Restitution

...justice for Joannie

Because maybe your eyes will be glued shut.

It’s prom night, 1982, and you’re lying in a broken dream on the edge of the asphalt with gravel in your mouth, your face, an open wound.

You wince, and squeeze your eyes shut, squeeze them hard, to force out the blood and grit, until finally, you see something, a body in the road, a person looking back at you, it’s Joannie, smeared across the centerline up ahead.

Look at her there. Glamorous, elegant, Joannie lying perfectly still.

Resplendent Joannie, luminous Joannie, glowing beneath the soft light of the acorn-shaped streetlamp suspended high above her silent, delicate frame. Joannie

Look at Joannie. How tragic. Finally in the spotlight, but unable to enjoy it. Joannie.

She lived for this. Joannie. She adored the spotlight, and you want it so badly for her.

“You should see yourself, Joannie.”

You need to see it.

You have it all to yourself, Joannie.

“Joannie!”

Bang! you’re wide awake, bug-eyed, gasping for air, trapped, twisted in your sweat-soaked sheets. Bang! bang! bang! bang!

Your heart, bang! bang! bang! bang! pounds so hard and so loud, bang! bang! Bang! bang! you’re sure the neighbors are sick of hearing it.

You’re sick of hearing it.

Everyone is sick of hearing it. Hearing you. Seeing you.

You make everyone sick.

“You’ll never drive again,” the judge declared.

“And you will never leave this town,” she ordered. “Let alone the state. Never mind the country.”

“No, you can never leave,” she said.

And where would you go?

So, no. You won’t go anywhere.

Except to work every day and to the post office once a month, no later than the 6th of the month.

You work every day of the week to fill your time and occupy your mind because your mind only wants to see Joannie lying there, so dramatic in that lonely spotlight. Joannie.

The work is hard, but it suits you.

You work alone mucking stalls, collecting fecal-matted, urine-soaked straw. You groom animals and tend to their needs. It grounds you.

It’s good to be needed—even if it’s only the pigs, goats, and chickens who’ll have you.

The post office is the other place you go. You go there every month, no later than the 6th of the month.

You shuffle through town, past the hardware store, the barber, the bank, then hobble up three short limestone steps, 1, 2, 3, as real people bustle by your slow crippled body.

You drag yourself through the front door and limp past the American flag.

Shuffle along. Head down to avoid the glares. Joannie.

When it’s your turn, you hobble to the counter and politely ask, “May I have a money order for one US dollar, please?”

“That’ll be three fourteen,” she sneers with all the Federal boredom she can spare.

She’s so bored with you.

Three dollars and fourteen cents for a one-dollar money order sent by certified mail. Always certified mail.

$3.14 for a one-dollar money order. Like 3:14 am, when Joannie was pronounced DOA, dead on arrival, DIF, dead in the field, BID, brought in dead, DRT, dead right there.

Those are the terms.

“Don’t forget”

“Don’t forget your receipt,” she sneers.

Disgusted with you, she sneers. “Don’t forget your receipt.”

“Don’t forget.”

That’s what her father said. Those were his words.

"Don't forget!" Wagging his long, bony finger from the witness stand. "Don't you forget! Don't you ever forget!"

He stood, turned to face the judge and spoke:

"Your Honor, I beg of you, please—please do not send this scoundrel away to some prison where tax payers will feed and clothe him. Do not send him away where he and his sins will be forgotten along with what he did to my little girl.”

“No, Your Honor, please. I beg of you. That is not justice.”

“Instead, keep him here, right here in our small town where we can look upon him with disgust each day and remember who he is, who my daughter was, and who she may have become if it were not for his heinous, murderous acts.”

Raising his long, bony finger to the heavens he went on.

“I've set up a foundation, Your Honor, a trust for the victims of drunken devils like him. Keep him here, Your Honor. Let him work, earn a wage, and contribute to the community he destroyed and to contribute a portion of his weekly earnings to Joannie’s trust.”

“Please understand, Your Honor. It’s not his money that I want. No.”

“No, I want this scoundrel to remember.”

He turned to you, his eyes burning with a pain you could never comprehend.

“One dollar!” he bellowed. “One dollar each week for the rest of your life so you will remember my daughter and what you did to her.”

The judge nodded. "So ordered. One dollar each week, payable to the Joannie Hawthorne Foundation, for the remainder of the defendant's natural life."

'Bang!' the gavel echoed through the courtroom.

So that’s how it is

So that’s how it is and that’s how it’s been. Every month, for the last seventeen years, no later than the 6th of the month, you hobble to the post office, purchase your one-dollar money order for $3.14, and send it to the Joannie Hawthorne Foundation along with a self-addressed stamped envelope, and you wait.

You wait for the return envelope to arrive and you carefully open it to retreive your payment receipt and you neatly file it away.

It’s important, your payment receipt, and you keep them all in order because your probation officer drops by to check, and you go straight to jail if you miss any payments.

So, you wait for the return envelope to arrive, as it always does. About ten days for the envelope to arrive, and yet you're always surprised each and every time.

Surprised by how dirty, smudged, and wrinkled it is. Like it’s been abused, roughed up, trampled. Run over.

And the address, scrawled with your own crippled hand, how it buckles your knees and sickens your belly as everything comes flooding back as your eyes well up with tears. Joannie.

“No one knows, Joannie.”

Because maybe you loved her and she didn’t care.

Because maybe she was right when she took your keys, called you a drunken loser, then wandered off with Jimmy and Steve. The three of them laughing together, humiliating you in front of everyone.

Did you love her? I mean really love her?

Because if you really loved her, you would have been there to stop her.

But instead, you walked away, walked for home, walked alone along that dark, twisted road.

She came looking for you, you know. She came for you.

The one and only time you truly had her attention, and you killed her.

She was in your car, after all.

“No one knows, Joannie.”

“Here’s your receipt,” the mailman grunts in disdain.

“Your receipt,” he grunts.

You take the crumpled envelope from the mailman’s hurried hand and retreat back into your dingy one-room apartment.

You tear open the envelope, unfold and smooth out your payment receipt and there, in the corner, you notice something.

A tiny heart drawn in blue ink. ♡

You blink. Rub your blurry eyes. Look again.

The heart’s still there.

You crumple the receipt, throw it away.

You're seeing things. You must be. You try to put it out of your mind.

But next month, it happens again. This time, a smiley face :-)

Small. Discreet. But unmistakably there.

Months pass. The receipts change. A flower sketch in May. A penciled "Hang in there" in June.

The faint scent of lavender in August.

"No one knows, Joannie."

Except...

You don't deserve it. You know you don't.

But every month, you find yourself looking forward to the receipt, hating yourself for it, and yet wondering what you might find.

"Here's your receipt," the mailman grunts, same as always.

But this time, as you take it, your eyes meet. And for a split second, you swear you see something there—something… human.

Maybe, just maybe, you're not alone in this world after all.

Maybe someone does know.

---

Hey, it’s me 👋 Paul.

This is part of a larger storyline I’ve been tinkering with.

What do you think? Is it worth exploring?

Thanks for reading. I really appreciate your feedback.

I love you guys! 🤗

-Paul ♥️