Free Under Radar by Michael Tolkin Page A

he wanted to fix himself, but to what end? He was here for the rest of his life. What good if this enlightened vision of himself finally arrived?
    Slowly, Tom made friends. If someone needed help moving a bed, Tom was there to give a hand. If someone needed help reading a brief from his lawyer, Tom was there. The thanks he received made him grieve more deeply for the time he had wasted.
    He understood this: If I could have recognized true friendship when offered, throughout my life, I would notbe the person I am, and therefore I would not be here. Much earlier in life I would have joined in friendship with strong good people, men and women, not my gang of sleazy scammers, and we would have helped one another.
    He imagined the contours of such help. It would have the energetic zest of his conspiracy without the cynicism, that suspicion of everyone else. He would make more money, but it might take longer, and his friends would always be there to point out new opportunities.
    He lay on the floor of his cell, his arms crossed over his chest, their weight the two soft heads of his little girls stretched out on the floor beside him, in the living room of a condominium they rented at a ski resort in Vermont, watching the logs spark in the fireplace.
    Skiing, yes, they would go skiing all winter long. His good friends and their families would rent condominiums in the same place, and they would all gather together at the end of the day and make dinner, big pots of spaghetti and huge salads made of nothing but iceberg lettuce. Rosalie never bought iceberg lettuce because it lacked the vitamin content of romaine, but children love iceberg’s noisy crunch, especially with sweet creamy dressing from a bottle. They eat large bags of potato chips, forbidden at home, but what the hell, right? It’s a vacation. Let’s relax. One of his friends is sure to know something about wine, and he brings a dozen different bottles, and all of them are good.
    After dinner they play Scrabble together and let the children win, not that the children aren’t all bright andcapable, and so intellectually elastic that they make wonderful words on their own.
    They rent videos that everyone can watch. One of the fathers rents Jimmy Cliff in
The Harder They Come
, a film about a poor Jamaican singer who turns to crime and is shot to death in a mangrove swamp. With the first reggae song, the little girls are moved to stand in front of the television and dance, shaken by the music out of their bodies and their modesty, but they don’t want to dance, the music captures them, invisible strings reach out and jerk them like marionettes, and they cry out for help, and then Tom reaches for his machine gun and shoots the television, and then every television in the ski resort, and then he shoots everyone who threatens his children, all the children, and he goes on shooting.
    ...
    His father died after Tom’s ninth month in prison, and his mother died soon after.
    Rosalie visited without the children to bring him the news. She came with a white Jamaican lawyer. She wore a pretty yellow sundress and white sandals.
    â€œYesterday, after I left, your sister told the girls that you were dead. She told the girls that I had gone to Jamaica to identify your body. She told them that Jamaican law calls for your cremation. I know it’s horrible, but we want to make a hard boundary between the day you killed Barry Seckler and their future. I couldn’ttell them the story and look them in the eyes. When I come back, I’ll give them the comfort that I can.”
    â€œWhat did I die of?”
    â€œWe said you had a heart attack. We didn’t want you to be murdered. A heart attack was easy. We’ll have a memorial service when I go home.”
    â€œWhat will you say at the funeral?”
    â€œWe’ll talk about the man we remember, the man we loved. It will be wonderful for the girls and wonderful for me. We’ll laugh about you.