Under Radar

Under Radar by Michael Tolkin

Book: Under Radar by Michael Tolkin Read Free Book Online
Authors: Michael Tolkin
years, so completely within the routines of my penance that time dissolved and, with time, my crime.
    How many years?
    Something in me stands corrected. I look like a saint.
    Beneath the mirror was a washbasin. Tom ran the water and splashed it on his face. This must be why I was standing here. I was here to wash my face. Behind him, in the mirror, Tom watched the smoker on the bed. It was time to learn more.
    â€œWhere do I get a shave?” Tom asked.
    The man on the cot smiled at him, like a father in love with a baby. “What?”
    â€œWhere do I get a shave around here?”
    â€œI’ll be right back.” The man ran from the room, shouting down the corridor, “He spoke! He spoke! He wants a shave! Levy wants a shave! Levy wants a shave! He spoke!”
    A hundred prisoners gathered outside the cell. Tom watched them, remembering some of their faces from his first year in the prison. There were two white men among them.
    â€œCan someone tell me my story?” Tom asked, keeping his eyes averted from the white men, who Tom supposed were drug dealers, so the blacks would not feel divided from his respect. “Can someone tell me how Ibroke my nose and why my hair is white?” Tom’s voice was as unfamiliar to him as his face, lower, softer, not so aggressively placed in the middle register, not so tight. He liked this new voice. “Can someone tell me how long I have been here? Have I been well? Have I been a burden or of service? Please, how long have I been here?”
    The first man to answer was the man from his cell. “Seven years.”
    â€œAnd my hair turned white in seven years?”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œAnd how did I break my nose?”
    An old man in the crowd started to answer, excitedly, but he spoke an impossibly difficult argot, and Tom could understand none of it. One of the white men, an American, saw Tom’s distress. “I’ll help you,” he said. “I know what he’s saying.” So the old man explained, and the American translated.
    â€œWhen you came into the jail, you knew nobody. For the first year, everyone asked about you, what you had done. You were the man who killed a tourist who had offended your daughter. Everyone knew the story. No one blamed you.”
    â€œBut I shouldn’t have done it.”
    â€œNo one blamed you. Still, this is prison, and men challenged your honor. A thief from Negril asked you to fight. You had no choice. He hit you, and you hit him. He hit you in the face, with a rock he kept hidden, and you fell. You were taken to the infirmary. There was a condemned man in the bed next to yours who took youfor an angel. He had been tortured for days by the guards. His hanging was due in a week, and the warden wanted the man presentable because the execution would be observed by the press.
    â€œThe condemned man told you a story. He was seen talking to you every day, all day and all night, for his final seven days. You asked him questions at first, and he answered, but then you stopped asking questions and you listened. The condemned man whispered to you.
    â€œAnd all the time that he talked, your hair lost its color. On the day he finished, they came for him and walked him to the gallows. And on that day, your hair finished turning the color it is today, that terrifying white. And since that day, silence has been your companion. You have walked among us, eating, dressing, bathing, never saying a word, minding yourself. We spoke to you, but you never answered.”
    â€œWhat did the hanged man tell me?”
    â€œOnly you know the story. We have been waiting for it.”
    â€œI don’t remember it. I don’t even remember the hanged man.”
    â€œYou must remember!” The old man jumped at him and grabbed his shoulders. “You were told a story that cannot fit inside you without coming out. Someone else’s memory resides inside of you, it was placed there by a man who was

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