Book #472-98

The barcode on the back cover was scratched so deep it looked like a scar. I still remembered the prison librarian’s handwriting on the checkout slip taped to the inside cover: Due: April 12, 1995. I’d been cuffed and put in a squad car seventeen minutes after I signed it.

The book sat heavy on the wool blanket. It smelled of mildew and the basement damp of the county library, a smell that had not changed in twenty-eight years. My room smelled of damp plaster and the industrial soap they used to scrub the halls. The walls were painted a color that was supposed to be cream but looked more like dirty teeth. I sat on the edge of the mattress. The springs groaned under my weight.

I was fifty-two years old. My hands were rough from the dishwater at the diner where I worked. The hot water and the steel wool kept my skin raw, but the steam was good. It rose up from the sinks and made a wall between me and the customers. I liked the wall.

The package had come in the morning mail. It was wrapped in brown butcher paper, tied with white string. There was no return address. The name on the front was printed in black ink, the letters sharp and vertical. Earl Hawkins.

I ran a thumb over the cover. The plastic laminate was peeling at the corners. To Kill a Mockingbird. I opened it. The spine cracked loud enough to hear.

I expected the pages to be blank, or at least clean, the way a book should be. But someone had been at it with a pen. Blue ink lived in the margins. It crawled up the sides of the paragraphs and squeezed between the lines of dialogue.

I turned to page 200. The handwriting was small and tight.

I hated you when I read this in high school, the note said. I thought you were the monster.

I knew who wrote it. I didn’t need a name. I saw her face every time I closed my eyes. Catherine. She was seven when the gavel came down. She had worn a yellow dress with a white collar. She had cried without making a sound.

I turned the page. I stopped breathing.

I went to law school to make sure you never got out.

The ink here was pressed down hard. The paper was indented. I could feel the anger in the texture of the page.

I stood up and walked to the window. A siren wailed two streets over. My shoulders pulled up tight toward my ears. It was a reflex. The body remembers things the mind tries to drop. I waited until the siren faded toward the highway.

I looked back at the book. I wanted to throw it in the trash can by the door. I wanted to burn it. It was a piece of the cage I had just left. But I sat back down. I turned to the last chapter.

The handwriting was different here. It was shaky. The loops of the letters were loose.

I found the discrepancies in the timeline, it said. I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry.

The room was silent. A truck rumbled past outside, rattling the window frame. I stared at the words until they blurred. She had spent ten years proving I didn’t kill her father. The DNA test had opened the cell door, but this ink felt heavier than the iron bars.

I turned the back cover. A folded piece of notebook paper fell out and landed on the linoleum floor. It was white and stark against the gray tile.

I reached down and picked it up.

I unfolded the paper. It was ruled notebook paper, torn from a spiral binding. The edge was ragged.

Tuesday, 3:00 PM. The Bluebird Diner.

I looked at the clock above the sink. The second hand swept around with a small mechanical grind. It was 2:20 PM. Tuesday.

The Bluebird was six blocks away. It was a place with vinyl booths and coffee that tasted of burnt grounds. I knew it. I walked past it every morning on my way to the garage to wash dishes. I never went in.

I sat there. The paper shook in my hand. I put it down on the mattress to make it stop.

If I went, I would have to be Earl Hawkins. Not the dishwasher. Not the inmate. I would have to sit across from the woman who had watched me go away in chains. I knew what I would see in her face. I had seen it in the lawyers’ faces. Pity. It was a soft, wet look. It was worse than the hate the guards had. Hate you could brace against. Pity made you weak.

I looked at the door. The deadbolt was unlatched. I could stay. I could heat up a can of soup on the hot plate and listen to the radio. I could go to work tomorrow and disappear into the steam.

I looked back at the book. The checkout slip was still taped to the inside cover. The glue had turned brown and brittle. Due: April 12, 1995.

I ran my finger over the date. I hadn’t finished the book. I had been on chapter twenty-four when the police kicked the door in. I had marked the page with a gum wrapper. The wrapper was gone now.

I owed it to the man I was in 1995. He was twenty-four. He liked to fix carburetors and he thought the law made sense. He never got to finish the chapter.

I stood up. My knees popped. I dug into the pocket of my work trousers. I pulled out a ballpoint pen. It was a cheap stick of blue plastic I had fished out of a trash can at the gas station a week ago. The cap was missing and the end was chewed.

I sat the book on my lap. I pressed the checkout slip flat against the cardboard cover. The paper was thin.

I clicked the pen. I wrote on the back of the slip. The ink was dry at first, scratching invisible lines, then it flowed dark and thick.

I didn’t do it.

I looked at the words. They sat there on the yellowed paper. Four words against twenty-eight years. It didn’t look like enough. It looked like a child’s note.

I tore the slip from the book. The tape gave way with a sound like dry leaves tearing. I folded the paper once and put it in my shirt pocket. It felt light against my chest.

I put the book on the nightstand. I put on my jacket. It was denim, stiff with grease stains that wouldn’t wash out. I checked the lock on the door, then I walked out into the hallway. The air smelled of floor wax. I walked down the stairs and pushed open the heavy front door. The sun hit my face. It was bright and hard. I started walking.

The bell above the door jingled when I pushed it open. The air inside was warm and smelled of bacon grease and stale cigarette smoke from years ago that never really left the walls.

I saw her in the back booth. She was looking at her hands.

I walked over. My boots made a heavy sound on the tile. She looked up. Her face was sharp now, the baby fat gone long ago. She wore a gray suit jacket. There were dark circles under her eyes. She looked tired.

“Mr. Hawkins,” she said.

I sat down opposite her. The vinyl seat was torn and covered with a strip of silver duct tape. “Earl,” I said. My voice sounded rusty.

The waitress came over. She held a pot of coffee. She poured two cups without asking and left. The steam rose up between us.

Catherine didn’t drink. She wrapped her hands around the mug. “I didn’t think you would come.”

“I got the book,” I said.

She nodded. She looked out the window at the parking lot. A car drove by, the sun flashing off its windshield. “I stole it,” she said. “From the evidence locker. Years ago. I wanted to see what you were reading. I wanted to know what kind of man kills a father and then checks out a book about justice.”

“I didn’t kill him,” I said.

“I know.” She opened her purse. She pulled out a manila envelope and slid it across the table. It was thick. “That’s the official copy. The judge signed the order this morning. You’re free, Earl. Really free.”

I didn’t touch the envelope. I looked at her. “The lawyers told me that. You didn’t have to send the book.”

She took a breath. It shuddered in her chest. “I found your old files. The prison library requests.”

I looked at the table. I remembered those forms. Small yellow slips of paper.

“You requested that book every week for six months,” she said. “And on one of them, under the reason for request, you wrote something.”

She reached into her pocket and pulled out a photocopy. She placed it on the table. The handwriting was mine, but younger. The letters were loops and hard angles.

I need to know if the truth actually matters.

Catherine put her hand on mine. Her skin was cool. It was the first time someone had touched me without meaning to restrain me in twenty-eight years. I looked at her hand, then at her face.

“I wanted to return the book,” she whispered. Tears pooled in her eyes and fell onto her jacket. “And I wanted to tell you the answer is yes.”

I reached into my shirt pocket. I pulled out the checkout slip with my four words on the back. I laid it next to her photocopy.

“It matters,” I said.

She wiped her eyes. She sat up straighter. The sadness in her face hardened into something else. Something sharp and cold.

“The police are holding a press conference tomorrow,” she said.

“I know,” I said. “DNA doesn’t lie.”

“It wasn’t just DNA, Earl.” Her voice dropped low. “I found the murder weapon. It was in my uncle’s garage. My father’s brother.”

I stared at her. “Your uncle,” I said. “He sat in the front row. He wore a blue tie.”

“He held my hand,” Catherine said. Her voice was flat. “He told the jury he saw you running from the house. He lied.”

She reached into her bag again. She pulled out a cell phone. She placed it on the table between the coffee cups. The screen was dark.

“I found the gun three days ago,” she said. “I haven’t called the station.”

I looked at the phone, then at her. “Why?”

“Because the system took twenty-eight years from you,” she said. “If I make the call, the headline is about my family. It’s about a scandal. You become a footnote again.” She pushed the phone across the formica. It spun slowly and stopped in front of me. “I wanted you to be the first to know. You call them. You tell them you solved it.”

The diner was quiet. The cook scraped a spatula against the grill in the back.

I picked up the phone. It was heavy. I looked at the screen. I dialed 911. I put the phone to my ear.

“Emergency,” the dispatcher said.

“My name is Earl Hawkins,” I said. “I’d like to report a murder.”

We waited in the booth. Ten minutes later, the cruisers arrived. The lights flashed red and blue against the diner window. They didn’t come for me. I watched the officers walk to the door. I didn’t flinch.

Two weeks later, I stood in the middle of a room on Fourth Street. The apartment was small. The floor was bare wood. The walls were painted a clean, bright white.

There was no furniture, except for a mattress in the center of the room. It was brand new. The plastic was still on the corners. I had bought it with the first check from the state settlement. It was the first thing I owned that no one had used before me.

I sat on the mattress. It was firm.

I took the book out of a paper bag. The cover was still scratched, the spine still broken. I opened it to the back.

I took the pen from my pocket. It was the same blue ballpoint.

I drew a single line through April 12, 1995.

Next to it, I wrote the date.

Returned.

I closed the book and set it on the floor. I lay back on the mattress. The room was silent. There were no footsteps in the hall. There were no keys turning in locks. I closed my eyes. The dark was just dark. I slept.