The Executioner's Song - The Executioner's Song Part 14
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The Executioner's Song Part 14

"Guns?" she said. "Yes," he said, "guns." She asked where he got them. "Where do you think? I stole them." Kathryne just said, "Oh." Right there on the back deck of her car he started bringing them out for examination. "I'd like," said Gary, "to leave them here." "My God, Gary," said Kathryne, "I don't think you better. I can't keep them here."

"I'll be back," Gary said, "when I get off work. I just want to leave them in a safe place for a little while."

She couldn't believe the way he had set them out on the trunk of the car. If any of the neighbors looked through the window, they wouldn't believe what they were seeing.

Deliberately, he took each gun and described it to her like it was a rare beauty. One was a .357 Magnum this-or-that, another was a .22 Automatic Browning, then a Clan Weston .38 something-or-other.

Kathryne just said, "Gary, I don't know much about guns."

"How do you like this one?" he asked.

"Oh, they're nice, they're all nice, you know." She said, "What are you going to do with them, Gary?"

"A couple of dudes are going to buy them," he said.

By now, all the guns were unwrapped. He said, "I gave Nicole one to protect herself. Pretty little over-and-under Derringer. I want you to have this one."

"I don't need it, Gary. I really don't want it."

"I want you to," he said. "You're Nicole's mother."

"God, Gary," said Kathryne, "I've already got a gun."

"Well," he said, "I want you to have this Special. It's just not safe for two women living out here alone like you and your sister."

She tried to explain that she already had her husband's Magnum. But Gary said, "That's too big a gun. You shouldn't even attempt to shoot it."

Now he laid the guns in her car trunk. Kathryne let him know that she definitely didn't want to be driving around with them. So he said, "Let me leave them in the house." Told her he'd return at five o'clock. Well, she declared, she wouldn't be home then.

That was all right, he'd just come and get them. With that, he carried the diaper bag into the house, and put the guns behind their couch, all seven or eight of them. Then he wrapped the Special in an old cloth, and put it under her bedroom mattress.

That evening when she and Kathy got home, they ran to look behind the couch and yes, the guns were gone.

8.

During the day, while Gary was at work, Barrett came by in his and Nicole drove up with him to the Canyon. Sunny and Peabody left the pickup and went out to play. Before they could even light a stick, his pants were off, hers were off-they were getting it on. She heard herself say, "Gary is crazy. We might end up dead." Then she Jim, "If anything happens, I want you to know that I love you." She really did as she said it.

Gary came home in a sloppy old windbreaker with the sleeves cut off. His pants were a mess, and he was half drunk. He told her go over with him to Val Conlin's to examine the truck. She asked to get cleaned up first. She didn't really want to be seen with him. She looked like he slept out in the yard.

Gary kept talking to that man Conlin as if he had the money. It was a real irritant.

Next, he wanted to stop off and see Craig Taylor. That was the dumbest. Craig's wife, Julie, was in the hospital. Now Nicole's kids and the Taylor kids were carrying on all over while Gary got to play chess with Craig. Whooped when he beat him.

Then Gary started to tee off on Val Conlin for making him wait on the truck. "I'll wreck the place and a couple of his cars too," he said. "I'm going to kick them windows in." It was like opening a bottle that smelled awful.

Craig just listened like an owl. He had the biggest shoulders she'd ever seen for a guy with an owl's face. Never said anything. Just blinked.

Gary said he hated to watch TV. He especially hated the police shows. Nicole yawned.

As they were leaving, Gary asked Craig, "What do you think of me?"

"Well, it seems like you're trying," said Craig. "Just have a few breaks and you'll be all right."

Going up from Craig's to Kathryne's, right on the long road to her mother's house, darn if the Mustang didn't stall again. Gary got so pissed he broke the windshield.

Simply reared back with his feet and kicked the windshield. It cracked.

That got the kids upset. Nicole didn't say two words. She got out and helped him push the car to get it started. It still didn't go. Then somebody came along to give them a shove. They drove in silence for a couple hundred yards.

For a week she had been trying to say that they could live in separate places and see each other time to time. Now, when it came to it, Gary spoke. "I'm taking you to your mother's house," he said, "I don't want to ever see your face again."

He dropped her off with the kids as easily as going down to the grocery for a six-pack. She thought she'd be glad, but she wasn't. It didn't feel like it was over in the right way.

In twelve hours, Gary showed up at Kathryne's house. Just ahead of lunch. He wanted her to come back. He was drunk even as he asked her. She said she wouldn't. She said, I want to think about it awhile.

He didn't want her to think. He wanted her to agree. Still, he amazed her. He didn't force a thing. After he left, though, she decided it had been too easy. By tomorrow he would be coming every few hours. So she called Barrett and asked if she could stay at his pad. Nicole made it clear she didn't want to hang in. Just wanted a bed for a couple of days.

If she was going to disappear from Gary, there had to be places other than Barrett's. She went looking for an apartment. The same day, Barrett found one in Springville. Hardly anybody knew the address, and she made him swear to keep it secret.

Now she was living five miles from the house in Spanish Fork. If Gary took the back highway to Provo instead of the Interstate, he would pass two streets from her place.

Barrett wanted them to try one more time. One more trip of the mind. When she was young and used to read animal stories Kathryne had told her about reincarnation. Made it sound like a fairy tale. That was when Nicole made the choice to come back as a white bird. Now she thought that if she didn't straighten out the way she lived with men, she was going to come back ugly and no would ever want to look at her.

Chapter 11.

EX-HUSBANDS.

Barrett had this tendency to think of himself as small. In fact, his mom and dad used to tell him that when he was born, he looked no bigger than a kitten you put in a shoe box. Now he was five-ten and might weigh 145, but he never had the habit of thinking of himself as other than small-sized and self-sufficient. Like a kitten. During the stretch when he had his first romance with Nicole, he remembered spending one week all by himself in a yellow cell in the nuthouse. Painted pale yellow like a kid's nursery, only it was a cell. He remembered taking his socks, rolling them up, and throwing them at the wall, throwing them and catching them. It was the only thing he had to do. He got along.

On the other hand, he wasn't built for the heaviest punishment. Not with his long pointed nose and his fine pale brown hair, soft as a girl's. His hair could pick up bad vibrations from a stranger he passed on the highway. So Barrett had some idea usually what to expect. That was just as well considering the horror right now on his hands of helping Nicole hide out from that old scroungy madman, Gary Gilmore. Here was one love affair caught Barrett by surprise. He was horrified by Nicole's bad taste. Only once before had he seen her exhibit such real lack of judgment.

Barrett had been through everything with Nicole. Seen a lot of dudes come and go, studs, jocks, freaks, animals, characters you could almost call cripples, but they always had something. If they weren't good looking, strong, well hung, then they had something you could relate to, some good trick. Barrett knew Nicole was a beautiful person and really independent, and if you had the misery to be stuck in love with her like Barrett, then you had to live with who she would come up with next. Had to be there when she was ready to quit the guy.

Barrett wasn't built for heavy encounters. That was part of his understanding of himself. Yet the bravest, heaviest things he'd done in his life happened because of Nicole. For example: helping her move out of Joe Bob's house was scary. All those hours with a borrowed truck outside-why, Joe Bob could have come back from work to check on her. Barrett had a gun that day, but Joe Bob was heavy enough to walk through a gun.

Yes, all those hours moving her furniture (which was Barrett's furniture when they had lived together) was some of the tightest time Barrett ever put in, but he got her away, every last lamp shade, and Sunny and Jeremy up in the front seat with them, yes, saved Nicole's buns one more time, and she even went back to living with him when he found the house in Spanish Fork.

He had been working then. Concrete pumping. Had been looking for an occupation to get him out of dealing. Thought concrete pumping might be it, but found it a hard attitude to keep loyal to. Straight people only had to take one look at him and his flowing hippie threads, suede buckskin-style jacket with fringe, long hair, mustache, and they would categorize him right at the bottom. It was hard to drive somebody else's truck, and get paid a couple of bucks while making the other fellow a couple of hundred bucks. It always got Barrett down. Dealing, you were your own businessman least.

Still, he had been trying to make a straight living and prove a point to Nicole. Driving from Spanish Fork and working at pumping in American Fork, he was thereby damn well from one end of Utah County to the other, close to 60 miles a day. Commuting in morning traffic was as straight as you could get. That was the point he wished to make. But Nicole and him started hassling about all the things in the past. Her sexual relations with other men bothered him. Couldn't get them out of his head.

Right from the beginning in Spanish Fork their sex life wasn't like it used to be. Not that feeling of love anymore. Times he'd say to her, "You don't even want me." He might just as well have had an open hole in him. To be without Nicole was living in the pits. She didn't realize how he felt-if she could just now and again feel his pain. She didn't know how beautiful it could be with her, if she was in the mood to have it beautiful. Nobody could give you a feeling you were wanted, like Nicole could give it. Like she was the seducer, and it was heavenly places when you got that goodness from her. When she cut it off, Barrett knew the pits.

So even with the house in Spanish Fork-$75 a month-he couldn't help it, he split. Went up to Wyoming for a few weeks, and did what he always did on a split, which is, try to enjoy his free, make the most of life without daily hassles. But he couldn't get on the good side of his free where you could feel kind of dapper. Instead he carried Nicole around like a load. So, first opportunity, he hit her up with a surprise visit from Wyoming, and pulled in front of the house in Spanish Fork about eleven o'clock on a cold February night.

Since another fellow's car was out front, Barrett came in by the back. Nicole and the dude were in the bathroom together naked. The fellow was sitting on the laundry hamper, a weird-looking dirty guy, Clyde Dozier. Barrett knew him in passing. A disgusting non-entity. Barrett didn't get violent, you know, he just went in the kitchen adjacent, and Clyde came and put his clothes on, and started to apologize and say it wasn't Nicole's fault. Barrett said, "Save yourself some problems, Clyde. Get out of here before I get mad." Barrett might not be that tough, but he had a few connections after all. Clyde left, and Nicole started saying, like, "I'm not your old lady. You went to Wyoming and left me, you know. I can do whatever I want to do."

Well, she had a bed made up on the kitchen floor and Barrett got it on. Didn't know why he wanted to have sex at that point, but he figured she gave it to him because he'd get violent if she resisted. Next morning, he wasn't mad. It was just funny more than anything else, you know, there on the kitchen floor with his old lady, saying, "God, couldn't you pick somebody a little better than Clyde?" He really wanted to get together with her. So he gave up Wyoming and took a place in Lindon. Dropped over two or three times a week until she told him to stay away. One time he went over and another low scroungy dude was there, Freson (what a name!) Phelps. Barrett stayed away a long time before he went over to Spanish Fork again.

On this occasion, different things were around, Different furniture. Somebody new had moved in. He sat and had a cup of coffee with her. Before he could even start talking, Gilmore came in. The first time he heard about the fellow was when she introduced them.

Barrett's impression was that here was one more old scroungy dude. He didn't look right. More bad taste! He was wearing cutoffs and his legs were too white. Gilmore looked a lot older than her. Barrett didn't feel hurt or anything, just kind of disgust, you know, like I don't believe this.

He went on talking with Nicole. Gilmore never said a word, sat at the kitchen table. He seemed bothered. In a little while he up and went to the front room. At that point, Barrett nodded at Nicole, and they went outside. Sunny and Jeremy were playing, they sat near them, and Nicole said Gilmore was an ex-con. Nicole went back to the house. Barrett was left outside playing with the Pretty soon, the kids started saying the same things over and over. It was like they had a crowbar in your collarbone and were prying open. "Pop, poop, pop, poop," they'd say, and giggle.

He went down to his truck, and took off. He could really feel his skinny butt bouncing in the cab.

Then he met Gilmore the second time. Dropped over to visit while Gary was out to the store. While Barrett was talking to Nicole by the apple tree, Gilmore came back. Didn't say, Get the hell out, but sure acted like his return was the good cue to leave. So Barrett got up, and Nicole went right into the house. That left Barrett to walk to the street alone. Just then Gilmore came through the front door to confront him on the sidewalk.

He said, "I want to tell you something. I accept the fact that you're Sunny's father, but Nicole is mine." Barrett said, "Look, buddy, you can have her. I don't want her." These words gave Gilmore a bad look, a real bad-dog look. Gilmore said, "You don't have to insult her."

At that point Barrett got a scared feeling. He was used to seeing Nicole with other men. He'd watched her with other men. What else was there to say? You can have her. He certainly couldn't keep them from having her.

Besides, it would do no good for Gilmore to know his true feelings. That would wake Gilmore up. Barrett said, "I wasn't trying to insult her. Nicole don't want me, and I don't want her. I just wanted you to know." He got in his truck, and right there on the road, cruising along, he felt hope. It was the sound of Gilmore saying, "Nicole is mine." They got to talking like that, and they lost her. She didn't want to be owned for long.

After that, riding around, wheeling high off a Thai stick, Barrett might drive by her house. If Gary's car was out in front, he would not stop. If the scene was right, he would visit a little with Nicole, feel her out.

One time, Rosebeth answered the door and said Gary was at work, and Nicole was away with the kids. It was the first time Barrett ever saw Rosebeth, but he walked in like it was his house. After all, everything he owned was in there. Gary and Nicole, said Rosebeth, would be gone the whole day for sure. There was nice warm weather in the room.

Jim was sitting in the chair, and the girl was lying on the living-room bed that served for a couch. He thought she was pleasantly plump, had a real sweet baby-fat, but too young and virgin to fool around with. When she got up, however, to lift a blanket off the bed, he decided to get beside her, and they started to kiss. Didn't take a minute for her to say, "Now, let's get undressed." "Okay," he said "I'll go for that." They took off their clothes and lay on the bed, she said, "Let me suck it." Barrett said, "Don't let me stop you."

All her doing, you know. Barrett laid back and she spun around and popped it right on his face-he had no choice. She didn't really know how, actually hurt him with her teeth. All same she got pretty warm. But her clit wasn't sensitive, you know, couldn't make her flinch.

Still, she got pretty warm. He turned her around and she had expectant look. Only he couldn't get in. She was a virgin, he found out, and he was hurting her.

"Gary only wants me to do things with him, you know," she was saying, "Gary wouldn't like this, you know." Told him how the three of them fooled around. Barrett just kept flicking her clit.

It seemed to open her. He turned around and slipped it in, went right in, really good, nice and warm, no movement at all, all he needed. That was it, you know.

He put his clothes on and she got up and put her clothes Hadn't been in her more than ten seconds. She hadn't really done anything, but she had really nice breasts. He got a phone number from her. A tremendous deal. All free. Did it with his back to Gilmore.

By the next time he happened to stop, Nicole said she'd go for a ride. He took her up to the canyon and Sunny and Peabody went out and played. Barrett got seduced right in the truck. That's what happened that day.

He thought it was 'cause she loved him again, because she special feelings. She told him afterward she still loved him, all that stuff. Then they came down from the canyon, and he took her home It sure flared up his love for her. It made him miss her more. It was like a sacred thing to him, a way to express a feeling.

The next day, she called him up. "I'm pretty upset," she said, 'pretty down." Gary had become very dominating.

When Barrett went over, she was sad and really depressed and he just loved her. He stood naked with her, gave her the attention she needed and told her that he'd get her out of this mess.

Once she was in his dinky little flea-bag motel room, it didn't take but one night to know they needed more space. He went to see a friend who owned a couple of apartment houses in Springville and said, Hey, let me work on your swimming pool for the rent. The fellow went for that and moved them into an apartment on Third West in Springville. That same day, while Gilmore was on his job, they got the furniture from Spanish Fork and brought it over.

It was worrisome doing it. Nicole let him hold a .22 Magnum Derringer over-and-under that Gary had given her. This scene was even heavier than Joe Bob. Barrett noticed a piece of paper tacked up against the wall, saying, "Where are you, girl?"

He had the gun in his back pocket, loaded. But he kept thinking of Gilmore's other guns. If the man came home, they would have a shootout right there. Even after they were moved to the apartment, nothing let up. Nicole kept saying, You don't know Gary, he's dangerous. Barrett carried that gun.

This trip, Nicole was giving him sex like a professional. Not taking money, but like she thought he'd done a favor, so he deserved it back. It certainly wasn't one of their good periods. She wasn't into orgasms very regularly. With all he knew about her, it all the same took a few days for Barrett to figure out that Nicole was seeing somebody else.

On the Tuesday night that Gary broke up with Nicole, he came back to Craig's house and spent a quiet evening. "She's out of my life," he said. Next morning, soon as he woke up, he talked of getting back with her. Took a Browning .22 Automatic out of his car, and asked Craig to hold it. Craig did. Wanted to mollify him. Keep him off the deep end.

On the way to work, Gary asked if Craig knew anybody who would buy the Automatic. When Craig said he didn't, Gary said, "You can have it." Craig wasn't certain whether Gary was giving it, or letting him hold it handy.

Spencer asked how the windshield got broke, and when Gary said he kicked it, Spencer asked, "What for?" Gary said he was mad at Nicole. "Well, why didn't you kick her?" Spencer said. "You know you got to have a windshield to pass a safety inspection. That kick cost you $50." Gary said he didn't really care.

This got Spence mad. Gary owed him money after all. So Spence asked again if he had the driver's license. When Gary said no, Spence said he must have been lying all along, and they would have to alter their program a little. But Gary's head seemed to be somewhere else. He asked what Spence thought of his buying a pickup truck. He, Spencer decided, had an awfully large ego.

During the day, Gary got the keys to the white truck from Conlin and drove it to the shop for Spence to approve.

It was a '68 or '69 Ford. McGrath thought it was seriously priced. Gary said he really didn't care, he wanted it. Spencer said, I do care. You're asking me to lay out $1,700 for a vehicle that is worth $1,000. It's unfair. You don't have a driver's license. If you wreck that thing, or somebody steals it, if you get into a fight they arrest you and put you in jail, or if you can't in any way make the payments on it, then I have to pay off. You should think serious about what you're asking me to do." That didn't bother Gary. There was no doubt in his mind, he told Spence, that he was going pay for that pickup. He did not think Spence should ever be concerned about losing a cent.

That night Gary went looking in the bars for Nicole and went home. When he could not sleep, he got in his car and drove all the way to Sterling Baker's new place.

Sterling had moved from Provo to a town called Lark near Lake City. It was late when Gary pulled in. It had spooked him, he explained, to stay in Spanish Fork without Nicole. He had talked to her at Kathryne's today, he told them, and she wanted to stay apart. He couldn't shake off the idea he had lost her. Gary looked so sad that no matter the hour, both Sterling and Ruth Ann had to feel sorry.

Gary began to talk about reincarnation. After death, he said, he was going to start all over again. Have the kind of life he always wished he had. He talked about it as if it was so certain, so real, that Sterling got confused and thought Gary was talking about an actual place like moving bag and baggage up to Winnipeg, Canada.

In the morning, Gary phoned in sick to work, and spent the morning driving around with Ruth Ann looking for Nicole.

They searched a lot of streets in Springville. Somehow, Gary felt she was there. They dropped in on Sue Baker, but she didn't know, she said, where Nicole might be. There was a smell of diapers in Sue's house and she looked miserable. Didn't know where Rikki was; didn't know where Nicole was, didn't know anything. Ruth Ann began to get sorry for Gary. She had never seen a man suffer so much over a woman. He must have checked the laundromat five times.

Toward the middle of the afternoon, Ruth Ann went back to Lark, and Gary showed up at work. He had hardly picked up a tool before there was a call from Nicole.

"Are you drunk?" she asked.

"I'm stone sober," he said.

She was telephoning to tell him that she had just moved her furniture out of the house in Spanish Fork, but he could stay there the next few days until the rent was up. She didn't think they'd rent to him after that.

Could they get together? he asked. She said she did not think so. One of them might kill the other.

4.