English Audio Request

Mick was 57, with a bad back, rotten teeth, and hepatitis. He'd worn a BI tracker for two years. When he walked in from the icy streets of Trenton, my eyes darted to the electronic components hanging off his leg and clothing, and I sympathized with him immediately. Mick had tried to kill himself a few months earlier in a bout of depression, possibly brought on by poverty and estrangement from his son and daughter, both of whom he had been convicted of molesting. He was tall and lanky, with glasses and a moustache, and, in the way of some depressives, was disarmingly funny. If I'd met Mick in the hallway of my apartment building, I would have thought he was there to fix the heater.
His parole officer, an intelligent young guy named John Goldin, meets Mick weekly to confirm where he has been, and why. He started by checking off the signs that Mick had kept away from kids and continued living his desperate and carefully observed life. "Any contact with police?" Goldin asked. "Drugs? Alcohol? Minors?"
Mick gave four quick, weary Nos.
Did Mick still plan to go fishing to supplement the $480 he had left over from his monthly disability payment after he paid child support? Were bedbugs still feasting on him and the other residents of his rooming house? Why had he gone to Broad Street on Wednesday?
Mick answered the questions with the resignation of someone who had become used to explaining every minute of his life to a man barely half his age. Yes, he was going to start fishing again. The bedbugs were gone for now. He'd gone to Broad Street to visit the TD Bank and count the loose change he'd found on the street.
As for the anklet itself, he told me his diabetes made him worry about where the band rubbed his skin. "I can't afford no infections," he said. In the summer, when the weather was hot and he didn't wear long pants to conceal his tracker, he said the stares were constant: "I get tired of people asking me every day, 'That a phone?' I mean, shut the fuck up."