Hell's Half Acre

fifteen.

AND I WAKE UP ON A RUBBER MAT. Bright light overhead and fine powder of broken glass in my eyes. Force them shut and extend one hand to examine my environment. There’s maybe an inch of water on the floor, cold water and I can hear the steady drizzle of a burst pipe. My hand splashes around in the water a while, blind and weak. My hand is a drowning rat. Unsanitary perhaps, but I use my wet fingers to soothe my eyes. I sit up and look around. The cell is five feet by seven. Overflowing toilet and two bunks tricked out with rubber mats. An inch of standing water on the floor and now I comprehend that I touched my sore eyes with toilet water. Brilliant. I’m alone in the cell. I was violent and they wanted to isolate me. I was comatose and they wanted to keep the crazies in the drunk tank from eating me alive. I’m wearing an orange jumpsuit and my bootlaces are gone. I was suicidal, maybe.

The memory is fucked, full of holes. Handcuffs chewing into my wrists. Crumpled in the backseat and my view of the world is sideways, upside down. The back of a cop’s head through steel mesh. Fuzzy blond hair. He wears no hat and I am muttering a lot of nonsense about Nazis. He ignores me but when we arrive at the station he drags me out of the car in such a way that my skull smacks into the doorframe with a lovely hollow thud. The booking process is hazy. But I can imagine it. I have been arrested before and I always fuck up the fingerprinting. They tell me to relax and I immediately go tense. The prints smear every time and it pisses them off no end. I was carrying no identification and I wonder what name I gave them. Ray Fine. Fred, or maybe Jack. That would have been beautiful. I might have slipped into my role of Jack the retard. The cops would not likely be amused by Tourette’s. They would probably beat a guy pretty severely if he was barking obscenities and repeating everything they said.

Oh, god.

I seem to remember a gloved finger wiggling around in my asshole, but maybe I was dreaming of Jude just now. I remember the sudden flash of the camera. That mugshot is a rare beauty, I’m sure.

I sit up and stare at the toilet. The water is churning up over the sides like there is big trouble underground. The water looks clear enough, for now. But as soon as I use the toilet then I will have my own nasty fluids rippling around me. I may as well take a shit on the floor.

I wonder if they gave me a phone call. That phone call shit in the movies is nonsense. The scene where some poor bastard is moaning about his rights. I know my rights, he says. I want my phone call. The phone call is not a constitutional right, as far as I know. Thomas Jefferson and the rest of his crew didn’t have telephones, and anyway they sure as hell didn’t give a shit about any drunk asshole’s rights. And the word asshole is crucial. If you get arrested for public drunkenness, it’s because you’re an asshole. You walk in the door and you’re already an asshole. You’re an asshole. I’m an asshole. Everyone in here is an asshole. The cops can wait three days to charge you if they feel like it. And if you’re an asshole with no manners, well. You may as well forget about your fucking phone call for a while.

But I appear to be on suicide watch. And this means that somebody will come by to rattle my cage before long. They have to be sure I don’t eat my own tongue or gouge out my eyes. They have to at least pretend to care. I slosh over to the door like I’m going duck hunting and man I am none too steady. Drunk as a bishop even now and when did I last eat something. The tomato sandwich that Molly made for me. I wonder how she would like me now. I lean against the steel door and I hope my neighbor is friendly. I put my mouth close to the little window, pressing my lips against the cool mesh.

Hey, I say. Anybody out there?

Long hollow silence and for a few horrifying moments I imagine I’m the only one. Like something out of a science fiction movie. All of the prisoners have died of some horrible virus. The guards have fled and the prison is functioning on computer autopilot. But that can’t be.

Hey, I say.

Shut the fuck up, says one thin voice.

Then another, dry and torn. What’s up, cousin?

Confused, I say.

About what? says the voice. You’re in the pokey.

Yeah, I get that. Are we on suicide, though?

Damn straight, he says.

Fuck me, I say.

I always go suicide, says the voice. Always. Like flying first class. I got to have my privacy.

Yeah. But they hold you for seventy-two, I say.

Nothing wrong with that, cousin. Three days peace and quiet.

I close my eyes. Three days drifting on a rubber mat in a pool of my own urine. And no cigarettes. I will probably die without cigarettes.

How long since the sheriff last came by?

Don’t have a watch, cousin. But I’d say a half hour. At least.

The thin voice pipes up. Bullshit. It was ten minutes ago.

You shut your hole, says the torn voice. You got no concept of time.

Hey. You want to come suck my fucking dick?

Laughter, wheezing. What dick?

Thanks, I say. Thanks anyway.

I flop down on my little rubber lifeboat and wait for the next head count. I chew my lip for the residual taste of tobacco. I stare up at the bright fluorescent tube of light and wonder if it is day or night. I would sleep, if I could. I would dream.

Come footsteps. The rattle and echo of a billybat against one steel door after another. Then a chorus of voices, the music of hollow bones. I can’t be sure if they are coming from within or without. To hell with boys creeping up slowly. I’m hungry, hungry. And a man may fish with a worm that hath eat of a king and then eat of the fish that fed on the worm and around and around you go. Through the guts of a beggar and I don’t like ice cream.

On my feet and to the door.

The face of a young black guard appears at my window. The whites of his eyes like porcelain. He thumps the door and asks if I’m okay.

Yeah. Thanks for asking.

He grunts and starts to move on.

Excuse me?

Yes? His eyes narrow.

I hesitate. I need to sound sane and I’m not sure my voice is reliable.

What do you want?

I need to speak to someone. I’m not sure I belong here.

The other prisoners begin to wheeze and cackle like a gang of chickens.

I’m not suicidal.

The guard peers at me. What’s your name?

Poe, I say.

He consults a clipboard. Yeah, he says. The ex-cop.

I’m not a cop. I’m just a regular asshole, now.

Says here you’re an ex-cop.

Furious whispers from left and right. Long slow, creeping shadows at the edge of my vision.

I sigh. Yeah. What am I charged with?

Assault, he says. Public drunk. Vagrant. Resisting arrest. And oh, shit. You won the lottery. Looks like you’re up for murder.

Did you say murder? That doesn’t sound right.

Tell it to the detectives, he says. They’ll be wanting to talk to you, now you’re awake.

He moves along to the next door and my neighbor says that he doesn’t belong here either. That he’s not crazy. He wants a phone call, a lawyer. He knows his fucking rights. Then he lowers his voice and confides to the guard that the fallen prophet Jeremiah has in fact been creeping around in his cell all night with his guts leaking out between his fingers and the motherfucker won’t shut up. Jeremiah is pissed off at God and he won’t let the rest of us sleep. The guard laughs and moves along.

I squat in the center of my cell with eyes closed. Murder, huh. That wasn’t part of my plan for this night, I know that much. I try to remember what happened. There was a sad fucked-up scene with an Asian whore. Then stumbling drunk. I was offensive. There was some sort of slapstick confrontation with a bouncer outside a nightclub that might have got messy, but murder seems a bit extreme.

I open my eyes now and a funny thing happens. I look around and for two seconds maybe three, this is no jail cell. I see fake wood paneling and molded furniture, avocado green. I see a stained mattress with faded blue stripes and I see an open doorway and miles and miles of yellow earth and this is home. This is my trailer back in Arizona.

I believe I would trade my soul for a cigarette.

The mad jangle of voices, farther away now. The drip of my toilet like a soft summer rain.

The thin voice. Hey, man. What the fuck? You five-oh, or what?

Long time ago, I say.

Once a cop, he says. Always a cop.

Fuck you, kid.

You talk like a cop.

Then laughter, like glass breaking apart.

Hours pass, maybe days.

My neighbor with the torn voice tells me that they never turn off the lights, that time is therefore elastic and that if I am not insane now, then surely I will be soon.

The young black guard returns and says the detectives are ready to interview me. I am led down the hall in shackles. My unlaced boots loose and flopping.

Voices.

Hey killer what you got in that bag is it my true love’s head?

I don’t listen. I maintain a straight face. I keep my expression straight and true, like a well-groomed garden. I want to get out of here and I need to look right.

The guard is silent.

A security check-point and we wait to be buzzed through. Something stinks of sweat and vomit and I have a pretty good idea it’s me. Now I catch a muddy glimpse of myself in a bank of plexiglass and baby I’m a fright. Bruises and black streaks on my face and scarecrow hair. I touch my face and remember lying in the street, bloated and damp and I have to say my hat’s off to that bouncer. He bounced me good.

The guard deposits me in another small, windowless room. He tells me to shut up and wait, as if I have a choice. I sit at a scarred wooden table and flash back to the interrogation room back at the Denver P.D., not to mention a thousand and one poorly drawn rooms from the movies and television. I have been on both sides of the table and I know that interrogation is a pretty simple game of rhetorical hide and seek. The results are written in advance, like the streaming threads of fate, but however you arrive there the scene is bound to be ugly, and numbingly tedious, poorly designed and self-consciously acted.

Even so. I didn’t kill anyone and I want to see the sun today. I want a cigarette. There are right answers and wrong answers. The right answers will get me out of here. The right answers will put me on the street with the other humans. The wrong answers will get me a shot of Thorazine. I think of my neighbor, the one tormented by Jeremiah and I wonder if I should present myself as a paranoid Christian. A lot of good it’s done my neighbor.

The first cop is a short white guy, heavy and morose, with a bad mustache. It droops down over his lip and his tongue darts in and out as if to taste it. He adjusts his belt and gun and crotch and belly and heaves himself into the chair across from me, sighing. The second cop is small and pale. He doesn’t look like he weighs more than 140 or so and his hair and skin are the same pale beige color and basically he has a lot to overcompensate for and I have a feeling he’s as mean as he can be. He stands against the back wall, silent and staring.

Name? says the first cop.

Phineas Poe.

Middle initial?

None.

Interesting.

Is it?

Phineas Poe, he says. Formerly of the Denver P.D., Internal Affairs Division. He spits out these last eight syllables like bad meat.

Long time ago, I say. Hell of a long time.

Do you know why you’re here?

What’s your name? I say.

He stares at me. He stares at me for a while and I wonder if he’s counting to ten. His tongue darts out again, pink and terrible. That mustache truly bothers me and I try not to look at it. I realize that I have made a mistake. Questions will only make these guys angry. Your lines are already written so just spit them out in the proper order and everything will be fine. I tell myself to sit up straight. I try to indicate by my expression that I’m an okay guy. I’m intelligent and cooperative and respectful and all that shit but I don’t really think my face can handle so much at once. I glance at his pale little partner and he’s licking his lips, as if he just can’t wait for me to say the wrong thing.

Where are my manners, says the first cop. My name is Captain Kangaroo.

I tell myself to shut up, shut the fuck up. Don’t breathe.

But it’s like I have a manic little butterfly in my mouth, dying to get out. I shoot a glance at the pale little cop and I say it. I just say it.

I guess that makes you Mr. Green Jeans, I say.

He smiles at me and his teeth are the same shade of beige as his hair and skin.

Again, says Captain Kangaroo. Why are you here?

Because of a misunderstanding?

A misunderstanding.

That’s right.

I see. What did you do tonight?

Nothing interesting, I say.

He yawns. Tell us anyway.

I had a couple of drinks at a place called Mao’s. Then I wandered down the street and immediately got my ass handed to me by a very unfriendly bouncer. Then I woke up here.

I guess you’re harmless, says Captain Kangaroo. I guess we should let you go.

The two of them stare at me and I just feel weary.

I know that I have a role to play here, I say. But I just can’t do it.

What? he says.

Why do we have to dance around this fucking bush? I say. The guard told me I’m charged with murder. Why don’t we talk about that?

Are you suicidal? says the pale cop.

I don’t think so.

Do you ever entertain suicidal thoughts?

Of course.

How often?

I entertain such thoughts every day. Don’t you?

No.

I think it’s normal.

It’s not normal.

Define normal, I say.

The pale little cop begins to whistle tunelessly. His partner sighs and looks at his watch. The pale cop sits down for a moment and takes off his left boot, which is an imitation leather Teddy boy boot that zips up over the ankle. He comes around the table, still whistling and walking funny because he only has the one shoe on. He smiles and shows me the boot, like a salesman. I look at it politely. Then he bashes me in the head with the heel of the boot and I feel something in my neck pop.

Normal, he says. There’s no such thing.

No such thing, says the Captain. He speaks in a numbing monotone.

That’s why we have crime in this country, says the pale cop. Because nobody feels normal and nobody wants to be normal.

There’s blood in my mouth. I swallow it.

Philosophy, I say. To be normal is to be dead.

Exactly, he says. And you’re about one smart answer away from another bump on the head.

You call that a bump?

Okay, says the Captain. This is boring the shit out of me.

He tosses an envelope on the table. The envelope contains crime scene photographs. I look at them one by one and they’re pretty bad. There’s so much blood I don’t recognize the girl at first. But it’s the yellow-faced girl I saw shitting on the street. Dead from every angle. Her skirt up around her waist and her pretty legs spread wide. It looks like her head was just about cut off. The last photo is a grim shot of her blackened fingers clutching what looks like a bloody five-dollar bill. I stare at her fingers until the scratches she left on my wrist begin to throb. There is something different about her and I realize it’s her hair. The girl shitting in the street had stringy brown hair like she was already dead, but in these photos she’s wearing a frizzy black wig.

That’s odd, I say. It sounds terrible as soon as it comes out of my mouth.

Odd? says the pale cop. I take it you’ve seen her before?

She’s wearing a wig, I say.

The pale cop shrugs. Her natural hair was falling out.

Captain Kangaroo tosses another photo on the table, a Polaroid. I reach for it, then pull my hand back. I can see from where I’m sitting it’s a picture of a Japanese fighting knife that’s been dipped in blood and looks a lot like mine. I look at the Captain. He yawns and his tongue flicks out to taste the mustache.

I guess I want a lawyer, I say.

The pale cop flashes his brown teeth. I’m sure one will be provided for you, he says.

Another guard comes to take me back to my cell. He informs me that I can see my lawyer in the morning, before I’m arraigned. His words sound so strange. I wonder exactly how many courtroom movies and television dramas I have seen in my lifetime. I sit on my rubber mat and watch the water rise around me. I wonder if anyone has ever died by drowning in jail. My neighbors have become moody and silent, which makes me lonely. I contemplate my situation and it seems pretty clear to me that I’m fucked. The girl in the street was apparently killed with my knife. The medical examiner will find bits of me under her fingernails. The black wig she was wearing will turn out to be Veronica’s, the whore from the Paradise Spa, and even though I never came, the wig will no doubt have traces of my semen in it. What else. That’s enough, isn’t it. They don’t need much else.

Phineas is fucked.

I crush my eyes with the heels of my hands until I see stars but I am not transported back to my trailer in the desert or anywhere else. I wonder who it was, who set me up. John Ransom Miller. Molly. Jude. Jeremy, the spurned doorman. Veronica had no discernible motive but then motive is the biggest crock of shit in legal and literary terminology. Consider the waitress with a hacking cough who serves you hashed browns at five a.m., what the hell motivates her. The guy outside the diner, waiting for a bus with a hole in his shoe. The guy who drives the fucking bus, for that matter. What motivates them. What motivates any of us but money and sex and basic survival. Veronica had arms like winter twigs but she might well have been stronger than she looked. She had intimate access to that wig and if someone offered her a thousand dollars, who the hell knows, she might have been happy to shank a common street whore. How the hell do I know. I had my cock in her mouth for about ninety seconds but I didn’t get to know what was in her heart. I can’t help but laugh. I love this society we live in. I don’t know. I don’t know who rang my bell and it really doesn’t matter. It could have been any one of them. It wasn’t me, anyway. I was drunk as a lord but not drunk enough to kill.

I am left to decompose for a few hours.

At what feels like two in the morning, the new guard arrives with a gloomy kid in medical scrubs who takes samples of my blood and urine. Then at dawn I am served a meal of processed meat on white bread, half of a canned peach in sticky syrup, and a small paper cup of grape Kool-Aid. The meat is slimy, the bread damp. The peaches are gray and the Kool-Aid is grape only in name and color. I need my strength, though, and I consume the food mechanically, masticating with a dull efficiency that pleases me.

Along about five, not long before the first pink fingers of dawn, I get another surprise. The guards bring me a cellmate. A white guy, cat thin and lined with tattoos. The hard leather arms of a welterweight. Dirty blond hair and eyes like smoke, a scruff of beard. His name is Sugar Finch, and when he sees me, he just grins. He grins like his mouth is full of locusts.