Under Radar Read Online Free

typical.” Typical of what? The more reassuring word would have been “normal.”
    â€œDoes prison help?” asked Tom.
    â€œYou mean, does the shock of the system cure some criminals of their crimes?”
    â€œSomething like that.”
    â€œI think I know what you’re asking,” said the judge. “You’ve read some articles about the expanding prison population.”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œAnd you’re aware that while more money is being spent on prisons, the cash goes to contractors and guards, not to any rehabilitation programs.”
    â€œRight,” said Tom, with a mixture of relief and embarrassment for his awkward phrasing of something Judge Davis could put so simply, and his shame for the way his morbid fascination with prison could come out only in such a squeak, while behind the misshapen presentation of himself something inexpressible cramped the flow of thoughts.
    â€œBut this assumes,” continued the judge, warming to an audience, “that the main function of prison has to be a cure for crime, something other than punishment, or punishment that also protects.”
    â€œProtects who?”
    â€œYou and me,” said the judge. He looked hard at Tom, because Tom had just confused the criminal with the victim. Tom was thinking about prison as a place where the criminals are protected from their victims. Now he was sure that Judge Davis, drunk but no fool, saw this blending as the real reason for Tom’s questions. Yes, thought Tom, he knows I am guilty of something real.
    â€œI meant that prison can protect the criminal from the people he hurt, the people who would want revenge.” Boy, did that sound odd.
    â€œThat’s a novel thought for a lawyer.”
    Tom felt the judge drifting with him into incoherence. He stammered, “And then, and then, you know, there’s rehabilitation. Not to mention his punishment. I mean, not to mention that he’s being punished. That is … you know, he’s given the chance to, you know, look at where he is, and maybe decide that when he gets out, he doesn’t want to go back because … jail is so horrible, and it is horrible, jail, isn’t it?”
    The judge dropped his congeniality. “I’m a liberal Jew, Tom, but I don’t believe in rehabilitation for all but a few, in fact, for such a few that when I look at the individual cases of those who returned to the path of lawfulness, I see men whose returns were promised in their falls, and that’s a small group of men, Tom, whose crimes were spiritual crises, almost artistic crises. The average thief and rapist, the average killer, however much and perhaps because he was so damaged by society and conditioning,is too wounded and broken, too sick, too stupid, for any restoration of decency. Lock them up, Tom. Did I say stupid? Yes, I did. Do I sound cruel? I’ve sent three men to their death, Tom. You didn’t ask about that. And I can sleep at night.”
    While the men talked, the children’s dinner ended. Tom paid some attention to Alma and Perri as they followed the fleet of children to the broad wooden deck beyond the dining room, where the hotel band played on a low stage. One extension of the deck was built on stilts over a rock shelf, which the water just covered at high tide. Then the children raced from one side of the deck to the other, to the few triumphant dying waves, inches tall, that succeeded from the bay. This gave the parents great happiness, the giddy shrieks of their children blended with the sounds of ocean and kitchen, every property of the evening resonant and clear, each fragrant piece of it, sound, vision, and emotion, suspended in a Jell-O of gently drunken satisfaction.
    Alma loved music, and when the bass player or the pianist first tested the volume, she left the wave chasers. Alma, at four, was happy as soon as the musicians arrived in the little shack. She was old enough to know