Years ago, back when the movie Schindler's List came out, I was friends with these two missionaries.
They worked with Chicago gang kids who they would meet in prison and try to bring to God.
Anyway, one day I got a call from them and they just had seen Schindler's List and they wanted to talk about it.
Because, you know, call your Jewish friend.
They'd seen Schindler's List.
I was their Jewish friend.
Anyway, so we got together, and...
What they said was, first of all, we think we understand you better now, thanks to Schindler's List.
And I think what that was about was they knew about the Holocaust, of course, before this.
But it was more of a kind of historical fact, like you read about in a book.
The reality of what happened in the Holocaust I don't think ever had really hit them.
You know, the emotional reality of it.
It just hadn't hit them in the gut, all those people dying.
So we got together and we talked about it.
And they said the scene that touched them most was at the end of the film.
And maybe you've seen Schindler's List.
It's a scene after the war and it's this rich guy Schindler, who had been using his money during the war to save Jews from dying in the concentration camps.
And he realizes that now that the war is over, he could have saved so many more people.
You know, he still had money he hadn't used.
He could have saved more people.
And there's a scene where he goes from person to person saying stuff like I could have sold this pin, you know, and saved two more Jews.
It's gold.
Or this car.
So we're talking about this scene and my friends, Jane and Glenn, the missionaries, say this thing.
That totally surprised me.
They said, that's us.
That's our daily life, that scene.
That's our life.
This Saturday, for example, Glenn says He wanted to stay home and watch the ballgame on TV, you know.
But he thought to himself no no, I got to go out there and I got to save another kid.
I got to try to save another kid.
You know, I got to go to the jail.
I got to go to juvie.
And they both said that OK, at the end of their lives it's going to be just like that scene in Schindler's List.
They're going to go to heaven and they're going to be called to account.
And it's going to be all you know.
You took this day off and you pretend to be doing paperwork and you could have been out there saving another kid.
Or you know, you watch the doubleheader with Cincinnati and there was a teenager who was ready to hear your message and come to God.
And they were going to be held to account.
I think, before this conversation, my understanding of Jane and Glenn's life It was pretty much exactly like their understanding of the Holocaust.
You know, like I understood, like in my head, I understood intellectually that they had given their lives over to serving God.
I understood that as a fact.
But what it actually meant had not totally penetrated me.
Jane and Glenn, my friends, they were like superheroes.
You know, they had this incredible connection.
The power to save somebody, to bring them to God, to turn somebody's life around.
And I got to say, I met kids whose lives were completely straightened out because of them.
They did a really nice job.
They did save kids.
And with their great power came great responsibility, a responsibility they tried really, really hard to live up to.
Well, today on our radio show we have other people who feel that same sense of power and responsibility in their daily lives.
And I'm not just talking here about judges and doctors and four-star generals and people who you would expect and hope would feel the burden that comes with that amount of power.
I'm talking about normal people, people you might not suspect.
But from WBZ Chicago to This American Life, I'm Ira Glass.
Our program today, With Great Power, our show in three acts.
Act one, objects inside of your mirror are truer than they appear.
Act two, unwelcome wagon.
Act three, waiting for Joe.
In that act, Sherlock Mouse Lander has a tale of the being with more power than any other and more responsibility.
Stay with us.
This American Life, today's show is a rerun, act one.
Objects in side view mirror are truer than they appear.
Well, the woman at the center of this next story has the power to change two people's lives, and change them in a big way.
And what's interesting is at the height of her power, she doesn't even know she has it.
Alex Kotlowitz tells the story.
On this one August day in 1979, Carla Dimkoff learned something which shaped the rest of her life and the life of a complete stranger, and the thing about it is it took 26 years for her to realize that.
At the time, Carla was 19 years old.
She was living in a trailer home in the small town of white cloud Michigan, when her father, James Keller, who lived in Tennessee, showed up unannounced driving a motor home.
Her father was a bit of a vagabond, someone who lived on the edge.
So this surprise visit wasn't all that unusual.
He did this all the time.
He would.
He would basically abandon my mom and he would just take off for days at a time and He would end up wherever he wanted, in several different states.
And this time he ended back up in Michigan.
Carla was kind of at loose ends herself.
She'd been raising a daughter alone.
And the day her father arrived, Carla had gotten married to a man she'd met just a week before.
Her father gave them $20 as a wedding gift and wished them well.
Then they went their separate ways for the evening.
Carla and her new husband got home around 2 a.m., but her father was still out.
He stayed out most of the night.
When I got up the next morning, it was fairly early.
I want to say between 7 and Seven and nine, 10 a.m.
He was in the driveway, walked outside and I said, you know, hi, where you been?
And at some point he told me he had been at the lamplight bar for a little while and I was kind of puzzled because the bars close at two, fifteen or two thirty.
And I wondered where he had been the rest of the evening, and I really never got an answer to that.
Even stranger was what he was doing in the driveway.
He was repairing the side view mirror on his motorhome.
It had actually been broken off, and he was putting a whole new mirror on it.
And he was just doing it in such a hurry and throwing parts into his vehicle, which I thought was strange.
Why throw all the junk when you're 10 feet from a dumpster into the motor home?
And he was in just such a hurry about it.
It just struck me odd for a minute.
And The next thing I know, he said, well, I'm out of here.
And he left.
And I didn't speak to him probably for several months to a year.
It wasn't just that Carla's father was a drifter.
That makes him seem benign.
He was, by Carla's recollection, a violent man.
Carla remembers once she was slurping while eating spaghetti, and he hurled the table on its side.
But it was much worse than that.
When Carla turned 11, her mother told her that her father had molested a young girl.
Carla tried to protect others in the family and that brought her into direct conflict with her dad, like one of the times he went after her mother.
I stepped into the middle of it, and he punched me in the jaw.
And I ended up in the emergency room later that evening.
How old were you?
Around 16.
At that point I became afraid, physically of my father and emotionally of him, and I was afraid to be alone with him after that.
This is all important to know in order to understand what happened next.
Shortly after Carla's dad drove out of town, Carla picked up the Times Indicator, the local newspaper, and read that.
On the very same night her dad didn't come home.
Just hours before she found him in the driveway fixing his busted side view mirror, a 19-year-old woman had been killed on a nearby road, a deep gash in her head.
In the article the sheriff said, and I quote we assume she was hit by an unknown vehicle, maybe by a mirror or some projection.
I just said, oh, my God.
I had an overwhelming feeling that my father had killed someone.
And I just...
At first, she went to her minister, who urged her to go to the police, which she did the very next day.
She had a friend drive her to the police station in town, where she learned that the detective in charge of the case wasn't in.
So she left him a note.
This is the letter I wrote to Detective Foster and it says Mr Foster, I would like to speak with you concerning the death of Christy Ringler.
I do not have a car.
If you could possibly stop out to my house after 3 p.m. today, it would be greatly appreciated.
Thank you, Mrs. Tarrow.
That evening, there were two detectives that actually came out.
They were dressed in plain clothes.
They knocked on the door.
They came in.
I told them the whole story about my dad had been here.
He had been gone all night.
Gave them just a little bit of a history of my dad, not a whole lot of history.
And they were like, OK, well, we have this information.
Thank you.
I had the feeling when they came in the door that they thought they were wasting their time.
I don't even think they sat down.
They stood there just kind of towering over me.
And I was clearly intimidated by the whole situation, not really ever dealing with anything like this.
And maybe I just made myself sound unsure.
See, Carla laid out two possible scenarios for the detectives.
One, that her father accidentally struck this girl while driving home from the lamplight bar.
That seemed likely given his shattered side view mirror and his eagerness to get out of town.
The other, well, she thought it was possible that her father had killed Christy Ringley on purpose.
That, knowing her dad, maybe he tried to flirt with Christy at the lamplight, that maybe she'd repelled his advances and that maybe on the way home he saw her on the road and rammed her with his side-view mirror.
Carla now believes, though, that the speculative scenario didn't sit too well with the detectives.
They made me feel like a fool, like I had a grudge to grind when I was trying to get my father in trouble or something.
And just this poor trailer park person.
Were you conscious about living in a trailer, about being poor?
Very, very.
You know, I knew that wasn't the thing to do.
I knew that's not where I wanted to be.
So.
The detectives leave and you know in your heart of hearts that your dad was somehow involved in the death of this girl.
What do you do with that knowledge?
I bury it.
When she looks back on it, this was the moment of truth.
This was her opportunity to act.
And she feels like she just gave up without any kind of fight.
Carla ordinarily didn't back down easily, but she'd been dismissed often before.
In seventh grade she went to a guidance counselor about her dad's alleged abuse and all the counselor did was go tell her parents.
Then remember the time she ended up in the emergency room?
Well, she told a doctor there that her father had punched her.
Nothing came of that either.
So when the detectives disregarded what she had to say...
It felt familiar, like this was how it was always going to be.
Her dad would elude any responsibility for what he'd done.
She wasn't about to confront her father, who she feared would physically hurt her if she did.
And as for the authorities... The thought never occurred to me to go back to the police.
I didn't want to feel that feeling again of intimidation. of just being dismissed.
And that's really a selfish thought now that I think about it.
The thing was, though, she couldn't keep it buried, at least emotionally.
She thought about it all the time that her father had, in all likelihood, accidentally or purposefully killed someone, and that she hadn't done enough about it.
You know, I had these horrible nightmares that this dead girl was walking down the street trying to chase after me.
Her body's all dismembered and And I got the feeling in my dream God, I sound like a nut that she was chasing me.
And I couldn't ever figure out, why are you chasing me?
You know, there's been times where I could not think about it or I would be a wreck, can you?
Can you remember a particular moment?
Yeah, I can remember um one time driving in the car and just thinking about my life in general and all the things that had gone on.
And it always ends up with Christy and I often thought I could just stop thinking if I just hit that tree, Just tortured.
David to interview with Larry Pat Sautter, taking place in the Whale County Sheriff's Department.
President of this interview is Larry Pat Sautter.
Deputy John Sutton and Detective Charles Foster.
Today's date is 8-27-79.
The time is 1500 hours.
Carla wasn't the only person damaged by Christy Ringler's death.
There was the Ringler family, of course.
But there was also someone else, this 27-year-old truck driver named Larry Suter.
The tape you just heard is a tape police interview of Larry, a wiry built man with a charming smile who liked to party.
And while he didn't live in White Cloud the night of Ringler's death, he had been visiting a friend there.
I don't think we drank at his house, if I remember correctly, but we went down to what they call a lamplight bar, which would have been south of town.
And we'd sit there and drink maybe three hours in a bar.
Larry met a woman at the lamplight.
It was Christy Ringler.
They caught each other's eye, and when Larry and his friend went to party down the road, there was Christy as well.
And when you got to the house, what happened?
And when we got to the house, I went in, Jim went in, and I think I sat around for about 15 minutes.
One girl went outside, and I went out.
And she was out sitting on the front steps, and I went out and sat on the front steps.
And when we went out into the front of the yard, there was a tree out there.
And we were kind of sitting out there by the tree and stuff and you know kind of kissing a little bit this and that.
And then she got up and she walked off and started walking towards town, which would be back north, towards White Cloud.
Larry, who had a good deal to drink, says he offered to try to find her a ride, but she insisted she'd be all right.
The last time Larry saw her, she was walking down the dark two-lane road by herself.
Two days after Ringler's death, the police asked Larry to come down to the station for this questioning.
The interview lasted an hour and 15 minutes.
Larry didn't bring a lawyer.
He didn't feel he had anything to hide.
I've got nothing to hide.
All right, this tape's going to be terminated at $16.15 on page 2779.
And I don't think I heard anything from him for probably 12 and a half years.
Larry returned to his life driving a truck and laying gas pipes.
He got married to a woman named Melody.
And they thought about starting a family together.
Then, one day.
One day I went to work, which was November 14th, and it's easier to remember because it was the day before deer season.
And they came to work and they said that you were under arrest for open murder.
And I go, that's what it was.
Did you know what they were talking about?
I had no clue.
This was in 1992, like Larry said, 12 and a half years after Christy Ringler's death.
A new sheriff had reopened the case and it quickly got a lot of publicity.
Larry, who's quiet and reserved, felt deeply embarrassed.
You know, my name was in the paper.
My face is in the paper.
It's like, oh, my God.
I mean, I mean, this is humiliation.
Had you ever been arrested before?
No, sir.
But Larry assumed that justice would just find its way.
This is Melody, his wife.
They offered him a plea bargain for two to five years if he would admit he did it.
And he refused to because he didn't.
And did he come to you for advice?
We were there together.
And what did you tell him?
And I told him, you can't plead guilty to something you didn't do.
The prosecutors argued that Larry had bludgeoned Christy Ringler with a pint-sized bottle of Canadian Club whiskey.
Their key piece of evidence was the testimony by pathologists that the bottom ridge of the.
At the trial no mention was made of Carla's note and her subsequent interview with the detectives.
The suitors believe the prosecution buried it.
Larry was convicted and sentenced to 20 to 60 years.
My world just came right out underneath me, you know, I mean, in total shock.
It was a nightmare, straight-up nightmare.
There is, I suspect, nothing more confounding and debilitating than being sent to prison for something you didn't do.
And the years behind bars had their effect on Larry as well as on his wife, Melody.
Melody had a car accident after visiting Larry in prison and lost her factory job.
She had to move back home with her parents, where she spent most of her time going over and over trial transcripts and police reports.
She gave up the idea of ever having children.
And I had a hysterectomy while he was in prison.
So you gave that up as well?
Yeah.
And in the years Larry was in prison, he struggled to sustain himself too.
One of the ways he did that was to build these meticulously constructed Western scenes out of toothpicks.
Log cabins churches saloons, covered bridges.
He trimmed the toothpicks sometimes 2500 of them for one model with a nail clipper so that they fit together with glue like cut logs.
The hours upon hours spent constructing them helped keep his mind off his case.
Over the years.
Alex, I'll tell you what I mean.
Yes, I was very, very bitter in there, but you know, I just try and say to myself you know just, you know, let it go and Take one day at a time.
Larry and Melody believe there had to be someone out there with some knowledge about what happened that night.
And so Melody, along with Larry's sister, searched and searched and searched.
We made trips to look for people.
We went to Nuevo County when people told us we were crazy, we could get killed.
And we interviewed people, we talked to people we, you know we, did everything we could to try to you know, find out what really happened to this girl.
Of course, the person they were looking for was Carla, but they didn't know she even existed.
And Carla was completely unaware of them as well.
In the 26 years since Christy Ringler's death, Carla had gotten divorced and remarried to a college professor.
She now lived a comfortable life outside Grand Rapids in a spacious A-frame home on five acres of land.
Her father had died in 1999 and all she could think about afterwards was he'd gotten away with it completely, and that tore at her.
And then one day in January of last year, she picked up a newspaper and read for the very first time about Larry Souter.
Melody, Larry's wife, had convinced John Smetanka, a former prosecutor, to take Larry's case.
A medical examiner who had testified at Larry's trial now believed it was unlikely Ringler's wounds were caused by a whiskey bottle.
I was sitting in here in the living room and my husband was in the TV room.
And I read this article about Christy Ringler and I'm like, oh my God, someone has been convicted of this.
I'm telling you, I literally just about fell on the floor.
At that moment, it hit Carla.
Because she had held on to this knowledge about her father's probable involvement in Christy Ringler's death.
Someone had been sent to prison.
The very next morning, she called Larry's lawyer and spoke with his associate.
I said to her you might think I'm a crazy woman or something, because I'm sure you don't get these phone calls all the time.
But I know this Larry Souter story that you're working on and I reported that my dad killed that girl.
They did in fact worry she might be a crazy person.
No one had ever seen anything from the police indicating that they'd interviewed Carla.
So the attorneys quickly filed a Freedom of Information Act request and in a stack of police reports they received they found the very note that Carla had left for Detective Foster, as well as half a page of nearly indecipherable notes the detectives took from an apparent phone interview with her father.
One thing led to another, and within two months Larry Souter got word that the authorities finally believed him.
His conviction was vacated.
And after 13 years and 18 days in prison, on April 1st of last year, he walked out a free man.
Carla had first asked the attorneys to keep her identity hidden, though that was impossible because it was such a public case.
Mostly, she felt she completely failed this man, this stranger, Larry Souter.
I cried for her.
A long time.
Weeks.
About two months after being released from prison, Larry told his lawyer that he wanted to meet Carla.
So they agreed to have lunch at a local Applebee's.
And Carla prepared herself for Larry's fury.
My husband literally had to help me out of the car.
I was trembling so much.
And...
I knew who he was right away when we walked in and we just both kind of collapsed in tears and I wasn't sure why he was crying, but I was just so overwhelmed with guilt that I could hardly look at him.
On a recent afternoon, Larry came by to see Carla.
Somewhat surprisingly, they've become friends.
And, in an odd twist of fate, they're both battling cancer and have helped each other out during their respective treatments.
On this rainy afternoon, the two stood in the kitchen in a tight embrace.
And as they held each other, Carla became overwhelmed with guilt and began to cry.
It's going to be all right.
I'm so sorry.
I'm so sorry.
Carla can't help herself.
Whenever she sees Larry, she breaks down and apologizes.
There was even a period of two months when Carla wouldn't return Larry's phone calls.
Because you can only apologize so many times and felt the need to do it all the time.
I just seem like you're awfully hard on yourself.
I mean, you've righted something, you've got.
You gave somebody his freedom.
I didn't give larry his freedom.
What he didn't do gave him his freedom.
If i was going to give him his freedom, i would have given it to him 13 years ago and i didn't do that and that's where i failed.
But I think you've been so hard on yourself you didn't know he was there.
No, but I knew what the right thing at the moment was.
You know, in my heart of hearts, I knew what was happening, and I just let it go.
And I don't understand a person that can do that.
Here's the strange thing about all this.
In certain ways, all of this has been harder for Carla to handle than for Larry.
Sometimes you happen upon a moment, you witness something on the street.
Let's say a man threatening a woman or a parent hitting a child.
And the fate of a complete stranger rests on how you handle things.
And you feel perilous to do anything.
So you turn your head, you walk away or, as in Carla's case, you try to do something, but not forcefully enough.
Then you resume your life, though those moments stay with you.
Well, imagine if you got a second chance.
Carla did, and she paid a price for getting a second shot at it.
Now she's even more tormented because it really has sunk in the kind of power she held 26 years earlier.
And so she feels ashamed.
Larry, though, sees it all quite differently.
She's my angel.
That's what he calls me, his angel.
Matter of fact, he brought me a gift a couple of weeks ago.
And it's a lawn ornament and it has a couple angels on it.
And it lights up at night.
I want you to know I go out in the middle of the night when I can't sleep and I look at it.
While Carl has spent sleepless nights staring at her angels remembering the past, Larry's trying to forget.
Right after he got released, he and Melody built a bonfire to burn all the clothes and letters associated with his time in prison.
Not long ago as a gift, Larry gave one of his toothpick constructions to Carla.
She has it displayed in her living room.
It's a log cabin with a chimney built with pebbles Larry collected from the prison yard.
This, of course, is what Larry did to forget.
But now Carla has it as a constant reminder.
Alex Kotlowitz is the author of several books, most recently An American Summer.
Today's show, like I said earlier, is a rerun from years ago Carla died from breast cancer in 2008.
Coming up.
A family wishes for years to get the power to defend themselves against a dangerous neighbor.
And then, they get it, and they have to decide if they want to use it.
That's in a minute, on Chicago Public Radio, when our program continues.
This is American Life, I'm Ira Glass.
If you're going to program, of course, we choose a theme.
We bring you a variety of different kinds of stories on that theme.
Today's show, With Great Power.
Stories about ordinary people who find themselves with a superhero's dilemma.
With great power comes great responsibility.
We've arrived at Act 2 of our show.
Act 2, Unwelcome Wagon.
There's a kind of a power that only means something if you don't use it like, for example, threatening to use a nuclear weapon.
This story is about something like that.
Except, instead of taking place in the desolate borders of rival nations who hate and fear each other, it occurs entirely on a quiet street in the suburbs, between next-door neighbors.
We've changed the names of everybody who you're going to hear from in this story.
As we go along, you'll see why.
It begins years ago with a woman who we're going to call Betty and her husband, when they decided to move from the inner city to a quiet suburban neighborhood.
Their kids were young.
At first, it was great.
But then their next-door neighbor decided he was going to build a fence on what he thought was the property line.
And he kept saying, I know where the property line is.
I've lived here 12 years, and I'm putting my fence on it.
Then my husband said, well, we should get a survey because our deed doesn't show it there.
So we asked him to do a survey and he refused.
This is Betty's daughter, who's now all grown up, who we'll call Julia.
So we had a survey done anyway.
Of all things, the survey gave even more land to the neighbor than he thought he'd had, which you would think would have made him happy.
But in fact Betty and Julia say it just made him mad because he had not waited for the survey to start building this fence.
And now, thanks to the survey that he had not wanted, his yard was actually bigger and he had to move the fence.
He was very angry and he was going to sue us because he said we made him put his fence in the wrong place.
It all started from that.
And so how much of the fight was actually about the property and how much was it that he just didn't like the look of you, you know?
I'm guessing about.
10% about the property, 90% didn't like us.
The word that they used often about us, and he very often was, you people ain't from here.
We were just different, I guess.
We were liberals.
Yeah, we were liberals.
We looked different.
We acted different.
After that, things started happening.
And they started small.
One night, Betty was on the phone, and she looked out the window towards the neighbor's yard.
Each of the two houses had a long driveway coming back from the road and the two driveways were nearly side by side.
The neighbor's truck was in his driveway. near the two houses.
I could see cigarettes being relit out in his vehicle and I realized that he sat in his vehicle and watched us.
So he watched us for hours into our living room, which had these big picture windows.
And I can't think of anything more boring than watching us.
But he did.
That was the beginning.
Wait, so he would just sit there for hours.
You guys are like coming in and out of the family room with a bowl of popcorn and you sit in front of the TV.
Exactly.
And we didn't go to anybody because.
You know, he can sit out in his truck if he wants to.
It's a little strange.
At first, they figured he would just lose interest and stop.
But he didn't stop.
Other things started happening.
They got crank calls.
For a while, every time they sat down to dinner, they got a call.
Their license plate disappeared.
The lights outside their house were shot out with a BB gun.
They called the cops, only to be told that if they wanted to build a case, they needed to capture the crimes on videotape, which they tried to do.
And more interesting than anything else every time they left the house, it seemed like the neighbor was waiting for them.
We could not go outside without some interaction, without him yelling or insulting us in some way.
And what would he yell?
Oh, well, to me, it was always the same.
Okay, I'm just going to stop the tape right there.
For a quick warning to listeners, a nice southern lady is about to get a little salty.
Oh, well, to me, it was always the same.
Get your ugly old lass out of here, you ugly old bitch.
You old bitch shouldn't be on this earth.
To my husband, it would be, you ain't no man.
There's nothing to you.
You're worthless.
You let your wife wear the pants in the family.
And he sat there with popcorn watching us and mocking us and saying oh, y'all are putting on a big show.
Y'all want some popcorn?
And offered it to my dad.
Wait, and what were you all doing?
Just going into the garage, maybe to get a bike or to get some old furniture out from storage.
It's such a commitment to messing with you.
Yes, it was his life.
One morning they woke up to find this neighborly greeting.
The words bitch and whore literally carved into their lawn in giant block letters.
One set was up by the house.
The other set, down by the curb.
And they were done with some type of very strong weed killer that would last a year.
Yeah, we would either have to have them dug out and dig down like two feet, or they were going to be there for a year.
And they were there for a year.
And so and so.
People would drive by your house for a year and the word whore would be down on the lawn.
The bus would pick me up for school in eighth grade, and it would be there.
No one would say anything.
Though there was also a picture we interpreted to be of a dog doing an obscene act with a woman.
Wait, you mean he drew it on the lawn with the weed killer.
Yes, a dog and a woman it was.
It was good enough that neighbors knew what it was and um, Did you have the feeling that the entire neighborhood was against you?
Yes.
Yes.
Really?
Like everybody sided with him?
I don't know that I would go so far to say they sided with him, but more the feeling that you've stirred up something in the neighborhood that we didn't want stirred up, that we set him off somehow and that it was our fault.
They have other stories.
The neighbor would play chicken with her car.
He'd point his headlights into their house for hours, flash them on and off.
When they went away on vacation, he would drive under their lawn, spin the tires.
When Julia's little brother went out on his bike.
The neighbor would get on a bike himself sometimes and circle the little brother and lunge at him so he would fall off.
He was only eight.
It was strange, they say, to feel that somebody hated them so much.
At some point, he started going after your pets?
Yeah.
This was a very emotional thing for me.
We didn't tell Julia about it until, I guess, this past year.
Not all the details.
I was an animal lover as a kid.
She was.
I always took home the cat on the side of the road.
And I had a little black cat named Phoenix.
And he killed it.
He killed it?
One day we found Phoenix beside the fence, but just pushed through the bottom of the fence on our property.
And if you looked across his driveway, at the end of his house there was a big metal baseball bat leaning against the house.
Well, by that time we had attorneys, and they said, take the cat and have it autopsied.
And we did, and it had been killed by a blow, two blows to it.
But that was a part of him.
He not only killed the cat, but he wanted you to know how he did it.
And by leaving the bat, we knew what happened.
He had left it out by the driveway for me to find while I waited for the school bus.
But it was a snow day that day.
So my parents were the ones who found it.
And so did you not find out about it for years later?
I just knew he died.
We just couldn't tell her.
They thought about moving.
They even put their house on the market.
After the words bitch and whore had grown back on the lawn, of course.
But the economy wasn't so great.
The house didn't sell.
So they stayed. vowing not to let the neighbor get to them.
This wasn't easy.
By now they were in the middle of basically an all-out war.
There were restraining orders and counter-restraining orders and court charges and counter-charges.
By this time, both sides were videotaping each other, Betty and her husband trying over and over to get some proof that would finally incriminate the neighbor and stop him, and never getting it.
So that's how it went. for over two years.
And then, a fateful pile of garbage was dumped onto the lawn.
A pile of garbage that was actually able to change the balance of power, giving Julia and Betty and their family both great power and great responsibility.
The neighborhood had thrown trash on their property before, mostly little things cans, cigarette butts, nothing interesting, nothing useful.
But one day we went out and there was a whole lot of stuff.
It was papers, letters, bank statements, mortgage statements.
It had everything about them.
That series of numbers that, you know, makes us the person we are in America.
You mean the Social Security number?
The Social Security number, yes.
He and his wives.
I always suspected it was maybe the wife got mad at him or one of the daughters because they were adult young women and actually in that pile of stuff uh, were letters from the daughters saying oh mom, why don't you know?
Sort of like daddy's terrible and Your good and personal things as well as business type things.
I mean, you photocopied a few of these and sent them to us.
I have to say, I don't have them here.
They're so unbelievably personal.
You feel embarrassed to read them.
You do.
You do.
I mean, one of them, you know, starts with a sort of caveat.
I hope you never read this letter, because if you do, it means that you know things are just very bad between us.
And you know another one.
One of the daughters sort of says like well, I'm writing this letter while you and dad are fighting over some silly stuff.
And you just, it's so heartbreaking.
Yeah.
It is.
He was so mean and that showed what his family thought of him, how he had raised him to be what his wife thought of him.
You know, we were a family that loved each other.
We had dinner together and, you know.
Yeah.
We still laughed and had fun.
So suddenly you guys had his social security number and all these bank numbers and all that.
And you saved it?
Yes, we have.
We have a briefcase.
And it's our little treasure chest.
So really, suddenly you had like a tremendous leverage over him.
I mean, you could really do some damage.
Did you think about it?
Oh, yes.
We talked about it.
What did you think about doing?
Oh, closing up his business and bank account.
Posting all his information in some truck stop, or in many truck stops across the southeast, so that somebody could steal it.
Just like posting his social security number.
Yeah, making him a child porn person so he could never live anywhere comfortable again.
Put him on a sex offender list, you know, contribute to Hezbollah.
He could join NAMBLA.
Any of those type things would be...
Be good.
The joy in your voice as you're saying these words.
Yeah.
So now they had great power to mess with their neighbor, to punish their neighbor.
He would never know what hit him.
He would have no idea it was them.
And despite what I have to say clearly hours and hours that they spent talking about the revenge fantasies.
They held their fire.
They showed restraint.
We had the thoughts, but we never did anything.
So it was just nice to hold on to them in the special briefcase as a sort of secret weapon.
Yes, like we have a little piece of him in this briefcase.
And at any time, we could do something with it.
Well, in a way then, the main thing that finding all these papers that it gives you, it's like a gift, because it helps with the one thing you've got, which is being able to fantasize about revenge.
Right.
That's true.
And if we ever used it, that would be gone.
I mean, if we put it out in the truck stop or did something on the internet, it would, That would be gone.
We would have done our thing.
And, you know, we still can fantasize.
Yeah.
Yeah.
But it would be different if we didn't have these things, because you know saying, if you have no power, then not using power means nothing.
But we have the power to do something, but we choose not to.
And it gives us control over him, and control over him in a way we never had, when he was tormenting us.
Eventually the neighbor moved away. stopping back to harass them only occasionally.
Julia and Betty and their family moved later.
But after all these years, they've kept that briefcase full of papers.
You never know when it is that you're gonna need your secret superpower.
Act 3, Waiting for Joe.
Well, in this act, we make a little shift.
This is going to be a story about somebody with great power, but the story is going to be told from the point of view of the powerless.
When you're powerless, you spend a lot of time speculating about those above you.
Much more than the other way around, I think.
The people above us, they do not care.
They don't notice you and me.
Not in the same way.
But we think a lot about them.
Our parents, our bosses, our bosses' bosses, the people who run our government, the people who run the big companies that shape our daily lives.
What is going through their heads, we think?
Why are they acting this way?
And there's one figure, I think, that we wonder about more than any other.
Jerome Auslander grew up in a place consumed with these particular questions and has this story.
In the beginning, he was always on time.
But it had been a long time since the beginning, longer than either Donut or Danish could remember.
I don't get it, complained Danish.
Isn't it time?
It's time, answered Donut.
It feels like it's time.
It's time.
Danish paced anxiously back and forth.
Of course it was time.
He knew it was time.
He didn't need Donut to tell him that it was time.
So where is he then? asked Danish.
If it's time, then where is he?
I don't understand.
Either he knows that it's time or he doesn't.
Does he know that it's time?
Donut sat curled up inside their cold, empty feeding bowl, focused intently on the doorknob of the apartment front door, believing with all of his heart that at any moment the doorknob would turn, the door would open and Joe would appear.
We cannot pretend to think that we know what Joe knows and what Joe doesn't know.
Pronounced donut with a sharp twitch of his nose.
We must only believe with all our heart that Joe knows.
I bet he doesn't know, said Danish.
He rose up on his hind legs and flailed uselessly at the glass walls until he became exhausted.
Breathing heavily.
He lumbered over to the water bottle that hung in the far corner and drew a few drops into his mouth.
You non-believers are all the same, scoffed Donut.
He pushed some dry cedar chips into a small comfortable mound and settled down upon it.
As if you were the first hamster to ever doubt him, he said.
The first rodent to ever think, really.
Who else but you, with your keen intellect, your contrarian insight, your moral bravery and conviction?
Who else could possibly come up with, what if Joe doesn't?
What if Joe can't?
Joe knows who believes, Danish, and Joe knows who doesn't.
Joe is here.
Joe is there.
Joe is simply everywhere.
What if he never comes back?
What if he's forgotten us?
What if he's died?
You look around at all your plastic tube highways and your fabulous habit trail and think you're special.
But do ants not build anthills?
Do bees not build hives?
It is not what we build that makes us unique.
It is what we believe.
It is that we believe at all.
Doubt, my dear Danish, is no great achievement.
It is faith that sets us apart.
Besides, added Donut, he left his wallet on the front table.
He's got to come back.
He did? asked Danish.
He stood up on his back legs and squinted through the glass.
Where?
Donut walked over and stood beside Danish.
There, on the table.
Where?
There.
That?
Yes.
That's not a wallet, you idiot.
Of course it's a wallet.
It's a book, said Danish.
It's not a book.
Sure it is, said Danish.
I can read the spine.
Along came a spider by James Patterson.
He dropped down and shook his head.
Oh, no, he does not.
Donut squinted a moment longer.
Damn, it was a paperback.
Why would Joe abandon them?
Why would he leave a sign for them right there on the foyer table and then make it not a sign?
And why James Patterson?
What did it all mean?
He does not read James freaking Patterson, cried Danish.
Our salvation, our provider, we must be out of our minds.
It's a test, Donut said as he curled back up in his bed.
He's testing our faith.
Danish stood on his hind legs and flailed uselessly at the glass wall until he became exhausted.
He took a drink of water, climbed up into the plastic treehouse and curled into a tight angry ball.
I happen to find Patterson thought-provoking and suspenseful, Donut said after a moment.
You what? asked Danish.
Did you just say you find James Patterson thought-provoking and suspenseful?
Jesus Christ, open your eyes, Donut.
Don't you see what he's doing to us?
Holding our food over our heads like this?
Dangling our fate before us like a banana raisin nut bar tied to the end of a stick?
Look at you, Donut.
Are you so desperate to believe that you're actually defending James Patterson?
I thought Cat and Mouse was a taut psychological thriller, said Donut.
Oh, bite me, said Danish.
Donut closed his eyes.
Hunger stabbed sharply at his stomach, but he would never admit it to Danish.
Where the hell was Joe?
Danish rummaged frantically through the seed shells and shavings that covered the floor of their transparent little world.
He isn't coming, he said, looking for even a sliver of a husk of a shell of a seed.
He isn't coming.
Donut nestled deeper into his bed, eyes shut tight in fervent concentration.
May he who has fed us yesterday, he prayed, feed us again today and tomorrow and forever.
Amen.
Yes, Danish suddenly shouted.
Yaha!
He pulled a brown chunk of apple from beneath a small mound at the back of the cage and raised it victoriously overhead.
Without even stopping to knock off the stray bits of cedar and pine needle that stuck to its sides, Danish opened his mouth wide and dropped it in.
He made quite a show of chewing it, mm-ing and oh-ing and ah-ing, finally swallowing it with a loud, dramatic gulp.
He smiled, patted his stomach, and burped. a deep, long belch of satisfaction.
He washed it down with a few drops of water and slid down to the floor with a contented sigh.
Donut watched Danish, a sour mix of jealousy and disdain on his face.
His stomach groaned.
Where the hell was Joe?
Donut stood up and stomped over to Danish, who looked up at him lazily.
Well, demanded Donut.
Well, what?
Well, maybe you could give a little thanks, said Donut.
Thanks, asked Danish.
To who?
To Joe, Danish.
To Joe.
For what?
For the apple he gave you.
The apple he gave me, asked Danish.
I found that apple myself.
Do you think the apple just grew there?
Donut shouted.
How did the apple get there, Danish?
We searched this cage a thousand times and never found a thing.
That apple was a miracle, a gift.
Joe heard my prayers, and he brought forth upon this cage a holy apple.
His stomach grumbled.
Danish belched again and rubbed his belly with pride.
Accept, Donut, that you didn't get any food.
You asked.
I received.
Seems like a strange system to me.
He sucked a piece of apple rind out from between his teeth.
Not that I'm complaining.
You know what?
Next time, why don't you ask him for a carrot?
I simply must start getting more fiber.
Joe grants food to those who need it most, replied Donut bitterly.
Danish tired quickly of Donut's lectures, particularly when he was hungry, which he suddenly was.
Again.
Again.
He got back up and began searching again through the rough cedar chips that covered the floor.
Donut dragged himself wearily back to bed.
The miracle of the apple had made him ravenous.
Donut would never admit it.
He was ashamed to even think it.
But lately, he'd begun to doubt.
Lately, Joe and his mysterious ways were beginning to tick him off.
It was the same thing with him every damn day.
Begging, thanks, begging.
Verse, chorus, verse.
Why me? wondered Donut.
It must have been his own fault.
He must have sinned.
He must have angered Joe.
Just last week he had questioned why their litter wasn't changed more frequently.
Perhaps there's a cedar shortage, he'd ask Danish sarcastically.
It is a hardwood, you know.
He had even complained aloud that their cage was too small.
The chutzpah.
Some hamsters didn't even have a cage, let alone a habitrail and an exercise wheel.
How could he have been so ungrateful?
He barely even used the blessed exercise wheel, a beautiful exercise wheel that any hamster would love, and Donut had only ever used it once.
He was ashamed of himself.
No wonder there wasn't any food.
Why should Joe give him anything more if he couldn't appreciate what he had already been given?
Donut closed his eyes and silently thanked Joe for starving him in order to show him the error of his ways.
Forgive me, he prayed.
And with that, Donut hurried out of bed and climbed onto the exercise wheel.
He ran as fast as he could, huffing and puffing, regret and retribution nipping at his heels.
Danish, meanwhile, was going mad.
He'd been tricked, tricked by Joe.
He was even hungrier now than he'd been before he'd eaten Joe's cursed apple.
Oh, yes, very good, Joe, yes, quite witty, shouted Danish.
Well done, old boy, touche.
Back on the exercise wheel, Donut could run no more.
He stumbled back to bed.
Danish stood on his hind legs and flailed uselessly at the glass walls until he became exhausted.
Donut prayed.
And behold, suddenly, the doorknob did turn.
The apartment door did open.
And Joe did appear.
Danish peed in excitement.
Donut crapped in fear.
Joe was thin and pale, and he wore a rumpled brown suit.
The badge hanging from his chest pocket read, Mail Room.
There was a woman with him, too, a woman Danish and Donut had never seen before.
She had thin hair and thick glasses, and she and Joe wrestled their way through the doorway as one, groping and feeling and rubbing each other as if each had somehow lost the keys in the other's pants' pockets.
Joe groaned and tore open her blouse.
Danish and Donut pressed their noses to the glass.
There better be apples in there, said Danish.
Forgive me, Joe, for doubting you, prayed Donut.
Joe lifted the woman into his arms.
To hell with dinner, he whispered.
She threw her head back and laughed, and as they headed down the hallway toward his bedroom, Joe switched the living room lights off with his elbow.
Darkness.
Donut looked at Danish.
Danish looked at Donut.
We have brought this upon ourselves, said Donut.
Danish stood on his hind legs and flailed uselessly at the glass walls until he became exhausted.
Donut prayed.
Shalom Auslander.
His story, Waiting for Joe, is from his collection, Beware of God.
His most recent book is Fé, a memoir.
I won't be a victim, a beggar or a fool.
I try to live my life.
If you don't love me, what am I supposed to do?
I'll take the high road and walk on away from you.
Well program is produced today by Elise Spiegel and myself, with Alex Bloomberg, Diane Cook, Jane Marie, Amir Leary, Lisa Pollock and Nancy Updike.
Senior producer for today's show is Julie Snyder.
Elizabeth Meister ran our website back when we did this show.
Production help from Seth Lind and Kathy Hahn.
Music up today from Jessica Hopper.
Help on today's rerun from Adrienne Lilly, Molly Marcello, Catherine Maimondo, and Stone Nelson.
Special thanks today to Davey Rothbart, John Smetanka, and Anne Buckleitner.
Thanks today to This American Life partners Cho Moon, Wendy Epstein, and Nicole Valentine.
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Next week on the podcast of This American Life.
There have been so many efforts by the Trump administration this year to pry certain people away from their jobs and their communities, the lives they've built.
One family decided to respond with an unexpected secret weapon.
Pull it up.
You should just pull out the spreadsheet.
I can do that.
It's beautiful.
It's excellent.
It's a thing of beauty.
Garrett and Chrissy and their magical spreadsheets next week on the podcast or on your local public radio station.
