Spammer by Anel Viz

“Spammer”

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(Author’s note: In keeping with the theme of Internet spam, I have not given the main character of this story a name.)

16. Angels

Being supportive of Joel wasn’t easy. He’d become a recluse. If they headed to his table with there trays, he got up and fled, leaving his lunch uneaten. No one knew his address, and the police wouldn’t give it out. They tried sending him an email, but it came back as undeliverable. They finally tracked him down by hacking into the Hormel computers and went to see him that evening.

He opened the door and asked, “How’d you find me?”

“We’re not telling.”

“Well, you may as well go back home. I ain’t in the mood.”

“For sex or just to talk? We just came to talk. We’ve been hearing everybody else’s side of the story and thought we should hear yours.”

“Nothing to tell. My side’s the same as theirs.”

“Aren’t you at least gonna ask us in for coffee?”

“Sure. Come on in.”

They took a seat on an old, beat-up up couch. He didn’t have much else in his living room. “Things must be pretty damn awful for you right now,” Norm began.

“The worst of it is what I did to my kids. They never used to side with their mom, but now they won’t even speak to me. The older boy’s started high school last year. Can you imagine the things his friends are saying to him? He doesn’t want to go back in fall. Won’t be much better for the younger ones, either.”

“That sucks.”

“I’d get the hell outta here if I could, find another job somewhere, maybe someplace like Pipestone. But I don’t know if they’d let me live there.”

“Why not?”

“I can’t leave the county without permission while I’m on probation, and if I move out of the county, the county I move to gotta say it’s OK for me to live there.”

They took turns making suggestions, but Joel really was in a bind.

“You’d be better off in the Cities anyway. Easier to remain anonymous. Everyone knows everybody In a little outta-the-way place like Pipestone. If one person found out, the whole town would know about it.”

“They’d find out, all right. I have to register with the cops as a sex offender wherever I go for the next fifteen years. I’ll be in my sixties and retired by then, unless I’m still paying child support. That could happen if my youngest goes to college.”

“Hennepin County would take you. One more sex offender won’t make any difference there.”

“If it’d happened in Hennepin I probably wouldn’t have to register. No big deal there, what you did. You’d’ve got off with a slap on the wrist.”

“I can’t move anywhere unless I find a job first. They won’t let me, and I can’t afford to be outta work. Once the divorce is finalized I’ll have to pay child support, maybe alimony too. I’m not even sure I’ll be allowed to see the kids.”

“Alice’ll come around. You lookin’ for work?”

“It’s not so easy when you can’t go on line. Can’t go to a bar either, not for five more years. Until I’m off probation.”

“They took away your computer?”

“No, I still got my laptop. Can’t do much except play games with it now. They took it and went through all my files and found all the porn sites I used to log on to. Luckily there wasn’t no kiddy porn on it, or they might have ordered community notification. They found some of them emails I sent you, too. I thought I’d trashed ’em all. I was afraid they were gonna haul you in for questioning.”

“Good thing I never answered you.”

“They have no way of tracing me,” Norm said. “I got rid of that addy long ago, and I bought myself a new computer when I went off to college.”

“I bet they’d never found out if you’d go on line in Hennepin. You could log on in some coffee shop and no one would know who you were.”

“Yeah. If anyone saw me here, they’d report me.”

“You could come over to our place and use my computer to look.”

“What good with that do? Can’t send ’em no emails.”

“You could phone and drive up to the Cities if get an interview.”

“You think they let me?”

“I think the police would jump at the chance to get you out of the county.”

“It won’t be easy finding a job. I got a record now.”

“You don’t have to tell them if they don’t ask. And I didn’t say it’d be easy.”

“I think you better go now. But thanks for comin’ over. You’re angels, both of you. It was good bein’ able to talk about my woes some without bein’ judged.”

“Who are we to judge? It could’ve happened to either of us. Well, probably not Norm, but certainly me.”

“You cruise the johns?”

“No, not for a long time, but I did when I was younger.”

“You know we came out,” Norm said.

“No. Who woulda told me? How’d it go?”

“No big deal. It didn’t lose us any good friends. Gus and Barney have said some pretty stupid things, but nothing mean.”

“Because I got caught cruising at the urinal, huh? Makes it sound dirty.”

“I think it was more because of Alice.”

“You think so, huh? Well, thanks again for everything. Come over again sometime, please, just not right away. I still ain’t much up for company. Not that it didn’t do me a world of good.”

Posted: 12/12/08