Free The Executioner's Song by Norman Mailer Page B

say to his people, "Okay: guys, let's get this done." She thought he was terrific even if he was short.
                    A couple of days back, Gary had been to see a man with a sign-painting company but had been offered only $1.50 an hour. When Gary said that wasn't even minimum wage, the man replied, "What do you expect? You're an ex-con." Spencer agreed it wasn't fair. If Gary was doing the same work as somebody else, he should be paid the same money.
                    It turned out, however, that Gary did not have much experience applicable here. He was good at painting but they didn't do much sign-painting, just covered machinery with a paint gun. "Still," said Spencer, "you impress me as intelligent. I figure you can learn." He would put Gary on at $3.50 an hour. The government had a program for ex-cons and would pay half of this salary. Next day, he would start. Eight to five with breaks for coffee and lunch.
                    It was seven miles and more from Vern's home in Provo to the shop in Lindon, seven miles along State Street with all the one-story buildings. The first morning Vern drove him there. After that, Gary left at 6 to be sure of getting to work by 8 A.M. in case he wasn't able to find a hitch. Once, after catching a ride right off, he came in at 6:30, an hour and a half early. Other times it was not so fast. Once, a dawn cloudburst came in off the mountains, and he had to walk in the rain. At night he would often trudge home without a ride. It was a lot of traveling to get to a shop that was hardly more than a big shed with nothing to see but trucks and heavy equipment parked all over a muddy yard.
                    He was real quiet those first few days on the job. It was obvious he didn't know what to do. If they gave him a board to plane, he just waited after he cleaned it off. They had to tell him to turn the plank over and plane the other side. One time the foreman, Craig Taylor, a medium-size fellow with big arms and shoulders, discovered that Gary had been working an electric drill for fifteen minutes with no results. Couldn't get the hole started.
                    Craig told him he had been running the drill on reverse. Gary shrugged, "I didn't know these things had a reverse," he said.
                    So the word Spence McGrath got about him was that he was all right, but knew no more than a kid out of high school. Polygrinders and sanders and paint guns all had to be explained. He was also a loner. Brought his lunch in a brown paper bag and took it himself the first few days. Just sat on a piece of machinery off to the side and ate the food in all the presence of his own thoughts. Nobody knew what he was thinking.
                    Night was different. Gary was out just about every night.
                    Rikki was getting a little in awe of him. He knew be didn't want to mess with Gary. At the poker game, Gary told them about the Idaho fellow he left in a hospital after a fight.
                    Now, Gary also told everybody about this black dude he killed in jail who had been trying to make a nice white kid his punk. The kid asked Gary for help, so he and another buddy got ahold of some pipes. They had to. The convict they were taking on was a bad nigger, and had been a professional fighter, but they caught him on a stairway and beat him half to death with the pipes. Then they put him in his cell and stabbed him with a homemade knife 57 times.
                    Rikki thought the story was talk. By telling it to everybody, Gary was just trying to make himself look big. Still, that didn't leave Rikki feeling comfortable. Any fellow that wanted to live on such a story could hardly back down if he started to lean on you, and you pushed back.
                    There were times Gary seemed almost simple, however. Running after the girls in