"Oh, no, no, no." Mr. White starts to laugh in disbelief. "The only thing, like I tell you, way back, way back, we used to have some break-ins. But them people aren’t here no more." He says again how that was back in the ’80s. The offenders only turned up six and a half years ago.

"I don’t know what he’s talkin’ about," says the old man.

Both men moan and shake their heads.

I ask what it was really like before the offenders came.

Suddenly the laughter turns off. There’s a worrisome lull while the music pulses and wails. "I don’t know," the old man says. He seems reluctant to speak. "All I know is that all my children ain’t here. I had my grandchildren here, and now they ain’t here no more."

"That’s what I was trying to tell you," Mr. White says to me.

The old man looks sad. He clears his throat and glances at the chickens pecking his lawn.

Mr. White speaks for him. "When them people, the sex offenders, come here, they say who want to go, go." He says some officials came out before they moved in, going door-to-door, to inform them that no children should live here anymore. So the older man’s grandchildren had to move.

"They got to go. Because of the sex offenders," Mr. White says. "They say no kids can stay out here, so I don’t know."

So for the offenders to find their own corner of heaven, to create their own community out of exile, another community had to be displaced. That’s what I’m hearing. This was the real offense. Those were the terms and conditions for the families who had already been compelled once to leave their homes to seek a better life in the cane.

When I go back to the house, Rose is on the couch playing her cell-phone game, as usual, while Judge Judy presides on TV: Hey! I’m talking. Do you understand? Well, you know what sometimes happens, and I don’t know if it happened here. Maybe we’ll find out, maybe not....

I am suddenly overtaken by an unwholesome urge. It’s an underhanded impulse that can’t possibly lead to any good. I know I ought to ignore it. Best not to put myself in a position where I know specifics. It’s impossible to give the benefit of the doubt—impossible not to judge—when you have too many specifics. But I go to my room anyway, close the door, and sit on the edge of the bed. I wait to see if the urge will pass. When it does not, I go ahead and open my laptop.

Then I tap in my present coordinates, zip code, address, and then, with the sugary sludge of adrenaline in my gut, the words "sex offender."

And there they are.

Friends and neighbors, gracious hosts, right there on the registry for all to fear. Once I start reading, it’s not as if I can stop. I see all the young guys who got slapped with the statutory charge, and I wonder anew at the twisted laws of this state. At the permanence of the stigma. But my skin grows colder with each click. A new wave of dread at each mug shot. It’s like getting a peek at a bundle of autopsy photos on a crime show, when a cop drops a folder to reveal a bit of unwelcome if titillating exposition. Traveling to meet a minor. Lewdly fondle. Lascivious molestation. To solicit or obtain. Commit or simulate. Force or entice. The lighting of a mug shot would make anyone look suspicious, I think. But, Jesus, as I read on, how fast the oozy depths rise to the surface. Random Dude. Stay-at-home Andy. My new friends, whose peaceful snores have lulled me to sleep these past few nights. And—what?—that pugnacious old charmer could have faced a 480-year maximum sentence? Then, after reading an arrest report about Richard and his twin stepgranddaughters, I discover, almost inconceivably, that the version presented to me—as tabloid nightmarish as it already was—was sanitized. This is so much more sickeningly brutal. Perhaps he had been merciful to spare me, but his diluted and self-serving version doesn’t begin to capture the depravity of it. Offended at myself for having looked, I close the laptop, thinking, No one should ever see this, I will keep what I have seen to myself, and then I go in the bathroom to splash cold water in my face before I make my way to choir rehearsal and potluck.