Hard Rain Falling - Don Carpenter [56]
The next morning in Municipal Court he found out what the charges were. By this time he was really sick; hung over, his arms and legs hollow, his belly a hard knot, his face burning with fever. The assistant district attorney, a large man in a brown suit, with reddish hair and a peaked, sunburned face, read out the charges in a droning yet somehow angry voice, standing at his table, holding the sheet of lined onionskin paper up before his eyes, telling Jack and the rest of the court that Jack was charged with statutory rape, resisting arrest, drunk and disorderly, and theft. In the same bored angry monotone he said, “We have a foreign warrant on him, too, your Honor.”
“Well, let’s hear it, let’s hear it.”
“This just came in this morning, your Honor; it’s a warrant for kidnap, Balboa County. If it hadn’t come in on time I was going to ask you to hold him on the local charges or bind him over to Superior Court.”
Jack and the judge looked at each other for a moment, and then the judge shook his head slowly. “Hold for Balboa County,” he said, writing on his disposition sheet. Jack had never been in Balboa County in his life; but he did not think it was unusual. The way he felt, nothing was mysterious. Everything seemed rational. If they had taken him out and hanged him in public he would not have been surprised, and if they had just let him go, he still would not have been surprised. They took him back to his cell and he went back to sleep. He woke up several times during the day with attacks of diarrhea, and although he was nauseated he could not manage to vomit. He felt lucky to be able to sleep.
Late that afternoon two detectives came and got him and drove him up to Balboa County. The two detectives sat in the front of the big black-and-white station wagon and Jack sat in the back. They had welded steel eyelets to the floor in back, and Jack wore leg chains that were fastened to the eyelets. Back of his head there was a grill of steel mesh, and each of his hands was outstretched and handcuffed to this grill. The two detectives were very nice to Jack, spoke to him, and let him smoke. The one who was not driving had to hold Jack’s cigarette for him, turned halfway around in the seat, but he said he didn’t mind. Both detectives said they were sorry about having to truss him up like that but it was regulations. “Some of your felonies,” the one who was not driving said, “we just use the cuffs; but on your capital crimes we got to use the leg chains, too.”
“You know, though,” the driver said, “it cuts both ways. I mean, you’re pretty safe all locked up like that. A couple of our guys were haulin a prisoner just like you are, I think the guy cut up his wife and killed her or somethin, and the guy drivin was goin like a bat out of hell and this dumb fuckin farmer comes puttin out of a side road, blind, and whacks right into the side of the vehicle and knocked it ass-endways, it goes off the highway, turns over a couple of times and ends up on its top. The guy drivin held on to the steerin wheel and he was okay but the guy sittin next to him got throwed out and spilled his brains all over the street; caved in his head like a punkin; but the prisoner, why, he was just sittin there as pretty as you please, upside down, all chained in, protected, not a scratch on him, yellin his head off to get him out of there before the fuggin thing blew up. You never saw anything like it.”
The other one grinned back at Jack. “So we got these safety belts now”—he held up the end of a seat belt and waggled it at Jack—”but piss on em.”
“I got mine on,” the driver said. “You never know.”
The other one said, “How the hell can I administer to the prisoner’s needs if I’m strapped in? I’d have to strap in and then unstrap every ten minutes.”
“It’s your ass,” the driver said. “You’re the one in the ninety-percent seat.”
“Seventy-percent seat,