The Executioner's Song by Norman Mailer Read Free Book Online Page A

Toni with their kids, and of course she and Johnny had their own brood present including Johnny's son, Kenny, by a previous marriage. Counting all the noses, they came to thirteen, and they made jokes about that. The main dish was spaghetti Italian style, promised to Gary the way Brenda's Sicilian grandfather used to make it, with mushrooms and peppers and onions and oregano and garlic bread. She had some hot cross buns for dessert with a white X of icing on the top and plenty of coffee, and would have enjoyed the meal if it hadn't been for how tense Gary looked.
                    Everybody was jabbering back and forth. It was not a quiet meal, but Gary was a little out of it. Occasionally, somebody would ask a polite question of him, or he would say something like, "Boy, this is better grub than what they had at Marion," but kept his head down as he ate, and hid his silence by swallowing food in a hurry.
                    Brenda came to the glum conclusion that Gary was an atrocious eater. Too bad. Table manners were one of her hang-ups. She couldn't stand to see a man shoveling and slobbering at the table.
                    From his letters she had expected him to be very much of a gentleman. Now she decided she should have known his manners would be common. In prison, they didn't eat with napkins and place settings. Still, it got to her. Gary had long artist's fingers, small at the tips, nice-looking hands like a pianist might have, but he gripped his fork with his fist and bulldozed it in.
                    He was, however, sitting at the end of the table by the refrigerator and so the fluorescent light over the sink was shining on his face. It lit up his eyes. Brenda said, "Wow, you've got the bluest eyes I've ever seen."
                    He didn't like that very well. He said, "They're green." Brenda looked him back, "They're not green, they're blue." This went back and forth. Finally, Brenda said, "Okay, when you're mad, they're green; when you're not, they're blue. Right now, they're blue. Do you feel blue?"
                    Gary said, "Shut up and eat."
                    After Vern and Ida and Howard and Toni and the children left, and Johnny had gone to sleep, Brenda sat around with Gary having a cup of coffee. "Did you have a good time?" she asked.
                    "Oh, yeah," said Gary. Then he shrugged, "I felt out of place. I have nothing to talk about."
                    She said, "Boy, I wish we could get over that hump."
                    "Come on," he said, "who wants to hear about prison?"
                    Brenda said, "I'm just afraid of bringing back bad memories. Would you rather we didn't walk so lightly around the subject?"
                    Gary said, "Yeah."
                    He told her a couple of prison stories, God, they were crude. Gary could tell an awfully gross story. It seems there was this old boy Skeezix, who could perform fellatio on himself. He was proud of that. Nobody else in OSP could.
                    "OSP?" asked Brenda.
                    "Oregon State Penitentiary."
                    Gary had taken a small cardboard box, painted it black, and put a tiny hole in it so it looked as if it were one of those lensless pinpoint cameras. He told Skeezix he had film in the box, and it would take a picture through the pinhole. Everybody gathered around to watch Gary take a picture of the fellow going down on himself. Skeezix was so dumb he was still waiting for the photo to come back.
                    On finishing his story, Gary went off laughing so hard, Brenda thought he'd sling his spaghetti around the room. She was awful glad when he wheezed into silence and fixed her with his eye as if to say, "Now, do you see my conversational