Authors: Joe Clifford
Outside, the winds smacked iced branches against the windowpane. I stroked Beatrice, fists filling with white fur, feeling the empty ache inside.
I’d made a good dent in the twelve-pack and was contemplating another beer run before the roads got too bad—I hadn’t picked up any food since Jenny left—but decided against it. The thought of walking outside to my truck right then, turning over the engine, waiting for it to warm, and starting down that long, snowy road filled me with unspeakable dread. Instead, I turned my attention back to the television and watched a man die in a pit of cobras. I’d dozed off when someone buzzed the bell.
Jenny had a key. Charlie would call before driving all the way out here, which he seldom did anyway. Which literally left no one else. I didn’t have a single friend in Plasterville. Then I remembered those two cops.
The buzzer rang again. I set down my beer, shooed Beatrice off my lap, and went to the window. I peeked into the street. I had a clear view. Didn’t see a squad car.
Like they’re going to announce they’re here to cap your ass. Man up, Jay.
The buzzer.
“Jesus,” I shouted. “Hold on. I’m coming.”
I jerked open the door, and there she stood, Nicki, holding a sack of takeout Chinese.
“What the hell are you doing here?”
“Nice to see you, too.”
“Are you nuts? What if my wife was home?” I looked over my shoulder, whispering. “How do you think this would look?”
Nicki leaned in, whispering back, “I didn’t know we’d been hooking up?” She peered past me. “Is she? Home, I mean.”
“Not your concern.”
“I’ll take that as a no.” Nicki hoisted the Chinese. “Hungry?”
I couldn’t believe the nerve of this girl.
“Can I come in?”
“No.”
“Jay, I need to talk to you. I know we got started off on the wrong foot, but—”
“Why are you telling people I asked you to unseal official court documents? You know how much shit I got in at work over that?”
“Sorry. But that’s why I’m here. Please. Can I come in?”
I didn’t say yes but since she wasn’t taking no for an answer I left the door open and walked back in the kitchen.
“I’m sorry,” she said again, stepping inside my depressing world.
“Yeah. You mentioned that part.” I gestured around the house. “Wonder why I’m home?”
“Because you’re done working for the day?”
“I’ve been here all day.”
“I didn’t get you fired, did I?”
“No. But damn close. I’m on the heels of a big promotion. Instead I get a mandatory vacation.”
“Where is your wife?”
“That is none of your business, Nicki.”
She glanced around the place, at the cleared-out, opened drawers, which I hadn’t bothered to shut, the drained beer bottles toppled across tabletops, the crumpled cigarette packs, the tea plates I’d been using for ashtrays, all the telltale signs of a lonely man enduring a prolonged stretch of bachelor. The whereabouts of my family
wasn’t
any of her business, but no point denying the obvious either.
“My wife and son are in Vermont. Visiting her mother. Okay? Now tell me whatever you came to tell me so I can get back to my movie.”
“What are you watching?”
“Something you’ve never heard of. Go. You have two minutes.”
Nicki flipped her handbag on the table, extracting banded photocopies. “After you said your friend Brian was such a straight arrow, I remembered a case involving this other girl, Wendy Shaw. Honor roll, debate club, real square bear. She wrote a scathing blog post about her principal. Judge Roberts also shipped her off to North River. Called it ‘cyberbullying.’”
“And I care, why?”
“Hold on. So I got curious.”
“Curious? Or needed something to do besides hit on married old men?”
“Don’t be so sensitive. I already apologized. I snuck down to records and did some research.” Nicki spread the photocopies out on my kitchen table. “It’s not the first time.”
“What’s not the first time?”
“That Roberts has sentenced kids to North River for minor offenses. And not just Wendy and Brian. I pulled his sentencing for the past six months, year. Even further back. You have to see some of those charges. They’re ridiculous.” Nicki began reading down the reports. “A real pattern is emerging—”
I clasped a hand over hers. “You can stop right there.” I stepped back and lifted up my shirt, wincing as I revealed my wounds, the bruised ribs, my flank a slab of tender discolored meat, red, purple, shades of unknown green. The swelling around my eye had gone down. These bruises on my body had spilled blood deep inside me.
“Jesus! I thought your face looked a little fucked up. What happened?”
“Why don’t you tell me?”
“Sorry?”
“I have to be out of my mind to even let you through that door. Any exes pissed you gave them the boot? Special friends of yours who work for Longmont PD? Possessive types who don’t take no for an answer?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“No? Two cops stopped me after I talked to you the other night. On a deserted road. Where they dragged me from my truck. And took turns making sure I got the message to stay the hell away from you.”
“I don’t know any cops.”
“Well, one of them sure knew you.”
“He said that?”
“In so many words, yeah.”
Nicki wrinkled her nose, shaking her head, pointing a finger at me. “No, no, no.”
“No what?”
She was still shaking her head as she fanned the papers. “Even before I started working as a clerk there, Judge Roberts has been shipping kids to North River. Look at this sentencing history. Year by year. Twenty-one. Thirty-three. We’re barely two months into the new year, and he’s already signed the orders for sixteen more.”
“I told you. I don’t care. What’s that got to do with the two cops I just told you about? Didn’t you hear me? They took my license, Nicki, wrote down my address, said they’d be back to finish the job if I even
spoke
to you. You want to explain that?”
“I just did. North River.”
I went to the fridge for a beer. I didn’t offer her one.
“Have you been following New Hampshire’s recent debate about privatizing prisons?” Nicki asked.
“Nope.” I popped the top and leaned against the counter.
“Diversion programs are an alternative form of punishment,” she continued, undeterred by my lack of interest. “Here’s how it works. Parents of the juvenile offender, because they are minors, get together with the judge, and if both parties come to an agreement that this type of intervention makes sense, the judge executes the order, and the juvenile offender is locked up at North River.”
“Here’s how I know you’re full of shit. Brian’s mother wasn’t at the courthouse. That’s why I was there. I’d gone to Longmont to advocate on her son’s behalf, so no way in hell would Donna Olisky agree—”
Nicki grabbed a fax from the table, waving it under my nose. I snatched the page from her hand. There was Donna Olisky’s signature approving Judge Roberts’ recommendation for North River, time-stamped with last Friday’s date, a few hours after she’d called me in tears, hysterical.
“How does this North River work?” I asked her. “Exactly.”
“You remember that old cockroach commercial? You check in, but you can’t check out.”
“I think you mean the ‘Hotel California.’”
“I hate the Eagles.”
“Everyone does, Nicki.”
“I like kitsch better. Old commercials, PSAs from the ’70s. ‘How a Bill Becomes a Law.’ Cheesy ’80s music—”
“Terrific. I feel like I know you so much better.” Nothing kitsch about it when you survived the shit the first time. “What I mean is who funds this thing? If it’s not private, the state subsidizes?”
“North River’s main source of revenue is from the clients themselves, the parents, and from nonprofit donors. And it’s not cheap. These places can run upwards of a thousand bucks a day.”
“I’ve been to the Olisky house. They don’t have a thousand dollars, period.”
Nicki shrugged. “That’s the least disturbing part.” She ran her finger down a page till she found the figures she was looking for. “The facility started out with thirty beds. Look at this chart. Over the past three years alone, North River has seen a 300 percent increase in new inmates. Wings and additions are being added almost daily, the grounds in a constant state of construction. Complex is
massive
.”
“Okay,” I said. “Once more for the cheap seats—this concerns me how?”
“It concerns your friend.”
“I told you. We aren’t friends. His mom holds an insurance policy with our company.”
“You said he’s a good kid. Band geek, right?”
“Yeah.”
“Don’t you think it’s bullshit he’s doing hard time for telling a fib and a joint?”
“Sure. But the world’s a shitty place. I know at your age, you want to believe if we all join hands and try our best we can make a difference. Plant a tree, buy local produce, change the world. But none of that matters. Go campaign for cleaner ozone, free Tibet, whatever the fuck you college kids think matters. I’m just telling you it doesn’t.”
“How the hell did you get so cynical?”
“By walking around with my eyes open.”
Nicky pointed at the paper trail. “Jay, there are kids, some as young as thirteen, locked up for popping Mom’s pills and posting on social media.” She flipped through her Xeroxes. “This girl, Wendy Shaw? Who got accused of cyberbullying? Her principal wouldn’t let a trans kid go to the prom—”
“Trans kid?”
“Transgender?” She said it like my not picking up her new
American slang painted me a dinosaur. “Wendy rallied support for the student on her blog. Criticized school officials for being homophobic and discriminatory. All she did was
write
about it. Judge Roberts slaps her with that cyberbullying charge. She’s been in North River for a year.” Nicki plucked another page. “Another boy. Nabbed shoplifting lip gloss for his girlfriend. Almost two years.” She practically shoved the papers in my face. “Dining and ditching. Fistfights. Egging a house on Halloween. Pot, pills, E. All sent to North River by Judge Roberts.”
I pushed her hand away. “You know why people like to believe in conspiracies, Nicki? Because it means that no matter how shitty life is at this moment, at least it isn’t completely random—there’s someone who knows what the fuck is going on, a puppet master calling the shots, a wizard behind the curtain—and that however wicked, nefarious, or just plain evil that entity may be, it is still preferable to the alternative. Namely, that we are on our own. Everyone is running this race blind. The train’s gone off the rails, ship’s rudderless, each crazy bastard as screwed up and clueless as the next.” I finished my beer and set it down hard.
“How much have you had to drink?”
“Enough that I don’t have patience to play intrepid reporter with some riot girl who just read Sylvia Plath for the first time.”
“You don’t have to be an asshole.”
“No. I don’t. But I don’t feel like being nice, either. It’s been a bad few days, and you’ve only made it worse—”
“I said I was sorry.”
“I know. I appreciate it.” I clapped my hands, sincere. “But besides two cops who would have no problem dumping my body in a ditch—”
“Roberts sent them to scare you off—”
“—my boss told me, in no uncertain terms, to drop the Olisky
case if I want any hopes of landing this promotion. Which I desperately do. If only to get away from this frozen hellhole. Now, if you don’t mind?” I pointed at her so-called evidence. “Take your homework assignment and go home.”
Nicki snatched her handbag but didn’t pick up the rest of her crap.
I pointed at the paperwork cluttering my messy table. “You forgot something.”
“Maybe when you sober up, you can be bothered to think about someone other than yourself. Innocent kids are languishing in prison for nothing.”
“When you walk out the door,” I said, “that shit goes in the trash.”
Nicki shook her head and split without another word.
At least she left the Chinese.
I
DIDN
’
T THROW
away the photocopies Nicki left behind. I abandoned them to the rest of the trash on the table and grabbed a container of pork lo mein, returning to my movie and beer, stewing. Nicki was young, but the girl knew how to push the right buttons. Must be an innate female trait. I was lousy at not thinking about pink elephants.
My default position was almost always no, automatic refusal triggered from days dealing with my brother, who always needed a favor, a ride, a place to crash, money. When someone is forever making demands on your limited resources, you better learn to say no or you’ll be run ragged to the poorhouse. But let a few minutes pass, wait for a cooler head to prevail, and some misguided angel would start chirping on my shoulder, the compulsion to do the right thing eventually getting the best of me. A quality both infuriating and redeeming.
Even though I kept telling myself Nicki’s discovery didn’t concern me, I had a tough time ignoring what I’d heard. Innocent kids doing time over victimless crimes. Maybe calling these kids “innocent” was a stretch; no crime is “victimless.” The police weren’t plucking random teens off the street without reason. Laws get broken, prices have to be paid. But punishment needs to fit the crime.
Despite technical classification to the contrary, North River
sure sounded like a prison. Then what was the play? Overzealous prosecutors? A constipated judge? More than likely, a bunch of well-meaning but out-of-touch adults were overreacting to bad decisions made by today’s youth. Which had been the same song and dance for generations.
I gave up and accepted my brain wasn’t letting this go. The kick in the pants to do the right thing giving me a pain in the ass. Back at the kitchen table, I scanned the copies Nicki made at the courthouse. Nothing in there she hadn’t already told me. Somehow reading the facts for myself made it worse, the horror more real.
There were serious crimes listed, like dealing and assault, but the majority of transgressions were misdemeanors—shoplifting, joyriding, vandalism, and underage drinking, which met with equally harsh penalties. I understood the need for law and order, but sending a fourteen-year-old up the river for snatching a sweater off the clearance rack at the Gap smacked of disproportionate.