ploy, which Thomas never would have bought, and now people are dead and Ben is loose. He stomped around the department yelling obscenities and ready to shoot the warden and the doctor for criminal stupidity.
Thomas speaks insistently into the cruiser’s radio, “Nope, takin’ ‘em home.”
The voice on the other end of the radio sounds stressed, “Thomas, Chief wants to see them at the station.”
“I said I’m taking them home. Out.”
Hank and Alison feel a surge of gratitude toward him. All they want is to go home.
“If you guys get a chance to jot down some notes, and things you remember, ‘cause we’re tracking Ben Burne right now and that’d help me out some with my boss. You, know, whatever you remember exactly.”
“I remember everything exactly.” Alison says sadly, as she looks off at the passing scenery. “Forgetting won’t be a problem.” Hank wraps his arms around Alison and Jimmy. They lean their heads in together and in a cocoon of their own bodies, they block out the world.
Half an hour later, they pull up in front of their home. News vans are parked on the street in front and several cameramen and reporters leap out and race toward them as the police car pulls into the driveway.
“Can’t you get rid of them?” Hank asks distraught.
“They gotta right.” Thomas shrugs.
“What about our rights?”
“You can keep ‘em off your property. That’s about it.”
They get out of the car. The reporters surge forward.
Thomas yells, “Back it up! Back!”
The four of them hurry toward the front door. The reporters yell Alison’s name repeatedly and she holds her palms over her ears as she runs inside. Once inside the foyer, Hank slams the door. Alison runs upstairs. Jimmy follows. They crawl into her big bed together, pull up the covers, and lie completely swept up into the sweet comfort of home. Hank is alone in the foyer with Thomas.
“My family is not public property.”
“Tell me about it,” he agrees sarcastically.
Hank goes to the front windows in the living room and starts pulling all the drapes shut. Reporters use their telephoto lenses to shoot right into his house and pictures of him closing the drapes hit the press.
“She’s suffering. We need privacy.”
“I can put a unit in front and keep them off your grass that’s about all unless they break the law.”
“This is harassment!”
“They call it news now. The public eats this stuff up.”
“What can we do?”
“Stay inside until it blows over and it will blow over.”
For the next three days, Alison and Jimmy stay in her bed. They soak Alison’s wounds in hydrogen peroxide and then coat them with Neosporin. Her bruises turn purple and yellow. Jimmy takes a colored pencil and makes a circle around one of them and adds petals so it looks like a flower. She smiles and tells him it’s beautiful. They watch mindless cartoons, and eat in bed, which Jimmy knows was never allowed before.
Meanwhile, Hank fumes about the relentless dogs of the press outside. The “I’m a mother” comment leaked to a reporter and made front-page headlines. Then, it turned up on T-shirts by day two. The NRA immediately started a new website called “Mother-loaded.” Jay Leno and David Letterman wove it into their monologues. Jon Stewart made fun of Leno and Letterman for weaving it into their monologues. Hank held onto his rage with a slippery grip, after everything they’d been through, to be subjected to this was heartless. What gave them the right to stalk them, to badger her, to hang around their yard, to peek in their windows, to talk to the neighbors, to follow their car? She is wounded. She is a victim. All three of them are victims. They are forever changed. Hank sees his life sliced into two finite sections - before and after. Before, he believed in a god and in goodness. Before, he believed in fairness and in human decency. Now, he believes there is a brutality beyond reason, and that it survives on the bloody edges of life, and there is a society of sofa slugs, whose lives are so tedious, they find that brutality entertaining.
On Monday, their neighbors Pam and Jessie fought their way through the frenzied group of reporters to deliver casseroles so that the Krafts didn’t have to leave the house to shop. Hank passed a few words with them in the living room, but Alison never came downstairs. She can’t chitchat. She can’t talk about it and she can’t talk about anything else. The casseroles unnerved