Then there were letters to Kellen. She spent days writing them in beautiful penmanship on expensive paper. They all came back opened, taped back closed, and stamped UNAUTHORIZED CORRESPONDENCE.

Those letters seemed so wonderfully tragic to me. Each one a message he would never get. A note in a bottle, bobbing on the ocean. Lost.

4

KELLEN

June 1989

My second parole hearing was almost exactly like the first, except Old Man Cutcheon was laid up in the hospital with a heart attack. The room was too warm and Brenda Newling showed up to read a statement about how I destroyed Wavy’s life. I’d nearly convinced myself Brenda kept Wavy away from the last hearing, but now she was over eighteen. If she wanted to see me, she coulda come. She didn’t.

When the letter came saying I’d been granted parole, I couldn’t hardly believe it, but two weeks later I was free. Or as free as I could be in a halfway house with other ex-cons, checking in with my parole officer every week. I wasn’t allowed to live near a school or a daycare, so when I moved out of the halfway house, it was hard to find a place to live. And I had to file my address with the sex offender registry.

Getting a job wasn’t easy, either. Old Man Cutcheon ended up closing the shop, and it wasn’t like anybody else in Powell was gonna hire me, so I got paroled to Wellburg, which was bigger than Garringer, almost a hundred-thousand people.

The quick lube place was in a strip mall on the other end of town from my apartment, but it had one thing going for it: the manager didn’t give me a hard time about my conviction.

Gary was my age, maybe a little older, and bald. He looked at my application and said, “The felony, I have to ask.”

“I dated this girl who was fourteen. Her aunt caught us fooling around. I pled guilty, so the girl wouldn’t have to testify. I’m not proud of it, but I’m not a child molester. It was this one stupid thing I did. I don’t drink. I don’t do drugs. I won’t steal stuff. I’ll show up on time. I’m good with about anything mechanical.”

I kept talking, waiting for the hammer to fall, but Gary rubbed his head and said, “Jeez, a felony charge seems like a raw deal if the girl was willing.”

“I didn’t rape her. I just messed up.”

I got the job. It was more like a factory than a garage, just changing the oil in one car after another. Mindless work, which was good.

Four months after my parole, I was living in this damp basement apartment in an old boardinghouse. The sex offender registry, it was only supposed to protect other people from me. While I was living in that apartment, I had the tires on my truck slashed and somebody spray painted PEDAFILE on my door. I moved to a different building, farther away from the nearest school, but spitting distance from the train yard. For a few weeks, there was no trouble, but then somebody put up fliers to let people know a sex offender was living in the building.

A couple nights later, these two young guys stopped me coming up the alley.

“If you showed up dead, I bet the cops wouldn’t even care,” said the one who hung back behind his friend. He wore a gold cross on a chain.

“They might even give us a medal if we took care of you, you fucking scumbag.” The braver one jabbed me in the chest with his finger. No big deal, but eventually somebody was gonna try something serious.

That’s what was getting ready to happen the night I met Beth.

I closed the shop some nights, which was more money, but it meant I didn’t get home until after dark. Being out wasn’t all that different from being in prison. I had to be on my guard all the time, especially since somebody put up those fliers about me.

So I wasn’t surprised when those same two douchebags came at me in the alley.

“I don’t think you got the message last time,” said the one with the cross necklace.

“We don’t want your kind around here,” the brave one said.

They musta figured two against one gave them an advantage. They didn’t know I could take two guys easy when I was sober. Drunk, I could take ten. When they rushed me, I didn’t demolish them like when I used to get in bar fights. I coulda put them in the hospital, but I didn’t want to end up back in jail, so I took a lot more punches than I gave.

“Hey! Back off, you assholes! I already called the cops!” somebody yelled behind me.

That was enough to send the two douchebags running. As I was leaning up against the side of a trash Dumpster, trying to catch my breath, this woman walked up to me. She kept one hand in her purse, I’m guessing on a can of mace.

“Are you okay?” she said.

“Yeah, thanks. Did you really call the cops?”

“No, not really.”

I figured she’d go back the way she’d come, but she stayed there.

“You sure you’re alright?” she said.

“Yeah, thanks. Have a good night.”

After that, I decided breaking parole was better than getting worked over. So the next day, I bought me a baseball bat.

A couple weeks later, going out to my truck, I passed the woman who saved my ass. I was gonna pretend I didn’t recognize her, but she stopped me.

“Hey, Babe Ruth. You have any more trouble with those guys?” she said.

“Not yet.”

“Looks like you’re ready for them, though. I’m Beth.” She held out her hand to shake. I guess she didn’t see the fliers.

“Jesse Joe.”

“You’re a mechanic?” She looked at my uniform shirt with my name embroidered on one side and the name of the shop on the other. “Would you mind giving me a hand with my car?”