John Gilstrap - Nathan’s Run

Denise made the “okay” signal to Enrique through the window. Robert was a live one.

“So where does that leave us with this kid, Nathan Bailey? What should we do with him?”

“Honestly?”

“Of course. Nothing but the truth on my show. That’s the first rule?’

“Honestly, I don’t have a problem executing him. He killed a prison guard, for crying out loud. If he’s tried as a juvenile, he’ll be out in nine years, if not before, but that guard’ll still be dead. That doesn’t seem fair to me?’

Enrique’s voice in Denise’s headphones told her it was time to move on to Barb on line six.

“Thank you, Robert, I have to say I agree with you. Now it’s on to Barb, who’s live on the air with The Bitch. What’s on your mind, Barb?”

The voice was timid, maybe twenty-two. “Hello?”

“Hello, Barb, you’re on the air with The Bitch.”

“Oh, hi. This is Barb. Thanks for taking my call, B—” Her hesitation in saying the word was not uncommon among young women.

“It’s The Bitch, honey. Come on, you can say it. If I can be it, you can say it.”

Barb giggled on the other end. “Anyway, thanks for taking my call…”

Denise interrupted again. “No, you’ve got to say it, or I’ll hang up on you. Say, Hello, Bitch.”

Barb giggled nervously. “I… I don’t want to.”

“Sure you do. It should be easy, the way I’m treating you right now in front of millions of listeners. Just say bitch.”

“I can’t.”

“Sure you can. I’ll give you a running start at it. You just complete the sentence: Jeeze, you’re a…”

“Bitch.” Barb said it so softly, it was barely audible.

“Okay, Barb, that was a good start. Now, try it again with feeling. Son of a…”

“Bitch.”

“Okay, that was much better. Now let’s go for the gold. Say, Hello, Bitch.”

“Hello, Bitch.” Barb was laughing.

“Howya doin, Bitch.”

“Howya doin, Bitch.”

“Son of a bitch. You’re a real bitch, Bitch.”

Barb was laughing hard now. “Son of a bitch. You’re a real bitch, Bitch.”

Denise slapped the table triumphantly. “By George, we did it. Don’t you feel better now?”

“Absolutely.”

“And aren’t you glad that my radio name isn’t Vagina?” Hard laughter from the other end of the phone.

“Or better yet, maybe I’ll change my name to scrotum. Think of it: ‘Hello, America, don’t forget to listen to your scrotum every morning.’” Denise started to laugh herself. “Like men need any more encouragement to do that. Anyway, Barb, you’ve been a good sport. What’s on your mind?”

Barb composed herself more quickly than Denise would have expected. “Well, Bitch, I’m just not comfortable treating children the same way as adults. A child who’s a criminal can still be turned around. It’s not like an adult, where they know better and decide to commit crimes anyway.”

“So you don’t think that Nathan Bailey, at age twelve, knew that it was wrong to kill?”

“I think he knew it was wrong, sure. I just don’t think that children can put an act like that into perspective.”

“Come on, Barb, what does perspective have to do with anything? A public servant is still dead. That’s the only perspective he and his family will ever have.”

“I just don’t think it’s that simple. To try a child as a criminal requires more than just determining what the kid did. You have to look at what they thought they were doing.”

“What makes you think that little Nathan thought he was doing something other than killing?”

“What makes you think he didn’t?” Barb’s tone had a real “gotcha” edge to it.

“That’s just it, Barb. I don’t care. It really doesn’t matter, and that’s my point. The act of killing speaks for itself, as far as I’m concerned.”

The Bitch took two more calls before the first break. Neither thought that Nathan should be treated differently from any other criminal. The time had come, the callers agreed, when people had to take responsibility for their actions, whether good or bad. The courts had gone way too far in protecting the rights of the bad guys at the expense of the good guys.

Denise could not have agreed more.

Nathan sat on the edge of the big bed for twenty minutes, listening to a long string of grown-up strangers passing judgment on him.

How can they say those things? They weren’t there. They didn’t hear Ricky’s threats, or feel his hands around their throats. They didn’t know—they probably didn’t even care—that if he hadn’t killed Ricky, then Ricky would have killed him. They hadn’t seen the crazy look in his eyes, or have their brains rattled by a punch in the eye. They didn’t see the blood.

Oh, God. The blood.

The more he heard, the more he realized that the truth was becoming irrelevant. People were telling lies about him again, and he knew from experience how quickly lies can become reality in people’s minds, and how once that happens, they can do anything they want to you. No one had even heard his side of the story. All they had heard was what the police and the JDC assholes were saying about him. All they had heard were lies.

But he could change that, couldn’t he? All he had to do was pick up the telephone and call. He had the number memorized already; God knows they said it enough on the air. He could just pick up the phone and tell his side of the story, and set the record straight. Except it wouldn’t be that simple. They wouldn’t believe him. She’d make fun of him, and say terrible things to him, and he’d get upset, and the thoughts would come back to him and he’d get caught doing something stupid. He couldn’t afford to get caught.

But he couldn’t afford to let people think those things about him, either. There was no harm in just a phone call, was there? If things got bad, he could always just hang up.

The phone was a cordless one, resting on the nightstand next to the radio. Nathan picked it up, pushed the ON button, and just sat there silently for a long while, staring at the handset. Finally, the dial tone changed to a horrid screeching sound that caused Nathan to hang up quickly. Taking a deep breath, he pushed the button again, and dialed The Bitch’s 800 number. He noted the odd sound of the touch tones, which were all the same pitch. At home, he used to be able to play tunes with the tones. When he was done dialing, he brought the phone to his ear to hear an immediate busy signal.

Nathan felt relieved; the pressure was off. He had tried. Even though he had failed, trying was enough, wasn’t it?

He listened to two minutes more of the radio and decided that no, it wasn’t enough at all.

He dialed the number again. And again. And again. Each time, he got a fresh busy signal. On his ninth try, he heard some odd sounds in the handset, and had to stop himself from automatically pushing the flash and redial buttons. He had a rhythm going. Finally, the phone on the other end began to ring.

After what seemed to be a hundred rings, someone picked up on the other end. “You’ve reached the Bitch Line:’ the voice said. “What do you want to talk about?”

“I want to talk about this Nathan Bailey thing.”

“Are you a kid? The Bitch doesn’t talk to kids.”

“I think she’ll want to talk to me. I’m Nathan Bailey.”

Denise was ready to shift gears again. They had been on the Nathan Bailey topic for the better part of forty-five minutes, and they had stopped receiving original input. Once the callers currently on lines one and four were taken care of, there would be a commercial break, and then they’d move on to some tidbits on the way the president was handling foreign affairs.

Gordon, a psychiatrist from Stockdale, Arizona, was on the line, babbling psychological double-talk about how children under fifteen don’t have a strong enough system of values to make adult-level decisions regarding right and wrong. Denise smiled contentedly. When the good doctor paused to take a breath, she was going to eat him alive.