Townie_ A Memoir - Andre Dubus [76]
The cell was crowded when the cop pushed me in, so I stayed by the door and leaned against the bars where the only light was. In the gloom, three men sat on the steel bunk bolted into the wall. I didn’t look long, but there was one with scraggly hair and a beard, another wearing glasses and blue Dickies work pants and janitor shoes. There was a fat one with no shirt, and using the toilet as a seat was a blond kid talking in a low voice about dust, the best you’ll ever have.
The drunk I’d come in with was sitting on the floor near the bars, his back to the wall, his chin to his chest.
I leaned against the bars in the hallway light, shirtless. I hoped I looked big enough, or at least fit enough, to stay away from, and I was aware of my head now, a pulsing at my right temple, a new bruise. I knew I had a phone call coming, that I was in line for that. What I didn’t know is that Jeb and Sam and April C. were in the station a wall away trying to bail me out. Jeb, with his frizzy mane and unshaven face, had asked the desk sergeant how much.
“Sixty bucks.”
“Sixty bucks?”
“That’s right.”
“Where does that money go?”
“Excuse me?”
“I said where does that money go?”
“In my pocket, wise ass, now beat it.”
“No, I’m not leaving.” Jeb sat in a chair and crossed his arms. Two cops picked him up and hauled him to a cell not far from mine.
Out in the booking room, Sam approached the lieutenant on duty. “Please, Officer, there’s no need of that. I’ll get him out of here.”
“You want to get arrested too?”
“No, but he didn’t do anything, sir.”
April tapped Sam’s shoulder. “C’mon, honey. Let’s go.” Sam turned to leave, but his head got yanked backwards, the cop’s hand in his hair. “You’re going in too.”
“No, I’m not.” Sam reached up and grabbed the cop’s wrist, but the cop wasn’t letting go so Sam used his neck muscles to let the cop pull out his hair, and he grabbed the cop’s other wrist and walked him back against the wall, pinning both hands, the cop yelling and swearing and calling for help.
“I’m going to let go and walk out that door, all right? I’m just going to let go and walk.” But now there were two more cops on him, and in seconds Sam was in the cell with Jeb.
None of this I knew about. One of the men in my cell was snoring. The drunk at me feet looked dead, both palms upturned on the concrete beside his legs. In another cell, a man kept shouting through the bars for a drink. “I just need a fuckin’ drink!”
Every fifteen minutes or so, a cop would unlock a cell door and escort a man to a pay phone. New men were being brought in too. One was young and tall and sunburned, and his escort cop ran him facefirst into the concrete wall, then tossed him in the last cell. From where I leaned against the bars, I could see the fresh blood-streak, could smell piss and sweat and old wine.
“You.”
This cop was older, his hair gray. On his forearm was a U.S. Navy tattoo and he unlocked the cell and told me to stay put while he locked it again, then he gripped my elbow and walked me around the corner to a pay phone. “One call, five minutes.” He handed me a dime and stepped back to where he could see the row of cells, his hands on his hips. I pushed in the dime and called my father.
Part of me was surprised I was calling him. It was my mother I lived with. My mother who knew we’d gone to the beach, my mother who would be home. And Pop had gotten married again. To a woman he’d dated back in high school in Louisiana. He’d flown down there to see his mother, heard that Lorraine was a widow now with two young kids, and he asked her to meet him at the airport for breakfast, a meal that lasted three hours, and at the end of it, after not having seen or spoken to each other in over twenty years, they were engaged. To celebrate this, Mom had him over to dinner, the six of us sitting at that table we used only for holidays, Pop at the head of it. He sat