Lead -in

1. LEAD -IN

1. Have you ever happened to suffer injustice?
2. Did you feel the desire to take
revenge/vengeance['venʤ(ə)ns] ON sb. FOR sth.?
3. Do you stick to the concept that evil must be punished?

2. Listen to the story, get the general idea and answer the following questions

1.
What/s the general
layout of the story?
2. What did you feel while
listening
?

3. Pre-teaching the vocab: matching finding Russian equivalents

4. Listen again and answer the following questions

1.
Who was Elise?
2. What was the woman’s story?
3. What did tracker Coke Bucknil
suspect?
4. What did he do to restore justice?

5.

Her name was Elise Toussaint. And as I looked up at her face, I
couldn't help but feel regret. This emotion isn't the kind that settles
after long thought; it slams you in the gut and knocks the wind out of
you.
I was called in by the warden of the Federal Prison for Women, who
wanted me to attest to the fact that there were no more bruises or cuts
on the body than there had been the day before.
You see, I was the tracker that finally caught up with this little lady
after she escaped and lead the marshals on a chase of 3 days and a
hundred miles. Choppers, dogs, and men were called in from all over
the county to apprehend this "desperado", this "prostitute", this
convicted "drug lord" from a nearby state. Little did I know then that
she was running for her life.
"What is it, Coke?"
The impatient voice behind me wanted to hurry things along. He
wanted to get this lifeless piece of trouble out of his barracks, avoid the
risk of scandal. Well, as a tracker, I don't like to be rushed; and when
my name, Coke Bucknil, goes on a piece of paper that is to be taken
as gospel, naturally, I take my time.

6.

"How'd she die?"
"Broken neck. Can't you see? She hung herself."
"The correct term is hanged. Her toes are touching the floor."
"So? She's been there since 3 a.m."
"Where'd she get all that cloth to make the rope?"
"She used the bandages."
Yes, I remembered. In her desperation to get away, she lead me through
thick bramble, thorns, and muddy fields. She was suffering from exposure,
scratches, bruises, and blisters from the bites of fire ants. How they must have hurt,
but she never whimpered, not even when the officers pushed her into the mud to
cuff her. She'd needed a lot of bandages.
That image of a survivor rankled in me now, as I inspected the body of one who
apparently gave up in suicide.
"These red marks across her face, they weren't there yesterday, Warden."
"Oh yeah. I guess she made them when she slipped the noose over her head....
Come on, Coke. You've been long enough."
"Well, I'll have to mention those in my report."
"Get this straight, Coke, if you even insinuate that this is anything but a suicide,
I'll see to it that you never work in this town OR in this state again."
"I didn't insinuate anything. D'you know something I don't know, Warden?"
I enjoyed irritating him, but I didn't want to make him mad. 'This state' was a large
territory not to ever work in again.

7.

As for the town, it has more than 200,000 people but only one newspaper, one whose
reporters write what they're told to write, one that has an agreement with the college to
suppress reports of gang activity so that parents will not send their little darlings
somewhere else. And as I stood looking up at that lifeless face, a face that had been
beautiful at one time, this and other cover-ups blitzed my mind. I turned away from
the body, and left the building.
One thing about trackers: like they know how to read the signs in the bush, they can
read people. The warden meant what he said, and as I walked to my car thinking about
Elise, I wondered if that mattered to me. If I hadn't seen her twice, I would have written
anything he told me, even rhyming poetry. But the signs made me pause. The
expression on her white face was not one of peaceful suicide. It was fear, pure and
vivid fear. I'd seen that kind of fear before.
Another sign. How could a woman as slight as she was jump one foot off a cot and
break her neck? The act would only choke her. And... the marks on her face were not
from the cloth noose. They were made by large hands that pressed the life out of her
and broke her neck before they tightened the noose around her throat.
"She was murdered." I said out loud, and drove out the gate. If I had a decent bone in
my body, I'd go to the nearest Police Station and tell them my suspicions. But I had to
think this through. My life, as mediocre as it was, still meant something to me. If I
wasn't careful, I'd end up like her, because the power of two states was at work here.
She'd been convicted as a drug dealer and prostitute. That was the rumor, anyway.
But I don't pay much attention to rumors.

8.

I had my own theory about what really happened. When the idiot governor of this nearby
state got tired of his mistress, he planted drugs on her, labeled her a prostitute, got her
convicted, and sent her here; all because she knew too much of his organized crime
activities. He had to get her out of his way so that when she was killed, he couldn't be
blamed.
With that in mind, I finally decided what I was going to do about the injustice done to Elise,
and professionalism took over. From my small apartment, I did my tracking over the computer
until 2:30 a.m. By that time, I had a plan of action that would take me over the next week.
By 3 a.m. I had the Warden's mansion under surveillance from a respectable distance. I
was looking for a particular activity and found it. I had a tracker's hunch I might find the
governor's bodyguard from the nearby state, and I was right. In the early hours, the man
emerged from the Warden's mansion. There was no need to follow him; I knew where he was
going.
By 4 a.m., I was home again. Settling with the warden was easy. I would use my "specialoccasion" stationery. Handling it with plastic gloves, I wrote my report the way he wanted me
to, activated the chemical, and slipped it in a protective plastic. I addressed the envelope,
making sure it was FOR THE WARDEN'S EYES ONLY.
A few hours later, I took a plane to a coastal resort where the governor had a residence.
During my week there, there was quite a commotion, when coastguards brought in the bodies
of the governor and his bodyguard who had drowned, quite inexplicably, during an afternoon
fishing trip. How fitting that they should be together when it happened, I thought.
Meanwhile, back home, the Warden also died suddenly, apparently of natural causes.
Since he was easily replaced, I still had a job.
One thing about trackers: When they feel that gut-wrenching regret, sometimes they do
things for free. I did... for Elise.

9.

https://wordwall.net/resource/22107194/vo
cabulary-for-elise
https://wordwall.net/resource/22104605/inv
ersion-for-elise-a-few-good-reasons

10.

Several months after the events in this story, an investigative journalist from New York came to interview
Coke Bucknil about the story of Elise Toussaint. Here are Coke Bucknil’s answers to his questions; what were
the questions?
When......
When I caught up with her in the bush.
Did you......
No, I had been told that she was a prostitute and a drug dealer.
Why ......
Because as soon as I saw her, I could tell that she was not that kind of person.
Why......
Well you know, as I tracker, I know how to interpret people and situations.
When...
Next morning.
And why.....
He wanted me to attest to the fact that there were no new bruises on the body.
And .......
Definitely. There were a lot.
So what...
I asked him where they came from.
And ......
He claimed they came from the noose.
Did....
Of course not; I’m a tracker. I could see she’d been strangled.
So why...
Well, to be honest, I didn’t want to be the next victim. ...

11.

Role play; the moral dilemma:
How innocent or guilty is Coke Bucknil? He is the hero of this story,
yet he causes three people to die .... This could lead to an interesting
role play situation. A TV chat show, with seven participants:
a host,
Coke's lawyer,
Elise's brother or sister,
a legal expert,
a police chief,
the Warden's brother.
Situation: Coke has been arrested, charged, and is now awaiting his
trial. The whole story has come out, and is now dividing public opinion in
the USA.