Chapter Seven

In restless sleep, Gerry shifted against the hard, cold surface that felt like the floor of his cell. He was out of jail. He was free. What was the cold? It should be warm here. Opening his eyes, he turned his shoulders and touched the rounded porcelain of the bathtub. He was in his bathroom—the bathroom of his apartment. It should’ve been a relief. He should have been thrilled to realize he was no longer trapped, no longer behind bars.

But in the distance he could still hear them chanting. “Pervert. Pervert. Pervert.” It was like a steady drum against his skull. He was surprised he’d slept at all. Exhaustion and fear had driven him from his bedroom. The bathroom was the only room without a window. They had broken the glass the first night.

Finally, after midnight, they had been forced by the police to leave him alone long enough to get the window boarded up. But the board didn’t keep out the chill or the noise, and the small apartment had left no alternative but that bathroom.

Even worse, there would be no relief from the tiny apartment. He had applied for a dozen jobs in the area, but every one had turned him down flat. They knew who he was. They weren’t going to have anything to do with a pedophile. They didn’t call him that, though. No one did. They said things like “sicko” and “freak.” He supposed they were right. He was, wasn’t he? He could change, but not if they didn’t leave him alone.

Without sleep, his mind did crazy things. He no longer had control. It was like being on drugs. He just needed a chance—an opportunity to prove himself again. If they would just leave him alone.

But no one would give him that chance. There was no good transportation here, and without a car he couldn’t look for jobs further than a couple of miles from his apartment.

The last time he left the apartment to pick up groceries, he had called his brother in Fairfield. Bobby hadn’t even heard three words before he’d hung up. Gerry guessed he couldn’t blame Bobby much. It was probably hard for a normal guy to have a brother like him. Gerry didn’t dare call his parents. And his sister’s husband hated him. Gerry knew Stan would keep her from helping him.

His mother would have helped him if she could. But his father kept too close an eye on her for her to do much. The one time she’d come to visit him in prison, his father had found out about it and threatened to kick her out of the house. She’d written him a very nice letter explaining how sorry she was that she wouldn’t be visiting anymore, or probably writing either. She had always been passive, and he knew she wouldn’t ever stand up to his father. He hadn’t written her back. He had enough on his conscience without worrying that she’d get kicked out of the house on his account.

Pulling himself out of the bathtub, Gerry wiped at a wet spot on his sweats caused by a leak in the old faucet. He’d tried the floor the first night, but there was a worse leak from the wall pipe that had soaked his blankets. At least the tub’s leak was a slow, steady drip instead of the small fountain that sprang from the back of the toilet.

He looked around the apartment. A hot plate, an ancient refrigerator, and a rust-coated sink were his kitchen. A single bed now covered with broken glass was his bed. He had sixty-seven dollars to his name.

At least in jail he had a warm meal and a clean bed—most of the time. And he had learned to cope there.

“What’re you in for?” one of them would ask.

Gerry would turn around and look the man in the eyes. It was always the big men, too. Big, meaty men with red hair and necks and goatees, tattoos, and buck teeth and ten-gallon bellies who pumped iron to pass the time because they’d never learned to read.

“Tax fraud,” he’d said the first time.

The meaty man had eyed him top to bottom. “IRS?”

He had nodded quickly—too quickly, it turned out.

“That’s federal. You in a state pen.” The convict leaned over and shoved out his chest and a tattoo with the words “dead meat” in uneven blue writing.

“Gerry beat the rap on that one,” Wally, the librarian, cut in. “Ended up in here for assault in the process.”

The man looked at Wally and then back to him for confirmation.

He nodded—less quickly this time.

“What weapon?”

A 1040? “A bat. I had a bat.”

“You beat someone up with a bat?” the beefy man continued.

Wally nodded him along.

“Yep. My lady. I beat her with a bat.” His mind started to roll. “Was her who turned me in.”

The beefy man nodded and gave him a smile that looked more like a shark about to attack. “Me, too. ’Course I killed my old lady.” He looked around and added with a smile, “I still say not guilty, though. She had it coming, know what I mean?”

Gerry nodded without comment.

The beefy man left, and Wally closed the space between them. “I’m going to tell you a story a guy told me when I got here.”

He focused his attention and nodded.

“Was a guy here from N.A.M.B.L.A.,” Wally began. “You know them?”

He shook his head.

Wally lowered his voice. “The Northern American Man Boy Love Association. Their slogan is ‘sex by eight.” ’

He furrowed his brow. “Eight?”

“Years old.”

Gerry frowned. “Oh.”

“Not an especially popular group. They don’t get caught, most of them. They’ve got the most extensive underground system of any of the associations. But this guy, he got caught.”

He nodded, waiting.

“They brought him here,” Wally continued. “He refused to lie about the group he belonged to.”

There was a short silence. “And?”

“Guards found him two days later sitting on a broom handle.”

“Sitting on it?” Gerry asked.

“It was shoved so far up, it was coming out his mouth.”

He grimaced.

Wally looked around. “Don’t you tell them what you did—ever. They’ll kill you. You look guilty, too. Best learn how to lie. Make it violent. Little guy like you—make ’em think you’re crazy. Keeps them away.”

“Crazy?”

Turning his back, Wally started shaking and howling as he headed out of the room. He got strange looks, true—but they all stayed away from him.

Every day he’d pictured that broom handle and worried about someone finding him out, learning about all the bad things he had done. Eight years he’d lived with the fear, submitting to guard cruelty and politics, even kissing up, spit-shining shoes and pressing shirts to keep it quiet. Did the guards even know? He wasn’t sure. They’d always acted like they had inside information, but really they seemed no more informed than most of the inmates—only crueler and more violent.

He couldn’t forget the lady cop who had arrested him that last time, the time he finally got sent to jail—Sam Chase. The invincible Sam Chase. She’d been small and beautiful for an adult. Freckles sprinkled across her cheeks and nose, she almost looked like a kid to him. A perfect little kid name, too. He wished they’d had guards like her in prison. Of course she’d been real mad at him when she caught him in the playground with the kids, but he liked her anyway. She was his only friend out here. And now at least he could see her. He was going to get her attention now. He had the perfect plan.

And maybe she would help him get back to prison. He could convince her to send him back.

Gerry made his way into the main room and opened the refrigerator. There was almost nothing left to eat. He found a Pop-Tart and sat down on the floor, out of view of the window, to eat it. Leaning back against the far wall, he put on his headphones and closed his eyes. But even with his headphones on, he could hear them outside. There was no peace.

Three days ago, he’d passed through this same room and a bullet missed his head by inches. He’d called the cops. Citizens were supposed to report these things. They came, of course. But he knew they didn’t care. No one cared. Sure, he’d had problems. And urges. But he wasn’t doing anything wrong now. He was just trying to live.

The police had come and told him that they’d arrested the man who’d fired the shot. He knew that guy would be out of jail in no time. And the police hadn’t been able to do anything about the picketers.

“They got rights, too,” the redneck officer had told him. The look in his eyes said he might just as well have fired the shot. Gerry knew that with Megan’s law, people had the right to know who lived in their neighborhood and to picket if they didn’t like it.

At least Gerry had learned to stay clear of the windows. They wanted to lynch him. He could still hear them in his head.

Get out of our town, sicko.

Stay away from our children, pervert.

You should be dead. You don’t deserve to live. Die. Die.

He thought about Sam Chase again. She’d never told him that he deserved to die. She’d sent him to prison and he’d been safe there. He felt sad, but he took another bite of the Pop-Tart and thought about getting back to prison. Soon now. He’d be back there soon.