Clarence opened his eyes and hoped he looked incredibly sincere as he said:
“Do you have any children?”
The woman spoke ice chips:
“I’m here to give you the best possible legal advice. Right now, if convicted, you face a lifetime in jail. You understand that—am I correct?”
Clarence tried to stay on track.
“We traveled. Me and the boys. We moved a lot because work is hard to find. There weren’t problems until we got to Oregon. That’s when my oldest boy met a girl. That’s what caused the trouble. Her family turned my boys against me. They are the ones who should be sitting here today—not me!”
Her answer said it all: “You are going to trial. Not the people who stepped in to help your sons.”
He got up from the table. Help my sons? Those people were the kidnappers. Not him.
They’d get their due.
That was all he knew for certain as he abruptly left the room.
Prison is a place where there is never, ever silence.
At all hours of the day and night, sound ricochets off the hard surfaces in an assault that literally makes people’s eardrums bleed.
Mixed in with radios blaring and toilets flushing, carts are rolling and mattresses are slamming. Layered on top of that bed of constant clatter are raging arguments between groups of men and between men and their souls.
Someone is always shouting.
And someone is always wailing. Half the time, the rant is directed at a blank wall.
What Clarence Border really needed was for the noise to stop. And it didn’t.
The way he saw it, there was no public defender on the planet who was going to do the right thing, which meant that by the time the system was finished with him, he’d be eligible for parole when he was 213 years old.
His two no-good, backstabbing sons would probably be dead by then.
He hoped so.
Just thinking of Sam and Riddle made everything worse.
He’d seen the house that belonged to the Bell family. He could imagine the kind of kitchen they had and the food they ate.
And now, lying on his back and trying hard to make the pain go away in a foot that wasn’t even there, he thought about the budget for three meals of inmate food: two dollars a day.
There were glass bits and sand, hair, and even parts of rodents in the slop that he was given to eat.
He’d be much happier if they just gave him a large box of saltine crackers and a glass of water. It wouldn’t be cruel and unusual punishment. He loved those crackers.
Clarence could see Sam and Riddle sitting at a real table, eating off fancy plates and using silver utensils.
He scraped his spork across the molded plastic plate that tasted like ammonia from the dishwashing dunk.
Both of his boys now probably had their own bathrooms with stacks of fresh towels waiting after they took long, steamy showers.
He had no privacy and only the constant smell of sewage and sweat mixed with the glare of the twenty-four-hour fluorescent lights overhead.
He was subjected to the contempt of the guards, the harassment of the other inmates, and the pain of his physical condition.
And all that made a noise that buzzed nonstop in his head. It was a chain saw of fury directed at his own flesh and blood.
Well, he was going to settle the score.
Clarence held his hands out in front of his face and stared at his fingers.
He’d read in a magazine that researchers at the University of Alberta had determined that the shorter a man’s index finger when compared to his ring finger, the greater his tendency to exhibit aggressive behavior.
And by aggressive, they meant violent.
It turned out (according to these eggheads) that the length of your fingers had to do with how much testosterone you were exposed to in the womb.
That’s what fueled all the Mr. Short-Index-Fingers (short, at least, compared to their ring fingers) to become Mr. Hotheads.
Clarence smiled. On both of his hands, his ring fingers were much longer than the digits right next to his thumbs.
It was strangely comforting to know that he was born who he was. Not every man could swing a shovel and hit someone squarely in the face. Just like most guys couldn’t take a pair of pliers and rip off someone’s ear.
Clarence didn’t need to be provoked to do these things. He could unleash his rage machine at will.
His two boys didn’t have that kind of power inside. They were, he knew for certain, made of other stuff.
Clarence shut his eyes and was able to picture Sam playing the guitar. Wasn’t that all the kid had ever done, from the time he could first hold the instrument?
Riddle used his hands to draw. He usually didn’t have paper or the right pens, but he still found a way. The kid was left-handed, which made sense to Clarence because the boy approached everything from the wrong side.
Clarence held his hand in front of his face and felt himself ignite. He bolted up from his thin mattress and screamed.
It was a full-on, mouth-open, high-pitched cry. The sound was a mix of anger, fear, and pain.
When it was over, he sank back down and waited for someone to come check on him.
But no one did. Because not a person on this earth cared how he was doing.
And that was a feeling worse than being locked up.
3
Everything in the kitchen now had a yellow sticky tag with a word written on it.
Refrigerator. Stove. Sink. Counter. Table. Clock. Towel. Wall. Coffeemaker. Vitamins. Knives. Ladle. Spatula.
Jared found it creepy. He was ten years old, and all kinds of things were now driving him crazy. Of course Riddle couldn’t read. That made sense. But why was Jared’s mother spending every minute of every day trying to make up for lost time?
The way Jared saw it, Riddle didn’t need a tutor three times a week. And he certainly didn’t need the world labeled. Jared wasn’t going to wear a tag that said Brother, even if they paid him.
The whole house was starting to look like it was part of some kind of estate sale, only there were no prices on the big labels.
And then his big sister made a discovery. “Mom… have you noticed that Riddle has to get up really close to your stickers to see the letters? And he squints a lot.”
Debbie Bell glanced across the room. Riddle was drawing a picture of a pot roast on his new art pad. His nose was almost touching the paper.
Debbie Bell had taken Riddle and Sam for physicals, and Riddle was being treated for asthma. Now she looked puzzled. “Dr. Howard didn’t say anything about his vision.”
Emily shrugged. “Maybe he didn’t check it.”
Two days later, Riddle was diagnosed as being nearsighted, with extreme astigmatism in his left eye. Because Debbie Bell had to work that day at the hospital, Emily, Sam, and Riddle went to the optometrist’s office together to pick out glasses. They asked Jared to come, but he’d made it clear that it was the last thing he wanted to do.
Emily headed for the section marked Juvenile Boys. But Riddle had his own ideas. There was a photo of a redheaded girl wearing rectangular orange glasses. He pointed to the image. “I want those.”
Sam looked from the photo back to his little brother. “Riddle, I think those might be for girls.”
That made Riddle laugh. “How can there be different glasses for girls and boys?”
Emily whispered to Sam with concern: “He’s never experienced peer pressure.”
Sam and Emily tried to talk Riddle into at least looking at the other choices, but when the kid set his mind to something, there was no changing it.
A week later they returned when the glasses were ready. Emily stared at Riddle’s reflection in the mirror. He suddenly looked like he was from the punk-rock scene in London in the late 1970s. He was now somehow the hippest person in any room.
When Riddle spun around from the optometrist to face them, he could see Emily and Sam, and his eyes lit up
as a smile stretched across his face. “I see you guys! Everything is so much bigger!”
Riddle’s head swung in all directions. “I see all the little things. I feel dizzy because I can see so much.”
He was laughing now. He turned back toward Emily and Sam. “Guys—I really see you!”
Sam shut his eyes and tried not to feel anything. But when he glanced over at Emily, he could see that she, too, had a wobbly grin on her face.
Happiness.
The emotion that frightened him so much.
Summer officially started two days later.
Sam began a program at Baine College designed to acclimate students with learning differences who would be new in the fall. He wasn’t dyslexic, like the majority of the other kids in this summer class. He had his own unique issues.
Sam had no formal training or instruction from a teacher. He’d followed no curriculum. He had no experience as a student since grade school.
Emily’s father was a music professor at Baine. So obviously the place was making allowances. That put Sam even more on edge.
He now sat in the very back of the classroom, convinced that the twenty-two (he counted them) other students could see that he had not been in school since he was seven years old.
He was certain they could tell that he had no idea what to say, when to write something down, or even how to listen.
It was torture.
A woman came in and, with a marker, wrote DR. JULIA HUNT in block letters on the whiteboard. Sam kept his eyes glued to her as she spoke about the requirements for the class. He could see people typing into computers that they’d suddenly pulled from backpacks and placed on their desks.
It was impossible for him to listen to what the woman said and at the same time try to take down notes. And he didn’t have a computer. Even if he did, he had no idea how to type.
He could see other students tapping rapidly. It was as if they were playing an instrument. Their wrists stayed planted on the keyboard while their fingertips bobbled up and down.
Dr. Julia Hunt was talking now about the books they would read and the papers they would write. And in the end, there would be a final. But she didn’t say a final what.
Just a final.
And she said that the final would count for 50 percent of the grade. She looked very serious. She was the judge and the jury and the executioner.
Then Dr. Julia Hunt began to call names. Like a lineup. Like a firing squad.
Sam watched as the other students answered. They said only, “Here.” A few names were met with silence. And then the woman said:
“Sam Border.”
Sam felt like the temperature in the room had risen ten degrees in a matter of seconds. But he was able to open his mouth and get out a single word.
He said, “Yes.”
No one laughed, and the woman was on to another name as he shut his eyes.
Against all odds, he had survived.
On Sam’s first day, Emily had her second shift as a bus girl at Ferdinand’s Fine French Restaurant on Oak Street.
Like Sam, she felt as if she were on another planet.
Because she also had no idea what she was doing.
In the restaurant’s kitchen, Emily was responsible for sorting the dirty dishes and cutlery in order for the two dazed-looking guys (with the steamy water hoses that slung down from metal arms on the ceiling) to load up the forever-chugging dishwashing machines.
She had to keep the water glasses topped off in the dining room. And a constant supply of warm bread going out in the wicker baskets that all the diners got when they first sat down.
It was her duty to reset each table and deal with the linens and all of the garbage after every shift.
It didn’t sound like that big a deal when she’d first heard the duties, but she quickly learned that there was a lot more going on in a restaurant than meets the eye.
And on her second day on the job, she had the biggest screwup anyone could remember happening at Ferdinand’s.
The restaurant was in an old brick building, and while it had been renovated, there were things that dated back seventy-five years, to when the place had been some kind of beer hall.
Emily had been told multiple times to hit the switch by the entrance before she went inside the walk-in freezer. The toggle activated a red light over the heavy metal door, signifying that someone was inside the cooler.
The door was tricky. Sometimes it was accidentally left partway open, and the cold air escaped. But when it was closed hard, the mechanism that released from the inside had been known to malfunction.
And on that fateful day, in the middle of lunch service, Emily was in a hurry when she entered the walk-in to get more butter. Natalie, the daytime hostess, passed through the kitchen. She saw that the red light wasn’t on and assumed that the freezer door had been left open.
So she put her shoulder to the metal and shoved hard until it clicked.
Inside, the vacuum seal of the door made a sucking sound. Emily shouted: “Hey!”
It was so cold in the walk-in that she could see her breath as a white puff.
The “hey” now lingered in the air. Emily put the butter tray down and went to the metal door and pushed. Nothing. She then beat on the only exit with her fist.
“I’m locked in here! Help!”
The ceilings and walls and door in the freezer were six inches thick, made from insulated foam covered in stainless steel. The floor was a sheet of aluminum. A heavy plastic curtain hung in front of the doorway.
It was an extremely cold, sealed, metal box lit by a single weak lightbulb.
The temperature inside was negative two degrees Fahrenheit.
After Emily pounded on the door for what seemed like an eternity but was only eighteen seconds, she knew that she was in trouble.
The whirling fans of the cooling units made such a racket that she could barely hear her own knocking on the inside, so forget anyone hearing on the other side of the metal.
Emily’s uniform consisted of a sleeveless white shirt and a wraparound black skirt. Her legs were bare, and on her feet she wore gold ballet slippers.
She had been inside the walk-in icebox for less than a minute and she was already freezing. Emily felt her breath turn shallow as she realized that she was light-headed. It was possible, she suddenly realized, that she might faint.
There was a box of frozen imported anchovies behind her, and Emily sank down onto it, taking a seat in the dark corner as she folded her head down into her knees.
And then suddenly the freezer door was flung open. Emily opened her eyes to hear a voice say, “She’s not in here.”
Emily tried to get to her feet, but it was too late.
The woozy feeling returned as the room swirled, and she had no choice but to drop back down to the anchovies as the freezer door slammed shut.
4
Clarence lay on his cot and stared at the cement ceiling. Why had he taken the two boys in the first place?
All those years ago, he could have just walked out the door, suitcase in hand, and never come back.
Wouldn’t that have been so much easier?
But the voices in his head had told him that a man with little kids automatically looked trustworthy. They allowed him to blend into a crowd. And the older one, even at seven, had a brain. He was useful.
Clarence took them because they gave him power. They said that he was in charge. And that felt good. Until they stopped listening.
Is that what happened?
No.
They met a family. And those people turned his boys against him.
Somewhere in Clarence’s cell block, an inmate was chanting. He was saying over and over again:
“The worst thing to happen is the best thing to happen.”
That guy fixated on phrases and then spent not just hours but whole days repeating them.
At very high volume.
For a whole week, the guy wouldn’t shut up about hot sauce.<
br />
Now the lunatic’s new words bored into Clarence’s head. The voice became his interrogator.
What was the worst thing to happen to him?
Being sent to jail.
And how did that happen?
His sons had turned against him. And when he tried to even the score, he’d been attacked by his oldest. He’d been injured up there on the mountain. His leg had broken from the fall, and an infection had set in. At least that’s what they claimed later, when the doctor in the hospital amputated below the knee.
So maybe the worst thing to happen was the surgery?
He could feel his missing toes, his once bony ankle, and his always flat instep. He reached out to touch the phantom body part, and his fingers, moving through air, touched real nerves in the emptiness.
All the while he heard: “The worst thing to happen is the best thing to happen.”
And the words turned into a plan.
5
Emily was in the freezer for almost three hours.
During that time, in an attempt to keep warm, she removed the dish towel that was in her skirt pocket and wrapped it around her head. She then placed a shallow bucket over the dishrag.
As the cold got worse Emily took her knife and cut down the insulated curtain that was in front of the door. She then wrapped herself in the thick piece of plastic and pulled her knees up to her chest.
She was turning into a human Popsicle.
To keep from doing something irrational, she started to sing. She sang the same song over and over and over again.
And she thought of Sam.
It was their song. And she didn’t sing it well. For the last hour, she hummed, only managing a few words:
“Just call my name… and I’ll be there.”
No one in the restaurant knew where the new bus girl had gone.
The hostess said it was possible Emily had quit. All anyone could say was that she’d disappeared at some point before the beef bourguignonne ran out.