Triptych

Ben had been doing a crossword, and he was a

“There’s no sport in it,” Ben finally said. “I like the seduction of the show, my boy. I am an actor on a stage and you…” He gave his wet smile. “You are a rube.”

The rube hadn’t done too bad this time, though. In the few seconds Ben’s face had been pressed close to his, John had been able to tell him all he needed to know.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

After the jury returned with his sentence, John had been taken back to his cell at the county jail. They had left the cuffs on but taken away his belt and the laces in his shoes so he wouldn’t do anything crazy. They needn’t have bothered. He was too stu

Twenty-two to life. Twenty-two years. He would be thirty before he was eligible for parole. He would be an old man.

“It’s good,” his mother had said, tears in her eyes. She didn’t cry much after he was arrested, but now she let the tears flow. “It’s good, baby.”

She meant it was good because he had avoided the death penalty. A fourteen-year-old in Massachusetts had just made national headlines for beating another fourteen-year-old to death with a baseball bat. A twenty-eight-year-old in Texas had recently been executed for a crime he committed at the age of seventeen. Juvenile offenders were no longer a novelty. John could have been on his way to death row right now instead of looking at a lifetime behind bars.

“We can appeal,” his mother told him. “It won’t be long,” she said. “We’ll appeal.”

Behind her, his aunt Lydia looked dubious. Later, he would find out that but for one juror, a father of three boys, one of whom was John’s age, everyone else had voted for death. The rest had taken one look at John, then at the supersized photos of Mary Alice’s mutilated body, and wanted him to die, too.

In the holding cell, John kept going over and over everything that was said about him during the trial. The state’s psychologist had seemed nice enough when they talked a few months ago, but at trial he had told the entire courtroom that John was obviously a delusional psychopath, a cold-blooded killer who showed no remorse. Then, there were the kids from John’s school who had stood up during the sentencing phase to talk about what a good girl Mary Alice was and what a horrible person John Shelley had always been. Principal Binder, Coach McCollough… they had all talked about him like he was Charles Manson.

Who was that person they were talking about? John didn’t recognize him. Half of those kids hadn’t even said two words to him in the last three years, but now they acted as if they knew everything about him. There had been that split when they went from elementary to middle school, and the popular clique had left John behind. If not for sports, he would have been some kind of geek left to hang in the wind. When he was kicked off the football team, none of them would even meet his eye in the hallway. Now, according to these “friends” of his, John was some kind of… monster.

John had been staring at the concrete floor of the cell, following the cracks spreading out like a palm reader trying to divine his future. When he looked up, Paul Fi

Mary Alice’s father was smiling.

“Enjoy yourself now, you little piece of shit,” he told John. “This is as good as it gets from here on out.”

John didn’t answer. What would he say?

Mr. Fi

John didn’t understand. He was sixteen years old. Even if Mr. Fi

But it was.

They kept him at the county jail for the evening, guards strolling by his cell every half hour to make sure he wasn’t trying to twist his sheets into a noose. Coastal State Prison was near the Atlantic Ocean, several hundred miles away in a town John had never heard of. The prison’s policy was strict about visitors. He would have to be in a full month before they would allow his mother to see him. They said it was a period of acclimation, time to let the prisoner get used to his surroundings and make sure he deserved the privilege of having a guest come to see him. The longest John had ever gone without seeing his family was a weeklong church holiday he had spent in Gatlinburg, Te

They woke him at dawn to get a head start on traffic, and John shuffled onto the prison transport bus, feet shackled, arms handcuffed in front of him. His wrists were so slender that they had borrowed smaller cuffs from the women’s jail. He had always been rail thin, and stress made it worse. He’d lost almost twenty pounds during the trial and his ribs were clearly visible under the baggy orange jumper he wore.

There were other men on the bus, and they whistled and hooted when John got on. He smiled because he thought it was some kind of rite of passage.

“Be strong,” his mother had said, using more of her tough Kojak talk. “Don’t let them get to you and don’t trust any of them with anything.”

One of the guards had slammed his baton on the cage separating the driver’s area from the prisoners. He pointed to a seat directly behind the driver, telling John, “Sit.”

The bus was not air-conditioned, the ride bumpy. John’s chains clanked like Jacob Marley’s the whole way. He played games in his head, games he and Joyce used to play when they took family vacations to Florida. How many license plates from out of town could he find? How many cows were on one side of the road? How many on the other?

His bladder was so full by the time they got to the outer limits of Sava

He felt a sharp pain in his bladder when he stood, but he was glad he had the shackles around his ankles because it gave him an excuse to keep his legs together. The guard led the way to the first building, John in the front, the rest of the prisoners towering behind him. One of the men kept kicking at John’s heels and he walked faster, his bladder screaming in his gut.

They were all led to an open bathroom with a row of urinals. Slowly, each man was uncuffed, unshackled. John, embarrassed, waited for someone else to go before he did. He could feel eyes on him as he reached down to the fly of his jumper. The uniform was for a grown man, so the crotch had settled somewhere around his knees. Nerves kept him from being able to go at first, but he finally was able to release a thin stream of urine.

“Looks like a little Vie

“Shut up,” one of the guards ordered. The patch on his uniform read “Everett” and he held a baton between both of his hands like he was blocking a tackle. “Everybody take your clothes off and stand on the black line.”

John’s face went bright red. Because of his age, he had been kept in isolation at the county jail during his trial. The guards had still searched him plenty of times, but never like this. His entire life, he had never stood naked in front of a bunch of strangers. His hands felt numb as he worked the buttons on his jumper, and he tried not to look down at the other men, though of course he could see. They were huge-all of them. Their bodies were grown men’s bodies, hair sprouting everywhere. John was a late bloomer. He shaved his face maybe once a week and then it was out of wishful thinking more than necessity. He looked like a girl next to them, like a frightened little girl.