The Executioner's Song (139 page)

Authors: Norman Mailer

Noall Wooton's first reaction was, God, it's just like in the movies, it isn't going to happen. Schiller was taking notes on the checks he'd been careful to remove from the checkbook holder, and he noted that the hood came down loosely like a square carton over Gary's head. Not form fitting in any way. You could not have a sense of his features beneath the sack.

Stanger, listening to the phone, thought, "It is a final confirmation of some kind." Then Sam Smith hung up, and walked back to his place behind the line, and it happened to be next to Schiller. He handed Larry more cotton and they looked into each other's eyes.

Then, Schiller didn't know if Sam Smith made a movement with his arm, or didn't, but he felt as if he saw something in the Warden's shoulder move, and Ron and Bob Moody and Cline Campbell heard a countdown begin, and Noall Wootton put his fingers in his ears on top of the cotton, and Gary's body looked calm to Campbell. Cline could not believe the calm he saw in that man. Gilmore was so strong in his desire to die right, that he didn't clench his fist as the count began.

Stanger said to himself, "I hope I don't fall down." He had his hand up to protect his head somehow. Right through the cotton, he heard the sound of heavy breathing and saw the barrels of the rifles projecting from the slits of the blind. He was shocked at how close those muzzles were to the victim. They sure didn't want to miss.

Then it all got so quiet your attention was called to it. Right through the cotton, Ron heard these whispers, "One," and "Two," and they never got to say, "Three" before the guns went, "Bam. Bam. Bam."

So loud it was terrifying. A muscle contracted from Ron's shoulder down to his lower back. Some entire school of muscles in a spasm.

Schiller heard three shots, expecting four. Gary's body did not jerk nor the chair move, and Schiller waited for the fourth shot and found out later that two must have come out simultaneously. Noall Wootton tried to look at Gary at that point, but couldn't see anything from the rear of the crowd and went out the door before anyone else, and straight to his car which was up by Minimum Security, got in it, drove out. There were reporters interviewing people and photographers, but he didn't stop. He didn't want to talk to anybody.

Vern just heard a great big WHAM! When it happened, Gary never raised a finger. Didn't quiver at all. His left hand never moved, and then, after he was shot, his head went forward, but the strap held his head up, and then the right hand slowly rose in the air and slowly went down as if to say, "That did it, gentlemen." Schiller thought the movement was as delicate as the fingers of a pianist raising his hand before he puts it down on the keys. The blood started to flow through the black shirt and came out onto the white pants and started to drop on the floor between Gary's legs, and the smell of gunpowder was everywhere. Then, the lights went down, and Schiller listened to the blood drip. He was not certain he could hear it drip, but he felt it, and with that blood, the life in Gilmore's body seemed to lift off him like smoke. Ron Stanger, feeling dizzy, said to himself, "You're the only one that's going to pass out, and it will be embarrassing to end on the ground with all these people here," and he staggered backward from the force of the contraction in his back, put his arms out, grabbed hold of somebody to steady himself, and turned back to get another look at the body. That was when he saw Gilmore's right hand lift.

Ron closed his eyes and when he opened them again, the blood was a pool in Gary's lap, running to his feet and covering his tennis shoes, those crazy red, white and blue tennis shoes he always wore in Maximum. The shoelaces were now blooded over.

A doctor came along with a stethoscope and shook his head. Gilmore wasn't dead yet.

Ron thought of the day when Gary was in Fagan's office for a moment, and in that ten seconds Gary was all over his desk like a butterfly. He opened the desk drawer and took out a spoon, and shoelaces, went through everything like a guy leading an orchestra.

It was beautiful. Gilmore was a talented thief, after all, and finished just as Fagan said, "Yeah, okay, Joe." By the time the Lieutenant turned around, old Gary was sitting there calm as a nodding owl, and Stanger on the other side of the glass had his eyes wide open.

Gary made jokes about the shoelaces after that. They were good enough to hang himself by, he would tell Ron, and now the hand that had done the stealing moved up in the air and came down. It could have been pointing at the blood on the shoelaces.

They waited about twenty seconds. Then the doctor went up again, and Father Meersman came up, and Sam Smith, and the doctor put the stethoscope to Gary's arm once more, turned to Sam, and nodded. Sam Smith unloosened the waist strap, slid Gilmore out from underneath the head strap, and looked behind the body at the shot pattern where the holes came through.

Stanger was furious. The moment Gilmore was shot, everybody should have been walked out, and not served for a party to all this.

Even as Sam was examining the body, Gary fell over into Meersman's hands. The padre had to hold the head while Sam went fishing all over Gilmore's back to locate the exit wounds. Blood started coming onto Meersman's hands, and dripped through his fingers, and Vern began to weep. Then Father Meersman wept. An officer finally came around and said to the people standing behind the line, "Time for you to leave." Schiller walked out saying to himself, "What have we accomplished? There aren't going to be less murders."

All the while Father Meersman and Cline Campbell were unbuckling Gilmore's arms and legs. Campbell kept thinking of the importance of the eyes. He said to himself, "Why doesn't somebody move? We've got to save the eyes."

Over at the Warden's office, just a few minutes earlier, Gordon Richards had received a phone call from an Assistant Clerk in the U.S. Supreme Court, who was saying that the full Court—with Justice Brennan not participating—had just acted on the application for a Stay from the ACLU and had denied it. Richards got a little upset.

This Clerk who was named Peter Beck had been told nothing about "Mickey from Wheeling, West Virginia." Well, did Mr. Beck know, Richards asked, where Mr. Rodak was born and what his nickname was? "Is it Mike?" said Beck. Richards then asked if Mr. Rodak could call him. Before he knew it, he got put on hold. "Hurry, please," Richards called out to Beck, "it's crucial." There he was sitting with unconfirmed information from the Supreme Court. So he called out to the prison officials there with him in the Warden's office, "Tell them to hold at the cannery." The officials shook their heads, however.

The execution had just been carried out.

Three minutes later, Rodak came on the line. Richards asked for his nickname and his birthplace. The nickname was Mickey, he said, but he had been born in Smock, Pennsylvania.

"What about West Virginia?" asked Richards. "I was born in Smock," said Rodak, "but I went to West Virginia. I'm a member of the West Virginia Bar."

Had he offered this information to Earl Dorius? asked Richards.

Didn't think so, said Rodak. Finally, he remembered. "Oh, yes, the fellow wanted to make sure that he didn't get any false calls." Right. "Is," asked Rodak, "the execution over yet?"

"Wouldn't it have been horrible," said Richards to one of the officials, as he hung up, "if that had been simultaneous calls?"

Vern, Bob Moody, Ron Stanger, and Larry Schiller got into a car and drove over to the Administration Building. During that minute, they discussed whether or not to issue a press statement ahead of the Warden.

Stanger said, "I think we ought to. What do you say, Larry?" Schiller replied, "We have no obligation. The first person who gets there is the first person the press will talk to," and Stanger said, "Let's beat the Warden to the punch."

Vern said, "Can you answer questions about the execution, Larry? I don't want to talk about that."

The press conference was being held on the second floor of the Administration Building in a large conference chamber that looked like a courtroom. It was already as crowded as the Board of Pardons Hearing, same bedlam of media, cameras and crazy white light, people pushing to get in, close to 100 degrees inside. No room to breathe.

Trying to get upstairs, they were buffeted every way. Some TV guy was working with a couple of electric cables in front of Bob Moody, and got so rude about letting Moody pass that Bob just grabbed a male-female connection crossing his path and yanked it apart. The TV man cried out, "My God, I've lost power, lost power," as Moody went by.

When they reached the stage, Schiller said to Vern, "Why don't you talk first?" and Vern sat on a chair to rest his aching leg.

He did not speak long. "It was very upsetting to me," Vern said, "but he got his wish, he did die . . . and he died in dignity. That's all I have to say."

Bob Moody told them, "I think it's a very brutal, cruel kind of a thing, that I would only hope that we could take a good and better look at ourselves, our society and our systems. Thank you."

Ron said, "He was always trying to keep the spirit light because he made the statement he had received a gift, and that gift was he knew he was going to die, and he could make the arrangements and, therefore, he was indeed fortunate. He always said that he looked forward to the time when he could have quiet, when he could meditate, and today, Gary Gilmore has quiet, and he has quiet through eternity."

Schiller said, "I'm not here to express any of my personal feelings, but after Vern has left, I'll be more than glad to relate any of the facts anybody here would like to know. I don't think it would be proper to relay them in Vern's presence, but I will answer your questions then." He threw a look around the room and the only smile that came back was from David Johnston of the L.A, Times and the Orem TraveLodge. Then Gus Sorensen gave a wink.

ANNOUNCER FOR THE TV POOL Leaving the platform row are Ron Stanger and Robert Moody, two attorneys who have helped Gary Gilmore in the last couple of months to get the wish that he said he wanted, at that time, that he wanted to die, these men helped to see. that he got there. Also leaving, Vern Damico, Gilmore's uncle from Provo, Utah, the man who took Gilmore in after he was paroled from a prison. And now, Lawrence Schiller, a literary agent/filmmaker who's been involved in this case for some time.

Dave Johnston, watching Schiller, decided to give points to the guy's cool. Here, at this press conference with everybody hating his guts for teeing up the story, Schiller was still doing a real reporter's job. His adrenalin had to be high enough to make his frame shake, thought Johnston, yet not a quiver was showing.

Schiller spoke of the yellow line and the black hood and the black T-shirt Gary was wearing and the white pants, and the shots.

" . . . Slowly, red blood emerged from under the black T-shirt and onto the white slacks. It seemed to me that his body still had a movement for approximately fifteen to twenty seconds, it is not for me to determine whether it was an after-death or prior-to-death movement The minister and the doctor proceeded towards Gary," Schiller said, and kept on speaking in slow, clear sentences, trying to make the note-taking easy for tired reporters.

Then it was Sam Smith's turn.

SAM SMITH I have no formal statement. I think Mr. Schiller pretty well covered the detail. I will respond to questions.

QUESTION What was the official time, Warden?

SAM SMITH The official time was 8:07.

QUESTION How did you give the signal?

SAM SMITH I didn't really give the signal. I indicated all was in readiness.

QUESTION How did you do that?

SAM SMITH Just by a motion.

QUESTION Was there a squad leader?

SAM SMITH Yes, there was.

QUESTION Did the squad leader give the signal?

SAM SMITH What happened inside of them, I have no knowledge.