A Hole in the Universe - Mary McGarry Morris [31]
Oh, my God! No, don’t! Don’t do that! Gordon’s mouth opened, but the words clotted in his throat. The driver jabbed the club into the girl’s side, knocking her over. He said something, then climbed back behind the wheel. The monstrous pulse beat vibrated as they drove away. A thin trickle of smoke rose from the gutter where the cigarette still burned.
“Jada!” the woman pleaded as the girl hobbled up the walk and seized the railing. “You’re mad at me, aren’t you. I knew you’d be mad.”
The girl dragged herself along the railing onto the porch.
“Jada! Jada! Jada!” the woman bawled at the closing door, then plodded up the stairs in the reluctant tread of the chronically misunderstood.
Gordon’s chest felt bruised as he began to breathe again. Brutality had been as pervasive in his life as the low hum of Fortley’s fluorescent glare, but what was this? What virulence had he just witnessed? And what mad absurdity had the other night been, terrorizing an old woman, sound asleep, in her own bed? . . . I’m pregnant. Please, please, don’t hurt me, Janine Walters had gasped into the lowering pillow. He closed his eyes, overwhelmed again by the vastness of his own impotence. Who was he to be shocked or offended? What right did he have to judge the crime of another?
He started down the street, soon passing the same children he saw every day at this time. The oldest, Mike, dutifully gripped the hands of Jack and Tim, his younger brothers. Once around the corner, however, they began to wrestle, run, and tumble, grabbing one another’s hats, jumping in puddles, tackling one another so that before they had even reached the crossing guard they were disheveled and wild with freedom. Gordon usually enjoyed watching them, but this morning their voices rang shrill and mirthless.
Thoughts of the girl filled him with the same degradation he’d felt when he first got to Fortley. Added to the weight of his own crime, everything there had come as a shock. It made him feel dirtier, more inhuman, unworthy of kindness, and utterly alone. Days could go by without a word from his lips. When he was forced to speak, his voice came as a whisper. Because he could not remove himself, the violence and torment had to be walled off from his consciousness. Night after night, men might scream or sob or even hurl their feces at passing guards. In that first year, a man was disemboweled in the shower, another set on fire while sedated in his infirmary bed, a boy, just a little older than Gordon, raped his first night there, but after a while the horror dulled. Menace droned on, but with the numbing monotony of distant battle or constant thunder. With his cell as sanctuary, it had little to do with him. Concentration and diligence became his barricades.
Dennis called at dinnertime. He was telling Gordon that Mrs. Jukas’s call had come that morning in the middle of a difficult and excessively bloody extraction. It was an emergency, his receptionist had rushed in to tell him—something about an attack and his brother. The old woman told Dennis to come get his father’s ladder or else she’d call the Salvation Army to take it away. She couldn’t have it lying around out there anymore. Not after what had happened. Dennis had assured her he’d get the ladder out of there as soon as he possibly could.
“So could you please go get it?” Dennis asked.
“Now?” Gordon hungrily eyed the pork chops and spaghetti he had just put on the table.
“Would you just run over, please? I’ve been home a half hour and she’s called me twice already,” Dennis said.
He crimped tinfoil around the plate, then hurried next door and rang Mrs. Jukas’s bell. He waited, rang it again. She wasn’t coming and he was starving, so he went into her yard, where he found the ladder in a thicket of overgrown shrubs. He tried to pull it out, but it wouldn’t budge. Sidestepping his way into the dense bushes, he saw that the ladder was tied to the dripping spigot in a rung-woven network of knots and loops. He tried but couldn’t undo