Inside, the courtroom was standing room only. As Terry denied none of the charges, it was more a process than a trial, and his court-appointed barrister was there to navigate Terry through the bureaucracy of the system rather than aid him in an actual defense. Terry had no defense. He admitted everything; he had to- his infamy was tied up in it. To deny what he had been trying to do would have been like the crusaders explaining their journey into the Islamic world by saying they were just out for a long walk.
Terry sat defiantly next to his lawyer, and when the judge began his deliberations, he rubbed his hands together as though he were about to be sentenced to two scoops of vanilla ice cream. Speaking slowly and solemnly, like a seasoned actor getting his one and only chance to deliver Hamlet’s soliloquy, the judge projected his voice to the back of the courtroom with the words, “I sentence you to life imprisonment.” It was a bravura performance. Everyone let out the typical murmur that follows sentencing, though it was just for show. No one was surprised. There was no other way it could have gone down. What did come as a surprise, however- though you’d think by now I would’ve been accustomed to the taste of ironies squeezed from the cosmic juicer- is that the prison Terry was sentenced to was the one in our hometown.
That’s right.
Our prison. In our town.
Automatically, I looked to my father. Terry was sentenced to spend the remainder of his life in the prison his father had built, the prison that lay 1½ miles from our front door.
With their prodigal son home but not home, detained in a building that we could see from both the front veranda and the kitchen window, the sweaty grip that my mother and father had on their sanity began to loosen at an alarming rate. While there was some comfort having him safe from eager police snipers, to have him so tantalizingly out of reach was a torment that made it impossible to tell which of my parents had drifted further from light and life; they were dissolving so fast, each in his or her own sad way, you’d have thought it was a competition. It was like living with two ghosts who had recently accepted their death, who had given up trying to blend with the living. They had finally recognized their transparency for what it was.
With a curious, crazed look of joy on her face, my mother took up a new project: she framed every photograph of Terry and me as children and nailed them to every available wall space in the house. There was not a photo in the house of us over the age of thirteen, as if by growing up we had betrayed her. And I can see my father now too, sitting on the far right corner of the veranda, which allowed a view of the prison unobscured by treetops, binoculars pressed up against his eyeballs, trying to catch a glimpse of his son. He spent so many hours a day peering through those binoculars that when he finally put them down to rest, his eyes strained to see us. Sometimes he’d shout, “There he is!” I’d come running out to see, but he always refused me permission to use his precious binoculars. “You’ve done enough damage,” he’d say inexplicably, as if my gaze were like that of an ugly Greek witch. After a while I stopped asking, and when I heard my father shout, “There he is again! He’s in the yard! He’s telling a joke to a group of inmates! They’re laughing! He looks like he’s having a ball!” I didn’t move a muscle. Of course, I could’ve gotten my own binoculars, but I didn’t dare. In truth, I didn’t think he could see anything at all.
Our town became a place of pilgrimage for journalists, historians, students, and scores of curvy women with teased hair and excessive makeup who turned up at the prison gates to visit Terry. Most were turned away and wound up wandering around town, many clutching first and only editions of The Handbook of Crime. The book had been ripped from the shelves on the day of publication and quickly banned for all time. It was already a collector’s item. The obsessive fans were searching the town for guess who? Me! They wanted me, as credited editor, to sign it! At first it gave me a thrill to finally be the focus of attention, but I rapidly couldn’t stand it. Every autograph fiend hounded me with endless questions about Terry.
Again, Terry.
It was in this throng of star-hungry morons that I ran into Dave! He was wearing a suit but no tie, and his hair was neatly combed back. He’d really cleaned himself up. He was going for a new life. Apparently he’d found God, which made him less violent but no less unendurable. I couldn’t get away from him; he was hell-bent on saving me. “You like books, Martin. You always did. But have you read this one? It’s good. In fact, it’s the Good Book.” He held a Bible so close to my face I didn’t know if he wanted me to read it or eat it.
“I saw your brother this morning,” he said. “That’s why I’ve come back. I led him into temptation and now I’ve got to lead him out.” This Biblical talk was making me irritable, so I switched subjects and inquired after Bruno. “Bad news there, I’m afraid,” Dave said sadly. “He was shot dead during a knife fight. Martin, how’s your family? In all honesty, seeing Terry was only half my mission. I’ve also come to see your parents and beg their forgiveness.”
I strenuously advised him against it, but he was unswayable. It was God’s will, he said, and I couldn’t think of a persuasive argument against that, apart from saying I’d heard otherwise. Religious nuts! It isn’t enough that they believe in God, they have to go all the way, seeing into his vast mind. They think faith gives them access to his glorious to-do lists.
Dave didn’t come up to the house in the end; by chance he ran into my father outside the post office, and before he’d so much as pulled his Bible from his back pocket, my father’s hands were already wrapped around the poor bastard’s throat. Dave didn’t fight back. He thought it was God’s will he be strangled on the post office steps, and when my father pushed him to the ground and kicked him in the face, he thought that was God’s afterthought.
You see, my father really did have a list, and Dave was on it. The list fell out of his pocket during the fight. I picked it up. There were six names.
People who destroyed my son
(in no particular order)
1. Harry West
2. Bruno
3. Dave
4. The inventor of the suggestion box
5. Judge Phillip Krueger
6. Martin Dean
Given that he hadn’t been shy in blaming me with every look and gesture for most of my life, I wasn’t surprised to see my own name on the list, and it was only fortunate for me that my father didn’t realize I actually appeared on it twice.
After the fight, my father stumbled off into the dark, muttering threats. “I’ll get every last one of you!” he shouted to nobody, to the night. The police wandered up as they always do, like garbagemen after a street party, and as soon as Dave’s breath returned, he shouted, “I don’t want to press charges! Let him come back! You’re impeding God’s will!”
I grimaced, hoping for Dave’s sake that God wasn’t listening to his presumptuous rant. I don’t imagine God likes a sycophant any more than anyone else.
To tell you the truth, that episode saved me from death by boredom. With The Handbook of Crime finished and promptly buried, with Caroline gone, Terry locked away, and Harry dead, the town had little to recommend itself to me. My loves were all out of reach and I had nothing to keep me occupied. In short, I had no projects left.