The Executioner's Song

  Gary asked April if she'd like to go to a motel, but she just said she didn't want to go home. So they began driving around and soon got lost.

  Just as he discovered he had come all the way from Orem to Provo by back roads, the truck ran out of gas.

  It came to a stop on the lonely part of Center Street between the exit from the Interstate and the beginning of town. He got out and plunged into a little ravine off the road and hid the gun, the clip and the coin changer in a bush. Then he headed for the nearest store.

  Wade Anderson and Chad Richardson were at the 7-11 grocery down on West Center Street when this fellow came up to them. He said if they would take him to a gas station, he would give them five bucks.

  He looked all right, except he was kind of tired and certainly in a hurry. He gave up the five dollars as soon as they got in the truck and sat by the window looking out. Kept saying that his girl was sitting alone in the truck and he didn't want no one to hassle her, especially cops, she'd mouth off.

  They said, Well, okay, you know, we'll hurry as quick as we can.

  The trouble was, when they got to a gas station that was open, there was no gas can. Wade then said they could go to his house for one.

  The guy said, Well, we gotta hurry.

  It took a few minutes to get over to the east side of town, pick up the can from his dad's garage, come back to the gas station. Once they returned to the man's truck, Wade started pouring. Since he would soon be a junior in high school and was therefore trying to get a little better at talking to girls, he sprung up a conversation every chance he got and was looking to chat with the one in the truck. Of course he kept his eye on the tall man who was walking around in the little ravine below. The fellow had borrowed a flashlight from Chad's truck, and was beaming around down there looking for something.

  Wade said to the girl, "How you doing?" and she looked at him very seriously and said in this big voice, "Are you Gary Gilmore's son?" He said, "Oh, no, ma'am, I'm . . . I never met him before tonight," and about that time the fellow in the field found what he was looking for. Wade saw him pull a pistol out of the bushes, and a clip with it, and a coin changer, then he came walking back to them.

  Even slammed the clip into the handle of the gun as he did. Put it under the seat with the coin changer. Chad had been standing back a little as Wade poured the gas, and now they just looked at each other. Wow.

  After they finally emptied the can, this fellow said, "Thanks a lot" and was ready to take off. Went to start his truck. It wouldn't go.

  He had wore the battery down. So they gave him a push with their truck. That was it.

  Back on the road, Gary said to April, "No more riding around. I want a fancy place to sleep like the Holiday Inn." He turned onto the Interstate and bore down the two miles to the next exit.

  "I'm not going to fuck you," April said. "I'm feeling too paranoid."

  "I've got to work in the morning," Gary informed her. "We'll get two beds."

  Frank Taylor, the night auditor at the Holiday Inn, was at the front desk when a tall man carrying a half gallon of milk came in with a short girl who was holding aloft a long Olympia beer can like she was the Statue of Liberty. Frank Taylor thought, Here comes a real case.

  Since he was not only the night auditor but doubled as a desk clerk his next thought was that he wasn't going to get his auditing done first thing tonight. The girl didn't look like she'd quiet down too soon. Still, the tall man seemed sober when he came over to register.

  The girl kept asking snippy questions of Frank Taylor. Did he like working in a motel for a living? Were there bedbugs? Then she inquired for the ladies' room. The moment Frank Taylor told her it was across the lobby on the left, she started down the hall to her right. Taylor was yelling directions by the time she disappeared. The tall man only smiled. A couple of minutes later she passed across the lobby the other way. The tall man asked for a place to eat, and listened carefully to the answer that the Rodeway Inn, two doors down, was open 24 hours a day. Then he signed his name in large block letters, GARY GILMORE, gave Spanish Fork as an address, and reached into his pocket where he pulled out an awful lot of small bills to pay for the room.

  Taylor assumed Gilmore and the girl were shacking up but that was not really any of his business. You could get in a lot of legal trouble if you were too inquisitive. Just once, suggest to a real married couple that they were not really married. It was established practice to accept anybody who was orderly and paid in advance. Taylor watched them go off together hand in hand with the key.

  A while later, they were buzzing the switchboard. Gilmore was calling down from 212 to say he'd gone out in the hall and put some money in the machine to buy toothpaste and razor blades and Alka Seltzer, but the machine had not worked.

  It never worked, thought Frank Taylor. He got the items out of the supply case and walked down long corridors with green carpeting and yellow-brown walls, past dark brown plywood doors, past an ice chest and a candy vending machine. He went by an iced-drink machine and reached 212. When Gilmore opened the door, he had on red slacks and no shirt. He reached into his pocket and took out a big handful of change, kind of held it down as if to scrutinize it, then picked out what was needed. Taylor couldn't see the girl, but heard her giggle as the door closed.

  Chapter 14

  THE MOTEL ROOM

  At the far end of the bedroom, to one side of the far wall, was the only window and it looked out over the swimming pool. Since the window was sealed, there was an air conditioner installed beneath. On either side hung drapes made of a green-blue synthetic fabric, and they were drawn apart by white vertical cords that passed around milk-colored plastic pulleys. Two black leatherette barrel chairs and an octagon-shaped synthetic-walnut table sat in front of the window, and next to the table was a TV set on a swivel stand. Its chromium ball feet were set in rubber casters which buried themselves in a blue shaggy synthetic-fabric rug.

  A long synthetic-walnut combination desk and bureau was attached to one wall. In the interior of the flat drawer of the desk was stationery in a flat wax-paper envelope that bore the Holiday Inn logo: "Your Host from Coast to Coast." A copy of the regulations and a room-service menu lay next to a long thin strip of paper that read: PLEASE BE A WATT WATCHER.

  The beds on the opposite wall had headboards of synthetic walnut and their coverlets were of green-blue synthetic fabric. They gave off the same smell as the room. It was the odor of old air conditioners and old cigars.

  Between the beds was an end table with a lamp and an octagonal glass ashtray that carried the green logo of Holiday Inn. A red light for messages kept flashing on the phone. Since it was on by error, it did not go off. Neither did the air conditioner. After a while, its hum vibrated in the bowels.

  On the door frame of the bathroom was a switch that in the dark glowed like a squared-off fluorescent nipple. Turned on, the overhead light showed white walls and a cement-colored tile floor. A plate-glass mirror was attached above the sink by five plastic glass-clamps screwed into the wall. The sixth had fallen out. Its exposed screw hole looked like a motionless dark bug.

  The washbowl was set in a synthetic-walnut top. Along this top, two glasses wrapped in cellophane carried the logo of Holiday Inn, and two small cakes of soap in the Holiday Inn wrappers were placed next to a small tent-shaped piece of yellow cardboard that read, "Welcome to Holiday Inn." There was also a notice that the liquor store would be open from 10 A.M. to 10 P.M. These pieces of paper were damp. The rounded surfaces of the washbowl acted like a centrifuge when you turned on the tap and threw water out of the sink onto the floor.

  A strip of white paper was looped around the seat of the toilet bowl to certify that no one had sat there since the strip was placed in position. The toilet paper from the toilet-paper holder in the wall to the left of the toilet seat was soft and very absorbent, and would stick to the anus.

  "April," Gary said, "are you going to tear that strip off the toilet, or do I have to?" She glowered
at him, and threw the paper at the wastebasket.

  "The world makes you work," she said, "because of the rich. Every organization is rich, you see."

  "Man, you sure can talk," said Gary. He walked over and gave her a kiss. She said, "Sissy. Sissy wouldn't like this." He walked away from her and took out a stick of pot. "I want some," said April. He laughed and held it out of her reach. "Give us a kiss," he said.

  "I can't kiss you because of Sissy," she said. "Sissy has vampires."

  Gary lit the stick, and took a puff. "A toke?" he asked. But when she came near, he held it out of her reach again.

  Walking around the room she started taking off clothes. She felt as if they were congesting her. First her peasant blouse, then her Levi's. Walking around in her bra and her panties, she felt better.

  "Did you ever get up at four in the morning, Gary, and make cookies?" He was lying on the bed and taking his time on the marijuana.

  He just waved a hand. Then he sat up and burped. A look of pain came over his face, and he reached for the milk and took a swig.

  "Hey, kid, let's unwind," he said. "I'll give you a massage and you give me one."

  "The FBI," she said, "look in on houses to see if people are committing any crimes. They do it through the TV, you know." She lay back on the bed and the room was spinning. It was like a motel room she had gone to with a rich man. She had felt so alive that night because the plastic was so dead.

  "Gary," she said, "give me a toke. I'm kind of messed up." He passed her the stick and she sucked in. She must have taken a trip because there was Gary kissing her face, waking her up. "Leave me alone," she cried. When he gave her another kiss, she said, "Gary, you and Nicole were meant for each other,"

  "Nicole can get fucked."

  She started to walk around, remembering the night in Hawaii when she was walking around and Bobby and Warren were massaging her and dancing with her, and then Gary was sort of giving her a massage, walking behind her, right behind her, his legs locked with hers as if they were in prison lockstep, and they walked around the room that way with his thumbs massaging her shoulders and the back of her neck. After a little while she began to feel very close to him and whispered, "It isn't very good for us to do that. Sissy wouldn't think that was very good." She decided to turn on her mind and listen to Paul McCartney. "Open the door and let them in," went the music in her head, and it got to be a carnival. Gary would smack her from behind, or finger her panties, then he would growl in her ear like a lion. She'd think of rich men in motels and knock off his hand with her elbow. "Fuck you," she said. "Let me go to bed."

  "We're sleeping standing up," he replied.

  They were a king and a queen and she began to get pleased at the thought of them sleeping each in a separate bed, but she knew she would go down into a sleep that gave a very heavy feeling, like pictures she had seen in the Bible of demons coming out of dark space to torment people on this planet and really tear us apart limb from limb. She could picture thousands in the sky coming down like eagles on mice.

  All the while he was crawling on her, giving her a back massage.

  When she closed her eyes, she saw a man flapping his arms. He had about eight limbs on each side and was flapping them, an evil force, bringing disease and everything else like Satan, the strongest, to earth.

  Now she knew there was something wrong with the back massage. Gary had changed his personality. Gary, who was always so manly around her, more manly even than her father, had turned female and was crawling on her from behind with this back massage.

  If she would turn around and look at his face, she would see a woman. He was feeling her in order to feel his own breasts, his own belly. April could feel a woman behind her. That turned her off cold, man.

  "Let's go to sleep," she said. He didn't fight. He got into his bed and she got into hers, and he turned out the lights and she lay down in the dark and looked up at the ceiling. The spackled plaster had sparkles of glass embedded to look like a thousand stars. She couldn't stand the smell in the room and turned on the lights. On the wall just back of her was a landscape running all over the wallpaper of palm trees and the ruin of a stone arch, and on a hill, an old Italian house.

  Long skinny people wearing capes were walking around that countryside. Gary said, "Turn off the light. I need my sleep."

  She lay there some more, and he came over to her bed in the dark and tried to make her. She didn't know if he was serious or not. They just scuffled in the dark and he tore her underwear but she held the pieces together, and said, "No." She said, "Gary, I don't feel like doing this." She said, "Gary, you're losing your mind." She said "Sissy. Sissy. Sissy wouldn't think this is very good." At last he gave up and she lay there in the dark. The room started coming back to her. She saw the room very clearly like she was looking through a magnifying glass. "It's just one more night in a prison cell," she said to herself, "and I've been in prison all my life."

  Out in the foyer, as they left, was a small rubber pad on the wall. It kept the knob of the door to 212 from denting the plaster. She didn't know why but it reminded her of the cord to the TV set that was all coiled up and tied neatly by a white plastic wire. In her head that was like a snake strangling another snake.

  Deep down in sleep, the first thing Colleen knew was that somebody was knocking lightly on her door. It left her startled. She didn't know what time it was until she got up and passed the kitchen clock and saw it was two in the morning and Max was still away. Then she turned on the porch light and looked out the little window that was set in the door. What she saw made her very scared.

  Outside the window were five men, and the first of them was President Kanin of her Stake.

  He put his arm around her shoulder, "Colleen," he said, "Max won't be home tonight."

  She received a feeling that Max might never be home again.

  "Is he dead?" she asked.

  All five nodded.

  She cried for a minute. It wasn't real to her.

  At this point, one of the two men she didn't know, said to President Kanin, "Will she be okay with you?" When the answer was yes, these two strangers left. She realized they were plainclothes police men.

  President Kanin helped her dial home. No one answered. She remembered her parents were camping and had left that morning, so she dialed Max's parents. The lady who answered said Mr. and Mrs. Jensen had also gone camping, but she would get in touch with them. President Kanin now asked if there was somebody else one could call and Colleen thought of her cousins who lived across the street from her parents in Clearfield. They were home and said they'd drive right over. That would take an hour and a half.

  President Kanin now asked her if there was somebody who could stay with her until the cousins arrived. She said there was a girl in the Ward who lived two trailers down. They called and she came over. The three men left.

  The girl stayed nearly two hours. They lay down beside each other on the bed and talked. Monica stayed asleep and Colleen was numb. She had no desire to see where they had taken Max's body.

  She did not feel like saying "Let me go to him." She just sat and talked to her neighbor and it all seemed unreal. They would talk for a while, and then it would come back. It was a quarter to five when her relatives knocked on the door.

  April had taken out her earring, and in the dark she was using it to stick herself. She had this dream that one day she was going to take an injection and end it all. She wanted to know what it felt like. So she kept trying the point of the earring post against her neck.

  In the morning while it was still kind of dark, Gary moved over to her bed again, and tried one more time. Not that hard. Then he drank more milk. It certainly was love he needed more than sex, but April knew she could not let Sissy down cause Sissy still loved him.

  By 6:30 when Monica awoke in the dawn, Colleen was saying to herself that she was still alive, and her baby was still alive, and the baby had to be nursed. It would be terrible to totally upset the baby.

&nbs
p; So she went in and greeted Monica with "Good morning" and picked her up and loved her and gave her a bath and got her ready for the day.

  When the light came through the window, April and Gary dressed and he drove her home. As he dropped her off, he said, "April, whatever last night was like, I want you to remember that you'll always be my friend and I'll always care about you."

  She went in the house and nobody was there. Kathryne was off driving Mike to work and April started sweeping the floor. Right in the middle of it she said out loud, "I'll never get married, never."

  Kathryne had stayed up all night waiting for Gary and April. By five, she must have fallen asleep, and then the alarm went off not long after. She had to take her son Mike up the Canyon every morning to where he worked for the Forest Service, a twenty-mile trip up twisting roads, and after a day and night of cigarette smoke, the fear in her lungs felt ready to whistle up a storm with every breath. Then she came back down the Canyon to her house, walked in the door and there was April enthroned like a zombie in the kitchen chair.

  "Where in the hell have you been?" April did not answer. She just sat and stared. "Were you," Kathryne asked, "with that dirty crumb all night?" For all the easing of her fear, there was still no relief. She just felt sick. My God, April was in a trance. "Damn it," Kathryne shouted, "Did you stay with Gary all night?"

  Suddenly April screamed. "Leave me alone! Can't you leave me alone? I know nothing." She ran in the bedroom. "You're nosey," she cried from the other side of the door.