18

 

        As I had told Puck, my uncle Charlie was dead.

        Word about it had come to house on the day before Thanksgiving, as two soldiers in full dress uniforms came up onto our front porch and rang the front door bell – something nobody we knew did, so it always generally signified bad news.

        My family welcomed the soldiers into the front hall, where the soldiers delivered their solemn declaration.

        It was as if the bomb that had killed him had gone off again in our living room, leaving a stunned silence in its wake, putting to an end at least temporarily all the usual family feuds, and replacing them with something even more terrible, mourning.

        I couldn’t stand it. I needed noise around me. I needed to do something violent.

        So I lifted the key to the GTO from the hook in my uncle’s room and crept out of the house to the driveway where Charlie had parked and covered the car before going off to war.

        The engine started with a number of rough coughs, but as soon as I got it back onto the road, its virility returned.

        My family noticed the car leaving immediately, but I didn’t care, cursing them over the road of the engine as I rode away.

        Puck wanted to meet him so I did.

        When I got back to the car after the snow storm, I decided not to go home. I never wanted to go home again, and I half considered taking the car and going west – after all, Route 80 went all the way to San Francisco, and I still had most of the wad of bills Puck had thrown at me two days earlier in the castle.

        I still don’t know if I would have gone or not. I still making up my mind – riding very fast down the snow-cleared lanes of Route 80 when the sirens started.  I didn’t know they were after me until I reached the Totowa exit and realized they must have been chasing me for some time.

        I slammed on the brakes at the end of the exit where a number of Paterson, West Paterson and Totowa police cars blocked the way. An army of armed police officers swarmed out from behind me and approached my car.

        I didn’t get out until one of them ordered me out.

        Then, slowly, completely drained of emotions, I stepped out into the cool air, shivering at the chill, aware only then that I had no jacket, and could not recall where I had left it.

        The police told me to put my hands up, I complied.     When they told me to turn around, I did that, too.

        They patted me down, then cuffed me, and stuffed me into the back seat of a police car for the ride downtown – to the county jail on Main Street as it turned out.

        My speeding had only attracted the police to me. They’d had other reasons for clinging to my tail so long.

        Someone had apparently reported seeing my uncle’s car outside the liquor store the day the clerk got shot.

        No license plat, just the year and make of the car, and since another report apparently claimed Puck had gotten out of a car fitting the same description downtown later, a close watch was kept out for it

        They possibly thought they would catch Puck, but caught me instead.

        They put me in room and asked me a lot of questions, particularly about the whereabouts of Puck.

        Someone had seen us near Red Ball’s place so they knew he was alive.

        I told them I didn’t know where he was nor did I care.

        They decided to stick me in a cell block until I wised up or something from my family bailed me out.

        The guard in charge decided to have a little fun with me, seeing me as some kind of guppy he would put into a shark’s tank.

        He was a mean man who got his kicks from seeing other people suffer and he intended to see me suffer, and was sorely disappointed on my account.

        It’s not that I didn’t feel scared being sent up into the bullpen from the holding area and dumped into a large cell with thirty or forty seriously hardened criminals – I was scared all right – but I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of showing it.

        The bored guards stool outside the cage, expecting to have to yank me out later bleeding from every orifice. I heard one mumble about teaching me a lesson life and how I’d never want to come back to jail afterwards.

        One guard actually mumbled, “I hope you brought some Preparation H, boy You're going to need it."

        Slimy characters inside the cell oozed off bunk beds the minute the cell gate closed, creeping in my direction as if drawn to me by scent.

        “What’s your name, boy?” one white man with no front teeth asked.

        I told him.

        His pathetic smile broadened.

        “You look pretty fresh,” he said. “Maybe I need to give you a little squeeze, like bread, eh? Are you a little fresh loaf of bread, eh?”

        His fingers, stained yellow from countless cigarettes, stretched towards me, intending to grab hold of my shoulder.

        “I sure would like to…” he said, though his sentence ended in a scream as I yanked his hand around and bed it back in the wrong director, bones snapping as I did.

        “Let’s go! Let go!” he screamed, glancing back over his shoulder at the guards outside the bars who seemed indifferent to his pleas.

        “I’ll let you go if you promise to leave me alone,” I said in a low voice only he could hear.

        Charlie had taught me a lot about causing pain, though I’m sure I had done more damage to this man than I intended.

        I had a tendency to exert too much force.

        “Nobody’s bothering you,” the man said, his face now shimmering with seat. “So let go.”

        I released the man’s wrist and the man – after glaring at me for a moment – hobbled away to lick his wounds in a corner.

        His failed effort seemed to sour the good mood the cell block had enjoyed at my arrival.

        Others grumbled. A few even complained to the guards about what kind of ringing they had dumped in with them.

        The guards looked as puzzled as the prisoners and wanted to know what the problem was.

        The wounded man pointed at me and accused me of trying to break his arm.

        The guards who had an indistinct view of the events shook their heads, laughing at they expressed disbelief at the outcome of their joke.

        Hardened criminals had no business cringing away from someone like me.

        They made no more move to assist that man than they had me, nor offered any advice to the other prisoners who eyed me more warily.

These prisoners back into the shadows where they could wait and watch to see which way this new set of events turned out. They had the whole night. The game may turn out the way they expected after all.

I had to sleep sometime, the guards and prisoners concluded as the first laid bets among each other while the second group hatched plots, and I edged into a corner of my own, hoping I could survive the night unscathed.

Or that someone from my family would come and bail me out.

At some point later, the lights dimmed to indicate the change of hour and the time for prisoners to sleep.

The lights did not go out. Nor was the cell block dim enough to give the criminals any advantage my relative weakness didn’t already give them.

Yet it made them bolder and they crept closer, as if they had discussed some joint strategy and worked together to undo me in a way none would have dreamed of doing outside the walls of the prison.

One man with a shaved head and missing front teeth leaped at me, his hands aimed at my throat.

        I stepped aside, grabbed him by the forearm and the elbow and propelled his advance into a nearby wall which his head struck with an unnerving thud.

        My moving out of my corner allowed someone else to jump me from behind, his hairy arms clasping around me like an ape’s, although unable to close as I ducked down and twisted around to strike him between the legs twice.

        His howl made an air-raid siren sound serene.

        A third man took a poke at my face as I rose. I deflected the blow with my forearm and struck the man’s throat with a kick – leaving him gurgling too much to scream.

        The attackers retreated like wounded dogs to a corner where the rest of the pack reevaluated me from the shadows.

        Again, they waited and watched.

        When they made their move again, they came in pairs, three sets circling around so as to approach me from the front and both sides as I pressed my back against the wall.

        These left wounded as well, although they also left me much weaker.

        Later, they came again, some with weapons, and I got careless, inflicting on them more injury than Charlie would have found acceptable.

        When morning came, the line seeking nurse’s aid circled the room.

        Morning also brought despair.

        My family apparently had decided to teach me a lesson and not bail me out, a kind of tough love likely to get me killed.

        I didn’t trust daylight to keep the rates off me so I stayed awake.

        I watched the rats watching me and knew the minute I closed my eyes they would attack.

        Then I saw Red Ball – the laughing black man sitting on a bunk watching me, too.

        “How did you get here?” I asked.

        “The same way you did,” he said. “Puck’s antics turned a lot of attention on me – so the DA decided to close me down for a while.”

        Without the crimson light and darkness of his apartment, Red Ball’s history showed on his face, a tangle of scars and crinkles of anguish. His shaved head showed scars of where he had been hit from behind or from the side.

        “You won’t survive the night,” he told me.

        "I'm all right," I said.

        "You were fine," the black man said.

        "I can take care of myself!"

        "Can you?

        “I’m fine.”

        “You were fine. But you’re getting tired.”

        “Someone will bail me out,” I said changing the subject

        “If no one does?”

        “I’ll defend myself.”

        “Without sleep?”

        “You want me to prove my point?"

        "Don't threaten me, boy," the black man said. "You aren't good enough to threaten me. You're young. You're quick. But your style is raw and you make mistakes."

        “You know karate?"

        "It's not my school, but I'm proficient in it," the man said. "I only have one degree black belt in that style."

        “So what do you propose?”

        “I can protect you.”

        “Why?”

        “A man has his needs in a place like this – and since I can’t get out to see my ladies, I’ll need someone to take care of me while I’m in here.”

        "No way."

        "I can make you."

        "You'd have to."

        "Friend," the black man said, leaning over the table slightly, though not enough to draw a word of warning from the guards. "Even if you weren't tired, you couldn't beat me. You don't have years enough of practice to even come close. Maybe someday, not now. And now is all you've got. If you don't come to my bunk tonight, you'll be dead in the morning. I won't have to fight you. The rats'll tear you limb from limb, and the vultures will have their way with you -- doing a lot worse than I'd ever do."

        “I told you to leave me alone.”

        Red Ball shrugged.

        “It’s your funeral.”

        A few hours later, well before dark, the guards called for me.

        “Someone’s come to bail you out,” they said, and escorted me down the long corridors towards the door that eventually led to freedom.

        I expected to find one of my uncles waiting, but instead, I found Puck’s father, Creeley, waiting there.

        “My boy got you into this mess, I figured I ought to get you out,” he said.

        I called my uncles to tell them I was coming home. They told me they didn’t want me there any more.

        Maybe I didn’t feel like living in that old house full of ghosts either.

        Creeley offered to let me come live with him.

        I told him I didn’t want any part of his life style.

        He assured me I wouldn’t have to get involved with him that he his mistakes had cost him one son and that he did not intend to louse his second chance.

        I believed him.

        I apparently spoke loud enough for one of the guards to take notice.

        "Do you have a problem, buddy?" the guard asked, pressing the tip of his small black night stick into the space between Zarra's shoulder blades.

        "No."

        "Then let's not have any shouting, okay?" the guard said, and then walked away.

        The shaven-headed black mean leaned across the table again.

        "Well, friend?" he asked with one of his agonizing smiled. "You come with me now and I'll protect you. No one messes with me in this place."

        "Go away," I hissed. "I don't need you and I certainly don't want to be your wife."

        Twenty-four hours later, I was released on bail. I had a hard time signing for my possessions, and didn’t even recognize my wobbly signature.

        It would be the last time I got into legal trouble for twenty years.