Hard Rain Falling - Don Carpenter [70]
“You killed a dog?” said one of the prisoners. “That was tied up and couldn’t get away?”
“I did just that, sonny. Damn brute.”
“You had no right to do that.”
“Horse-frocky, sonny,” said the old man. “Now, if you boys will excuse me, I got to get some sleep.”
The old man got out on bail the next day, and Jack heard later that he had been convicted and given a one-to-five sentence, suspended, and two years on probation. Jack thought the old man had done right in both cases, but most of the men in the tank were upset and angry about shooting the dog.
Citizens like the old man usually got out on bail, or if convicted of a misdemeanor were sent right out to the trusty farm, but there were a couple of exceptions.
The first of these was a man in his middle twenties who lived in Sausalito, in the adjoining Marin County. He had, according to the wry tale he told, been driving home from a party in Redding, horribly drunk from the last few hasty nightcaps, and not long after he crossed the Balboa County line he decided he was just too drunk to go on, too sleepy, and so he pulled his car over and went to sleep. He was awakened by a flashlight in his face. The police made him get out of his car, turn around, lean against the side of the car and be searched. Then they made him walk a line, and they smelled his breath. They searched the car, too. He was taken in and thrown into the drunk tank, and in the morning, with the rest of the night’s crop of drunks, he came before the municipal court. He was charged with being drunk on a public highway. He explained to the judge that he was not driving, but sleeping. The judge asked him if he had gotten to where he was arrested by driving in a drunken condition, and he said yes, but that he had stopped driving because he realized he was drunk. The judge said that didn’t matter. He fined the man $250 and the man lost his temper and yelled at the judge, and was given ten days in the county jail for contempt of court.
“So I’m in here for not drunk driving,” he explained. “Ain’t that enough to frost your balls?”
Jack corrected him. “No, you got sent here for yelling at the judge. You got fined for not drunk driving.”
This particular citizen was very popular while he was in the tank. He played shrewd poker and won a lot of money, marveling that the men got to play cards all day and saying he wouldn’t mind coming here every so often just to get in the game. He appeared before the sanitary court, took his few token whacks and fines with good humor, obeyed the rules of the tank, was friendly to everybody and did not act superior, and at the end of his ten days went downstairs to the cafeteria and left money and orders for packs of cigarettes to be delivered in his name to “the boys on the top floor.” He was a chemist by profession and everybody admired him for his education, breeding, and good manners.
Jack envied him; he had his work, which he loved, and he had a good life and a good attitude toward life. He and Jack were the same age, too.
The other citizen was different. This man was in his fifties, an executive for a hardware company, and his case made all the newspapers. He, too, had been driving home drunk, but instead of pulling over to go to sleep he fell asleep behind the wheel while going sixty or seventy, and his car plowed into a parked car full of necking teenagers. Three of them were killed at once, both girls and one of the boys, and the other boy was in the hospital with a bad concussion and a broken collarbone. The executive got out of his car, saw what had happened, and ran off. Two policemen found him hiding in a backyard, and he offered the policemen fifty dollars each if they would let him go. It was stupid; his car was back there, wrecked,