer."

  Lu Ann said, "You have a choice of beers."

  He picked Coors. Lu Ann told Gary what it would cost and he handed over the money. When the bartender brought the change, he looked pleased with himself, as if he'd accomplished a tricky trans
action.

  He turned around in his seat and started watching the pool table. One by one, he examined the pictures on the wall, and the mirrors, and the little sayings tacked up behind the bar. Although he wanted nothing to eat, he studied the white inserted letters in the dark gray menu-board on the wall. He was taking in the place with the same intensity you would use in a game if you had to memorize the objects in a picture.

  Lu Ann said, "Haven't been in a bar lately, have you, Gary?"

  "Not since I got out."

  The place was practically empty. A couple of people were rolling dice with the lady bartender. Lu Ann explained that the loser paid for the music on the jukebox.

  Gary said, "Can I play?" Lu Ann said, "Sure you can." He said, "Will you help me?" She said, "Yes, I will."

  They called for the cup, and Gary asked, "Did I win?" Lu Ann said, "Well, I'm afraid you lost this time." He said, "How much do I put in?" She said, "Fifty cents." Gary said, "Will you help me pick out the selections?"

  Making their way through the beers, Lu Ann began to talk about herself. She didn't always have red hair, she told him. Used to be a blond, and before that, had tried different shades, a little brown, ash blond, honey blond. Just yuck, she described it. She had settled on red because it suited her temperament. Lu Ann happened to have been, she explained, a honey blond just at the time her first daughter was born with red hair. She soon got tired of people asking how the baby came out that way. So even though her husband objected, she thought she'd try the bright red herself. Talk of a turnabout, she didn't like it, but he did. So she kept it. She had now kept it so many years she would say, "Being a redhead is being me."

  She was a Utah girl, she said, and had been bounced back and forth. Her parents moved around the state a lot. When her husband, whom she dated through high school, went into the Navy, she hit both coasts with him: California and Florida. That was her life until she got divorced.

  Now, she was back in Utah County again. The desert was at the end of every street, she said, except to the east. There, was the Interstate, and after that, the mountains. That was about it.

  She would admit to being curious about his life. "What's it like in prison?" she asked. "What do you have to do to survive?"

  Gary said, "I got myself put into Solitary as much as I could so they would leave me alone."

  When they were ready to go, Gary asked, "Can I have a six-pack to take home?" She said, "If you want it." Gary said, "Is it all right to drink my beer in your car?" She said yes.

  Gary wanted to know why she'd come out to meet him. She said it was simple: he needed a friend and she needed a new friend. That did not satisfy him. He said, "When somebody in prison offers friendship, they want something for it."

  As they drove, he kept staring at the road ahead. Once he looked up and said, "Do you normally do that—just drive around?"

  "Yes, I do," Lu Ann told him, "it relaxes me."

  "It doesn't bother you?" he asked. "No," she said, "it doesn't bother me in the least."

  They kept driving. Suddenly he turned to her and said, "Will you go to a motel with me?"

  Lu Ann said, "No."

  "No," Lu Ann told him, "I'm here to be your friend." She said as forcefully as she could, "If the other is what you want, you better go look someplace else."

  He said, "I'm sorry, but I haven't been around a girl." He kept staring at the dashboard. After a silence that went on for a couple of minutes, he said, "Everybody's got something, but I've got nothing." Lu Ann answered, "We all have to earn it, Gary." He said, "I don't want to hear any of that."

  She pulled over. "We've been talking," she told him, "but not face to face. I want you to listen to me." She said that all her friends had all worked superhard to have their homes, their cars, their children.

  "You," he said, "all had it easy."

  She said, "Gary, you can't expect everything to be handed to you the minute you walk out the prison door. I'm a working girl," she told him, "Brenda works hard at home. She has her kids and husband to take care of. Don't you think she's earned all that?"

  He was fidgeting as she spoke. At that point he said, "I'm a guest in this car."

  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.