The Executioner's Song (138 page)

                The next thing he noticed was that Gilmore was not strapped tightly into the chair. It was the first detail that really hit him. Everything was loose.

                There were straps around his arms and legs, but they all had a good inch of slack. He could have pulled his hands right out of their restraints. Then, as Schiller continued to move forward, he saw a painted line before him on the floor, and an official said, "Stand behind that," so he wheeled and faced the chair. Now, with Gilmore again on his right, Schiller could see to his left a black blind with slots in it, and he estimated the distance at twenty-five feet from himself and about the same distance from Gilmore. Then, he took a good look. It was the first time Schiller had seen Gary in person since December.

                At this moment, he looked tired, depleted, thin, older than Schiller had ever seen him, and a little glassy-eyed. A tired old bird with very bright eyes.

                The next thing to impress Schiller was that Gary was still in control.

                He was carrying on conversations, not loud enough to hear, but saying something to the guards strapping him, to the Warden, and to the priest. Maybe there were eight people around him in maroon jackets. Schiller was about to put down in his notes that they were prison officials, but that was exactly what he wished to guard against.

                No journalistic assumptions. So he would not suppose they were prison officials. Just people in red coats. Then, as his photographer's eye grew accustomed to the scene, he could not quite believe what he next observed. For the seat of execution was no more than a little old office chair, and behind it was an old filthy mattress backed up by sandbags and the stone wall of the cannery. They had rammed that mattress between the chair and the sandbags, a last-minute expedient, no doubt, as if, sometime during the night, they had decided that the sandbags weren't enough and bullets might go through, hit the wall, and ricochet. But the dirty mattress repelled Schiller. He said to himself, My God, they stitched the black canvas neatly around the rifle slots for the assassins. Then he realized the word he was using.

                Still, you could not ignore the contrast between the meticulous preparation of the blind, and Gary's chair with its filthy ramshackle backdrop. Even the bindings around his arms looked to be made out of cheap webbing.

Ron Stanger's first impression was how many people were in the room. God, the number of spectators. Executions must be a spectator sport. It really hit him even before his first look at Gary, and then he was thankful the hood was not on yet. That was a relief. Gilmore was still a human being, not a hooded, grotesque thing, and Ron realized how he had been preparing himself for the shock of seeing Gary with his face concealed in a black bag. But, no, there was Gary staring at the crowd with an odd humor in his face. Stanger knew what he was thinking. "Anybody who knows somebody is going to get an invite to the turkey shoot."

                Stanger hadn't thought there would be anybody here to speak of, but there must have been fifty people behind the white line. Any cop or bureaucrat who had a little pull had gotten in. Stanger could hear Bob Moody's words about Sam Smith, so often repeated. "He's a very sincere man. It's just that he's incompetent. Totally incompetent."

                Here were all these Sheriffs and County Troopers Stanger had never seen before, come right out of the woodwork—how could you be respected in your profession if you weren't here?

                Moody also felt anger at all the people who had been invited. Sam Smith had given them such fuss whether it would be five or seven guests. Now there were all these needless people pressed behind the line, and the executioners back of the screen talking. You couldn't hear what they were saying, but you could hear them, and it incensed Bob that Ernie Wright, Director of Corrections, was dancing around greeting people, practically gallivanting with his big white cowboy hat, looking like a Texas bureaucrat.

                Moody had the feeling that the riflemen behind the blind were purposely not looking at Gary, but keeping their backs to him, chatting away in a group, and would only turn around at the last minute when given the order. Ron Stanger, situated next to Bob Moody, wanted to get up and say to all, "Here, bless your heart, you wouldn't give this man a piece of pizza before you blow his guts out." That's what he wanted to say, but he didn't dare. It would have been too hysterical. Couldn't let the man, he would have shouted, have his pizza and a six-pack of beer. Rather have it wind up in a correctional belly, wouldn't you?

Cline Campbell's first thought when he walked into the room was, my goodness, do they sell tickets to this? All the same, Campbell could feel how everybody was scared to death. It hung over the execution.

                The good old bureaucratic fear that somebody in an official place was going to forget something. Then there'd be all political or legal hell to pay. Campbell just contented himself with saying to Gary, "How are you doing?" and then he stood to one side of the chair and Father Meersman to the other, and Father Meersman got a cup of water and Gilmore took a sip of it as the priest held it to his mouth.

                An official came up to Vern and said Gary wanted to speak to him. Vern walked over into the light that was on Gary, and his nephew looked up at him with those baby-blue eyes of his, and Vern felt he'd like to pull him out of that chair, just pull him out of that chair and make him free again. Vern was feeling a great deal of emotion. He didn't want him in that chair, really.

                Gary said, "Look, take this watch. I don't want anybody to have it but Nicole." He had broken it and taped it with the hands set at 7:49.

                Now, he handed it to Vern. Must have been holding it all this while.

                Then Gary. said, "I want you to promise you'll see to it that Nicole is taken care of." How in the world Gary figured he could take care of her, Vern didn't know, but Gary had to ask somebody. They shook hands and Gary started to squeeze his hand, right there in the chair as if he could crush Vern's knuckles. He said to Vern, "Come on, I'll give you a go," and Vern said, "Gary, I could pull you right out of that chair if I wanted to."

                Gary said, "Would you?" Vern went back to his place behind the line and thought of the conversation he'd had weeks before when Gary asked him and Ida to be witnesses, and Vern had said, "I don't want Ida to see it," and Gary said, "but I want you there, Vern."

                "I don't know whether I can take it or not," Vern had said, "I don't think I can." Gary had said, "Well, I want you there"

                "Why?" Vern asked "Why do you want me?"

                Well Vern, Gary said, "I want to show you. I've already shown  you how I live"—he gave his most mocking smile—"and I'd like to show you how I can die." Vern thought all this now must be part of what he had said then because, back behind the line, feeling Gary's hands on his, Vern wanted to tell him, "That was so good, Gary, what you just did."

Bob Moody came next, and he shook hands. Gary had a smaller hand than  Bob had expected, but neither cold nor feverishly warm, just a shock, for it was a warm, living hand like any other. Gary looked at him and said, "Well, Moody, I'm going to leave you my hair. You need it worse than I do."

Schiller was next. As he walked up, he kept worrying about right things to say. But when he got there, he was dazed by the immensity of it all. It was as if he was saying good-bye to a man who was going to step into a cannon and be fired to the moon, or in an iron chamber to the bottom of the sea, a veritable Houdini. He grasped both of Gilmore's hands and it didn't matter if the man was a murderer, he could just as well have been a saint, for either at this moment seemed equally beyond Schiller's way of measure—and he said, he heard it come out of him, "I don't know what I'm here for."

                Gilmore replied, "You're going to help me escape." Schiller looked at him sitting in the chair and said, "I'll do it the best that's humanly possible," and was thinking by that, he would treat it all in the most honest way, and Gilmore smiled back at him with that funny tight grin of his, just a little expression in the upper lip, as he alone knew the meaning of what had just been said, and then the grin broadened into that thin-lipped smile he showed on occasion, evil as a jackal, subtly jeering, the last facial expression Schiller would have to remember of Gilmore. They shook hands, Gilmore's grip kind of weak, and Schiller walked away not knowing whether he had handled the moment the way he should. Didn't even know if it was a moment to be handled. He felt like he had no real relationship to Gilmore.

Vern had gone first because he was the patriarch, then Bob Moody, but Schiller had tried to be last. Stanger had thought, "You've got to be kidding, you're even doing it now," and won the maneuvering.

                Larry went ahead. When it came Stanger's turn, he couldn't think of anything to say. Just murmured, "Hang in there. Stick with it." Gary didn't look very tough. Wan, in fact. His eye showed the effect of all those drugs wearing off. He was trying to be brave, but just said, "Cool," like it wasn't that easy anymore to get the words out, and they shook hands. Gary squeezed real hard, and Stanger put his arm around his shoulder, and Gary moved the hand that was loose in the straps to touch Ron's arm. Stanger kept thinking that Gilmore's hands were skinnier than you'd think they'd be. And they looked in each other's eyes, kind of a final embrace.

                As soon as Ron returned to his position behind the line, a prison official came up to ask if he wanted cotton for his ears. Then Ron noticed that everybody was taking cotton, so he stuffed some into his head, and watched Sam Smith walk over to the back of the room where a red telephone was on a chair. Then Sam Smith made a phone call, and walked back and came up to Gary and started to read a declaration.

                Schiller, trying to listen, decided it was some official document. Not the sort, by the sound of it, that he would listen to normally but, through the cotton he could hear Sam Smith going blah, blah, blah.

                All the while, Gary was not looking at the Warden, but rather, leaning in his chair from side to side in order to stare around the large body of Sam Smith, practically tipping that chair over trying to see the faces behind the executioner's blind, catch a glint of their expression.

                Then the Warden said, "Do you have anything you'd like to say?" and Gary looked up at the ceiling and hesitated, then said, "Let's do it." That was it. The most pronounced amount of courage, Vern decided, he'd ever seen, no quaver, no throatiness, right down the line.

                Gary had looked at Vern as he spoke.

                The way Stanger heard it, it came out like Gary wanted to say something good and dignified and clever, but couldn't think of anything profound. The drugs had left him too dead. Rather than say nothing, he did his best to say it very clear, "Let's do it."

                That was about what you'd expect of a man who'd been up for more than twenty-four hours and had taken everything and now was hung over, and coming down, and looking older than Ron had ever seen him. Ah, he was drained out. Ron could see deep lines in his face for the first time. Gilmore looked as white as the day the lawyers first met him after the suicide attempt.

                Father Meersman walked up to give the last rites, and Noall Wootton braced himself and took a peep between the shoulders some of the big men in front of him, and remembered Gary when had come to the Board of Pardons Hearing, very confident that like he was holding all the cards, the ace and everything else you might need. Now, in Wooton's opinion, he didn't have it.

                And Schiller, looking at the same man, thought he was resigned in his appearance, but with presence, and what you could call a certain authority.

                Father Meersman finished giving Gary Gilmore the last rites. As they came forward with the hood, Gilmore said to him, "Dominus vobiscum." Father Meersman didn't know how to describe his emotion. Gary couldn't have said anything that brought back more of an automatic response. This was the greeting Father Meersman had given to the people again and again over the ten years and twenty and thirty since he had become a priest. "Dominus vobiscum," he would say at Mass and the response would come back, "Et cum spiritu tuo."

                So now, when Gilmore said Dominus vobiscum, Father Meersman answered like an altar boy, "Et cum spiritu tuo," and as the words came out of his mouth, Gary kind of grinned and said, "There'll always be a Meersman."

                "He wants to say," said Father Meersman to himself, 'that there will always be a priest present at a time like this."

                Three or four men in red coats came up and put the hood on Gilmore's head. Nothing was said after that. Absolutely nothing said. They put a waist strap on Gilmore, and a head strap, and Father Meersman began to think of how when they were first strapping him in the chair, Gilmore had wanted water and Father Meersman had given him water for the throat that was too dry. Then he had wanted another drink.

                Now, the doctor was beside him, pinning a white circle on Gilmore's black shirt, and the doctor stepped back. Father Meersman traced the big sign of the cross, the last act he had to perform. Then, he, too, stepped over the line, and turned around, and looked back at the hooded figure in the chair. The phone began to ring.