Above The Law

CHAPTER 13

TEUCH DREAMED OF A JAILHOUSE HAIRCUT. THE CLAMMY plastic cape tight on his neck. His hands pinned down on the armrests of the chair, weighted in concrete. And the buzzing as the hundred tiny blades snickered across his scalp. Tufts of dry black hair falling like fat snowflakes, sliding down the front of his face, depositing themselves in his open mouth. A mouth dry as desert dust and buzzing.

In the dream, he saw his sister-in-law, Isodora, as a child, pushing through the line of prisoners in a blaze orange jumpsuit of her own. He felt shame when her dark eyes found his. Her face crumpled and she began to shriek.

The sound woke Teuch and he saw a real child in a kid's rugby shirt, his face crumpled like Isodora's in the dream, and in his hand the pelt of a small butchered animal. Teuch moved his dry mouth. No sound came from it, but the movement sent a cloud of buzzing flies up from his face. As in the dream, his arms would not move, nor his legs, nor any part of him except the swollen silent lips. Still, he could listen from his bed in the deep brown weeds.

"Daddy! Daddy! Daddy!" The child stood frozen in terror, the pelt gripped tight, black hair woven through his fingers.

"Finish your business and get back here," a voice said. "If it's a bug, walk away. You want bologna or peanut butter?"

The father appeared, glasses fogging from the heat, plastic-wrapped sandwich in hand, mouth agog.

"Put that down!" he said, pointing at the bloody pelt. "Goddamn it!"

The boy's face spilled tears. The father reached for the pelt.

"What the hell?" he said, snatching the pelt and throwing it to the ground before he saw Teuch and the flies. "Oh my God."

The man and the boy disappeared and even though the flies returned, tickling Teuch's face, licking and feeding in the corners of his eyes and nose, he drifted back into another dream until something woke him suddenly. The man had come back without the boy, but with a cop who kicked at Teuch's foot. A dirty white cop. The long mustache on his face hid in the shadow of a tall felt hat.

"Jesus," the cop said, parting the weeds and kneeling down beside Teuch to touch his neck. "This man's alive."