Tenderness

by Robert Cormier

  Twenty years later he witnessed another clean-cut, well-mannered boy being questioned about murder. This time, the suspect readily admitted killing his mother and stepfather. He told his story in straightforward fashion, matter-of-factly. He answered all the questions politely, as if eager to assist the police in their investigation.

  Jake Proctor studied Eric Poole carefully as he displayed the scars on his arm, the bruise that remained from the fracture. Later, as he posed for the cameras, a wistful smile appeared on Eric’s face, a smile that told the world he was trying to disguise the pain within him. News photographers could not resist that wan, pitiful smile.

  But Jake Proctor saw another kind of smile on Eric’s lips after he had been brought back to his cell to await the next day’s arraignment. Precautions had been taken against a suicide attempt, the boy stripped of belt, shoelaces, anything that could be used to harm himself. His movements were observed by a camera mounted in a corner high on the wall of his cell. For some reason, Jake Proctor turned back to the cell after letting the others go on before him. He could not shake the feeling that Eric Poole was not what he seemed to be. All his answers had been too pat, almost as if they had been rehearsed. Glancing into the cell, he saw that Eric had turned his back to the camera, was holding his face in his hands, cupping his chin with his fingers. And he was smiling—that same smirk of satisfaction he had observed on that other boy’s face so long ago. A smile of secret triumph, as if he had played a trick on the entire world and was enjoying it now in solitude.

  Jake Proctor went to the files, brought up on the computer the case of Laura Andersun, whose body had been found in woods near a mall less than three miles from Eric Poole’s home. Another file disclosed a girl by the name of Betty Ann Tersa, visiting locally from Los Angeles, reported missing three months ago. Despite the burns and the fractured arm, there’d been no doubt that Eric Poole had murdered his mother and stepfather in cold blood. No remorse had appeared in his eyes as he admitted to the crime. Were Laura Andersun’s murder and Betty Ann Tersa’s disappearance mere coincidences?

  Thus began Jake Proctor’s investigation and later his visits to the youth facility where Eric had been sent after appearing in court as a juvenile. All Jake Proctor’s experience and observations convinced him that Eric Poole was a serial killer, like an evil incarnation of that long-ago killer of those five children back in Oregon. The old cop did not believe in reincarnation but he believed his instincts and vowed silently to put an end to Eric Poole’s grotesque career one way or another.

  The ringing of the telephone interrupted his thoughts, and Jake Proctor placed his teacup on the table.

  As expected, Pickett was on the line. Jimmy Pickett was young and ambitious, passing his first year in the detective division assigned to Jake Proctor. He’d become the legs of the old cop. He called Jake every morning shortly after seven. To make sure I’m alive, Jake told him. But actually to bring him up to date on overnight reports before Jake left for the office.

  “Two more days to go, Lou,” Pickett said, using the traditional shortened version of Lieutenant. “Think it will happen today?”

  “If not today, tomorrow,” Jake said. “Or sometime.”

  “Suppose it doesn’t?” asked Pickett, a natural worrier whose teenage acne still lingered on his face. “What do we do?”

  Jake sighed but his ancient heart kicked in, energized by the thought of Eric Poole as his quarry. “We wait,” he said. “Another day, another plan.”

  Pickett, too, sighed. “Okay,” he said, resignation in his voice.

  Jake Proctor knew how it was to be young and eager and wanting immediate action, now, at this moment.

  “Be patient, Jimmy,” he said. “Be patient.…”

  Jake Proctor, old cop, had been patient for twenty years.

  Eric Poole did not dream. His sleeping hours were a blank. He closed his eyes at night and plunged instantly into the nothingness of sleep, and woke up just as suddenly, eyes flying open to greet another day, a day without either hope or hopelessness. His three years at the facility had been a procession of such days. Now, only three more remained, and he found it difficult to realize that his freedom was at hand.

  He had known at the moment he removed his mother and Harvey from this world that he faced a certain number of years without freedom. He also knew that he was providing himself with protection. Protection from what? From doing what he had done to those three girls, although Lieutenant Proctor, smart as he was, and not as easy to fool as everybody else, thought there were only two. True, he had surprised Eric when he brought up the names of Laura Andersun and Betty Ann Tersa, but the old cop didn’t have the slightest knowledge of a girl named Alicia Hunt, who had been the most beautiful of them all.

  Eric knew he had been pursuing a dangerous course with the girls, taking too many risks, too often. Finally, he’d found it necessary to call a halt. Temporarily, of course. He enjoyed looking older than his age and could pass easily for seventeen or eighteen. But he also had the disadvantages of being underage. No driver’s license, no source of income. He knew that he was riding for a fall, certain to trip himself up if he continued on his present course. As a result, the murders of his mother and Harvey would serve several purposes. He’d get rid of a stepfather whom he hated fiercely and a mother who had taken this stranger into their home. He’d also carry out a long-range plan. The plan evolved from news stories in which he learned that the state allowed kids to be tried as juveniles when they committed serious crimes, even murder, if there was evidence of child abuse. Which meant freedom after reaching the age of eighteen. He also became aware of efforts being made to try juveniles as adults for those same crimes. Or to extend juvenile sentences to the age of twenty-one.

  Eric saw the logic of carrying out the murders as soon as possible, before the law could be changed. He’d be sacrificing about three years of his life for fifty or sixty later years when he’d be free to do as he pleased.

  What a bargain, he sang to himself, as he thought now of Harvey and his mother. Their murders were carried out in businesslike fashion, without passion or regret, but he experienced a thrill in his bones when Harvey looked into his eyes at the final moment and realized what was happening. “Goodbye, Harvey,” Eric murmured, watching the light of life fading in Harvey’s pupils. The moment was without tenderness but had its own special kind of beauty.

  After a few months at the facility, Eric was surprised when he experienced longing for the first time in his life, a longing for tenderness made more intense because it was impossible to achieve here.

  Although he never dreamed, he spent sweet moments in his bed, curled up as if in his mother’s womb, eyes half closed, summoning from the past certain moments with his girls—Laura and Betty Ann and Alicia. Moments of intimacy and ecstasy and a piercing tenderness that became an ache within him. But a sweet ache, which he could not resist inviting into the pale thing his life had become. He found that he could interchange the girls in his memory and realized, for the first time, how much they resembled each other, how he was always drawn to girls who were tall and slender, with long dark hair and eyes that contained hidden promises only he could decipher. Alicia had been the most beautiful, tawny skin and thick hair tumbling to her shoulders, hair that made his pulse race and juices fill his mouth. He met her the weekend his mother and Harvey went to the coast of Maine for a brief vacation. Eric convinced them that he should stay home alone, counting on the knowledge that Harvey would prefer not to have Eric accompany them, anyway. Rules and regulations were posted on the refrigerator door, and Eric promised to abide by them. An hour after they left, Eric boarded a bus for Albany, New York, three and a half hours away. Purchasing a ticket required no identification, left no clues behind.

  He barely disguised himself, hair slicked back, horn-rimmed glasses he’d bought at a flea market earlier. Wearing the glasses gave him a dim headache and slightly blurred his vision but the blurring actually softened the harshness of things,
blunting the cutting edges of buildings, curbs, traffic signs, mirrors. In Albany he took a local bus to a town chosen at random because he liked the sound of the name. Haven. He timed his arrival with classes ending at Haven High School. Hung around, spotting at last the girl who turned out to be Alicia Hunt. It had been a simple thing to turn on The Charm, to lure her away from the school bus. She smelled delicious, something lemony and fresh, like long fields at springtime. His fingers trembled as he held her hand and she responded by leaning against him. He enjoyed answering her questions, making up a new, complete history of himself with another name altogether, Carlo Jones, son of a wild and tempestuous mother from South America and a father who was an accountant, of all things. “Oh, Carlo,” she had whispered in that secret place to which she brought him, a place where she went to dream her own dreams, away from the world of her everyday life. He had spent a wonderful hour with her as they explored each other with fumbled caresses and passionate kisses. Then those final minutes when he’d been overcome with tenderness. And a sadness, surprising, too, as he thought of Carlo Jones, wondering what it would be like to be someone else and not Eric Poole. Sensing someone nearby, he stilled, listening. The moment passed and he never thought of becoming Carlo Jones again. But he occasionally spent tender moments remembering Alicia Hunt.

  He did not indulge in his reveries too often in the facility, knowing the danger of too much desire, knowing that he had to postpone those longings. Instead, he immersed himself into the routine of the place, just as earlier he had adjusted himself to school and home, taking no pleasure in it but accepting the postponement of pleasure. In all the years he spent in the facility, only twice did he come close to achieving moments of tenderness.

  The first involved the mouse that began to visit him on a daily basis. He first discovered it after returning to his room following one of the countless workshops. Cute little thing. His first impluse had been to catch the visitor and dispatch it immediately. The mouse had invaded his private domain and should be executed. But he was also fascinated by the tiny animal. He looked at the furry exterior and imagined its tiny, fragile bones.

  It amused him to watch the mouse playing in the corner, small legs skittering as it sniffed the floor, the little rodent nose twitching at the air. He watched it disappear in a hole so tiny he was astonished as the mouse insinuated itself into it. That night, after dinner, he brought a bit of cheese back from the cafeteria, sprinkled broken bits in the corner. In the morning the cheese was gone. He smiled, the flesh of his face feeling strange. Realized he had not smiled in ages. Could not remember the last time he had smiled.

  He fed the mouse for the next few days, watched it cavort in the corner, surprised that it did not seem to gain weight. Maybe there was more than one mouse: they all looked alike, of course. The mouse became part of his routine, part of his life. One afternoon it did not show up and he waited. Paced the room. Glanced out the window at nothing. Tried to read but could not. The room seemed to have lost a certain essence that he could not pin down. Then knew suddenly what it was. The room was—lonely. For the first time in his life, he knew what loneliness was like. Until that moment the word had been meaningless to him.

  Unaccustomed to such an emotion, he leaped from his chair, wanting to leave, get out of here. But could not, of course. He went to bed that night without carrying out his usual routines: did not do his hundred push-ups, did not read the next chapter in the manual on martial arts he had bought surreptitiously from another prisoner, did not relive one of the bright moments of his life with one of his girls. Instead, he lay staring up at the ceiling, listening for the sounds of the mouse. But heard nothing.

  The mouse returned the next day. He found it nosing around the room when he got back from his last class of the day.

  Suddenly, the mouse stood still, as if becoming aware of his presence, stood on its two hind legs, sniffing, quivering nose pointed directly at him. He advanced toward it. The mouse did not move, awaited his coming. He moved stealthily forward, thrilled, recalling how he had moved toward Betty Ann this way. Betty Ann, like the mouse, had had no notion about what was going to happen.

  He reached out and snatched the tiny rodent, not surprised that it was so easy. It was as if the mouse knew its fate and was sacrificing itself. The pulse of the small body beat softly against the flesh of Eric’s palm. The nose twittered, the body twitched. Despite the loneliness that he knew would be the result of his actions, he gently, lovingly squeezed, seeking the tenderness.

  The mouse became still in his hand, the moment of tenderness swift and fleeting, almost nonexistent. Disappointed, he slipped the body into his pocket and flushed it down the toilet on his next visit to the bathroom. Felt no regret, felt nothing, as the rushing waters swallowed the mouse.

  The second time he sought the tenderness in the facility had been a complete failure. He had also placed himself in a risky situation. The incident involved the bully called Sonny Boy.

  There was always a bully on the premises, no matter where you went. Bullies in the schoolyard, in the school corridors, on the athletic fields. Bullies, too, in the facility, because bullies have a way of eventually screwing up. Bullies came in all shapes and sizes.

  Sonny Boy was thin, with pale skin and mild blue eyes. At fifteen, he was already a career criminal. But soft crimes, petty. Shoplifting, housebreaks, auto theft, although he was hardly tall enough to peer over a car’s steering wheel. He had finally been sent to the facility for attacking a teacher in sudden fury, holding a knife to the teacher’s throat. Eric heard the stories being passed around about Sonny Boy and shook his head in contempt.

  Sonny Boy’s cruelties were sly and slippery. Jostling, pushing, tripping. And intimidating, of course. All out of sight of the guards. Like all bullies, he had a gift for seeking out likely victims. As if a radar beam zoomed out of his eyes and focused on a target.

  Eric, observing at a distance as always, waited for Sonny Boy to find his victim. Just as bullies could be found everywhere, so could the victims. Some were obvious, could have been wearing KICK ME signs on their backs. Eric could name any of a dozen guys who fit the requirement of victim. He was surprised at Sonny Boy’s choice: Sweet Lefty Stanton, an affable, carefree kid who was the star pitcher on the facility’s baseball team, easygoing, quick to laugh at a joke, relaxed at all times. The least likely victim in the place because he stood over six feet tall and registered 180 pounds when he stepped on the scale. He spoke in a slow, unhurried drawl.

  Sonny Boy had evidently found a weakness, a vulnerable spot in Sweet Lefty’s character, because the slow-talking ballplayer submitted himself to Sonny Boy’s tricks and ruses.

  Still affable and easygoing, Sweet Lefty continued to win ball games as the team’s top pitcher and smiled modestly at the applause and approbation. But Eric observed a shadow crossing his face when Sonny Boy approached, saw his meek acceptance of Sonny Boy’s jokes and jibes. “You sound stupid when you open your mouth to speak, small brain.” He ran errands for Sonny Boy, returned his soiled dishes and utensils to the counter at mealtimes. Remained silent when Sonny Boy ordered, “Shut up.”

  Everyone accepted the situation without comment or intervention. You did not interfere with the actions of others, no matter how cruel or vindictive. Keep your distance. Don’t fight anyone else’s battles. Don’t even be curious about other prisoners, what they do and why they do it.

  His dislike of Sonny Boy tempted him to intervene, to use his reputation as a killer to intimidate the bully. But time ruled out any action. The calendar in his room had shown that less than a month remained before his freedom arrived. It would be stupid to become involved in someone else’s problem at this particular moment.

  Then: enter the Señorita. Who awakened all his desires and made him ache with his old longings.

  The facility was a coed institution, but males and females were not allowed contact with each other. According to the rules, that is. They shared the same cafeteria and gymnasium and
athletic field, but never simultaneously. They caught swift glimpses of each other on occasion, and the males were quick to call out to the girls, yelling obscenities or variations on what they would like to do to their female counterparts, in language that made Eric turn away in disgust. The raw language of the facility offended him. He did not use such words himself. Harvey, as bad as he was, had never sworn, and his mother had blessed herself whenever she heard anyone using swear words, especially that word beginning with F. The F word was as commonly used in the facility as salt and pepper on the dinner table. Eric had never used the F word.

  Prisoners at the facility learned to eat quickly, because mealtime sessions were only forty-five minutes long. Males first, females second. A fifteen-minute interval between the two sessions allowed the cafeteria to be cleaned up and prepared for the arrival of the girls. Eric supervised the prisoners who cleared the tables, wiped them clean, and swept the floor.

  Eric saw the Señorita for the first time at the end of the cleanup detail. He was about to leave after a final check of the job when the door to the female side opened unexpectedly and a girl walked in. She was tall and slender, long black hair cascading to her shoulders. Their eyes met and held.