The story of his crimes, as he told it, was always framed as the prelude to revelation and epiphany. Prison gave him a chance to find himself, to discover his true value. And that was considerable. Just ask his publisher.
When he chose to talk about “going away,” Stanko liked to paint his criminal history as white-collar crapola. No big deal. A freakin’ railroad job. He’d admit, maybe, that he was a bit of a bs artist. But there was nothing un-American about that—it was all part of getting ahead.
But he never mentioned his kidnapping conviction, the details of which could seep right into a person’s nightmares. Anyone with a dollop of decency would deem them disturbing—and Stanko was hip enough to know he had to keep them secret.
And that part of his personality, the one that came out when he was angry and with a woman, must never emerge again. That was a rule. If he had a fatal flaw, that was it. Put that guy in the recesses of the mind and keep him there. When he did think about it, Stanko realized he was as a man stricken with lycanthropy, like the Wolfman, Lawrence Talbot, fearing the rise of the full moon would transform him into a bloodthirsty beast, like Dr. Jekyll, keeping Mr. Hyde on the down low. A monster that did very bad things—did them ecstatically—lived inside Stanko. Then it went away, leaving Stanko to endure the soul-crushing consequences.
Thinking about it made it worse for him. The idea was to sublimate the urge, push it deep, deep inside and hold it there. It was a constant struggle—like holding a balloon underwater.
An ex-con turned literati darling once described incarceration as living “in the belly of the beast.” And when you were released—Stanko thought, pushing the metaphor—you came out the beast’s ass. No bad men were cured in prison, Stanko knew. They just got worse, until they turned to complete shit.
Now, the Hummer ticket cashed in and spent—at least for the time being—Stanko headed for the Myrtle Beach area. Where better in the summer?
WELCOME TO THE GRAND STRAND the sign said.
During the first weeks of his freedom, he stayed in a number of rooms, all cheap—the landladies (there were never landlords) mostly unpaid. He looked for a job, but it was tough for a quality guy like himself to face the rejection. One look of suspicion or distaste from a prospective employer and his mood was shot the rest of the day. He got so mad.
He needed something to do with his days; so he began work on his research, maybe get an outline started for his latest literary creation. All he needed was a blank notebook, a cheap ballpoint, and a library with a pretty librarian.
THE LIBRARIAN AND HER DAUGHTER
Stephen Stanko took up his research at the Horry County Memorial Library–Socastee Branch. It was a good library, with many books on subjects that interested him. Happily for Stanko, it fit the second criteria as well. The librarian was gorgeous! A raven-haired beauty.
“I’m Stephen Stanko, the author,” he said to her.
“Laura Ling, pleased to meet you,” she replied. (Not to be confused with the Laura Ling who was the sister of TV personality Lisa Ling, who was held captive for a time in North Korea.)
Stanko asked her where she was from.
Dallas, Texas, born and raised, she said, her inflection emphasizing a musical Southwestern drawl. Stanko kept asking questions and she answered. She was born Laura Elizabeth Hudson. Her mother was Sue McKee Wilson Hudson. Dad, Earl Pierce Hudson, died too young. There was something they had in common, they both completely rocked high school. Laura was the BGOC—“big gal on campus”—at North Garland High. She had range. A member of the Beta Club (“Me too,” Stanko said, telling the truth) and vice president of the student council, she was inducted into the National Honor Society and was a nominee for Miss North Garland. Good-looking, brains, and politically savvy, too—a triple-threat gal, laugh out loud.
After high school, Laura went to Texas A&M University, where, an honor roll student, she majored in English. She later earned a master’s in library science at the University of South Carolina.
After school she married Chris Ling and had three children: two sons and the youngest, a pretty daughter, Penelope, who was called Penny (pseudonym). When they divorced, the boys lived with their dad, Ling moved into a place in Murrells Inlet, with her daughter, and she took a job as a reference librarian at the Socastee Public Library, near Myrtle Beach.
The library was modern and designed to please the eye, a one-story brick building, with its own parking lot and a semicircular driveway that allowed cars to drop library-goers right out front. Plus, a roof extended out over the driveway in front of the main entrance, so those entering and leaving weren’t exposed to rain or intense sun.
Out front by the road was a brick structure that existed only as a mounting surface for the sign. At the top was the county emblem, which reminded passersby that this was THE INDEPENDENCE REPUBLIC. Below that were the street number and the name of the library. In front of the brick sign, a spotlight protruded from the finely manicured lawn, so the words remained legible after dark.
Inside, Ling proved herself a master librarian. For any serious researcher, Ling was perfect to befriend. It wasn’t that her knowledge of any subject was exhaustive. She might not have known a fact, but she knew where to look it up. Her responsibilities at the library grew, and one of the extracurricular activities she signed up for was teaching senior citizens how to use a computer.
Upon first meeting, Laura Ling was attracted to the seemingly harmless Stephen Stanko. She found his intelligence and quiet confidence tremendously appealing. And he was good-looking to boot.
He didn’t hide being an ex-con. White-collar crimes, he always added. He’d learned his lesson and changed his ways. Seen the light. Now he had a cause.
One of the first questions she asked him was “Author?” Yes, he replied enthusiastically. He’d written a book in prison, and it had been published—a fact that Laura Ling wasted no time verifying. There it was, on her computer screen. His book was a call for prison reform and modernized methods of rehabilitation. Ling was so impressed. As far as she knew, he was the first published author to walk into her library, which, after all, was a branch. Sure, he was an ex-con. That was secondary.
Yeah, one book published, Stanko boasted, but he’d written several. In addition to his scholarly work, he also had two novels and an autobiography in the can. He was shopping the autobiography around, figured that would be the next to be published.
He was a smart guy, maybe an intellectual, too smart to be a criminal. And now that he was free at last, he couldn’t have seemed more rehabilitated.
She ordered a copy of his book for her library’s shelves and told Stanko to consider her library his library. He had access to all of the books, not just in the branch, but in the entire system. If he wanted a book and couldn’t find it on the shelf, they could go together to the county library system’s online catalog. The library had subscription-based databases for research in newspapers, magazines, and journals published from the mid-1980s on. There was a free New York Times archive on the Web, but it only included before 1922 and after 1987. Otherwise, you had to pay a fee. After years of dealing with clumsy microfiche, the Horry County libraries now had the much-easier-to-use microfilm for its periodical archives. And, of course, he would have access to the Internet. He had come to the right place, she said. Socastee was a library where he could do all of his research and see a friendly face at the same time.
Through Ling, Stanko made another friend, seventy-four-year-old Henry Lee Turner. Turner had taken one of Ling’s computer classes, held at the library. Later, when he had computer problems, he called Ling and she came over to his house to help him, bringing Stanko with her.
Ling was well loved by her colleagues. She went the extra mile to help people. Turner was an aging veteran, who lived in a mobile home and loved to fish. For a con man, they were the perfect marks.
Laura