Free The Four Stages of Cruelty by Keith Hollihan

and, perhaps, on my worst days, the utter elusiveness of the human connection Brother Mike insisted on pushing.
    “Well,” I said, “I admire what you’re doing.” I didn’t mean it, but I admired something about him, the true believer aspect, I suppose.
    “We both have difficult jobs.” It sounded like simple honesty, and a little chip of ice melted from my heart.
    “Jon Crowley was working on a visual narrative,” he said, “a story in pictures and words that delved into the themes of restorative justice quite heavily.”
    I was disoriented by his description of Crowley’s comic book. Restorative justice was not the vibe I’d picked up glancing through the pages.
    “The Four Stages of Cruelty,”
I said, the words slipping out.
    “You’ve seen it?”
    “No,” I said. “Heard someone mention it.” He knew I was lying.
    “Since you’re interested, perhaps you’d like to look at his source material. You can borrow this if you like.”
    He reached up to the shelf above him and retrieved a heavy, water-warped book and passed it to me.
    “An eighteenth-century British artist named Hogarth developed a series of prints called, of course,
The Four Stages of Cruelty
. Hogarth believed art
could
change people. He was a reformer. Social injustice and the root causes of criminality were among his themes. You should look through. We can have a vigorous discussion afterward. And I make the most wonderful cookies.”
    I didn’t know whether he was teasing me or getting rid of me, but I stood and prepared myself to leave, weary from my masquerade.
    “One more thing,” he said, as if it had been he who’d called us together. “I have something unfortunate to give you.”
    “What do you mean?”
    I was slightly alarmed by the announcement. Brother Mike walked back to his desk and found a manila folder and brought it to me. I took it, cautiously, and looked inside.
    A piece of white paper with an ink drawing on it. A woman holding a bejeweled sword, and that woman was me. An accurate likeness of my own face. My naked profile with long hair, an arched back, and pert, upturned breasts that could have been imagined only by someone who’d never seen a thirty-nine-year-old without a bra.
    “I’m sorry to heave that on you,” he said. “I removed it from a notebook. In this environment, there’s obviously some taboo subjects. Gang symbols. Violent fantasies. Pornography. This crosses a couple of those lines. I have an arrangement, fully known to my students, whereby I forward anything I confiscate to Keeper Wallace. But I thought you might rather destroy it yourself.”
    “Did Josh do this?” I could not help but feel the flush of shame.
    “You know him?” he asked.
    “Somewhat.” My day with the girlfriend killer had inspired a few fantasies. There was nothing surprising about that, but the thought disgusted me, and it was embarrassingto be sitting before Brother Mike with the drawing in my hand. I closed the folder. “I’ll take care of it.”
    “Thanks,” he said. “I’d rather you did.”
    I stood, the folder under my arm, and shook Brother Mike’s hand like an insurance adjuster. Then I tossed out one last question.
    “How did Jon Crowley finish his project with a broken arm?”
    Brother Mike looked surprised, and there was something gratifying in the way I threw him off balance, however unintentionally.
    “A good point, isn’t it?” he said. “Lawrence Elgin asked Jon that in class. ‘How did you do it?’” Brother Mike let out a ragged sigh. “I wonder, would you look in on them for me? I’d like to know their condition, and nobody has been willing to tell me a thing.”
    I promised I would do that, and felt the entanglements grow.

7
    But I did not get the time to check in on Elgin or Crowley. Four hours after I got home that evening, I was summoned back for URF duty. Disturbances on one of the blocks, theytold me, and the news felt like a delayed tremor following the fight in the