Defending Jacob

by William Landay

the depth of Wendy’s grief for a child she did not know; I took it as yet another sign of the woman’s emotional vulnerability.

The girl was about to cry, which reminded me of the grown woman I had just left on the sidewalk also near tears. Jesus, there was no escaping them.

She was not fat, but she was not thin enough for the tight T-shirt she wore. A little roll of flesh blossomed over her shorts—a “muffin top,” the kids called it without embarrassment. I thought she

He calls me a fat shit. Imagine saying something like that to your mother, calling her a fat shit.

I was a fool. Laurie, I was a fool. I know that now.

But to other kids sometimes? He just says weird things. Like racist stuff, just jokes. Or he calls fat girls fat or he says inappropriate stuff about them, like about their bodies.

screen name, Job, was displayed at the top of the page. I presume “Job” was a play on his first name or his initials (though Jacob’s middle initial was not O), or maybe it was a sly reference to the trials he was enduring.

Maybe after the case was ended Lynn Canavan would do the right thing and offer to keep me on the payroll, but I could not stay there, not as a charity case.

His Staples uniform made him look ridiculous. The red polo shirt hugged his flabby torso too tightly. Khaki pants accentuated the sort of bulging pelvis that Jacob and his pals call a “front butt.”