This was Basal’s cultural norm, and deviation from that norm constituted deviant behavior, and deviant behavior would be punished.
What kind of punishment? Restricted privileges. Isolation. Shunning. Meditation. An eye for an eye. What precisely that meant, Danny didn’t yet know.
The other members watched Danny with interest, but as Godfrey had predicted, they didn’t speak to him as they passed through the hub, nor during a quick survey of the tiny yard nestled between the east and south wings, nor in line for lunch. Not a word anywhere. Speaking to the priest was prohibited.
Godfrey ran down a short list of members in the dining hall that he thought might interest Danny. Carter Beagle, a convict who’d been locked up for over twenty years, transferred in from San Quentin. He was in for homicide, a gas-station robbery that went wrong when the proprietor’s girlfriend came out of the back room with a shotgun. Carter’s first shot went off by accident and struck the proprietor in the chest. He had taken half a load of buckshot in his right leg, which was why he limped.
Now he was an old-timer like most at Basal—those who just wanted to do their time in peace, unlike younger inmates who still thought they could prove something on the inside.
There was Max Demarko, a mob guy in for grand larceny, also an old-timer; Sterling Maxwell, in on weapons charges in the sixties; Pedro Rivera, a teddy bear of a man who had raped a woman twice his age while strung out on crack back in the day. Godfrey knew them all, and most of them shared one thing in common: they were program convicts who’d long ago abandoned any desire to buck the system.
Their silence was part of Danny’s indoctrination, but at the heart of that programming was the young man who Pape claimed would determine Danny’s fate at Basal.
Peter Manning.
Danny studied the boy while Godfrey murmured that the knuckleheads must have eaten their lunch at the first serving. His mention earned an apprehensive sideways glance from Pete.
During the ten minutes since Godfrey had motioned the boy to the table, Peter had looked Danny in the eye only once, and then for less than a second. He ate quietly, eyes fixed on nothing of note, lost in a world trapped in his mind.
That this boy could have been convicted of statutory rape was hard to imagine, much less believe. And yet here he sat, locked up to keep society safe and to help him see a better, nondeviant way.
Godfrey nodded at Danny, took a drink of lemonade, and cleared his throat. “Pete, why don’t you tell Danny your story? Hmm? The one you told me. The truth.”
Peter made no sign that he’d heard Godfrey. He remained hunched over his plate with one hand on his lap and the other around his spoon. Perhaps a more direct approach was called for. Confession wasn’t new territory for Danny.
“Maybe it would be better if I told you my story, Pete,” Danny said. “Sometimes we do things because we’re hurt. We wish we could take it back but it’s too late. I know, because when I was fifteen I killed some men, and now I wish I hadn’t.”
Pete glanced up at him, held his gaze for two seconds, then shifted his stare into space as he chewed his food.
“That’s not why I’m in prison. At the time I lived in Bosnia with my mother and my two sisters. Men came into our house and raped my mother and both of my sisters. That’s why I killed them.”
Pete’s eyes darted toward Danny. After a moment, he spoke. “Rape is evil,” he said.
“Yes. It is. Do you know why?”
“It’s a very bad thing.”
“Yes, but do understand why it’s a very bad thing?”
“It’s evil.”
Danny now understood what the warden meant when he’d used the word
Most cases of statutory rape involved consensual sex between a boyfriend and girlfriend who’d fallen in love and engaged in sex at the wrong age and on the wrong side of the marriage laws. Pete was twenty, meaning he’d been found guilty of having sex with a girl no older than seventeen, presumably nonconsensual sex. Otherwise he would have received a misdemeanor conviction. Either way, surely the court would have taken his cognitive impairment into consideration.
“How long have you been in Basal, Pete?”
“Four months,” Godfrey said when Peter didn’t answer.
“He was the last before me to be admitted?”
“Yes.”
This, along with the fact that the warden had specifically set Pete aside for Danny to help didn’t sit right. Perhaps he was reading too much into a coincidence. Either way, Danny now felt compelled to learn the full details of Pete’s crime and conviction.
“Did you rape a girl, Pete?”
No answer.
“It’s okay, you can tell me the truth. I used to be a priest, and although I’m no longer a priest, I’ve always tried my best to help people who’ve made mistakes. Believe me, I’m no stranger to mistakes myself. Maybe I can help you.”
Pete looked up at him again, this time searching his eyes for trust. The boy’s defensive mechanisms had started to break like the first crack in the shell of a hard-boiled egg. Danny had seen the look a thousand times.
Pete looked over at Godfrey, who nodded. “Go on, tell him. He’s a good man, a deviant like the rest of us, but he knows that deviant behavior doesn’t mean wrong behavior. Just like I told you.”
If Pete could understand that much, his cognitive impairment couldn’t be too great. Danny helped him along.
“Did you have a girlfriend?”
A mist swam in the boy’s eyes and Danny knew he’d gotten through.
“What was her name?”
“Missy,” Pete said softly, and the mist settled into thin pools at the bottom of his eyes.
“Did you hurt Missy?”
“I will never hurt Missy.” He said it with enough conviction to secure Danny’s confidence that the boy believed it.
“How old was she?”
“Fifteen. I met her at the park.” His eyes brightened. “She likes me. We spend time together. I would never hurt Missy.”
“Missy has a soft spot for people in need,” Godfrey said. “I don’t think she was slow, but don’t know for sure.”
Danny returned to Pete. “You were twenty and she was fifteen?”
“Missy is seventeen. She’s going to be a nurse.”
“So you were twenty and Missy was seventeen when they arrested you. Was she your girlfriend?”
A tear slipped from Pete’s right eye and he lowered his head again. It occurred to Danny that his breaking down in the cafeteria might not go well with the facilitator at the door or the other members.
“It’s okay, Pete,” Godfrey said. “Maybe it would be better if I told Danny what you told me. Can I do that?”
The boy hesitated, then nodded.
Godfrey addressed Danny, voice low. “A classic case of forbidden love. Missy comes from an upscale, conservative family—unlike Pete, whose mother is indigent and long ago divorced. No other family he speaks of. No brothers, no sisters. They met at a church event at a park when Pete was eighteen and Missy was fifteen, just two fledging birds who developed a deep bond of friendship. At first Missy’s parents had no problem with the boy their young daughter was trying to help out. Who would? Isn’t that right, Pete?”
