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A Thinking Man’s Criminal

Writer's picture: Timothy AgnewTimothy Agnew

Updated: 2 days ago


©20245 T. Agnew/craiyon.com
©20245 T. Agnew/craiyon.com

Lowell coreccional Institucion, inmate 394399


dear nathon:

please forgiv my bad english. i write you now. i see pictur in the newpaper and on televison. your soft eyes, i think, how you do this? i think you no guilty. i pray for you.

r. japoli.


You didn’t answer the first letter. You told Willie Q about it, though.


“Them little convict letter-writers, shit, they righteous,” he had said. “Some are bat-shit crazy, but some are luscious little vixens. Write her a letter, bro.”


You got very few letters in Lowell. Willie Q managed a few lines in his unintelligible scrawl, and his sister in Iowa wrote once chastising you about your failure of Jesus Christ. But then you started receiving random letters from R. Japoli.


The letters were always the same, black ink, smeared with sparse, broken English, and she spelled your name nathon.


The second letter arrived the following week:


Lowell coreccional Institucion, inmate 394399


dear nathon:

i tell you about me. i 39 year old. i from venezuela but i not happy live there no more. my husband jorge, he die last year (he have bad heart). now i alone and i write you. Why they say you do the crime? i think you not the man they say.

today my roses bloom, red and bright. very beautiful. i pick one for the table but you no here to eat with me. it rain now. you like rain? you come home soon? i wait for you.

r jopoli.


After the second letter, you began to fantasize about R. Jopoli. I wait for you. You’d close your eyes to see her dancing in a nun’s veil wearing a blue thong.


So you wrote her:


Dear R. Jopoli:

Thank you for writing me and believing in truth. Whats your first name? Yes, I “come home” and get out of here in six months. Yes, I like roses and rain, and I see us dancin in a downpour, with rose pedals on the ground where we walk. Blues my favorite colorr. Ill come to dinner soon.

Nathan


P.S. I didn’t do it.


After weeks of letters, you wonder if it’s a man disguising himself just to fuck with you, or maybe it was a nemesis, a dead guy’s dumb family getting revenge. Still, you were grateful for the letters and admitted it didn’t matter who wrote them.

Then you received a letter that smelled like roses and included a photo of R. Jopoli bending over a flowerbed in a sundress:


Lowell coreccional Institucion, inmate 394399


dear nathon:

my name ramona. thing in my country very bad now. the new eleccion is same demon. i think you in prison is same like live in my country. that why i come here to us state. I come visit you soon.

r jopoli


You hit the jackpot, you told Willie Q. I come visit you soon.


Six months later here you are on your knees at a rest stop off I-10, raking through the overgrown St. Augustine grass with your fingers, looking for the ring she threw, the 4-carat, $45,000 ring you planned to pawn and replace with a cheaper version that Willy Q said he could get, all part of your brilliant plan to get to Key West, when she is upon you.


People walk dogs and shuffle from cars to the pavilion, and you notice a kid watching you, entertained by the drama. Where the hell are his parents? He’s got an official NFL Buffalo Bills hat, his brown hair escaping from the front and sides like waves. You glare at him until he looks away.


“I remember your first letter,” you say up at her, angling for sentimentality.


She appears mammoth, like a dark prehistoric beast vignetted in the sun.

From this angle, you’ve gained a new perspective of her body. Her legs, yes long, but in this light, muscular vessels that scream from the earth as though she were a goddess reborn.


You have a brief vision of how they once wrapped around your shoulders when things were good, when she left her heels on, let the tips of them rip into your skin.


Her skin! You gained a new perspective of that organ, too, enigmatic and emblazoned with dark pores, like a velvet leather saddle. She is an elegant horse, you think, squinting your eyes up, a dark angry mare.


Her hands, clawed at her hips, appear ferocious. The nails, too, pink and purple and green with intricate enamel engraving edged and perfect, the way they dug in and left bleeding tracks along your back and ass, how you looked over your shoulder at the mirror in the morning and it made you grin like a high school kid for days.


Her body shifts and eclipses the sun for a moment, then she weights the other hip and it blinds you, the brightness of the morning bursting through her coiffed hair like the birth of a star.


You feel foolish down on your bad knees with your filthy hands combing the grass. Your face is filthy, too, and you cannot wait to wash it and apply your Con-Men Sonic 2 Face Cleanser and Toner and Moisturizer. Even if it is at a rest stop in the middle of Florida.


You had Willie Q bring you boxes of skincare stuff at Lowell and you pretended they were your brand, the brand you planned to start with Q in Key West, a brand of skincare products for incarcerated men.


But you needed the ring. You stare up at her and realize she’s taller than you and always has been.


“I call Danny,” she says. She turns on her heels and spins away from you, walking.


This is bad. This was not going as planned. You only had a day before you had to make the run to Key West to meet potential investors, sure, all ex-cons, but who you trusted.


Surely, Willie Q understands how uncertain love is. He was the one who told you to write her back. He called you a thinking man’s criminal because he believed in you. What would he think now?


You stand there and watch Ramona swing her hips toward the rest stop pavilion. Then you’re reminded that she is twenty years younger and you wonder how long you can keep up with her.


“Ramo,” you say as you come up behind her. Her pace is quick, her long legs pumping like a horse. Your knees ache as you try to match her pace, and soon you’re breathing in gasps. You reach out and hook your hand inside her elbow, and for a moment it’s as though she will drag you with her until she stops and spins to you.


“You promised me you go probation man, not miss any!”


Ramo. Danny knows,” (you lie), “I called him and explained.”


“You lie!”


“No, Ramo. This Con-Men Sonic thing with Willie Q is very important to us.”


“You go back to jail,” she says.


You’re a thinking man’s criminal.


The romantic sentiment didn’t work. She has her arms folded. You hear kids laughing on their way back to the car, a dog barking.


You realize you have to make a decision. You have to get control of the situation. You must be a thinking man’s criminal.


“Ramo, look at me,” you say.


“I look. Hijo de puta!”


Then R. Japoli lets you have it. Her palm feels like cement, all of her jewelry raking across your cheek like an oyster bed at low tide. The sting burns long after she’s made her strike, and her hand, having met its target, returns across her chest in defiance. She’s pouting now.


“Damn it,” you say.


She rocks her torso back and forth like a child.


You feel the anger rising inside your body, but you pat your burning face and smile. You decide to try one more time.


“Damn it, Ramo, my face. You know not to hit my face.” You have stepped back from her, out of her tentacle range.


“You say promise,” she says. “I toll you, no lies.”


“I know, I know, I know,” you say. “Let me find your ring and let’s go back to the car and talk about this.”


No volveré a meterme en ese horno,” she says. She’s not returning to the furnace car. You don’t blame her. The air doesn’t work, and this is Florida. What are you thinking?


“I’ll get you one of those fans at the next exit. You plug it into the lighter.”


But she has turned her beanstalk torso and begun walking away again. She is off the grass now and on the concrete, the click, click of her heels.


“Mister? Did that hurt?” The Buffalo Bills hat kid appears again.


Did that hurt? The little fucker.


You ignore the remark and return to the grassy sward and get down on your knees again. There is dog shit and wrappers and diet coke cans, but no ring. You look at the fenced retention pond and wonder if it has alligators so you can feed the kid to them.


The kid follows you and stands there watching. “She threw it further over there,” he says.


You freeze and look up at him. “Where?”


The kid stands there and points. “But it isn’t there anymore.”


You push yourself up and face the little shit. “Kid. Help me out here. Why isn’t it there anymore?”


“Because I gave it to the nice lady. The one who hit you.”


This infuriates you. “Listen to me kid,” you say as you stand. “This is not a game.”


Damn if the kid doesn’t cut and run. He’s headed to the pavilion, and he’s faster than you. Now you assume the kid has the ring. Why would he run?


Ramona is nowhere in sight as you enter the pavilion, but you see the kid standing next to a man amid a constant stream of truckers and families.


“That him?” says the man. He’s holding a phone to his ear.


The kid nods.


“Hey freak. You one of them? Like little boys?” he says.


You put your hands up. “This is a misunderstanding.”


“You chasing my nephew here is all I know. Called the cops.” The man steps forward.

“Look, the kid said he knew where my ring was.”


“I didn’t do anything. I told him I gave the ring to the lady,” says the kid. “But she left.”


“What ring?” says the Uncle.


“Left? Where?” you say to the kid.


“She got into one of those trucks with some guy.” He points to the trucker parking lot where endless rows of trailer trucks sit. “I think you upset her. My dad does it all the time.”


This advice from a kid makes you grin. You think of Key West and Willie Q and the Con-Men Sonic line of skincare.


You touch your face where it still stings and wonder if you’ll have permanent scars.




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