The Executioner's Song

  Then her father found out where she was, and came over. He wasn't mad or nothing. Thought it was kind of neat she'd run away from the nuthouse. Suggested she get married.

  Nicole always felt Mack-trucked into that one. There was a saying they used up in the nuthouse for when you got pushed into a marriage by parties larger than yourself. Mack-trucked. It was obvious to Nicole that her parents wanted her off their hands.

  On the other hand, even if she didn't like Hampton's personality, or couldn't be impressed much with his intelligence, she thought he was awfully good looking. Moreover, her dad kept telling her she didn't have to go back to the loonies if she was married. Then Hampton asked Charley for permission, and her father just said, "Let's go." Never did ask Nicole.

  He got in the car with Jim Hampton like they were old buddies—her dad wasn't even thirty and Jim was over twenty—put her in the back seat, and the car took off. Nicole knew damn well she wasn't gaining any freedom by marrying Jim Hampton. They drove along, drinking it up in front, and Nicole told herself she'd gotten into this and might as well give it a good try.

  Sitting in the back seat, Nicole remembered a time when she was 12 years old and her dad took her to a bar. She thought he was showing her off, but soon found out he had a girl friend in there he wanted to show off, and knew she wouldn't tell her mother. Only, at the door, she stopped. NO ONE UNDER 21 ADMITTED was what the sign read.

  Her father pointed to the 2 and the 1 and he said, It says no one under 12. You're old enough. She never was all sure when she was reading numbers backwards and so thought 21 was 12 that day. Now that she had become 14, it was all she could do to keep from laughing about it.

  Charley sure made a sight drinking with Hampton. In fact her father looked a little like her husband-to-be. She began to think they both looked like Uncle Lee, damn him!

  Well, the trip turned out to be not too bad. They picked up a friend of hers named Cheryl Kumer, and she drove with them to Elko, Nevada, where Nicole and Jim Hampton got married.

  Jim was never rough with her, but kind of sweet, and treated her like she was a precious doll. He was always saying to the rest of his friends who weren't married, Hey, look what I got. You know? He didn't have a job so they were living on unemployment. He wouldn't go to work, but really knew how to use a fingernail file on Coke machines. Even if she didn't wholly like living on dimes and quarters, Nicole thought they were having fun.

  After a few months, she was still faithful to him, which wasn't a bad trip. She was trying to unsort her sex hang-ups. They went from too little to too much. She could never come in those days which she knew wasn't all Hampton's fault. Besides Uncle Lee, she had one other big secret in her past she never told Hampton about. It happened the first time she left the nuthouse on a weekend pass and stayed at the party for two days and two nights. That was months before she'd even met Hampton.

  The guy that talked her into coming over from her grandmother's house on that occasion was about 28, and there had been booze and dope to smoke. She really liked that dude. He babied her, and paid a lot of attention, and kept her close by. When he made love, it left her feeling kind of mellow. Then he told his buddies there was a sweet little thing in the bedroom, go talk to her. Nicole was really hung up on the guy even when he began to hint to her that she would be befriending him if she would fuck his friends, you know.

  Nicole felt a lot of things as it was going on. She took herself off to a distance and watched herself. It was a way to think about things. Think out problems.

  Bottom of all, she was proud. Even if, to some degree, the fellows were fucking her over, yet she was into the kind of party her friends would be too chicken to go along on. That was exciting. So she got a little wasted and ended up with just about every guy in the house. Maybe she was there for three days. She just never went out.

  In the middle of it, she met Barrett for the first time. He came walking into the bedroom, a skinny little guy she'd never seen before. There she was all alone in bed on the second day, feeling spacey, and he walked in, and spoke to her from the hallway. He said, You know you don't have to do this. You're better than this. Yes, he said, you don't have to waste it all. That was her first memory of her second husband, Jim Barrett. He was only there a few minutes, but she always remembered the way his face looked then.

  She didn't see Barrett again until a month later when she was back in the nuthouse, and they threw him in, too. He wasn't the least bit crazy. He had, however, gone AWOL from the Army, so his father signed papers to have him committed. The nuthouse was better than the Stockade. Barrett's father had been a State Trooper, he told her, before he became an insurance agent, so from the point of view of the authorities, the son had to be kind of crazy.

  She really fell in love with Barrett in the nuthouse. They were almost the same two people. He was so cunning looking, so really sweet, a real pussycat. All smiles and all sweet, wearing cowboy boots, navy pants, tight shirts, well combed, well groomed, just a little guy. Then they took him back in the Army, and for the longest time she never heard from him. So she went AWOL, and married the other Jim, Hampton.

  Months later, Barrett showed up one day. Was waiting for her in the parking lot of the supermarket. They were so happy to see each other. How could she get married on him? Didn't she love him? Hadn't they talked of living in a house of their own where nobody could hassle them? If she was happy with the guy she had married, then he, Barrett, would bow out. He loved her enough to wish her love and luck. But if she wasn't happy . . . it was a beautiful head game he played. After thirty minutes, she just said good-bye in her heart to Hampton, and ran away with Barrett.

  They headed for Denver. It was a cold trip. They visited for a week with a friend of his, then came back to Utah and stayed with his folks. Nicole kept trying to say Jim, but that was also Hampton's first name, so she was more comfortable calling him Barrett.

  When they got back to Utah, however, Marie Barrett, his mother, was real nice, and took them in every way. Except she wouldn't let them sleep in the house. Get married if you want to stay here, was the way she drew the line. Nicole didn't care. The happiest she'd ever been in her life was when she ran away and slept in an orchard, so she didn't mind spending her nights on the back seat of a Volkswagen. It was Barrett who felt exposed in the street. He found out from his father that while they'd been in Denver, Jim Hampton was over looking for them with Charley Baker. Nicole thought it was stupid how Hampton and her father couldn't mind their own business, but, as Barrett explained to Nicole, he wasn't built to be confronted with a physical challenge. So they found themselves a better hideout.

  They found a scrungy little apartment on the main street in Lehi. The stairway leading up to their door was really bad with winos who had staggered out of the bar below. At the end of the street was the desert and the wind whistled in. Their window looked out on that street. Nicole could stand there, and watch her dad enter the bar below.

  Then one day Charley showed up at the door. Everybody had been looking, but it took her dad to find out they were not only in the state, not only in town, but, in fact, right above his favorite hangout. Her dad walked right in and gave this shitty smile, asked how she was. Barrett came over, and Charley said, "Boy, I'm gonna cut your goddamn balls off. I'm going to tear them out." He sounded like Clark Gable. Barrett said something kind of mild like "Can we talk about it first?" Then he told her dad that he wasn't evil and loved Nicole very much. Nicole just kept looking Charley in the eye. Before it was all over, her dad broke down and went home peacefully. She could hardly believe it.

  A couple of days later, the cops came and busted Barrett for being an improper person. That was the term for poor Jim—Improper Person. She figured her mother learned about it from her father and blew the whistle. Anyway, the guy who supplied Barrett with dope to sell came along and bailed him out. Then it was Nicole's turn. She crashed. She and Barrett sat up one night in a friend's van, eating orange sunshine out of a matchbox. The next day w
ent by all burned out but the next night they all took another hit. Nicole freaked. They were parked on Center Street in Provo, radio on, and Grand Funk came in, the song with the sirens. Suddenly everybody's vibes in the van kind of went in and out. Wham! Nicole felt herself winging down the road, just running, you know. Jim took after her, caught her, dragged her back, but he was feeling too loose himself. Nicole was blowing it and screaming. Barrett took her to the hospital, but even they couldn't handle her. She began to run around telling the nurses they were ugly. She was seeing lions and tigers. So they took her to the Youth Home.

  Kathryne wouldn't let her out. She told Barrett that if he wanted to marry Nicole, he had to pay the hospital expense first. Otherwise, she'd be sent on to Reform School. Barrett had to say to his folks, "Just let me marry her. That's all I ever wanted," and he talked them into putting up the $180 that was necessary.

  Her mother gave her a black dress to be married in. It was short and slit at the sides. That really affected Nicole. She didn't feel it was appropriate to get married in a black dress at 15. She didn't say anything to her mother, but it bothered Nicole that no one would even take a picture of them. She kept thinking, they must have a camera in the place somewhere, they might want a picture of us getting married. Nobody would take a snap. A couple of weeks later her family disappeared on her. Charley and Kathryne took off with the kids for his new station on Midway.

  Living with Barrett, sex was pretty much the same as with Hampton. She was a novice in those days. Wouldn't feel nearly so good as she would make believe. Like she never got her rocks off until a month after she was married. Of course, she would no more start with Barrett than she would flash to that first time with Uncle Lee. In fact, whenever sex went on too long with Jim and she felt sore and burning, or her breasts were tender from a mauling, it would feel the same as when she'd been a child. Still, she was crazy about Barrett. He was a sweet and kindred soul. They swore to be poor but happy all their married lives.

  At the onset, however, they just couldn't get that happy. Barrett had one big worry leaning over him. He finally came in with this heavy rap to his father, real dramatic, like a television series. Barrett's father, being an ex-cop, tended to buy it. "Look," Jim told him, "some guys fronted me a little dope, and I blew it all. Now, I can't pay. They're coming down on me and I gotta get out of town." With that, he talked his father into getting a used van, put a mattress in back, and took off. Only a long time later did Nicole decide Barrett had run a line on his father and wasn't in that kind of trouble at all.

  They ended up in San Diego in an old wooden hotel called the Commodore, and she found a plump black kitten about to get run over in the middle of the road and went out and got it, only it wasn't a kitten but a little pregnant cat, and had kittens itself in a couple of weeks. She thought that was pretty neat.

  It was a funny time. They were happy and miserable at once. She had started to come with Barrett and he started to play with the idea of selling her. It wasn't her so much as that he was a born salesman and needed something to sell. He liked to experiment. So did she. It opened her to a lot of crazy feelings that she couldn't get around to telling Gary about. They were too rough somehow, and besides, she never did get into selling herself. On consideration, she decided she better not mess with Barrett's ego. He was such a jealous person.

  Then they gave the cats away and drove back to Utah. When they reached Orem, they left the car parked right near an entrance to the Interstate. Barrett didn't even stop at his folks' house, just mailed them a card telling where he'd hid the keys to the van, and apologized for being unable to keep up the payments. He felt funny, he kept telling Nicole, that his folks would get their card postmarked Orem when they thought their son was in California.

  Then they hitchhiked up to Modesto where a weird guy with one eye all screwed up rented them a $50-a-month tiny cabin. It had cockroaches. They would turn off the lights, then turn them on, and kill the cockroaches. She discovered she was pregnant there.

  They had a fight about the baby to come. It wouldn't work, he argued. Later, back in Utah, Nicole decided it was a fork in the river. Because she had wanted him to get a job, and he kept promising he would. Saying it and doing it hadn't worked out equal, however. Barrett showed his true talents and talked a woman who was selling a thirteen-room house into renting to them for $80 a month, because that way, she could show it to buyers when she wanted. After they moved in, Barrett didn't work but had his friends over, and began to party, and got back into dealing. By the time Nicole was six months into pregnancy, the party didn't let up.

  One day the Chief of Police came over with the landlady, who returned Barrett half a month's rent and the cop evicted him on the spot. He wanted to stay, but they put the money in his hand, told him to go. Nicole was upset at having to live pregnant at her grandmother's while he stayed with his folks. Not only did they owe a lot of money, but Barrett did nothing all day but get stoned with his friends. Life had become a drag.

  At that point, her dad came in from Midway on some business. Just joking, he said, "Want to come back with me? See the Islands?" She said, "Damn right!"

  That was how she left Barrett the first time. Just took off in her seventh month as suddenly as she had left Hampton. On the airplane she kept thinking of early days with Jim when there was so much love she could even feel the things Barrett was feeling. Of course, such thoughts came only after she was able to get on the plane. The onset of the trip didn't go that smoothly. She and Charley spent hours trying to get a military flight to Hawaii, and kept getting bumped. One of the problems was that Charley didn't have her birth certificate, so Nicole couldn't go on his military card as a daughter. Being pregnant, she looked considerably older than usual. Charley, standing next to her, appeared more like a boy friend or husband than a father. That got her thinking about Uncle Lee like crazy. Come to think of it, her dad always treated her with the special courtesy you give a sexy lady.

  Maybe her thoughts were tickling his ear because Charley certainly got upset now at the idea of them being stuck overnight. "If I don't get my daughter on this goddamn plane," he swore, "I'm going to hijack the son of a bitch."

  He walked out to the Mess Hall, and next thing they knew, four MPs were saying, Would you come with us, Mr. Baker? Took them right outside, and spread-eagled Charley against the wall, shook him down, led him off to the Brig. Left Nicole sitting in the Mess Hall with eighty horny sailors. When she went to look for her father, she saw the largest cockroach ever. Looked as big as a mouse, and it came running out into the lobby where Nicole was waiting. She followed it down the steps, and around the building. With her big belly, she had nothing better to do than run along following that big old cockroach.

  Then her dad came out grinning from ear to ear. He had everything all straightened out. Because of the mistake, they were now treating him and Nicole like king and queen. Red carpet was out. She got to Midway in style.

  When she walked in the house, Kathryne's eyes almost fell out of her head. Nicole remembered how skinny she was, and how as she hugged her, there was something hollow looking about Kathryne, as if it was all getting too much for her. The teenagers, April and Mike, who had just been kids, were now getting wild. It made Nicole feel so bad she didn't even like to smoke in front of her mother for a couple of days.

  When Barrett found where she was, he ran up his old man's phone bill. Got so emotionally worked up, felt so much in love all over again, that he had gone to work. He had, he told her, even started a checking account. Was going to come see her.

  Nicole gave her love on the phone. She said not to come. It would get her father in trouble. To save on the fare, Charley had brought her over as his dependent, so everybody thought she was an unwed mother.

  Damn if Barrett didn't show up anyway. In Salt Lake, at the airport, he wrote a check which his dad later had to make good, flew over, went to the hospital, found the maternity ward, and sat outside her window. As soon as Kathryne left the room, he wa
s in. Nicole was happy he had come and it made a difference, but not a big one. She couldn't forgive him everything. In a couple of days she made him go home.

  Chapter 6

  NICOLE ON THE RIVER

  By now, Nicole wanted to hear about Gary's life. Only he didn't want to talk about himself. Preferred to listen to her. It took a while for Nicole to realize that having spent his adolescence in jail and just about every year since, he was more interested to learn what went on in her little mind. He just hadn't grown up with sweet things like herself.

  In fact, if he did tell a story it was usually about when he was a kid. Then she would enjoy the way he talked. It was like his drawing. Very definite. He gave it in a few words. A happened, then B and C. Conclusion had to be D.

  A. His seventh-grade class voted on whether they should send Valentines to each other. He thought they were too old. He was the only one to vote against it, When he lost, he bought Valentines to mail to everybody. Nobody sent him one. After a couple of days he got tired of going to the mailbox.

  B. One night, he was passing a store that had guns in the window. Found a brick and broke the window. Cut his hand, but stole the gun he wanted. It was a Winchester semiautomatic that cost $125 back in 1953. Later he got a box of shells and went plinking. "I had these two friends," Gary told her, "Charley and Jim. They really loved that .22. And I got tired of hiding it from my old man—when I can't have something the way I want it, then I don't really want it. So I said, 'I'm throwing the gun in the creek, if you guys have the guts to dive for it, it's yours.' They thought I was bullshitting until they heard the splash. Then Jim jumped and hurt his knee on a big old sharp rock. Never got the gun. The creek was too deep. I laughed my ass off."

  C. On his thirteenth birthday his mother let him pick between having a party or getting a $20 bill. He chose the party and invited just Charley and Jim. They took the money their folks gave them for Gary and spent it on themselves. Then they told him.