The End of Marking Time (27 page)

She tilted side to side as she came over. The enormous weight on each trunk had to be balanced just so or she risked a catastrophic fall. She eyed the recliner where Double had been sitting, but her hips wouldn’t fit between the armrests. She thumped on past the coffee table and settled onto the other half of the couch with a bounce that jostled me.

Emotions rampaged around in my head like little children set free in the midst of finger paints, amusement rides, and a truckload of candy. Ideas popped to life and like children without supervision, they whirled around with intense energy, but couldn’t decide where to strike out first. Dangerous ideas yearned to be set free. I imagined screaming at her, pummeling her, choking her, shoving that same gun in her face and watching her turn pale with fear.

What held me back? Was it Wendell’s lessons? Was it my fear of what Charlotte would do or that I’d be sent to the cat baggers if I fell out of line? Or was it because she was my mother and she still held some power over me, some control infused into my cells at birth? I didn’t understand why, but I sat quietly while the angry thoughts rampaged.

She told me how much she missed me, but there wasn’t an inkling of sadness in her eyes. She told me how long she’d looked for me, but I hadn’t gone far. I’d never been more than ten miles from home for the last ten years. If she’d looked hard enough she would have found me. Truth was she kept on collecting like I was still at home and never went out of her way to bring me back. She didn’t want the hassle. She wanted whatever she could get and that’s why she was here in front of me now. Charlotte had offered her something. She looked me right in the eye without a hint of guilt for what she’d done.

She told me I should give the boy up. She hadn’t even bothered to learn Jonathan’s name. I wanted nothing more than to see she didn’t get what Charlotte promised her.

“I’m going to take parenting advice from you? Charlotte should know whatever advice you give, I’m going to do the opposite.”

Charlotte dropped me home at lunchtime, but I couldn’t eat. The confrontation with my mother had been due for a long time. I was proud of myself for not screaming at her, but the little I’d said wasn’t satisfying at all. She had driven me here. She’d pushed me out when I was too young to survive without turning to crime. She didn’t apologize. She didn’t even look guilty. Some family counselor Charlotte was. She never mentioned the gun. All she wanted was for me to sign those papers and give my son to a stranger.

For a long while I thought I was missing the lesson in all of this. I couldn’t tell if I was succeeding by refusing to give up my son. Was taking responsibility keeping me safe from the cat baggers? Or would I be viewed more positively if I put the boy’s interests first and gave him a father without a criminal past? I wanted to see him grow up. Right or wrong, I wanted to know him, to stay connected to him.

I picked up Tom Sawyer but saw only a jumble of disconnected words.

I kept wondering about Nathan Farnsworth and how he could be so sure the people he chose wouldn’t get into trouble again. They looked different over there. There were no tattoos. Shorter hair. Neater clothes. Did those things really matter? Did choosing to be clean-cut really make a difference in life? I hoped not.

His relearners were wealthier. They were softer, but there was another thing Nathan used to pick the relearners he wanted. It was about history. He’d take someone if they were in for the first time. Otherwise he wouldn’t be in business at all. But once they non-conformed, Nathan didn’t want them anymore. He didn’t want guys who’d been in and out of the system over and over. He wouldn’t save them in court like Wendell would. Nathan Farnsworth didn’t care about helping people. He’d set up his program to make money. His success came from selection.

It bothered me that Nathan didn’t want me. I wondered if he was right. If I was hopeless. Was I destined to keep making the same mistakes over and over until they put me in the grave? Was I that broken? I wanted to change. I wondered if guys like Joel wanted to change as much as I did. Had we gotten such a bad start that we were beyond repair? Wendell was giving me his best. He paid for my apartment and all these people to track, watch, and in their own strange way, try to help me.

I stared at the southern boy on the cover of my book. Would Jonathan grow up to be like Tom? Would he take things from other people? That was my life. It was never really a choice for me. Maybe it was, but I’d made it too long ago to remember. No one had stood up and told me I was headed down the wrong path. They’d wrestled me and arrested me, but no one ever got through to me.

That was a job for parents. They had the first shot. The first chance to teach the right way to do things, to treat people. What could I offer Jonathan? Could I teach him what I didn’t seem to know even now? Probably not. I still had to have something valuable to give him. I had enjoyed our time in the sand more than I thought possible. I still wanted to go back even with Nick guarding my every move. I wasn’t fantasizing about getting back together with Kathleen anymore. That was impossible. But giving up on my son was giving up on myself.

I tried to read the book again and to listen to what Wendell was telling me. I was like Tom, a boy without guidance who learned to take what he needed. Was he telling me something about Jonathan? If there was something I needed to do, it wasn’t clear. Nothing with Wendell was clear. I paced. I stood rigid at the window with my hands on the sill.

I was waiting for them to come for me, to finally realize I’d been in the control room and needed to be punished. But no one came that afternoon. Charlotte didn’t mention it. In fact, she’d said little at all. Dealing with me was distasteful for her. She wanted me to sign those papers so she could hand me off to Joanne. Thinking about Charlotte and my mother only made me angrier. I paced more. Finally I detoured to the kitchen for a change of scenery or maybe just a longer track. Then I saw it.

There on the kitchen table was a pen camera exactly like the one Wendell had given me. I rushed it to the television and played the contents, but there was nothing recorded inside. The original was gone. I didn’t know if that interview had been erased or if someone had collected the camera and brought it to Wendell. What a hopelessly optimistic thought. When I really thought about it I knew Nathan Farnsworth had the camera. Somehow he could watch me in my apartment even though I wasn’t in his program. I didn’t know how he did it, but I knew it was him.

The blank camera was a new start, another chance. I’d be smarter this time. I’d get the evidence to Wendell even if I had to stand at his gate and scream for him to come out and get it. I was angry then, angrier than I’d been in a long time. I rededicated myself to proving Farnsworth wrong. I was going to come out of this. My success would reward Wendell for believing in me. It was small thanks, but it was all I could give. He needed all of his students to make it from now on, or he’d lose his business. I was risking my life, but from that moment on, I was taking control.

I’d spent so much time reading and pacing, it was too late for what I wanted to do next. So I sat down with my book and scoured for any clue Wendell meant for me.

I’d never read so long in my life. All the ideas hit me like a sleeping pill and replaced my cat bagger nightmares with dreams of a backwoods southern boy. I slept soundly and woke energized. I felt accomplished for all I’d read and optimistic about my mission to relearner court. When I arrived and read the posted hours, I realized I could have come the night before, but that didn’t bring me down. Non-conforming relearners streamed in ahead of me. A week earlier I would have felt bad for them, but that morning they were my opportunity to graduate back into the real world.

The visitor entrance was around back of the building by the parking lot. I guess they didn’t expect relearners to be curious about this place when they weren’t on trial, even though our apartments were clustered nearby. Honestly, I was only there because fighting crime was my way out.

The guard looked surprised to see me come in with an ankle bracelet but no escort. I placed my key, my book, and the pen camera in a plastic dish and it rode a conveyor through an X-ray machine. When the dish came out the other side, the guard kept my pen camera and waved me through the metal detector.

“Can’t take this in there,” he said. “I’ll hold it for you.”

I collected the book and the Budweiser key ring I’d swiped at a carnival. Most people carried car keys, house keys, post office box keys. They were a symbol of trust and power. My single apartment key identified my miniscule station in the world. I was glad when I turned the corner and found clusters of people talking. Counselors talked with troubled relearners heading in or out of hearings. Prosecutors and police officers whispered case details and prepared cases they were certain to win.

I followed the hall, uncertain where I was going, angling toward each little group I passed. Conversations stopped. Eyes glared. I moved on past the front entrance, around the hearing rooms until the hall dead ended. I hadn’t really thought this through. I was looking for wrongdoing in a building with the word justice hanging above the front entrance. This would take more than a quick walk through the building.

Back at the front, I chose a bench that allowed a long view of the lobby where I could see relearners entering, meeting their counselors, and heading off to hearings. I picked up my book and opened it, but I focused my eyes well beyond the words to the knots of conversation spread in front of me. Several times I watched the police bring in a new offender, take off his cuffs, and hand him over to a counselor. It was odd to think relearners didn’t need handcuffs, but they could never truly escape, not with tracking devices sewn into their heads. I wondered how many of them turned violent after losing their cases inside. These were the worst of the worst offenders, but things were different now. To law abiding citizens this system seemed like the proverbial slap on the wrist, but we knew different. Any relearner who lost control here earned a short drive to a locked room he could only leave by jumping.

That’s why the relearners behaved. They were afraid.

I didn’t have to ask myself if I was afraid, but when my fear began driving everything I did. I was afraid to go to prison the first time, before I was shot, before everything changed, but that was a different sort of fear. I wasn’t afraid for my life, but the cuts and bruises I’d collect, not to mention the emotional scars from years of abuse. My new fears built slowly. I wasn’t truly scared until the night in the car with Dr. Blake. I understood then how fragile my life was and how horrible it could be to wake up with my fingers sewn together or my eyes glued shut.

Wendell and Farnsworth had created the ideal system. On the outside it seemed almost childish in its kid-glove approach to reforming criminals—that’s what we were, criminals not relearners. Those inside understood how insidious their captors could be. The two faces of the system protected it from righteous dogooders. They would never discover the truth. At least not in time to save me. Back in the old system I would have been short to the gate because I’d served most of my time while I was asleep. Instead of counting the days until I was free, I was stalking criminals, hoping to trap someone infinitely more powerful than me just to save my skin.

The man in the bloodied golf shirt snapped me from my self-pity. I’d seen him during a Wiffle ball game. His huge biceps and pecs made it hard for him to catch up with a fastball, but he was a master at hitting balls that darted and weaved toward the plate. When he walked through the lobby, he had a white bandage plastering his ear down to the side of his face. His shirt was torn open in three or four places and the white fabric was covered in blood. It looked like he’d been stabbed, but he walked steadily. It was someone else’s blood. That’s why he was surrounded by cops.

I got up and hurried to the corner so I could see where they took him.

As I got closer I saw that his jeans had been muddied and then rinsed. They stopped at the double doors. I thought they were going to take the cuffs off before bringing him inside, but they didn’t. I’d never seen that before. He must have gone nuts and beaten someone to death. This guy was in serious trouble and I was positive Nathan Farnsworth would do his best to dump him off on Wendell.

I tried to be casual as I came down the hall, but there was no mistaking where I was headed. I paused outside the double doors, hoping to hear what I could from outside. The court officer stationed there pulled a door open and held it for me. I balked and he looked at me strangely for a second. I wasn’t dressed like an attorney and he couldn’t have missed the ankle bracelet. Everyone checked when they met someone new. Still, he held the door and waited. I moved inside and eased into the audience.

In the old system the majority of trials were public and the gallery had at least a few interested parties watching. Three wide rows of seats waited for an audience, but there wasn’t a single soul in the wooden chairs, nor had there been when I’d been brought here for judgment. Up front the prosecutor and three officers were ready to present. The accused, a man I’d known, but could not recall his name, pointed at me and then urgently to the door. A second later Nathan Farnsworth came in through the door to the judge’s chambers. His eyes locked on me and he faltered like he wanted to turn back the way he’d just come. He didn’t. He started to his seat and the judge followed a few seconds behind.