Punishment Read Free Page A

were from the same small place in Nova Scotia seemed to excite her curiosity. Maybe I was mildly flattered by this rare and unexpected show of interest in where I’d come from.
    “If we had a son,” she’d once said, after she’d become better acquainted with Strickland, “I’d have been happy with someone just like him. In any case, the way he turned out has everything to do with his family background. Discipline without love. Being adopted.”
    “Take him and everything he tells you with a grain of salt,” I’d warned her.
    I put the photo back in the drawer. The telephone saved me from another slide into the wasteland of remorse.
    The caller asked if I was Mr. Breau. I told him that I was. “
Tony
Breau?” he stressed, sounding friendly. I confirmed it by staying on the line.
    He told me that his name was Sullivan, Stanley Sullivan, and that he was a lawyer representing Dwayne Strickland.
    I said I was acquainted with his client. Sullivan then proceeded to assure me that he was calling me at Dwayne’s request. Strickland wanted to reconnect, given all our history.
    “It’s all behind me now and I’d like to leave it there,” I said.
    “I understand,” he said. “But I think you were friends.”
    Naïveté annoys me. “I know him,” I said at last. “We both grew up around here and we had some other things in common. We talked occasionally when he was inside but the relationship was hardly personal. Given my line of work, ‘friend’ would be a bit of an overstatement.”
    “Whatever the relationship was,” Sullivan said, “even if you weren’t friends, you were friendly. Let’s say he respects you. And for people with his background it’s rare to see respect for someone in the so-called system. He’d like to talk to you. That’s why I’m calling.”
    “Did he tell you what he wants to talk about?”
    “You’ve heard about the allegation, the death of the young woman. I think he’d like to present his version of events. He said he wants to tell you exactly what happened.”
    “And why would I believe him?”
    There was a pause, then he said, “It would be as much for my benefit as his. Given your history with him and your background I think it might be helpful to hear him tell it again. There might be small details, even inconsistencies.”
    “From my point of view,” I said, “I’m not sure what I could contribute.”
    “Mr. Breau, you and I have been around long enough to understand these kinds of situations.”
    “He got himself in a jam. He wants to get out of it. There’s really nothing I can do.”
    “Look. It’s my job to help him deal with his predicament. How to do that isn’t clear yet. Do we go for broke or cut our losses …”
    “Around here he’s already guilty …”
    “I don’t give a shit about ‘around here.’ He’s innocent until the system says otherwise. So will you help or not?”
    “Let me think about it.”
    “Here’s my number,” he said. “We don’t have a whole lot of time.”
    I wrote down the number, thanked him, said goodbye. I’ve learned from long experience the peril of a hasty answer to a lawyer or a con.
    After hanging up the phone I reopened the desk drawer, looked again at the photograph of Strickland and my former wife, then slammed it shut again. I stared for a while through my living room window at the sunny afternoon. It was a surreal vista of bucolic loveliness, the amber fields, the blue sea glittering.
    I first met Anna at an evening class at Queen’s. I remember it was sociology. I was still a CX-2, a guard, and after nearly twenty years, nearing burnout. My long-term ambition had always been to upgrade my career. Now or never, I decided, then signed up for classes.
    She was trying to enrich an undergraduate degree to improve her chances of getting into law school. We were both olderthan the others so we’d often sit together and during breaks share little insights over coffee and, over time, bits of personal