In 2004, Morris wrote his best letter ever, laboring over four drafts to get it exactly right. This letter was to Cora Ann Hooper. In it he told her that he lived with terrible remorse for what he had done, and promised that if he were granted parole, he would spend the rest of his life atoning for his one violent act, committed during an alcohol-induced blackout.
‘I attend AA meetings four times a week here,’ he wrote, ‘and now sponsor half a dozen recovering alcoholics and drug addicts. I would continue this work on the outside, at the St Patrick’s Halfway House on the North Side. I had a spiritual awakening, Ms Hooper, and have allowed Jesus into my life. You will understand how important this is, because I know you have also accepted Christ as your Savior. “Forgive us our trespasses,” He said, “as we forgive those who trespass against us.” Won’t you please forgive my trespass against you? I am no longer the man who hurt you so badly that night. I have had a soul conversion. I pray that you respond to my letter.’
Ten days later, his prayer for a response was answered. There was no return address on the envelope, but C.A. Hooper had been printed neatly on the back flap. Morris didn’t need to tear it open; some screw in the front office, assigned the duty of checking inmate mail, had already taken care of that. Inside was a single sheet of deckle-edged stationery. In the upper right corner and the lower left, fluffy kittens played with gray balls of twine. There was no salutation. A single line had been printed halfway down the page:
I hope you rot in there.
The bitch appeared at his hearing the following year, legs now clad in support hose, ankles slopping over her sensible shoes. She was like some overweight, vengeful swallow returning to the prison version of Capistrano. She once more told her story, and parole was once more not granted. Morris had been a model prisoner, and now there was just a single reason given on the inmate green sheet: Victim states she is still suffering.
Morris assured himself that shit did not mean shit and went back to his cell. Not exactly a penthouse apartment, just six by eight, but at least there were books. Books were escape. Books were freedom. He lay on his cot, imagining how pleasant it would be to have fifteen minutes alone with Cora Ann Hooper, and a power nailer.
Morris was by then working in the library, which was a wonderful change for the better. The guards didn’t much care how he spent his paltry budget, so it was no problem to subscribe to The American Bibliographer’s Newsletter. He also got a number of catalogues from rare book dealers around the country, which were free. Books by John Rothstein came up for sale frequently, offered at ever steeper prices. Morris found himself rooting for this the way some prisoners rooted for sports teams. The value of most writers went down after they died, but a fortunate few trended upward. Rothstein had become one of those. Once in awhile a signed Rothstein showed up in one of the catalogues. In the 2007 edition of Bauman’s Christmas catalogue, a copy of The Runner signed to Harper Lee – a so-called association copy – went for $17,000.
Morris also kept an eye on the city newspaper during his years of incarceration, and then, as the twenty-first century wrought its technological changes, various city websites. The land between Sycamore Street and Birch Street was still mired in that unending legal suit, which was just the way Morris liked it. He would get out eventually, and his trunk would be there, with the roots of that overhanging tree wrapped firmly around it. That the worth of those notebooks must by now be astronomical mattered less and less to him.
Once he had been young, and he supposed he would have enjoyed all the things young men chased after when their legs were strong and their balls were tight: travel and women, cars and women, big homes like the ones in Sugar Heights and women. Now he rarely even dreamed of such things, and the last woman with whom he’d had sex remained largely instrumental in keeping him locked up. The irony wasn’t lost on him. But that was okay. The things of the world fell by the wayside, you lost your speed and your eyesight and your fucking Electric Boogaloo, but literature was eternal, and that was what was waiting for him: a lost geography as yet seen by no eye but its creator’s. If he didn’t get to see that geography himself until he was seventy, so be it. There was the money, too – all those cash envelopes. Not a fortune by any means, but a nice little nest egg.