ABSTRACT CONVICTION by Jessica Lynn Panzner This thesis is a work of fiction that follows a young man named Conner through his acceptance of a quest for justice from its beginnings in Florida to its conclusion in Brazil. It explores his difficulties with the path he has chosen, and the sacrifices which he must make for the greater good. CONVICTION A Thesis Submitted to the Faculty of Miami University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts Department of English by Jessica Lynn Panzner Miami University Oxford, Ohio 2008 Advisor: ____________________________ Margaret Luongo Reader: ___________________________ Brian Roley Reader: ___________________________ Timothy Melley TABLE OF CONTENTS Foreword ………………………………..……. 1 Chapter One …………………………..…….… 2 Chapter Two …………………………...………15 Chapter Three ………………………………….21 Chapter Four …………………………………. 25 Chapter Five ………………………………….. 33 Chapter Six …………………………………… 39 Chapter Seven ……………………………….. 41 Chapter Eight ………………………………... 43 Chapter Nine …………………………………. 47 Chapter Ten …………………………………… 53 Epilogue ……………………………………... 60 ii Conviction Foreword En‘che knew that he was dying. The truth was, he had been conscious of the fact of his own looming death for much longer than any man should be. It could not be helped. As the last of his tribe, the Nanebo, his death would bring a change in the world beyond even his understanding. He did not consider his children or his children‘s children to be true members of the Nanebo tribe. They had turned away from the traditional ways long ago. No, the Nanebo people would die with En‘che, and so, perhaps, would their magic. As he lay in his simple hut, taking in the scent of the mud floor with each short breath, En‘che silently asked the ancestors to ease his passing. I only want to know if the man Tuttle has found the new Judge. I could die content if I knew that I did not take the power to the grave with me. Can you show me the man? The ancestors did not answer. They never answered the questions put to them by the living. It was foolish of him to expect them to change their ways to satisfy the curiosity of an old man on his deathbed. Perhaps he was not meant to know such things, though he didn‘t see how it could hurt. The smell of the earth came to him again, baking in the late morning sun. Apart from the sound of his own breathing, En‘che could hear nothing but the muted songs of the insects outside the hut walls. He had built the earthen dome in which he rested away from the world. There was not another person for miles in any direction. At least the ancestors granted him that measure of peace—to spend his last weeks in silence, apart from the mass of squabbling humanity he was charged to guide. He rested in the quiet, freed from the harsh sounds of the world and the constant, demanding voices. Including the ones in his head. 1 Chapter One Conner Browning was tired of going through life smelling like sour milk. For the last seven years, he had worked the same boring, embarrassing job. There were other people his age working at the Food Giant, but Conner had never seen himself as a twenty-five year old dairy-case stock-boy. It was a high school kid‘s job. Conner knew it—he saw his coworkers each day and wondered what was so wrong with them that they couldn‘t find anything better to do with their lives. The depression usually set in as he pinned on and adjusted the bright green, plastic nametag that read ―Connor‖ in black block lettering. He told his manager, Ted, about the misspelling on his first day of work, seven years ago. ―Oh… sorry man. You spell it with an e? We‘ll get you a new one printed up, okay?‖ Of course, Ted was long gone, and Conner never saw a new badge. He didn‘t bother mentioning it to any of the other managers who took over the position. Why am I still here? He got the job just after his eighteenth birthday, for extra spending cash on the weekends. And he stayed on, after graduation, after the deadline for application to community college came and went, after he finally moved out of his parents‘ house and into his crummy two-room apartment. Three rooms if you counted the john. That was a little over two years ago, when his hourly wage broke twelve dollars. It was just under fifteen an hour now. Even his measly thirty-five cent raises added up after a while. Conner took the job the summer after his junior year. That summer was hot, even for Florida, so the chilly dairy case sounded like a perfect place to escape the heat. And it was—at first. But as the novelty wore off, the stink started to set in. For some reason, every gallon of milk in every shipment was coated with a portion of the contents of at least one jug, carton or bottle that didn‘t survive the trip intact. So, every day Conner‘s store-issue shirt and pants were spattered and splotched with spilled milk. He was wet and sour before his first break. More than the endless monotony, the embarrassment of the silly uniform, or the degrading pay scale, it was the stink that really got to him. Unwilling to live with the smell any longer than absolutely necessary, Conner went straight home from work every afternoon. Once there, he stripped out of his Food Giant clothes, deposited them in their own special bin and took a long shower. Over the years, he had amassed enough sets of the uniform shirts and pants that he could wait to do laundry once a week and still have a fresh outfit to soil every day at work. Today when he got home, his usual scent was enhanced by a kind of wet dog smell. It had started raining half an hour before he got off work and by the time he discovered that there were no longer any available spaces in his apartment building‘s parking lot, it had progressed into a steady downpour. He parked on the street and trudged through the rain to his door. Distant thunder rumbled in the prematurely darkened sky. Once inside his apartment, Conner slogged directly to the bathroom to undress. Not wanting to drip any more sour-milk-water across the shag carpet than he had to, he stood naked in the shower, wringing out his clothes. After he squeezed as much cloudy liquid out of them as he could and piled them in the dry sink, he turned the shower to full pressure and stood under the warm water, head bowed almost to his chest. When did this happen to me? He thought as the drops hitting his neck slowly 2 massaged his muscles into numbness. I wasn‟t always a loser. I had all kinds of friends in high school. Girls, too. Now I‟m just some smelly old guy that works at the Food Giant, and probably will for the rest of his life. They‟ll find me curled up on a crate of yogurt one day, cold and blue. „Oh what a shame,‟ they‟ll say, „and he only had five more years until retirement.‟ Slowly, Conner scrubbed the dairy residue from his skin and rinsed himself off. As he stepped out of the shower a loud, booming crack shook the air around him. He had barely wrapped a towel around his waist before the power went out. Super. Now what am I going to do? No cable, no microwave, no anything. At least it‟s still light enough to see where I‟m going. Even with the dark cloud cover, five o‘clock on a summer afternoon was still hours away from nightfall. Unfortunately, as Conner soon realized, the storm wasn‘t cooling things down quickly enough to keep his apartment comfortable without the AC running steadily, sucking down electricity. As he began to sweat, he decided that maybe the best thing to do was just lie down and go to sleep. He could snooze through the worst of it and maybe by the time he woke the power would be back on. Despite the rapidly rising temperature in his small bedroom, it did not take Conner very long to fall asleep. His body was grateful for the opportunity to relax after having spent the last ten hours on its feet. He slept soundly and dreamlessly. *** Conner lay in bed not dreaming until the sunlight pouring through his window woke him with a start. A glance at his watch told him it was not yet seven-thirty. He had been asleep for fourteen hours. As he pulled himself to the edge of the bed and sat up, Conner noticed the puddle of sweat he had deposited during the night. He listened for the throb of the AC unit with little hope. Standing and walking over to the light switch, he confirmed that the power was still out. This would happen on my day off, he thought. He felt a wave of self-pity building up behind his ribs but, unwilling to indulge his pathetic side any longer, Conner shook it off and made a decision. Unable to cook on his electric stove and unsure what to do in his own apartment that didn‘t involve plunking down in front of the TV, he would venture out in search of breakfast and diversion. He took a cold shower, nearly convinced himself it was refreshing, put on a clean Hurricanes T-shirt and a pair of shorts and stepped out into the mostly sunny morning.