Joe

by Larry Brown

  They finished it where 9 runs into Calhoun County. A state trooper had his car parked sideways in the road and he was down across the hood with a shotgun to his cheek. Joe wouldn’t have stopped for him, either, but he misjudged by two feet the amount of room it would take to go around the left side. His wheel dropped off a culvert and he turned down into the ditch, jerking the wheel to no avail. The brakes wouldn’t stop the tires from sliding in the dewy grass. At five miles an hour he slammed into an oak tree three feet wide and broke the windshield open with his head. The dog went out the window and ran.

  When he came to, the headlights showed dark green jungle depths and bugs danced in the halos of light they made. Far down and away through the black night came the wail of sirens faintly, like sirens singing, like souls lost in the sky. Through the trees, faint blue flashes of light.

  When Joe woke the first time, it was to summer heat that held not a breath of air. Someone had taken a lighter and held it against the ceiling while kneeling on the upper bunks and writing strange fuck-slogans in smoke up there. There was a white man in T-shirt and skivvies and shower shoes sitting at a table with a black man in a rumpled suit and a red tie, playing cards. They regarded him as he came awake and then they ignored him. He slept again.

  He woke to the sound of banging. If anything it was hotter. What he’d have given for a cold drink of orange juice. He couldn’t believe where he was.

  He felt of his pockets. Shirt, pants, back pockets. There was nothing on him, no money, no cigarettes. He rose up finally and sat on the edge of the cot, his shoes still on his feet. With his fingers searching carefully he found blood caked above his eye and a knot above his ear. No memory came forward to attest to the reasons for their existence. They were only there and had somehow come with the rest of it. The walls were green and there was a little fountain above the commode. If he wanted a drink, he’d have to drink from that. What he’d been lying on was a stained striped mat about an inch thick. Other men lay sleeping on other bunks throughout the cell. He looked at the card players.

  “Has one of y’all got a cigarette I can have?”

  The white man looked around. “I’ve got a Kool if you want a Kool.”

  He got up and went over and took one offered from the pack and stuck it in his mouth.

  “I ain’t got a light either. You gonna have to kick me in the ass to get me started, I reckon.”

  “Here’s some matches. You want to sit in on a hand?”

  “Thanks. No, thanks.”

  When he had his smoke going, he went back and sat on the bunk. From the heat in the cell he judged it to be afternoon. He remembered standing in the road at night and seeing the truck against a tree, the lights shining. He thought he remembered somebody pulling his hair while he was hitting somebody else. He touched his scalp with his fingertips. It was tender, sore. There were small bare places where some of his hair had been pulled out. He couldn’t remember faces, complete events, just nightmare scenes that were vague and surreal, like glimpses of a movie he might have seen.

  He finished the cigarette and dropped it on the cement and ground it under his heel. The door to the cell was solid steel, with a small rectangular hole large enough to admit trays of food. He got up and went over to it and bent down so that he could look out into the hall. There was nothing to see but another wall and nine or ten cases of beer stacked against it.

  “Hey. Jailer.” He rested his head on the cool metal ledge and thought he might throw up from the idiocy of it all. From not learning his lesson, from the subservience he’d have to effect. There was no telling what he’d done. Murder maybe. Mayhem, at least.

  Steps sounded in the hall. A man bent over and looked in.

  “What you want?” he said.

  “I want to get out of here.”

  “No shit. I magine everybody in there’d like that.”

  “I get a phone call, don’t I?”

  “Yeah, you get a phone call. Who you want to call?”

  He thought for a moment. Not Charlotte.

  “I don’t know yet. Can you let me out and let me get some cigarettes? Did I have any money when I come in here?”

  “We got your money in the desk. You want me to take enough out to get you some cigarettes?”

  “I guess so. What have they got me for?”

  “I’ll have to go ask. I wasn’t here last night.”

  “You mind?”

  “Naw. Just hold on.”

  The steps went away slowly. He heard a door open and close. Somebody was yelling in another cell. Down the hall a tray slot opened. “Hey. Hey! Somebody. You hear me? I’m sick. I want to go to the doctor. Open this door.”

  The door to the hall opened. A voice called down: “What you yelling about now?”

  “I want to go to the doctor. I’m sposed to be takin medicine.”

  “I done told you you ain’t going down there. All you wanting is some more dope.”

  “Naw, I ain’t wantin no dope. I’m sick. I need to go see the doctor. I was sposed to done been down there.”

  “Go back to sleep, Roscoe. You got three more weeks.”

  “I can’t stay in here three more weeks. I got to go see about my kids, you son of a bitch.”

  “You stop that goddamn cussing. You been yelling ever since you got here. I’m tired of hearing it.”

  “I don’t give a fuck what you tired of. Now, goddamnit, open this door and let me out, you cocksucker.”

  “You better shut up.”

  “I ain’t gonna shut up.”

  “I’ll get that strap.”

  “Well, get the fuckin strap!”

  He shouted some more things but the door closed on him and his words fell on no ears that wanted them. After a while he sobbed. The tray slot pulled back shut and there was silence. Joe rubbed the scabbed place over his eye and wondered if it had been stitched, or needed stitching. In a few minutes the hall door opened again and the steps came back to his door.

  “You still on probation?”

  “Naw. I been off probation three years.”

  “Well. They can’t find a field officer. Said he was out feedin his cows.”

  “Hell, they don’t need to talk to a field officer. I ain’t on probation.”

  “They seem to think you are.”

  He groaned and held his head. He was trying to think of a name but now when he needed it most it wouldn’t come to him. Bob or Bill Johnson or Jackson.

  “What they got me charged with?”

  “Shit. A heap. DWI and assault on an officer. Resistin arrest. Whole buncha stuff. You gonna need you a lawyer.”

  “Can you get me a bailbondsman?”

  “I can try.”

  “They’s a card in my billfold if you’ll look in there. Did you get me some cigarettes?”

  “You never did say what kind.”

  “Any kind. Salems if you got em. Anything. Can you get me a Coke?”

  “I’ll see.”

  The steps went away again. It was nearly an hour before they returned, but he wouldn’t bum another cigarette. The jailer called him to the door and let him out. He stood with his head up in the hall while the jailer locked the cell behind him. The tray slot opened down the hall and a mouth came into view.

  “Why’s he gettin out? Huh? How come he’s gettin out?”

  “Knock it off, Roscoe,” the jailer said. To Joe he said, “Walk in front of me. Now hold it. I got more keys than Carter’s got little pills.”

  At last he stood in the dayroom with lounging cops and trustees with their feet up in chairs watching television. They eyed him warily.

  “Where’s my truck?” he said.

  The jailer was dumping his personal belongings from a manila envelope onto the cluttered desk. Keys, a ring, change, his wallet and comb and pocketknife. He was presented with a typed list of items which he himself had signed for.

  “Check to see that everything’s here and then sign. Count your money.”

  He picked u
p the billfold and opened it. He didn’t know how much he was supposed to have but there was nearly two thousand dollars in it. It tallied with the inventory sheet.

  “It’s all here,” he said. He slipped it into his back pocket and picked up his other stuff and signed. He looked up. All the city police were watching him. All their eyes were hostile. One had a Band-Aid on his chin.

  “You can’t learn your lesson, can you?” this one said.

  “You talkin to me?”

  “There ain’t nobody else standing here, is it?”

  Joe ignored him, though he hated to, and turned to the jailer.

  “You know where my truck is?”

  The jailer had settled in a chair and was unwrapping a sandwich from waxed paper. It looked like egg salad with hot peppers and tomatoes, and the jailer was reaching for a bottle of Louisiana Red Hot sauce.

  “I believe they took it to King Brothers,” he said.

  That would be about fifty-five dollars if he could even drive it home.

  “Can I go now?”

  “Not till you make bond. He’ll be here before long.”

  There was nothing to do but wait on the bondsman. Nobody ever got in a hurry about something like this. There was a water fountain on the other side of the room and he started walking toward it.

  “Hey,” the cop said.

  He stopped.

  “Yeah?”

  “Ain’t nobody said you could walk over there.”

  “Ain’t nobody said I couldn’t, either.”

  He went on and bent over the fountain, drank the cold water for a long time. When he finished, he wiped his mouth and turned around. Somebody was coming in, a man with a briefcase.

  “There’s my man,” he said.

  They had him on $2500 bond and he was surprised it wasn’t higher. They hadn’t set his court date and it took only a few minutes to get released. He paid the bondsman the money and they said he could go. He had his hand on the door to freedom when the cop with the cut chin spoke again.

  “We’ll see your ass in court, Ransom. You going back this time. This time they’ll keep you.”

  Ten years before, it would have been different. Now he would not let himself say anything. He wanted away too badly. They’d had him once and he had promised himself they would never have him again. Now they had him. He opened the door and walked outside.

  The cars moved along the streets in the hot sunshiny Sunday afternoon. Couples with children sat on the low brick wall in front of the jail, talking in quiet voices, plans made, promises promised, hands clasped and hearts maybe shuddering with fear. For some it was almost a home, but he wanted it for his home no more. He went down the concrete steps and across the narrow street, the bells in the courthouse tower starting to chime. They tolled two times and he marked each sound in his head and stopped for a car that was cutting through the parking lot of the bank. He was glad of not calling her and of her knowing nothing of this. As the car went past he raised his eyes to see the driver who had already seen him. He wasn’t sure. She had on sunglasses. It might have been anybody. He watched the car until it went out of sight, but she never looked back.

  Dawn on Monday found the boy waiting beside the road with his gloves in his hand, squatting in the pale dust, his ears tuned for the sound of a motor. Cars and trucks appeared as specks down the road and grew larger and gained form as they hurtled toward him and sped past but not one slowed or stopped. Not one was an old GMC with a wrecked camper hull.

  He sat there until the mist burned off, until the sun rose and lit the fields and dried the dew from the cotton. It hadn’t rained. He sat until the sun held the land in its grip for another day and he knew he wasn’t coming. Then he got up and faced down the road where the black strip of asphalt curved away toward the crossroads, toward distance and futility and nothingness. Nothing stirred anywhere. No breath of wind nor any sound. A light sweat broke out on his back. It was five miles, but he had a little money, and good credit. There was nothing to go home to anyway. He started walking, that old familiar thing that made riding such a joy.

  *

  At midmorning he trudged up the last little hill and walked between two pickups just as two men came out the door. He stepped aside for them to pass and he nodded. The boards of the floor just beyond the door were patched with printer’s tin and tacked insecurely and they crinkled when they were stepped on. He went inside and stood looking around. It looked empty. He waited. There was a single lightbulb in the ceiling, a yellow glare of illumination in a cavern of bad cereal and atrophied potato chips, long forgotten and stashed behind the bug spray. The coal stove sat at the rear of the room, lacquered with tobacco juice. Flystrips hung from the scorched ceiling with their victims mummified, handfuls of black rice flung and stuck, untouchables. There were crazy patches of tin all over the floor. He reached back and pushed the door open a little and let it fall to. The old man parted the curtains behind the counter and stepped out.

  “Hey, Mr. Coleman,” Gary said. He went over to the blue Pepsi box and slid the lid back. He felt among the cool bottles, examining the caps. In the dark water he found the letters R and C. The old man came from behind the counter slowly and eased himself down on the bench, the cigar cold and dead between his fingers. Gary closed the lid and went to the rack of cakes and got a double-decker banana Moon Pie.

  “You ain’t seen Joe, have you?”

  He turned at the old man’s question.

  “He never did come by. You seen him?”

  John Coleman leaned back and rubbed his forehead with his fingers. A crescent scar hung there, hung in flesh like an eighth of a moon. In his skull likewise lay the shrapnel he thought had killed him one day long ago.The boy could not know that it itched, it always itched, it never stopped its itch.

  “He wrecked his truck the other night. I believe they’ve got him in jail.”

  “Jail?”

  “I magine.”

  He looked down at what he had in his hands. His hunger seemed so small then, so stupid. He wrecked his truck the other night. He slowly opened the RC on the drink box and sat on the bench on that side, held the bottle between his legs while he opened the cake.

  “I waited on him a long time,” he said.

  The old man sat like a statue. He seemed to read some bad news on the screen door. A car passed outside, a flash of red that went out of hearing. The air pump kicked on and it chugged and chugged. John Coleman stretched one leg out and reached into his pocket for his lighter.

  “How bad did he tear it up?” Gary said.

  “Tear what up?”

  “That truck.”

  “Oh. I don’t know.”

  The lighter snapped and the smoke flooded out of his mouth. He bent forward and stroked his knee absently with the silver rectangle. Finally he dropped it in his shirt pocket.

  “I wished I knew,” the boy said. “I was supposed to buy it. I hope he ain’t tore it all to pieces.”

  The storekeeper offered no response. He seemed to hate to have anybody in there with him. The boy ate his Moon Pie and drank his RC and formed possible lines of conversation in his mind.

  “Reckon when he’ll get out?” he said.

  The old man shook his head. He crossed his legs and put one hand on the bench. The wood there was smoothly worn, polished, shiny.

  “Depends,” he said, finally. “Last time they got him they kept him two weeks.”

  “You don’t know what happened?”

  “Had a wreck was all I heard. I think the highway patrol got him.”

  That was all he’d say about it. He got up and went back behind the curtain where secret things were that nobody ever saw. A cot, shelves of books, shoe boxes of old money both rare and near extinct. Hot Budweiser in cans that he’d drink when he took the notion. A framed photograph of an old man and an old woman, their faces like leather in a tintype portrait, poised uncertainly and fearful on the porch of their log house. Theirs was the one that lay near the spring house, entombed
there after the first house burned down, far away now from where they slept their eternity away on the hill. He sat there for a while, until he heard the boy call out.

  He’d laid a dollar on the counter when he stepped back out.

  “I need to pay you for that,” he said. “I had a big RC and a Moon Pie.”

  He put the burning cigar in the ashtray and punched the buttons on the register. He rang it open and said: “Sixty-five.”

  Going out the door the boy looked back at him. John Coleman seemed like something made of china, a being or mannequin with living flesh but wires for bones. His glasses caught the tiny sunlight and flashed it across the room.