His voice was severe, his breathing loud and ragged.
“You know, I dreamed that stuff forever. There was nothing good. Nothing worth remembering. The pen was terrible. There were men in there for raping women and biting off their nipples. We spit on them. They couldn’t be put in with us, because we’d kill them. When we served food in the line, we spit on their food and on them. We just kept spitting until they were through. I was in there for honorable crimes. I was respected.”
He stopped speaking, just breathing hard, and I couldn’t help but wonder what of his past he was leaving out. He hadn’t served much time relative to everything he’d done.
“Shouldn’t the sentences have been longer?” I asked.
“No,” he said hoarsely. “Most of my crimes they could never pin on me. But police want to make deals. They need to close cases. They agreed to reduce the charges if I claimed a few robberies and gave them some information. Criminals always take advantage of the police bureaucracy like this.”
“Did you have to tell them about your partners?”
“No. It was never anything serious. They just wanted to close cases.”
The intensity of my anger surprised me. It was the conversation itself, that we were discussing this—like this—that I had no way to voice sympathy or sadness. I knew with absolute certainty that he’d hate me if I did, if I made him feel weak. All we had were these stories. Not even the truth mattered.
“So you never ended up killing anyone?” I asked quietly.
He didn’t answer right away.
“It’s—it’s complicated. Sometimes on jobs, things happen. But I never went in planning to …”
I listened, waiting for him to finish.
“I should let you go,” he said. “It must be late there. We’ll talk tomorrow. Okay?”
“Okay,” I said, but he’d already hung up.
✴
PAGES TURNED AND I had a sense of understanding, like a surge of adrenaline, but just as suddenly it faded. I searched through sentences that blurred, pages turning faster and faster, the ink washing over my face like rain.
Wind drove against the walls, rattling the windows, and I woke. There was the distinct sound of icicles breaking in the eaves, falling along the side of the house.
I got out of bed and sat at my desk. I stared at the pages of my notebook, their empty outlines.
His stories of crime didn’t haunt me, just simple moments: a day I followed him through the rows of pines, his hands half-open against his jeans as he walked, and I asked why he didn’t cry. He’d told me that I shouldn’t, and I wanted to understand how it was possible not to cry when angry or sad or hurt. He stopped. “I don’t cry. Men don’t cry,” he said. “I have work to do. Go back to the house.” I flushed, too furious to speak, tears coming into my eyes and embarrassing me. I turned, but he’d seen my anger and he called to me. His brow was furrowed, his cheeks lifted. “I’d cry if something happened to you,” he said, “so be careful, okay?” And then he smiled, as if this were a joke, and we both laughed. He waved and I started back across the fields.
The days I spent with him are among those I recall most clearly. I studied him when he spoke—his beard and dark, expressive eyes. He was often lending small amounts of money, and once, standing outside his store as sunlight filtered past the three pines he’d planted there, I asked him why. He told me it was worth a little money to know if you could trust a person. I considered the wisdom in this and began lending nickels at school.
Once, during the early years of his success, he gave in to my begging to go fishing, and took me to the Nicomen Slough, near where I was born. He let me row downriver as he set up the lures. Then we drifted and fished. The sky was a field of gray, and the wind churned the water, small waves slapping the boat’s hull. When needles of icy rain fell, he began to row. We’d drifted far, the bridge a thread of shadow. I didn’t think we’d get back. He put the rods in the bottom of the boat and pressed the oars rhythmically. I huddled into my lap as the wind swept spray into our eyes.
After he put the boat in the truck and tied it down, we walked to a diner across from the landing. He sat at a booth and I went to the bathroom. My numb fingers couldn’t get the button back through the stiff jean, so I held them under hot water, too proud to tell him. When I came out, my hands burning with renewed sensation, he had two coffees waiting. He’d never let me have coffee. It was a light chocolate brown and, in my mouth, creamy and rich. He watched me with pride, and I had a sense of all that he knew and how similar we were. The storm blew against the windows, and his fingertips fluttered the edge of a napkin as his eyes focused beyond the glass, on something far away.
✴
HE CALLED JUST before midnight, having forgotten the time difference. I apologized to my landlords and switched to the phone in the living room. I asked if he was okay.
“I’d like to disappear sometimes,” he told me. “Do you understand it’s not cowardly?”
I struggled to swallow.
“I do,” I said.
He cleared his throat and asked, almost childlike, “Do you think it’s wrong?”
I wished I could see him and read the intention in his eyes.
“You have to understand that it’s not cowardly,” he told me, “what I want to
