Utopian Day (6 page)

James took the pills and the water, doing as he was
instructed before handing the empty glass back to the EMT. Tony
offered his hand to James.

“
Name's Tony.”

James shook his hand without saying anything. Tony
continued.

“
The edge of the headache will
wear off in about fifteen minutes if you're like most.” He nodded
towards a chair by the door where a plastic bag was placed. “Your
clothes are in there. You'll need to wash them. The body loses
bladder control when the shock hits. There are some scrubs
underneath the bag you can wear back to your room to
change.”

“
What's going to happen to
me?”

“
You mean are you going to be
shipped out of here? No worries. Everything is caught on video
around here. It was clear you didn't start anything and tried to
get out of the situation. You're good to go.”

“
What about Laura?” James
whispered, trying not to agitate his throbbing head any more than
necessary.

“
Well, that's another story. The
docs will decide that. She's obviously one ticked off lady. I give
her a 50/50 chance either way. They really don't want to send
anyone home if they can avoid it. Makes them and the program look
bad. I'll come back in ten to escort you back to town.”

Laura had woken up in a hospital bed. The first
thing she’d noticed besides the intense headache was that her hands
and feet were in restraints. A few minutes after she’d woken up,
Tony had come in and offered her two migraine pills, putting them
in her mouth and giving her a drink through a straw. It had been
about thirty minutes since then. She wondered what was going to
happen next. A few minutes later, Sheila, the women's staff
counselor, came in the room and sat down beside her on the bed.
Laura looked out the window, not wanting to look Sheila in the
face.

“
I know I blew it,” Laura
said.

“
You think?” Sheila responded. She
waited for Laura to continue.

“
I just couldn't stand him hitting
on me like that.”

“
So that's what it was, was
it?”

Sheila waited again for Laura to speak. Laura's eyes
started to tear up, and when she spoke next, there was a different
kind of pain in her voice.

“
I miss him. I miss him so
much.”

“
It's not James' fault, you
know.”

“
I know. But every time I see him,
I think of Paul and how Paul should be here instead of
him.”

“
So you turned your anger about
Paul's death onto James.”

“
Yeah. I guess I did.”

“
Did it help?”

There was a long pause. Tears were slowly making
their way down Laura's cheeks. She began moving her head from side
to side.

Sheila let out a long sigh before she continued.

“
I'm going to try to keep you
here, Laura, but you have to promise me you won't do something like
this again.”

Laura turned and looked at Sheila.

“
O.k.,” she replied.

Sheila placed a motherly hand on Laura's forehead
and smoothed the hair to one side that had fallen down over Laura's
eyes before turning to leave. As she was heading out the door,
Laura spoke.

“
Sheila?”

Sheila stopped and turned towards the bed,
“Yes?”

“
Thanks for not giving up on
me.”

Sheila smiled slightly and nodded at Laura before
turning and walking out the door.

Chapter Eleven

James worked steadily in doing his part on the
assembly line, but his mind was somewhere else. His job was simple
enough that he could perform it while thinking on other things
without too much chance of making a mistake. During a break at the
water cooler as he leaned against a wall, away from the others,
J.T. wandered over in his direction.

“
What's on your mind?” J.T.
inquired.

James' eyes were staring off into space and J.T.'s
question brought his focus back into the room. “Just thinking about
stuff,” he replied.

“
Look, if you don't want to talk,
fine by me, just tell me and I'll buzz off. But if you want to get
something off of your chest, I can listen,” J.T.
continued.

“
This whole thing... being here in
Utopia... I've had some time to think about my life. The
counseling, the reading, all of it.... I guess I have a different
perspective now than I did when I came here.”

“
How's that?” J.T.
responded.

James started shaking his head from side to side as
he continued. “I've made a lot of stupid mistakes. I've been doing
it all wrong.”

“
What exactly do you mean by
that?”

“
I've been living life wrong. When
my mom died, I was angry. I took it out on everybody and I didn't
listen to the people who tried to help me. I let that anger lead me
to a bad place and did some really stupid things. I took what I
wanted because I thought I deserved it and I had the power to take
it. I never thought about what my actions might be doing to
somebody else... and now I'm here... in prison.... I don't want to
live that way anymore.”

“
Well, James,” J.T. replied, “you
don't have to. You can learn to live a different way. You know, you
and I are a lot alike. Before I was convicted, I lived in much the
same way you described. I took what didn't belong to me because I
thought I deserved it and I had the ability to take it. Then I came
here. It took me a few years being here and soaking up the lessons
of this place before I began to get it. But when I did, it wasn't
long before I came to the same conclusion you just did. Since then,
I've been working my program as best I can, and I can tell I'm
really changing on the inside, where it counts. You can change,
too, James.”

The automated voice came over the speakers.

“
Now is the time to return to your
workstation... Now is the time to return to your
workstation.”

James went back to work and, for the rest of the
day, he kept thinking about what J.T. had said and about that
twelve step statement he heard in the first group session he'd
attended:
We admitted we were powerless over our destructive,
compulsive behaviors and that our lives had become
unmanageable.
He wasn't certain how he could change, but he was
sure of one thing; his life had certainly become unmanageable and
he wanted to do whatever it took to learn to live a better way.

Later that evening at the library, James sat down at
the computer terminal and prepared to take his first book exam. He
had read up on the process in the manual the night before in his
room. After reading whatever book the prisoner chose, he or she had
to complete an online assessment to prove they had actually read
the book. The test was to be comprised of four multiple choice
questions and a short answer question at the end, asking what they
had learned from reading the book. He punched in his user ID and
password as they had been printed in the manual, then punched in
the code on the back of the book he had been reading. The questions
popped up on the screen:

When Benjamin Franklin was twelve years old, what
profession did he begin:

__ Candle-maker

__ Printer

__ Painter

__ Farmer

James selected 'Printer' and moved on to the next
question.

About the year 1730, Benjamin Franklin started the
first one of these in the American colonies:

__ Newspaper

__ Insurance company

__ Public library

__ Firearms manufacturer

James was fairly certain it was either 'newspaper'
or 'public library'. He was glad this was an open book test. After
spending a few minutes thumbing through the book, he located the
answer. He selected 'public library', and continued to the next
question.

Which of the following are descriptions that
Franklin gave among his list of thirteen virtues:

__ “Speak not but what may benefit others or
yourself; avoid trifling conversation.”

__ “Lose no time; be always employ'd in something
useful; cut off all unnecessary actions.”

__ “Wrong none by doing injuries, or omitting the
benefits that are your duty.”

__ All of the above.

He thumbed through the book for a few minutes and
eventually found the section where the thirteen virtues were
listed. He found all of the quotations on the same page and
selected 'all of the above' from the list of answers.

Benjamin Franklin started the first one of these in
Philadelphia:

__ A fire station named “Union Fire Company”

__ A restaurant named “The Golden Eagle Tavern”

__ A hunting club named “Foxglove Hunting Club”

__ A gambling club named “The Gaming Diversions
Association”

He selected the fire station and continued to the
last question.

What have you learned by reading this book:

James looked at the last question and sat back in
his chair. After some consideration, he leaned in towards the
monitor and began pecking out his response on the keyboard:

Benjamin Franklin started life out without much
education. He read a lot, tried to learn as much as he could that
would help him move ahead in life, and didn't spend much time
getting angry over things other people did to him that were wrong.
He also did a lot of things that helped other people. I would like
to be more like him in the future.

When he was done typing his answer, James clicked on
the “submit answers” icon on the screen. Immediately, his score
flashed in front of him:

Congratulations! You scored 100%

He smiled to himself. “That wasn't so bad,” he
thought. He looked up at the clock on the wall. He still had
forty-five minutes left before they were sent back to their rooms
for the night. He picked up the journal that Dr. Thompson had given
to him during their first session together. He flipped to the page
where he had written down the title of the book that Dr. Thompson
had recommended he read next,
Some Fruits of
Solitude
by William Penn.

He selected the library catalog program on the
computer and typed in the book title, locating the book location
code and writing it down in his journal. Then he went and found the
book on the shelf. It was another thin book, which made him wonder
what Dr. Thompson was thinking about his reading abilities.

He pulled the book off of the shelf and found a good
spot to begin reading. It was a bit difficult at first because some
of the words the author used had been spelled differently back when
the book was written. It caused him to read more slowly than usual.
However, it wasn't long until he read something that hit him like a
ton of bricks. He read it again and again, letting it soak in to
his mind. Then he opened up his journal and began copying the words
down so he could read them again later:

We understand little of the works of God, either in
nature or grace. We pursue false knowledge, and mistake education
extreamly. We are violent in our affections, confused and
immethodical in our whole life; making that a burthen, which was
given for a blessing; and so of little comfort to ourselves or
others; misapprehending the true notion of happiness, and so
missing of the right use of life, and way of happy living.

And till we are perswaded to stop, and step a little
aside, out of the noisy crowd and incumbering hurry of the world,
and calmly take a prospect of things, it will be impossible we
should be able to make a right judgement of our selves, or know our
own misery. But after we have made the just reckonings which
retirement will help us to, we shall begin to think the world in
great measure mad, and that we have been in a sort of bedlam all
this while.

Reader, whether young or old, think it not too soon
or too late to turn over the leaves of thy past life. And be sure
to fold down where an passage of it may affect thee; and bestow thy
remainder of time, to correct those faults in thy future conduct;
be it in relation to this or the next life.

- quote from the preface of
Some
Fruits of Solitude, In Reflections and Maxims
- by William
Penn, published in 1682

James must have read the passage about ten times in
all. He began thinking about the conversation with J.T., the group
sessions, the one-on-one session with Dr. Thompson, and about where
his own thoughts had been leading him recently. He was beginning to
realize that it was all a pattern. It was all guiding him to a
destination.

He thought back in his life and recounted the
direction he had been taking – the wrong direction. He remembered
how even then there had been those in his life who had tried to
direct him along the right path. But he was too busy, too angry, or
too distracted to really understand that he was in desperate need
of the direction that was being offered to him. Now, here in this
place, he was being given a second chance. He wasn't sure why they
had selected him for this program, but he wasn't going to let this
opportunity slip by. He decided that whatever it took, he was going
to leave this place a changed man... a man changed for the
better.

Chapter Twelve

As he ascended the New York brownstone's steps,
Silas McGruder had disturbing thoughts. He thought of what he was
about to do and who he was about to do it for. He thought of his
wife of twenty years and his teenage son. He thought of their quiet
suburban life in New Jersey and their plans to eventually retire in
Florida. He thought of how his gambling had put a strain on their
marriage and put all of those plans in jeopardy.