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.
I have something to live for, he told himself. How many men in here can say that, especially once their thighs go flabby and their cocks only stand up when they need to pee?
Morris wrote several times to Andy Halliday, who now did have his own shop—Morris knew that from American Bibliographer’s Newsletter. He also knew that his old pal had gotten into trouble at least once, for trying to sell a stolen copy of James Agee’s most famous book, but had skated. Too bad. Morris would have dearly loved to welcome that cologne-wearing homo to Waynesville. There were plenty of bad boys here who would have been all too willing to put a hurt on him for Morrie Bellamy. Just a daydream, though. Even if Andy had been convicted, it probably would have been just a fine. At worst, he would have gotten sent to the country club at the west end of the state, where the white-collar thieves went.
None of Morris’s letters to Andy were answered.
In 2010, his personal swallow once more returned to Capistrano, wearing a black suit again, as if dressed for her own funeral. Which will be soon if she doesn’t lose some weight, Morris thought nastily. Cora Ann Hooper’s jowls now hung down at the sides of her neck in fleshy flapjacks, her eyes were all but buried in pouches of fat, her skin was sallow. She had replaced the black purse with a blue one, but everything else was the same. Bad dreams! Endless therapy! Life ruined thanks to the horrible beast who sprang out of the alley that night! So on and so forth, blah-blah-blah.
Aren’t you over that lousy rape yet? Morris thought. Aren’t you ever going to move on?
Morris went back to his cell thinking Shit don’t mean shit. It don’t mean fucking shit.
That was the year he turned fifty-five.
???
One day in March of 2014, a turnkey came to get Morris from the library, where he was sitting behind the main desk, reading American Pastoral for the third time. (It was by far Philip Roth’s best book, in Morris’s opinion.) The turnkey told him he was wanted in Admin.
“What for?” Morris asked, getting up. Trips to Admin were not ordinarily good news. Usually it was cops wanting you to roll on somebody, and threatening you with all kinds of dark shit if you refused to cooperate.
“PB hearing.”
“No,” Morris said. “It’s a mistake. The board doesn’t hear me again until next year.”
“I only do what they tell me,” the turnkey said. “If you don’t want me to give you a mark, find somebody to take the desk and get the lead out of your ass.”
The Parole Board—now three men and three women—was convened in the conference room. Philip Downs, the Board’s legal counsel, made lucky seven. He read a letter from Cora Ann Hooper. It was an amazing letter. The bitch had cancer. That was good news, but what followed was even better. She was dropping all objections to Morris Bellamy’s parole. She said she was sorry she had waited so long. Downs then read a letter from the Midwest Culture and Arts Center, locally known as the MAC. They had hired many Waynesville parolees over the years, and were willing to take Morris Bellamy on as a part-time file clerk and computer operator starting in May, should parole be granted.
“In light of your clean record over the past thirty-five years, and in light of Ms. Hooper’s letter,” Downs said, “I felt that putting the subject of your parole before the board a year early was the right thing to do. Ms. Hooper informs us that she doesn’t have much time, and I’m sure she’d like to get closure on this matter.” He turned to them. “How say you, ladies and gentlemen?”
Morris already knew how the ladies and gentlemen would say; otherwise he never would have been brought here. The vote was 6–0 in favor of granting him parole.
“How do you feel about that, Morris?” Downs asked.