Answer the question. Wasn’t it in fact your work that got Mr. Varrick sent in for involuntary sex along with you? Hadn’t he been cribbing your notes? Didn’t you drag him down with you? Weren’t you still secretly copying Faulkner, at night, under the covers, with a flashlight?

Eee … yes! Damn you! Yes!

Weren’t you laboring along, in the ‘great southern gothic tradition,’ using heavy, frightening imagery?

Yes! [Beaten. Whipped. Chastised. Chastened. Cowed. Diminished. Uncertain. Afraid. Tentative. Sick]

Ignoring punctuation, running whole pages of narrative together, incorporating colons, semicolons, hyphens, making your characters talk like Beeder Mackey on LSD?

[Softly] Yes.

All right. What happened after Dr. Evans finished reading your … work ?

[Trying to regain composure] He became irrational.

Irrational? Was it irrational for him to show displeasure over unacceptable work?

No.

Was it irrational for him to have little patience. with two longtime inmates who refused to be rehabilitated? Repeaters?

No.

Then why did you say he became irrational?

He … [shifting in chair, crossing legs, uncrossing legs] he started taking the paper clips off the papers. He was shouting.

What was he shouting?

Obscenities.

Were these obscenities pertaining to the work at hand?

Yes.

Did he tell you he was about to take you in for involuntary sex?

No. He didn’t. He just told us to wait, that we weren’t going to beer call with the rest.

What happened then?

Well. We waited. We waited in the yard.

Did everybody else take a beer break?

Yes. They did. We could hear them. They sounded like they were having a good time.

Really whooping it up, eh?

Yes.

And that really bothered you. Didn’t it?

Yes. It did.

You thought you weren’t being treated fairly, didn’t you? You thought even a convicted copycat should have rights, didn’t you?

Yes. I do. I mean I did.

When did you first realize that you were about to be taken in for involuntary sex?

When they brought the blindfolds out.

Were the earplugs and the nose plugs applied at this time, also?

Yes. They were. [Eyes downcast] We knew, then.

Were you afraid?

I … [Ashamed] I was very afraid. I’d never had to do anything like that before in my life.

But you’d been given plenty of warning.

Yes.

You’d been told to pick up the level of your writing. Both of you.

Yes.

Were you blindfolded before you were taken inside?

No, they—made us look at them first. For several minutes.

And then.

[A whisper] Then they blindfolded us. [Whole court straining forward to catch words, reporters scribbling furiously] I tried to hold Howard’s hand but I couldn’t find it. I told him … I told him to be brave. He was crying. I was, too. We were both … at the lowest point of our lives. They’d reduced us to animals.

What happened then?