After that I couldn’t go to the stable unless Bruce was there with his shotgun. His hands shook like crazy but he stood by with his gun ready while I took care of Chico and Mick. At home, my dad kept a loaded revolver next to his chair in the den. He had baseball bats propped in the other rooms.

Then one day I found my favorite tabby cat hung by a noose at the barn. Bruce said, He’ll kill your horses next. I was watching Mick and Chico graze in the pasture when suddenly Chico reared up and started striking the air, and I saw Baker out there crawling on his hands and knees like a dog.

I ran to the barn phone and called the police. The sheriff’s department arrived and all of us went out to the muddy field to look. Bruce said, Here’s a toe print, and here’s the knee print. Looks like he’s gone now, said the sheriff.

Nearby was an empty grain wagon with a ladder on the side. One of the deputies started climbing it, but when he got halfway up, Baker jumped out the top, swinging a little hatchet. He ran into a ravine behind Bruce’s barn. The deputies didn’t shoot. An officer gave Bruce a nightstick and they went into the swampy woods together, but Baker was gone.

All night I listened to the police scanner. They seen Baker by the bridge, they seen him by the school. Then he disappeared.

They found out he’d escaped from federal prison — they thought he’d drowned. I was escorted to and from work every day. I had to change my hours to accommodate the patrolmen’s schedule. I had to move my horses to Waterfield, twenty miles away. I couldn’t go out and enjoy myself. I was always looking over my shoulder. It wore my parents down — I could see it in their faces.

Well, guess what? I started going to college. I went into law enforcement. I thought, My rights have been violated. I’m going to find out how the system works. I’m not going to run.

THIS SUCKER

I studied law enforcement part-time. Did quite well, got all As and Bs. I paid my way working full-time at the factory. I was forty, forty-one years old.

I did an internship at a halfway house for people just out of prison. I wanted to go right up among them because I thought they were like him. I wanted to get in their heads. But they were mostly poor people with drug problems.