with his eyes lowered. Ben seems literally smaller and certainly less powerful than he did in the chapel. The palm of his left hand is completely wrapped with white gauze and tape but still a little red seeps through.
Warden Tummelson asks, “So, Burne, you want to donate your kidney?”
“After next month I really won’t be needing ‘em, Warden. You can take ‘em both if you like.”
Tummelson studies Ben: his posture, his expression, his demeanor - all submissive.
“You think giving away your organs is going to relieve your conscience?”
“Nothing can do that. Living with myself is much harder than dying will be.”
Tummelson leans in and Ben can feel the warden’s breath on his face. “You don’t fool me, Burne. There isn’t a civilized cell in your entire pathetic body.”
“I saw the girl on the TV. Said she needed a kidney. Just thought she could have mine is all. Simple as that.”
“You deserve to suffer.”
Ben raises his repentant eyes to Tummelson and a tear forms, “I’m going to hell for eternity.”
The warden exchanges a look with Wilkins who shrugs. “Hell will be a picnic compared to what will happen to you, if I agree to this, and you try something.”
“There are no picnics in my future, Warden.”
Tummelson’s temples throb. He notices that his mouth is dry. Stress. He is pissed beyond rationality to be responsible for this decision. He glances over at Doctor Kim who takes that moment to hold up the picture of the girl.
“Maybe since you’re feeling so holy and contrite,” Tummelson asks, “you’d like to tell me where we can find your brothers.”
“If I knew I’d tell you. I live every day in fear that they will hurt someone else. If I could stop it, I would. But they, too, will answer to God in the end.”
“Right. Get him out of here. I need to think.”
Wilkins takes Ben by the arm and they leave the office.
Doctor Kim, “Warden, I do not see your conflict here.”
“Doctor, no offense, but you have no idea what you’re asking.”
Doctor Kim walks over to Tummelson’s desk and tosses the picture on it. The young woman’s face smiles up at him.
“This is Jennifer Booker. She has three children under seven. Look at this while you’re thinking it over.” Then, he leaves too.
* * *
Chapter Four
“Yeah, well you’re so ugly when you walk past ‘em, flowers die,” Jimmy teases his best friend.
Alan counters, “Yeah, well you’re so ugly you make my cat throw up.”
“Yeah, well, you’re so ugly your mom has to tie a pork chop around your neck so the dog will play with you.”
The two-story Kraft home pulses with relatives celebrating Jimmy’s birthday. Nine-year-old Jimmy is stringy: his legs are spurting out of his body with so much speed his weight cannot keep up. He looks like an egret, all limbs and long neck. At the rate he is growing, his own arm length is constantly changing, and so, he knocks over nearly everything he reaches for; one day last week, a frustrated mother volunteer, at school, called him clumsy and Alison got mad. She explained to Jimmy (within the woman’s hearing) that if her arms were longer every single week she’d misjudge things, too. “Jimmy, your dad is six-foot three-inches tall, so you are definitely on your way up, kiddo.”
Classic rock pours out of speakers all through the home. Every room is wired for sound; it was the only thing that was important to Hank. The two-story bungalow is brightly lit and the rooms are alive with arguments, tall tales, and laughter. Uncles tell the stories they have told for decades, and laugh in all the same places; some teens pay attention to the stories for the first time, and without meaning to, become tomorrow’s carriers of the family’s oral tradition. The littler cousins, in a never-ending loop of catch-me-if-you-can, and looking like chipmunks, dart from the warmly upholstered family room of rich gold and red hues into the petite dining room, barely clearing the legs of Alison’s antique French reproduction table. And while Aunt Ruth constantly yells at them to slow down, sit down, calm down, Alison never does. She notices this evening that they look exactly like the DVD she played for her class today of the lion cubs socializing in the Maasai Mara. This is the Kraft pride - the tribe she married into and it has been tricky. She can decide the course of her own friendships, she can even turn away from her own family, if she chooses