“My name’s Fergie.” The kid leaned forward, his blue prison shirt bunched up around his shoulders. “Repeat offender, I got this parole violation. What I want to know is, how much of my hard-earned good time will they take away?”
“Good time?”
“Like I rake leaves, repair vehicles, get paid shit. They take off two and a half days a month from my sentence. Now they’re gonna put some of it back. It’s like I never did no work.”
Homer didn’t know how much good time Fergie would lose. He said he’d find out.
Gordie spoke up boldly. “Suppose, like, somebody has a lot of cash nobody knows about, do they have to, like, pay taxes on it?”
I don’t want to hear about it, Homer wanted to say. “All income must be declared,” he said, knowing he sounded stuffy. “With confirmation from the source. Confirmation might be—uh—sort of difficult, if the income was improper or illegal in some way.” In other words, don’t bring it up at all, you dumb kid.
“Shit,” said Gordie softly.
“My name’s Hank,” said the thickset boy with red hair. “I just got in this place last week. I got money problems too. There’s this guy owes me money. Only now I’m here he thinks he don’t have to pay me.” Hank’s voice trembled with his sense of grievance. “See, while I was on the outside, he hired me to do something for him, so I did, only at that particular time I was out on bail, and then I got sentenced and they dumped me in here, so now this guy don’t want to pay me.”
“Do you have the agreement in writing?” said Homer.
“Nah, it was like, you know, a verbal agreement.”
“Well, maybe you could try suing him in small-claims court. I could help with that.”
“Nah, nah, I don’t wanta bring it up in court. Jesus!”
“I see,” said Homer, who didn’t see. “Let me think about it.”
“I’m Jimmy,” said the broad-shouldered young African-American, “and my wife, we’re getting a divorce, only she thinks I don’t need no money in prison, she can just take everything.”
“Everything?”
“Right. I got this neighbor, he tells me she’s gonna take off with the car, the entertainment center, the twenty-eight-cubic-foot fridge, the king-size bed, the living-room suite. I bet she’s forging my name on checks. She done that before.”
Homer made a note. “Well, that’s no problem. We can do something about that.”
“Ferris, my name’s Ferris,” said the kid with the harelip. “They give me a lousy public defender, like he really messed up, I didn’t do nothing, I’m innocent, but he wasn’t no help.”
This too was fairly straightforward. “Well, the first thing would be an examination of the court records. I’d have to see if anything improper was said or done. I doubt incompetence on the part of your counsel is enough to call for a retrial. Have you got a transcript? No? I’ll see if I can get one.”
“My case is rather complex,” said the fat middle-aged man with thick glasses. “Barkley Pendleton Haywall’s my name, and I’ve been reading the literature.” He nodded at the law books lining the walls. “There are several very interesting precedents to my case, all tending to the view that it has been mishandled. The first was the Commonwealth of Massachusetts versus Hemelman, in 1976, in which the judge concluded—”
There were impatient shufflings of feet under the table. Hank, Fergie, Gordie, and Ferris all grimaced as Barkley went on talking. His sentence was for child molestation. His fellow inmates were not repelled by theft, drug dealing, assault, rape, or even murder, but they were disgusted by Barkley’s crime. He was a skinner, the lowest of the low. They looked at him with loathing, and edged their chairs away.
Barkley didn’t seem to notice. He was completely wrapped up in the ramifications of the seven other cases in which the molested children had been older or younger, and more submissive or more combative. There was also the important question of whether they had actually been penetrated or merely handled.
“Jesus,” whispered Gordie, nudging Ferris. “Yuck,” said Ferris. “Christ,” muttered Hank, shuddering. “Gawd,” said Fergie, making a noise like vomiting.
Chapter 14
Then the mother took the little boy and chopped him in pieces, put him into the pan and made him into black-puddings.
The Brothers Grimm, “The Juniper Tree”
Annie drifted out of her bedroom just before sunrise, while the house was still wrapped in dusk. The chairs and tables were still there, and the white keys of the piano. After the long night of unconsciousness and dreams she was happy to see that her perfect house existed still. It had not been blown away in some mighty readjustment of the world. Her painted wall was still there too, flowing through the room like a river.