The Executioner's Song Read Free Page B

friends and what good men they were, Then he said apologetically, Well, you don’t want to hear about prison, it’s not very pleasant.
     
    Johnny said they were only tiptoeing around because they didn’t want to offend him. “We’re curious,” said Johnny, “but, you know, we don’t want to ask: what’s it like in there? What do they do to you?”
    Gary smiled. They were silent again.
     
    Brenda knew she was making Gary nervous as hell. She kept staring at him constantly, but she couldn’t get enough of his face. There were so many corners in it.
    THE FIRST DAY 15p>
     
    “God,” she kept saying, “it’s good to have you here.”
    “It’s good to get back.”
    “Wait till you get to know this country,” she said. She was dying to tell him about the kind of fun they could have on Utah Lake, and the camper trips they would take in the canyons. The desert was just as gray and brown and grim as desert anywhere, but the mountains went up to twelve thousand feet, and the canyons were green with beautiful forests and super drinking parties with friends. They could teach him how to hunt with bow and arrow, she was about ready to tell him, when all of a sudden she got a good look at Gary in the light. Speak of all the staring she had done, it was as if she hadn’t studied him at all yet. Now she felt a strong sense of woe. He was marked up much more than she had expected.
     
    She reached out to touch his cheek at the place where he had a very bad scar, and Gary said, “Nice looking, isn’t it?”
    Brenda said, “I’m sorry, Gary, I didn’t mean to embarrass you.”
     
    This set up such a pause that Johnny finally asked, “How’d it happen?”
    “A guard hit me,” said Gary. He smiled. “They had me tied down for a shot of Prolixin — and I managed to spit in the doctor’s face. Then I got clobbered.”
     
    “How,” asked Brenda, “would you like to take that guard who hit you, and get ahold of him?”
    “Don’t pick my brain,” said Gary.
    “Okay,” said Brenda, “but do you hate him?” “God, yeah,” said Gary, “wouldn’t you?” “Yeah, I would,” said Brenda. “Just checking.”
     
    Half an hour later, driving home, they went by Point of the Mountain. Off to the left of the Interstate a long hill came out of the mountains and its ridge was like the limb of a beast whose paw just reached the highway. On the other side, in the desert to the right, was Utah State Prison. There were only a few lights in its buildings now. They made jokes about Utah State Prison.
     
    3
     
    THE EXECUTIONER’S SONG
     
    Back in her living room, drinking beer, Gary began to unwind. He liked beer, he confessed. In prison, they knew how to make a watery brew out of bread. Called it Pruno. In fact, both Brenda and Johnny were observing that Gary could put brew away as fast as anyone they knew.
     
    Johnny soon got tired and went to sleep. Now Gary and Brenda really began to talk. A few prison stories came out of him. To Brenda, each seemed wilder than the one before. Probably they were half true, half full of beer. He had to be reciting out of his hind end.
     
    It was only when she looked out the window and saw the night was over that she realized how long they had been talking. They stepped through the door to look at the sun coming up over the back of her ranch house and all her neighbors’ ranch houses, and standing there, on her plot of lawn, in a heap of strewn-about toys, wet with
    cold spring dew, Gary looked at the sky and took a deep breath.
    “I feel like jogging,” he said.
    “You’ve got to be nuts, tired as you are,” she said.
    He just stretched and breathed deep, and a big smile came over his face. “Hey, man,” he said, “I’m really out.”
     
    In the mountains, the snow was iron gray and purple in the hollows, and glowed like gold on every slope that faced the sun. The clouds over the mountains were lifting with the light. Brenda took a good look into his eyes and felt full