Damnation Street

7.

So now Bishop lay on his bunk in the county jail, three floors up. His jeans and T-shirt and leather jacket were gone, and he was dressed in orange coveralls. He lay with his hands behind his head. He gazed up at the mattress above him. The mattress above him sagged under the weight of an enormous shaved-headed muscleman. The muscleman was also dressed in orange coveralls. There were eighteen other men in the cell, each on one of the bunks on the eleven other double bunk beds. All of the men were dressed in orange coveralls-county orange-just like Bishop.

The cell was dimly lit, shadowy. There was a grated window high on the wall. It showed a rectangle of blue-black sky. There was a steel toilet underneath it and a steel sink. There was a strange, empty smell in the place, tainted now and then with shit and sweat and disinfectant. There was a steady wash of noise: doors and voices, ventilation fans, footsteps on stone. Bishop breathed in the smell and listened to the noise and watched the mattress above him move as the muscleman rolled over.

He tried to think about other things. He thought about his Harley, about being on his Harley. He thought about the cops chasing him and how the wind had felt on him as he careered downhill. That was funny; that was all right. He thought about the girl-the one from the bar-he'd forgotten her name again. But he thought about her ass against his belly and her tits against his palms. He thought about that other girl, the blond who'd nearly killed him. He thought about the moments when he'd been inside her on that cold, still border of himself…

But finally, it was no good. Here he was in CJ. All those thrills were in the past, and he couldn't bring back the feel of any of them. He was sick of his life.

The noise came back to him, the smells, the heavy presence of breathing, grunting, cursing men in orange. He tried to think his thoughts, but they became vague and jumbled. The girl's tits in his hands became the feel of the motorcycle handlebars, and then his hands were fists and he was in an old dustup with his drunken father, finished long ago. Then he had a bad taste in his mouth, and he knew he'd been asleep and time had passed. He thought it was the dead of night. There was still plenty of noise-fans, voices, doors, footsteps-but there was a stillness underneath the noise somehow that gave him the sense of a late hour. Somewhere in the distance someone was screaming for the deputies, screaming for help. No deputies answered. Eventually, the screaming stopped.

Bishop drew a breath, coming fully awake. He shifted, stretched on his bunk.

Suddenly, a hand grabbed his upper arm. A pair of wild staring eyes appeared right beside him.

"Help me!"

It was a sobbing gasp. Bishop glanced toward it. He saw a willowy white kid, the only other white guy in the cell. His face was as pale as paper. His lips were as dry as dust. And that stare, that wild stare of his, was full of terror.

"He's gonna kill me! Please!"

Bishop put his hand over the kid's face and shoved him. "Get the hell away from me," he said.

The kid fell backward onto his butt. He scrambled onto his knees, grabbed Bishop's hand. "Please! I don't want to die! My father will pay you! I swear!"

The kid had a round, soft face, a floppy mop of brown hair. He had full sensuous lips and deep sensitive eyes. His hands were delicate with long fingers. They gripped Bishop's hand hard. His voice cracked.

"I didn't mean anything! Really. I was just scared, that's all. They just scared me! Please! You're a white man. Please!"

Bishop yanked his hand free. "Get the hell away from me or I'll kick you in the head," he said.

"But he'll kill me!"

Bishop kicked him in the head-not hard, just a few harrying blows around the temple to drive him away again.

Throwing up his arms for protection, the kid retreated in a crouch. He sank onto the floor, his back against the bunk across the narrow aisle. He buried his pale face in his delicate hands. He sobbed. "Please. Please."

The Mexican on the bunk across the aisle was lying on his side, his back to them. He looked over his shoulder. "Shut up, Maricon, " he said to the kid.

The kid went on sobbing.

Now, with a sort of dreamy slowness, another man heaved around the bunk bed at the end of the row. He came lumbering toward them.

This one was a hulking figure, big-bellied, slump-shouldered, broad. His head was squashed and shapeless. It looked like a giant glob of clay that had been hurled down- splat!- on top of his neck. Marble eyes glowered out of the clay as he approached. Bishop glanced down instinctively and saw the clay-headed man was gripping a sharp strip of metal in his doughy right fist.

He thought, well, the kid was telling the truth anyway. This monster was definitely out to kill him, all right.

The Mexican on the bunk across the way shook his head in exasperation. He rolled back onto his side, his back to the action. The enormous muscleman on the bunk over Bishop's let out a deep laugh- heh, heh, heh. He was happy to have some entertainment.

Bishop lay as he was, his fingers laced behind his head again. He watched the clay-headed man stalking toward the kid step by slow step. He sighed. What a bunch of fucking lowlifes. It depressed him to be locked up in the same cell with them.

The kid looked up from sobbing. He saw this Clayhead guy coming for him. He shrieked like a girl and flung himself at Bishop again. His voice was a ragged, high-pitched scream:

"Ple-e-e-ease!"

He gripped the edge of Bishop's bunk desperately.

But now Clayhead was on him. He let out an animal growl and grabbed a handful of the kid's floppy mop of hair. He yanked it so the kid's face turned up toward him. The kid gaped up at the squashed features with his mouth in a wide frown like a fish's mouth. Somewhere in that shapeless mass of flesh above him, there was a killer smile and those marble eyes gleaming. The kid stared at those eyes helplessly, waiting to die. Clayhead held the metal blade low and aligned it with the kid's jugular, to make sure he cut just the right place.

"Oh for Christ's sake," Bishop muttered. He reached out irritably and broke the clay-headed man's arm.

He broke it at the wrist, grabbing it in both his hands, twisting it back and around. The snap of the bone was like pistol fire. The metal blade pattered quietly against the cell's concrete floor.

Clayhead screamed. He grabbed his broken wrist and started reeling back up the aisle, banging from bunk to bunk, whooping and roaring. At the end of the aisle, he fell down and writhed.

The kid, released from his grip, fell down too. He curled trembling into a ball on the floor, his orange jumpsuit stained at the crotch and bottom.

There was a loud buzz and the cell door opened, and the deputies came rushing in, as serious and self-satisfied as if they'd arrived in the nick of time.