The guy’s got a bandage down the left side of his face, his hair hangs soft over it. They got his hands cuffed with plastic ties and he’s wearing those jail booties. He aims his eyes right at me, and he smiles. I didn’t mean to be looking that direction, I wasn’t really looking, my eyes weren’t looking at anything.
I’m sure of that. I just look at nothing between recording. There can be a lot of waiting in my day. And I’m not asked to take down, and then the defendant shuffled in, and then he coughed and then his fancy lawyer adjusted his cuff links. So time drifts along, and that’s when my eyes fell on this man.
I grabbed up inside when he’s eyes met mine. I haven’t been thinking about the people I’m been writing about since I started in here Brown County. I’m happy not to know any of them. Even the mother who came in after beating up her kid didn’t to get me, not the way it would have if I were in Nordeen. I don’t know the mother or the kid. I can do my job without wanting to leap up and hit the people doing such wrong.
Now this man, he stops me. He gave my inside a tug. And damn, I’m smart enough to stop it right this minute. So even here, there’s somebody who’s as messed up as Roy. This guy was arrested for beating up somebody for nothing, like Roy. Now his lawyer’s asking that his client be allowed to go to rehab and not to jail. But the judge isn’t so convinced that rehab for what he says is the fourth time is gonna do this man any good.
I keep my eyes down and I feel my fingers pushing down the keys. I know my fingers are freer than they would have been in Nordeen. They slip and slide along and I record every little word like I do, and I don’t look up again after they all stop talking. I let this guy walk away and I know I’m never gonna see him again. Nobody could guess how much I know about this guy, this sort of guy. The particulars may be different, but I can take a guess about the general way he’s been living. I bet there’s a girl somewhere, ruining her life just to be with him. Might be some girl leaving her kid alone in the dark just to be with him.
The day’s still beautiful when I’m done with work. I still got time to walk on my beach before the sun’s gone. I got time to be thankful for all that’s happened to me that’s taught me to never, ever look at that kind of man again.
The air’s soft tonight even with the coolness of winter coming on.
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What's so great about this is that by now you know your character so well, you know exactly how she will react to somebody like this man. You know just how Rawling's history plays into her present, what memories are triggered by what she sees day to day. You have totally come to inhabit her. Nice going!
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