Nobody's Angel

18

HIS EYES WERE SWOLLEN SHUT FROM THE BUTTS OF THE CUES when the chief of police shoved him into the drunk tank. “I don’t know which one of you snakes bit the other first. It’s all cowboys and Indians to me. But you’re in my house now. And you’re for sure snake bit.”

“Yeah, right,” said Patrick.

“ ‘Yeah, right,’ ” laughed the policeman. “Shit, you can’t even talk! Look at it this way: This is probably the only bunk in town where they won’t keep beatin on you. You’ll get breakfast and we’ll see you on home.”

“I’m sorry,” said Patrick, angling for the narrow bunk catercorner to one other amorphous form, foreshadowing, Patrick thought, his future. “Nothing to read. Someday I’ll be a dead bum.”

“I’ll tell you what: You just as well throw in with me, mean as you are.”

“Am I mean?”

“You’re plumb mean.”

“Oh, that’s terrible,” Patrick said in simpleminded drunkenness. “Oh, I wish you couldn’t say that about me.”

“Well, I can!” said the chief of police brightly.

And the lights dropped to minimum observation, just enough to get a vomiter’s tongue cleared or keep some whitecross detox bozo from beating his head on the fixed steel table where, it was intended, one would eat, play cards and be polite about the finger paints. As Patrick fell off to sleep, he felt that it was a good jail, one where they preferred your being a civilian to your being a jailbird, suicide or rising crime star.

Patrick didn’t know whether he was dreaming — he didn’t think he was — when he heard the chief’s voice, coming in through the alpha waves and alcohol, say, “The lady left your bail.”

As for now, his belongings, his keys and directions to his truck were what he most required.

The note from Claire read:

Patrick,

Tio flew to Tulsa early this A.M.

Stop/call for details as needed.

Claire.

Oh shit oh god oh now what. Can this be more sadness-for-no-reason? Pig’s conduct is what I’ll stand accused of, you can bet your hat on that. And my feeling is that the chaps who have made such a stretch of bad road out of my body with their cues are, at any other time or place, universally considered good fellows who never reverse their cues to beat on a human and who, all agreed, had been driven to the limits of their patience and who, moreover, when the jury returned, were universally acquitted and not a little applauded by all familiar with the particulars of the case. Except that Patrick couldn’t remember anything about it. Therefore he would join the cheering throng in its endorsement of each lump’s administering; for though he was the recipient, democracy did call for backing one’s fellows, even on limited information.