On the weekends, he began driving up to Talbot Corners, New Hampshire. In 1977, he began taking Curtis and Freddy with him. Gradually, a plan began to take shape. A simple one, the best kind. Your basic smash-and-grab.
Philosophers have debated the meaning of life for centuries, rarely coming to the same conclusion. Morris studied the subject himself over the years of his incarceration, but his inquiries were practical rather than cosmic. He wanted to know the meaning of life in a legal sense. What he found was pretty schizo. In some states, life meant exactly that. You were supposedly in until you died, with no possibility of parole. In some states, parole was considered after as little as two years. In others, it was five, seven, ten, or fifteen. In Nevada, parole was granted (or not) based on a complicated point system.
By the year 2001, the average life sentence of a man in the American prison system was thirty years and four months.
In the state where Morris was stacking time, lawmakers had created their own arcane definition of life, one based on demographics. In 1979, when Morris was convicted, the average American male lived to the age of seventy. Morris was twenty-three at the time, therefore he could consider his debt to society paid in forty-seven years.
Unless, that is, he were granted parole.
He became eligible the first time in 1990. Cora Ann Hooper appeared at the hearing. She was wearing a neat blue suit. Her graying hair was pulled back in a bun so tight it screeched. She held a large black purse in her lap. She recounted how Morris Bellamy had grabbed her as she passed the alley beside Shooter’s Tavern and told her of his intention to ‘rip off a piece.’ She told the five-member Parole Board how he had punched her and broken her nose when she managed to trigger the Police Alert device she kept in her purse. She told the board about the reek of alcohol on his breath and how he had gouged her stomach with his nails when he ripped off her underwear. She told them how Morris was ‘still choking me and hurting me with his organ’ when Officer Ellenton arrived and pulled him off. She told the board that she had attempted suicide in 1980, and was still under the care of a psychiatrist. She told the board that she was better since accepting Jesus Christ as her personal savior, but she still had nightmares. No, she told the board, she had never married. The thought of sex gave her panic attacks.
Parole was not granted. Several reasons were given on the green sheet passed to him through the bars that evening, but the one at the top was clearly the PB’s major consideration: Victim states she is still suffering.
Bitch.
Hooper appeared again in 1995, and again in 2000. In ’95, she wore the same blue suit. In the millennium year – by then she had gained at least forty pounds – she wore a brown one. In 2005, the suit was gray, and a large white cross hung on the growing shelf of her bosom. She held what appeared to be the same large black purse in her lap at each appearance. Presumably her Police Alert was inside. Maybe a can of Mace, as well. She was not summoned to these hearings; she volunteered.
And told her story.
Parole was not granted. Major reason given on the green sheet: Victim states she is still suffering.
Shit don’t mean shit, Morris told himself. Shit don’t mean shit.
Maybe not, but God, he wished he’d killed her.
By the time of his third turndown, Morris’s work as a writer was much in demand – he was, in the small world of Waynesville, a bestselling author. He wrote love letters to wives and girlfriends. He wrote letters to the children of inmates, a few of which confirmed the reality of Santa Claus in touching prose. He wrote job applications for prisoners whose release dates were coming up. He wrote themes for prisoners taking online college courses or working to get their GEDs. He was no jailhouse lawyer, but he did write letters to real lawyers on behalf of inmates from time to time, cogently explaining each case at hand and laying out the basis for appeal. In some cases lawyers were impressed by these letters, and – mindful of the money to be made from wrongful imprisonment suits that were successful – came on board. As DNA became of overriding importance in the appeals process, he wrote often to Barry Scheck and Peter Neufeld, the founders of the Innocence Project. One of those letters ultimately led to the release of an auto mechanic and part-time thief named Charles Roberson, who had been in Waynesville for twenty-seven years. Roberson got his freedom; Morris got Roberson’s eternal gratitude and nothing else … unless you counted his own growing reputation, and that was far from nothing. It had been a long time since he had been raped.