“Special Prosecutor”

by Tony Trigilio

For punishment is directed above all at others, at all the potentially guilty.

– Michel Foucault

I am riding in the passenger side of a rusted GeoPrism that once must have been the color of Tang. Kenneth Starr driving, obviously very much in love with me. He tries too hard, beams every time he looks up at me no matter what I’m saying. His smile strains across his face, threatens to open a gash below his nose and rip the flesh from his cheeks. He hands me a green canvas satchel he just bought. I am supposed to be impressed. The satchel resembles one I use for teaching – green, canvas, practical, compact. Mine cost $14.95 at the university bookstore, but the price tag on his is $872.00.

*

I’m not sure why he’s taking us to Ohio, but I’m along for the ride. In the present moment. Deep listening.

*

This is very, very nice, I say, especially all these little pockets for pens & paper clips. Really, this is a fine bag. And look, you can put books in this compartment and they will be separate from papers, which you can put in this compartment.

He tilts his head toward me. Ken Starr’s toothy smile. When he smiles, his wire-rimmed glasses reach for his arching forehead. He scans me for a glimpse of reciprocation, but I direct my eyes back to the road. The dashed center line is painted orange. He drives carefully despite his anxiety to please me.

*

Look here, I tell him. I found a strong, netted section – perfectly sized for documents – hanging in the middle of the satchel, separated by two zippered compartments. I am a good listener, people-person, high emotional-intelligence quotient. Look at this, I say. Next time you take the President to court, you can put all your documents in this sack. What a nice bag you have here.

*

Always the firm handshake, I was taught, but don’t grip too long. I unzip a side pocket and an enormous garment bag – complete with clothes hangers – inflated itself from the side of the satchel. The garment bag is geometrically impossible. No way the satchel could hold a secret compartment this size. And even so, why would it be secret?

Let others break eye contact first.

It’s the eyes, don’t look at the lips. The eyes.

*

I can still remember Diane and Dave’s place after all these years. An elegant sprawling gabled farmhouse. It anchors an acre of southern Ohio corn. It was too big for them so they kept boarders. We thought about starting a commune. They took good care of the place but couldn’t keep the money straight from the boarders. They came to me with their problems and I listened. That’s what people do, it’s what you’re supposed to do. Don’t turn away your friends. If you can’t be honest with them, then who are you trying to fool? Diane and Dave keep their arms around me as we walk through their empty living room. They want to stay close to me, and for some reason I speak in low tones fearing eavesdroppers. In that hush I tell them Ken Starr is staying at their boarding house and I need to get away. They say nothing, their silence a mystery I’m content to leave unsolved. Their arms around me, they escort me into the kitchen, a huge converted gymnasium with rows of picnic tables. Migrant laborers, mostly men but a few women, squished at every table eating eggs and toast heaped on every plate. It’s clear to me that Diane and Dave’s house serves as a way station, an underground railroad of sorts. A cell in a network of fake identities, citizenship papers, resettlement. I look down at the floor as we speak. If someone sees this, maybe my gaze, downward and focused, can make the conversation look casual. It’s the secret force of well-being, it glides past obstacles in dreams and only perches, an unmoved sentry, when we’re awake. Everyone must see punishment not only as natural, but in his own interest; everyone must be able to read in it his own advantage. The floor is tiled as if someone half-gutted and nearly rehabbed a turn-of-the-century tenement. I imagine whole families living in rooms with no privacy but for blankets draped in thresholds where doors should be. Diane and Dave keep their heads down, too, with faked ease, vigilance concealed, with business as usual. We’ll watch his movements in the boarding house, we’ll watch so he doesn’t snuff out this settlement.