Once upon a time I was thrown in jail for being Jesus. True story. The cop was pissed off about it, but sometimes you gotta jump into a rabbit hole, just to see what happens next.
Living life outside the norm was all about the in between times as I hitched my way across America. In the rides by good Samaritans and crazy freaks, with swerves and curves, I was led down lanes that flowed into avenues with a deja vu crystallization at their end. Often, the road could be an unintentional highway of hilarity. Other times, there was an uncanny sensation of synchronicity. In these moments, I realized that everything happened exactly as it should.
There ain’t no such thing as a free lunch.
--Walter Morrow
--Walter Morrow
“Anything you like,” said James, the wiry and exuberant fella who had invited us on a dinner date. It could have been a trick of the lights, which were hanging from a wooden panelled ceiling, but the whites of his eyes were tinged yellow and glassy.
“Alright,” I said. “My predilections are mutable. I’m gonna get one of whatever it is you’re having.”
“Oh yes, yes, let’s see what’s good,” he said, looking over the menu. “A steak for me. Yes indeed.” He looked at me, and added, “They’s got good ones here.”
“Sounds good,” I said. It was an eighteen dollar entree.
The two girls put their heads together and began whispering.
“Oh come now, don’t be shy,” James managed before erupting into a crackling bout of laughter that petered off into a whistling wheeze. “What about you ladies, now? Don’t be shy girls. It’s on me.”
“Steak, I guess,” said the girl across from James. She sounded ambivalent and cast a sideways glance to her friend. The other girl nodded, but neither of them looked thrilled to be at the table. Although James exuded a contagious zeal for life, both girls were allergic to his moxie.
“I work, son!” he had pronounced when I asked what kind of job he had. He didn’t elaborate with anything more than a laugh, so I didn’t probe. He’d just been paid, or so he said, and wanted to celebrate. Looking back through the clear lense of hindsight, I could see how easily I’d been fooled.
“Y’all live here?” James asked. Sitting next to me on a red cushioned bench across from the girls, I saw that he was intent on drawing them out of their shells.
“Yeah,” said the girl across from him. Her eyes were fixed on the table. Both of them were obviously uncomfortable under the spotlight of his glassy eyed gaze.
“Alright then,” James said, nodding. His smile glowed. It bespoke of an excessive amount of energy that shined as bright as any night light out of his ebony face. “You’re friend too? Y’all both live here?”
The girl across from me was stirring a red straw in her ice water.
“We both live in Spokane,” retorted the brunette across from James. She had delivered the statement in a tone that suggested finality: no more questions, please.
“Alright then. Don’t mind me,” James said, and leaned back in his seat, chuckling to himself, looking immensely pleased.
“You eat today?” he asked after only a few seconds of gratuitous silence.
“A little,” said the brunette, and began examining her butter knife. She polished off a few watermarks with her napkin, and looked at her reflection.
“A little huh?” James asked. “I didn’t eat much myself. But I’ll tell you what…” and he launched into a story. If he had heard the aggravated sigh from the brunette, who immediately tuned out, he didn’t let on. His tale was disjointed and impossible to follow. James would ask an occasional, ‘know what I’m saying?’ but the question was meant to be taken rhetorically, and he didn’t wait for any sign of comprehension before rambling on.
When I had met them an hour ago, the girls had chatted back and forth, at ease and giggling as girls often do. They had told me the bus I should take to Manito Park, and were explaining about the Thursday night drum circle held there, when James had ambled up. Without breaking the ice, he invited us to dinner. The girls had stood there, caught off guard and blinking. But when I told James that I couldn’t see a reason not to join him--if he was buying--it seemed to make the girls think. They silently deliberated by shooting one another meaningful glances. Finally, hesitant, they consented, saying that they could always take a later bus to Manito.
From the moment he had walked up, they had been wary. The suspicion of the girls reminded me of how close we were to Northern Idaho, home of the Aryan Nations. But perhaps it wasn’t his race, but his forwardness, that they found unsettling. James had shaken all our hands, introducing himself as if we had a prior agreement to meet one another. It was a little odd, but having just hitchhiked into Spokane the night before, a meal in a restaurant sounded much better than baloney on white bread or whatever it was that the church handed out to the homeless.
As we crossed the street, James went on and on about how good the food was, how good the weather was, and how good life was. I caught his enthusiasm bug, but the girls couldn’t be infected. They walked along with a resignated plodding as if immune to our outspoken dinner host.
Now, inside the restaurant, they were apprehensive. Neither of them seemed keen on talking. Their distrust of James was masked in an apathy that flickered with little ticks of underlying annoyance. Heedless of their discomfort, James prattled on. The brunette, who had spoken earlier, looked beyond James to the wall. The curtain of eyelashes across from me were never raised. The dishwater blonde and silent girl was reticent, giving her undivided attention to the rotating ice in the glass in front of her. I wondered if she was successful. She looked to be attempting a form of self hypnosis and mesmerizing herself as a way of escaping.
James’ story ended with a hitch. We had understood none of it, other than it had been a grand old time for James that night in Detroit.
“All I had today was half a mocha that someone abandon,” I said, and shrugged when neither girl indulged James with a comment.
“What do you mean abandon?” James asked.
“They tossed is aside like it was a hackneyed beverage not worth the money they paid for it. Can you believe that?”
“You got it out of the trash?” He turned to me with his face screwed up. “Lawd, but that is disgraceful.” He clucked his tongue in disappointment, as if I had let him down. His tale had been about a glorious night where he had been a hero. He had everyone laughing in that Detroit bar, and I had gone and spoiled it by following up with a line about getting something out of the trash.
“Yes, I’m a parsimonious cad when it comes down to it,” I said.
“A what?”
“A cheap bastard,” I clarified. “But that mocha was still hot, and I couldn’t stand to see it go to waste. To be honest, I didn’t mind the lipstick smear on the lid one bit.”
“Gross,” said the ice cube stirrer. I glimpsed a flash of reproach in her blue eyes before she looked back into her whirlpool of distraction.
“Where’s your dignity, son?” James asked. “Ain’t yo mama never taught you nothing about grabbing things out of the trash? That’s filthy, just plain filthy.”
“Are you saying my mama didn’t raise me right? What’re say about my mama, James?”
James exploded in a raucous laugh that made both girls shift in their seats.
Our waitress returned, her expression flat, looking unamused by the jovial antics of James.
“Made up your minds?” she asked. Her face had a thick base of foundation that did little to cover the coarseness of her grouchy expression.
“Yes indeed, we’s all ready,” James said, and looked to the girls who nodded. “We’s all getting steaks, and I don’t know about them, but I want mine well done. How boutch y’all?”
“Medium rare,” I said.
“Medium,” said the brunette; her friend nodded.
“Fries or salad?” asked the waitress, as if we were somehow testing her patience. She sounded worn out, but that couldn’t have been the case. It was only mid afternoon, and the Caboose didn’t serve breakfast. I could see she resented us.
“Fries for me,” James said.
“Me too,” I said, feeling sheepish under the glowering woman.
Both girls wanted a salad. The way the waitress scribbled our orders on her pad seemed aggressive. It was hostile. Without asking what kind of dressing the girls wanted on their salads, she closed her pad with a snap.
Imperturbable, James was still smiling broad as ever. I wondered if this was a kind of racism he’d become accustomed to. Was the waitress a racist? I couldn’t tell, but her darkness hadn’t dimmed James’ good humor one bit.
As she walked away, I thought about our dinner party. There was James, a black guy in his mid thirties. He must have looked awfully quirky. His jeans had holes in the knees and his white sneakers were falling apart. Then there was me, a green bandana loosely tied over a mop of stringy dreadlocks and a scraggly goatee dangling from my chin. The two girls were dressed in clean clothes, but looked uncomfortable--mousey.
Like an epiphanic bolt of lightning, it dawned on me that I had no idea how old they were. I was about to turn 22. When we met, I had figured they were around my age, but something in the disapproving looks of the waitress made me think twice. For all I knew, she was a mom with daughters the same age as the girls. Whatever the case, she could see that we weren’t birds of a feather. In fact, we had no business dining together at all. James and me were predators.
Until our meal arrived, James held a one sided conversation with the girls. All his questions were answered in a monosyllabic mumble by the brunette. Despite her recalcitrance, James never dropped the ball of his inquisitive gab. He refused to let silence settle on the table. Deciding that the waitress was off base in her assumptions, I began to admire the tenacity of James.
Why he had chosen to take us out to dinner remained a mystery, but he wasn’t intent on seduction. If he was, his method was spurious, not at all correlated to anything he said. Not once did he make a personal comment about how the girls looked. Although he was overbearing, none of his cajoling could have been interpreted as perverse. He asked about bus routes, parks, and kept reiterating what a beautiful day it was. He reminded us over and over about what a splendid time he was having--what fun we were all having. Several times he elbowed my arm for concurrence, choosing to be oblivious of the aloof expressions across the table. Both girls looked crestfallen in varying states of agitated boredom
When the waitress returned, she uttered not a single platitude as she slid our plates in front of us.
“Oh my, oh my!” said James, rubbing his hands together. “Look at this. Will you just take a look at this? Thank you kindly, why thank you ma’am.”
The waitress gave a ‘harumph’ in response and walked away.
“Thanks for dinner, James,” I said.
“Oh don’t mention it,” he said with a wave of dismissal. “My pleasure, my pleasure. Now you don’t need to find your dinner--” he leaned into me and cupped his hand to the corner mouth and whispered--”in the trash.” He laughed again, elbowing me. The brunette rolled her eyes.
The steaks wouldn’t have won any medals, but James bit into his as if it had been dropped onto his plate from heaven. His noises of approval made the blonde giggle. After the first bite, he went to work on the steak at a ferocious pace. He sliced and stabbed into the meat, lifting fork fulls into his mouth before he had swallowed the previous bites. The girls looked up at him with wide eyes as he devoured the meal.
I was halfway through my steak when James had cleaned his plate.
“Now that hit the spot,” he said, rubbing his stomach. “Yes it did, it surely did.” He wiped his lips with a napkin and sighed.
“Thank you,” said the blonde, poking at her salad.
“My pleasure,” James said. “Now y’all excuse me, but I feel nature calling.”
I slid out of the booth so he could get by. He took quick steps headed toward the bathroom in the back of the restaurant.
“Oh my God,” said the blonde, when he was out of earshot. “Did you see the way he ate?”
“Totally,” drawled the brunette.
“Hey, if he’s going to pick up the bill, then he can eat anyway--” I stopped halfway through my sentence. Both girls frowned and turned their heads to look where I was looking.
“Oh my God, was that James?”
“No,” I said. It was a lie, and I didn’t sound convincing. But I didn’t think either of them had turned in time to see anything but a blue denim sleeve pass outside the front window. James had left the building.
“Yes it was,” said the girl across from me.
“Maybe he left his wallet in his car,” her friend said.
“Stacey, did James look like he owns a car? Holy shit, my mom is going to kill me.”
“Your mom?” I asked.
Neither of the girls acknowledged my question and began conferring with one another.
It didn’t take long for me to put it all together. James had hustled us. One half of the Caboose was a restaurant, and the other half was a bar. The two halves were separated by a kitchen. With the bathroom in the back, James had made a loop, and ducked out the front door. I had to think fast.
“Damn, now I need to pee,” I said, and made a move to get up.
“Don’t you leave dare leave us here!” Stacey warned, grabbing my wrist
“Well, I’m not going to piss my pants,” I said. “I’ll be right back.”
“What? No, wait!”
But I didn’t wait. Without time to come up with a game plan, I followed the route James had taken. Half way through the bar, twenty feet from the front door, the bartender shouted, “Hey, no one underage. You need to go back to the restaurant.”
“Oh, I’m almost 22,” I said, trying to sound casual.
“Not you, them,” he said.
I looked back and saw that Stacey and her friend were following. Trying to mask the adrenaline, I feigned nonchalance with a shrug and kept walking. Just before I reached the door, a rotund man in a white apron stepped in front of me.
“Where do you think you’re going?” the cook asked.
“I forgot my wallet in the car,” I said, trying to step around him. He grabbed my sleeve before I could reach the door and swung me around. With the inertia of the swing, we spun around. A centrifugal force was pulling us apart; but he held tight. Without conscious volition, I performed a wrist lock I had learned in an Aikido class, and sent him crashing into a bar stool. During the commotion, the two girls slipped out the door. I was about to follow when a heavy hand gripped my shoulder. Before I could react, my feet were flying up from under me, and all was lost. The tall man, who seemed to materialize from nowhere, climbed on top of me and delivered a thudding blow to my face. Without hitting my nose, the punch only stunned me.
“Now stay down!” he bellowed.
The cook got up from the floor with a scowl.
“I told Doris that there was no way in hell you was gonna pay for them steaks,” he said. “She should’ve kicked y’all out the moment you walked in.”
Warning me not to move a muscle, the big guy on top of me got up with a smirk of satisfaction.
“Okay, okay,” I said. “I surrender.”
“You all got steaks, huh?” he asked. “Unfucking believable.”
“That guy we were with said he’d pay for dinner,” I said. Even to my own ears, the excuse was feeble.
“Well, that just means you ain’t too bright,” said the cook. “You coulda done the right thing and told Doris what happened. You coulda washed dishes, but now we gotta get the law involved.”
“Dishes? For a tab of eighty dollars? How long would I be washing dishes?”
“Don’t get smart with me,” the cook said, dusting his hands on his apron.
“Just asking,” I said.
“Larry, you want me to hold him down while you call the cops?”
“No, just stand by the door,” the cook said.
The tall man stood like a sentry, but in his red and black flannel shirt, he looked more like a lumberjack. How could he wear such a thing in the heat of August?
Ten minutes later, an officer walked in the door and took down Larry’s statement which was corroborated by the nods of the guy that had punched me.
“Do you want to press assault charges?” the cop asked when Larry had finished.
“No,” Larry said.
“Well good,” I said. “I’m the only one who got hit. Not that you’re asking me, but I’m not pressing assault charges either.”
“Shut your mouth,” Larry warned.
It was all so surreal that I began to chuckle. My left temple felt hot from when it had been struck, so I leaned it against the cool floorboards. The floor had some grit on it, but after spending the night in a bush on the side of a building, I knew that dirt didn’t hurt. These people weren’t being unreasonable, and I noticed that the cop had written down Larry’s statement on a pad the same size as the waitress’s. Her name was Doris. Doris and Larry, what a duo. They’d probably danced this number a few times before and would most likely nab some cockroach like me again. I wondered how many got away before the dust cleared.
Laying there on the floor, I couldn’t account for my contentment. The restaurant was cool, quaint, and cozy, but wasn’t I in hot water? I felt that I could lay there forever without any complaints.
“Alright then,” said the cop, and nodded to me. “Are you going to try and run again?”
“No,” I said.
“Do you want to get up and explain yourself?”
“No, I think I’ll stay down here,” I said, grinning.
“Get your ass up,” grumbled Larry.
“Let me handle this,” the cop insisted.
Larry huffed back behind the bar. I got to my feet and sat at a table across from the officer.
“All this could have been avoided if you would have been honest,” he said.
“Honest, huh?” I asked. “Larry said I could have washed dishes, but I guess it’s too late for that now.”
“Yes it is. You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say, can, and will be held against you in a court of law. You have a right to an attorney....”
I had seen enough movies to have memorized the lines, and mouthed the rest of them in time with the officer. At the end, I rolled my eyes at the ridiculousness of it all.
“Something funny?” the officer asked.
I shrugged. “I feel kinda dumb for not seeing that I was being hustled.”
“So, what’s your name?” The cop looked at me, his pen hovering over his pad, but I gave him a blank look. A few seconds ticked by before he asked, “What? Did you suddenly lose the ability to speak?”
“Didn’t you say I had the right to remain silent?”
A cold warning flashed behind his gray eyes. Although I knew my question was poignant, from a philosophical standpoint, I saw that it rubbed him the wrong way.
“You’re not going to tell me your name?”
The man who had tackled me shook his head and sipped his beer.
“Well, what good is my right to remain silent if I can’t use it?”
“Can you believe that asshole?” Larry asked his lumberjack friend.
“You can make this hard on yourself,” said the cop. “That’s up to you.”
“Alright,” I said. “Do you really want to know who I am?”
“That is what I’m asking.”
“Really?” I questioned, feeling the need to ham it up with theatrical suspense. I could feel every ear pricked.
“Okay, I guess I better confess.”
“Please cut the bullshit,” the cop said.
“Jesus Christ,” I said, looking up at him with imploring eyes. “I’m back.”
That did it. The cop bolted up, jerking my right arm behind my back and slammed me on the table. The table top formica was cool, I noted, and cleaner than the floor. It smelled of bleach. I felt a steel cuff slap around my wrist and then the other wrist was bound as well.
“Alright you little prick,” the cop said through clenched teeth. “I was going to let you off with a ticket, but now you’re going downtown.”
“Downtown? Aren’t we downtown now?”
“Don’t you know when to shut the fuck up?” the flannel shirt man asked. He had rotated on his stool to watch.
“I wasn’t gonna say shit,” I said with my cheek pressed to the table. “But no one liked me using my right to remain silent. Nothing I do seems to make you guys--ouch!”
Although my shoulder had been tweaked, and felt as if a blade were prying my arm from its socket, I felt a surge of maniacal giddiness. There was nothing I could do to suppress the giggles, which in turn, infuriated the officer who wrenched my wrist even further up the center of my back. The rabbit hole in which I found myself plummeting made me wonder if I were somehow out of line. No. Impossible.
“Forgive them father, for they know not what they do,” I said.
“You just don’t know when to quit, do you?” the cop asked. With tears in my eyes, my shoulder screaming in protest at the angle of my bent arm, I was escorted out the door without being able to reign in my laughter.
Justice is sold to the highest bidder.
--Rohinton Mistry
With the windows up in the back of the police cruiser, I felt a kinship with all the dogs left baking in parked cars across the world. The sun streamed through the windows, and beads of sweat started to pop out of my forehead. The tickling itch, as droplets rolled down my temples and nose, was more of a torture than the tightness of the cuffs. Without being able scratch, I rubbed my face on the window, leaving a smear, but hardly alleviating the itch.
The police officer had gone back in the air conditioned Caboose, and I knew he was making me wait in the back seat of the car as punishment. Suppressing the creeping claustrophobia, I closed my eyes and tried to control my breathing.
I wasn’t laughing at the turn of events any longer. The situation seemed stark, but I tried to understand that it had all been orchestrated by an incomprehensible madman. The reason I had claimed to be Jesus was not only because I was sure that it was true, but I believed that fate had a way of sorting things out. Fear of the future and regrets of the past were vices. They were defeating sentiments straight out of the devil’s playbook. I was trying to give up the knowledge of good and evil. To embrace my theory that no mistakes could be made was of paramount importance. But it was nearly impossible to believe at all times, especially in a suffocating car. Pain and fear were always the biggest hurdles to overcome, so I tried to draw my mind away from the here and now.
James--what a crafty guy. I could learn a thing or two from his con. Then I considered his energy. It could have been the lighting in the Caboose, but there was probably a better explanation for the yellow fog in the whites of his eyes. I doubted it was cataracts. He must have been high as a kite. How had I not seen through his game?
After fifteen minutes broiling in the back seat, the cop walked back out.
“You know we’re going to find out who you are,” he said, as he got in the car.
“Oh yee of little faith,” I said, shaking my head.
A bitter kind of indignance was all over his face when he glanced at me in the rearview mirror. I realized he must be a Christian. That, or perhaps he didn’t appreciate being fucked with by some bum with dreadlocks. Without any ID, I knew they’d have their work cut at the station. For the rest of the short drive, the cop didn’t say a word.
I looked out the window, hoping I might spot James, but he was long gone. Of course, even if I was able to point him out, my cop wouldn’t give chase. Besides, I had nothing against James. He’d won. Maybe not fair and square, but I wasn’t going to be a poor sport about the way things turned out.
When we arrived at the station, I was locked in a small holding cell. It was no bigger than a broom closet, brightly lit, with white walls and a thick wooden bench. All was quiet except for some disturbing muffled noises coming through the wall. It sounded like moaning, a pleading cry, making me think that a junkie must be in a desperate need of a fix.
After a few minutes of wondering what the moaner’s issue was, I decided to amuse myself by drumming on the bench. I sat on the floor and found that with open palmed slaps I could produce a crisp snare crack. With a closed fist, the bench resounded with a rumbling boom of rich bass. Boom boom smack. The acoustics in the room were astounding! So, already things were looking up. Even if I couldn’t catch the bus to the drum circle in Manito Park, I could still get my groove on.
Lost in the beat, I hadn’t noticed the cop standing outside. How long had he been watching? I listened to the clinking of his keys and thought about carrying on with my thumping when the door opened.
“Alright Jesus,” he said, using the Spanish pronunciation of the “J” as an “H”.
“It’s Jesus,” I corrected.
His face was stone.
I frowned when he retrieved a pair of blue latex gloves and slid them over his beefy hands.
“Yikes,” I said. “I suppose there’s no way to stop what’s coming next.”
His eyebrow raised for a moment, and then he asked, “Do you have any needles, knives or sharp objects on your person?”
“No,” I said.
“You sure? Because if I prick myself, it’ll be your ass.”
“Wait,” I said, needing the procedure clarified. “Are you telling me that it won’t be my ass if there aren’t any sharp objects in my pocket?”
“What?”
“Nevermind,” I exhaled, relieved. “I was thinking you were going to search me where the sun don’t shine. You know, like at the end of Wayne's World.”
“Be straight with me. You don’t have anything that’s going to poke me, right? If you do, now is the time to say so.”
“No, I don’t have needles, knives, thumbtacks or nails,” I said.
The cop patted me down. I winced as he retrieved a list of phone numbers from my pocket.
“What’s this?” he asked.
“Just some of my apostles,” I said. “Many are called, but only a few pick up their phones.”
He muttered about what an idiot he thought I was, and then began feeling through my dreadlocks. After he left the room I resumed my drumming. I free flowed, trying to come up with fresh rhymes as I banged on the bench. The reverberation was so sublime that I thought I wouldn’t mind spending a week or two in the small room. Every time I stopped, I heard the groans of the man in the next room. His monotone complaint was like a drone, so I rapped about his plight, trying to keep my flow on point, and in the same key as his wretched lamentation.
A couple of hours had passed when there was a tap on the window.
“Hey, I really like your music,” said a female officer. She had blonde hair that was pulled into a ponytail and an angular face that cut the light in a favorable way.
“Thanks,” I said. Something wasn’t right here.
“Tell you what,” she said. “Do you want to get out of here?”
“Um, maybe later?”
“Well,” she breathed, feigning consideration, “we’re willing to let you go and give you a hundred bucks if you tell us your name.” She held up a hundred dollar bill, and pressed it to the glass.
“Thou shalt not tempt the lord your god,” I said and scoffed.
“I know your name isn’t Jesus, if that’s what you mean,” she said. She too pronounced the name with an ‘H’ like the cop who frisked me.
“It’s Jesus. Like ‘cheese’ with an ‘us’ at the end. Do I look Mexican? You aren't a latina, and if neither one of us speak Spanish, so why do you call me heysoos?’”
“You’re funny,” she said.
“Not as funny as you,” I lilted.
“What do you mean?” she asked. Was she batting her eyelashes? Unbelievable!
“I’ll bet you that hundred dollar bill that you were never going to give me that hundred dollar bill,” I said.
“You don’t think I’ll give it to you?” she asked. She shot me an offended look, as if I were being coy. It was all a bit much. She was probably the station’s best looker, but I couldn’t believe it had come to this.
“Let me get this straight,” I said. “You expect me to believe that you’ll not only let me go, but I’ll be rewarded $100 for telling you my name?”
“I said I would,” she said with a shrug, and glanced down as if she were bashful about the honest offer.
“Tell you what,” I said. “If you hold that hundo up to the window and light it on fire, I’ll tell you anything you like.”
She looked taken aback for a moment, and then seemed to speak if she were reciting: “It’s a federal offense to deface or destroy currency.”
“Yeah? It can be our little secret,” I said, and winked. If she could pretend, then so could I. “Just like you promised that Benjamen, I ‘promise’”--I made air quotes--“to tell you the name my mama gave me. It’s easy. All you have to do is burn that nasty bit of paper.”
The corner of her smile twitched, but it was only a small crack in her facade before she recovered, and said, “Come on, you can tell me your name.” Her eyes were different.
Something about the way she said it, the sudden flip in her act to that of a friend, made me laugh. The tactlessness of it all was blatant, but she was giving it her best. I imagined the guys outside, a few other officers that I couldn’t see on the sides of the small window, listening in. I wondered if they’d bet on my credulity.
Guessing I had an unseen audience, I tried to make my eyes look brooding, and in a mock baritone suave latino accent, I said, “You could tell me your address, chica. Tell Heysus.”
She looked infuriated and was out of view an instant later.
I drummed a bit longer, my lyrics about the shameless bribery of a prostitute, when my arresting officer appeared in the window.
“Alright, Jasper,” he said. “We called your father, and he told us your name. Your other friends held out, but your dad was straight with us.” He sounded triumphant, but also condescending and smug.
“Huh,” I grunted noncommittally. It was a bummer, and I was a bit disappointed in my old man.
As he wrapped the handcuffs back around my wrists, I told him he didn’t need cut off the blood to my hands. He told me not to be a pussy.
“They’ll be off soon enough. Too soon, if you ask me.”
He jerked me out of the cell, and I looked in the next room to behold a horrific figure. The man who had been moaning was silent now. Through the window I caught the emaciated wreck, rocking back and forth, skin and bones. With gnarled hands all black with grime, he had bits of debris lodged in his hair.
“Wow, where’d the zombie come from?” I asked.
The cop didn’t answer, or say anything more until we stopped by a water cooler.
“We’ll see who’s having fun in a couple weeks,” he commented. He filled a paper cup and tilted it for me to drink.
There was an escalation of cranking tension, but it disappeared when I said, “Hey bro, you got me.”
His chin tilted upward as he said, “I’m not your bro.”
“What do I have? Like a month?”
“You’ll be sentenced in two weeks,” he said.
“Two weeks,” I considered. “Could be a lot worse.”
“I agree, and I think the judge will too. Don’t think I won’t show up for court if you try to say you’re innocent.”
No, we weren’t comrades, and he was making that abundantly clear.
“Oh I’m guilty,” I admitted.
It had been no accident that the cuffs were biting into my wrists. Both of my hands were numb by the time we arrived at the processing center of the station. I was handed over to an older officer with a big gut hanging over his belt. With a white mustache, I saw him as a walrus. He had large drooping eyes and a bulbous nose and seemed indifferent about dealing with me.
As he took my prints, I looked around to the small cubicles, all separated by gray office partitions. There were a handful of officers milling about under the low ceiling. The metal desks and filing cabinets looked cheap. The fluorescent lights cast a dismal blue hue from the white panels which had rusty stains of water damage. The entire place looked drab until I noticed the lady cop who had tried to bribe me. In contrast with the rest of the place, she was like a diamond in the rough, a princess in a pig stye. It was no wonder they had sent her to at least try and beguile me. She glanced over with a haughty look. It quickly changed to a threatening glare after I mouthed the words ‘I love you’.
Smiling for the mugshot, and making jokes about the fingerprint ink, did little to change the spacey demeanor of the walrus. He wouldn’t meet my eye. His jelly like gaze would drift around the room coming to rest on different computer monitors. His breathing was hoarse, and his face was red from the effort of moving around the office. After passing me off to another officer, he seemed happy to collapse back in his swivel chair.
The new handle seemed to have some sympathy when he saw my bruised wrists, and reattached them like loose fitting bangles.
“So, you’re Jesus?” he asked with a note of good humor.
“If you say so,” I shrugged. He had pronounced it correctly, in the gringo dialect.
“Was it worth it?”
What?” I asked.
“Joe said he wouldn’t have brought you in if you would have talked straight and told him your name.”
“All I know is that I’m going to jail for being Jesus. It might not be ideal, but it sounds a helluva lot better than getting crucified.”
The August sun was still up and blazing when we crossed the street. I looked up at a bleak building. It was the color and shape of the tip of an oversized calloused thumb. Its ten story mass took up a quarter of the city block. With slits for windows, it struck me as repulsive. From below, I could see the windows couldn’t open, squeezing off not only the outside air, but most of the daylight as well. But the sun was relentless as it baked the odious behemoth of a building. I hoped there would be decent air conditioning inside. If not, it would be two weeks of roasting, and not the funny kind.
To my relief, the opening of the door was accompanied by an icey cool blast of air. The white tile floor was offset by pea green bars, and everything was gleaming with a dreamlike waxiness. The overall feeling of the place was a sterile one. We were greeted by an austere woman that floated a form across her counter for me to sign. Without makeup and quite stout, she was born for the job. She had been here long enough to take on the physical characteristics of the place. She sat, formidable, perched atop a stool behind her wall of plexiglass. She glanced up at me as she took the form and dropped it in a wire basket. After nodding with a half smile to the cop, she pressed a red button that buzzed open the bars.
From one gate to the next, two goonish escorts led me down the hall and into an elevator. When the doors opened, all was silent on the fourth floor. Expecting more green bars, and perhaps some hoots and hollers, I found it unsettling that all the cells had thick steel doors. It looked more like a mental asylum than the jail of my imagination.
Halfway down the hall, my escorts stopped to unlock the heavy bolt of a cell. There was another guy inside. He was around my age wearing black jeans and a polo shirt. I couldn’t tell if he was nervous or had just woken up, but he blinked at me as the door opened. The guards uncuffed me and left without a word.
“Hey,” said my new roommate when the doors closed. He sounded timid, which was much better than the opposite of timid.
“Hey,” I said.
He introduced himself as Chris, and seemed relieved to see me. A little shorter, he had curly hair, a beak of a nose and the slight build of a stereotypical computer geek. Chris had been in for a week and said he was going stir crazy without anyone to talk to.
“A week?”
“No, actually its just been a couple of days,” he corrected. “There was another guy when I got here, but he was kind of an asshole. He wasn’t exactly someone to shoot the shit with.”
“The silent type?” I asked
“No, I wish. That wouldn’t have been bad, but he kept wanting to have contests.”
“Contests? Like thumb wars?”
“No, more like push-ups and pull-ups. I told him I knew that he could beat me, but he wouldn’t shut up about it until I tried. It wasn’t like I could walk away, so I had to.”
“That’s not nice,” I said.
“This whole place sucks,” he said. “The food sucks--I shouldn’t even be in here.”
Chris explained that had been a designated driver, and had no idea that the people in the back of his car were drinking. The cop who pulled him over slapped him with a DUI.
“I told the cop to breathalyze me because I didn’t even have a drink--not one drop of alcohol. He said it wouldn’t matter because I’m twenty, but they can’t do that, right? Just because some people in the back of my car are drinking--know what I mean?”
“You didn’t have alcohol in your system?”
“No.”
“Dick move by the cop, but there’s that law about not having open containers.”
“Yeah, but that’s different than drunk driving. If he would have given me a ticket for that, I could have understood. But it’s completely unfair, and now my car is in the impound, which costs like three hundred a day, and I’m going to have to pay a shit ton for insurance. Plus all the fines and classes they make you go to--I’m totally screwed over!”
“Wow, with all that pent up angst, wouldn’t exercise be cathartic?”
“What?” he asked, his face crinkling up like a wad of Kleenex.
“Those contests. Do some pushups to let off some steam.”
“No, dude, I’m telling you that the guy before you was mental. He had a swastika tattoo on his neck.”
“Well that’s some shit,” I said.
“Seriously, like something not right in his head.”
“Yeah, I’m sure it wasn’t a good time for you. But what else is there to do in here? Might as well get shredded, right?”
Chris shook his head with a look of distaste.
The bunkbeds had thin mats resting on steel sheets. They weren’t too bad--much more comfortable than the saggy bedsprings I’d imagined. The food was pretty much what I expected. The lunch and dinner sandwiches alternated between warm mystery meat and peanut butter and jelly. Both sandwiches arrived limp and light between white bread. For two days, breakfast was oatmeal with a honey packet. On the third morning, I was too hungry to be skeptical about the neon yellow eggs.
“Are these even eggs?” Chris asked, stabbing into the fluorescent flubber with his plastic spoon.
“Maybe a mix of eggs and some sort of gelatinous goo,” I said. “What do you want to bet this stuff would glow in the dark? It’s probably toxic waste, but I’ll take yours if you’re not gonna eat it.”
“No, I’m gonna eat it. Maybe we’ll get powers like the ninja turtles.”
The stainless steel toilet and sink were next to one another. Chris told me to plug my ears and look away, embarrassed of the noises he made on the throne. We weren’t given toothbrushes or anything to wash ourselves but powdered soap in a dispenser above the sink. There was toilet paper, most of the time, but we always saved our napkins. Chris told me he had thought about cleaning out the toilet by flushing it a few times, and giving himself a sponge bath with his socks.
“You can’t be serious,” I said. “After just one week? That’s all it takes for you to think about a toilet bath?”
“Dude, this is inhumane. My balls itch.”
“Just wash your nuts then. I won’t watch.”
Without Chris, I might have been bored, but we made the best of it. We told each other endless stories and played hangman on the dinner napkins with a pencil stub.
“I wish we had a deck of cards,” Chris said.
It was just after the fluorescent breakfast of the third morning, and I was on the lower bunk reading the Bible.
“Yeah, or a chess set,” I said.
“I don’t play chess.”
“No chess, no workouts, you don’t read--damn Chris.”
“Even if I could read, the Bible is pure bullshit.
“Speaking of bullshit,” I said, “Ezekiel 4:15 trips me out. It talks about preparing bread over cow manure.”
“Yeah, I’ve heard of that,” Chris said.
I read him the text, and he said, “People in the untouchable caste in India have to use cow manure to cook with.”
“It doesn’t say ‘cook’ in the King James version; it says prepare. Could be a huge difference. I’m thinking Ezekiel might have known a thing or two about where to find psychedelic mushrooms. He says to weigh the “bread” before you eat it, and then listen to the voice of the lord.”
“Now you’re tripping,” Chris said.
“It’s not really important to weigh and measure bread, is it? If we’re talking ordinary bread, are you going to listen to God any better?”
“God? I don’t think anyone was listening to God. Whatever voice they listened to was completely tyrannical,” Chris was offended. “The church tortured people, burned innocent women at the stake, and convinced poor people that they’d go to heaven if they gave up all their money. I don’t think the pope or prophets were eating shrooms.”
“Evil people do evil shit, for sure. But you gotta understand that before the Bible was printed, most of the people couldn’t look up anything for themselves. Everyone had to trust what the clerical assholes at the top said, and they had to read it in Latin. They probably thought Ezekiel was writing about bread, but what if all this time there’s been mushroom codes--little hidden messages embedded in the text.”
“Whatever. I think the whole thing is meant to control the masses. It’s not just Christianity; all religions are basically fucked.”
“You have a solid point,” I said. “But imagine if Christians would have been eating psychedelic mushrooms every Sunday instead of wafers and grape juice.”
“What are you even talking about?”
“A make-believe sacrament as opposed to a real one.”
“A sacrament? They’re just mushrooms. I’ve shroomed a couple of times and ran around in the woods. If someone started a mushroom cult, they’d would ruin everything.”
“Maybe, but I’d join. If people started eating mushrooms as the body of Christ, I’d give it a whirl,” I said.
“You should start a cult. Then you could convince everyone that you’re a mushroom prophet and have sex with their wives.”
“Is that the goal?” I asked and laughed.
“Dude, that’s what happens in like every single cult in human history.”
I had to agree. Despite the goodwill of any new system’s tenets or sacraments, all cults devolved into twisted fundamentalism. Eventually, the guy at the top was sleeping with all the women.
Chris got down from the top bunk and looked outside. Most of the window was translucent but not transparent, sandblasted or fogged over so the inmates couldn’t appreciate any sort of a view. The first day, Chris had shown me the thin line of clear glass that butted against the cinderblock wall.
“See anyone out there?” I asked.
“No,” he said.
I knew about the stop sign. Occasionally someone would walk across the three foot strip of sidewalk he was constantly observing. He’d seemed manic as he described a girl he’d seen before my arrival. The memory of her black skirt and big tits made his eyes gloss over. Unlike me, Chris was a libidinous lech with a fetish for red fingernail polish. While his imagination lit up his face as he described his former girlfriends, I could only stand to listen to him talk about their cosmetic affectations for a few minutes before tuning out.
Unfortunately, Chris was dyslexic. I offered to read out loud, but as the Bible was the only book in the room, he declined. Watching the patch of sidewalk was as good as it got for him. I figured the chances of seeing anyone worth the effort of looking were as slim as the view itself. But Chris was ever hopeful. He peered out of the slit with an OCD like frequency. Every fifteen minutes or so, Chris was drawn to this little glimpse of the outside world. Even if the habit was ultimately futile, I supposed it was a better way to pass the time than a toilet water rub down.
That third day, the guards came for me just after dinner. We were both puzzled. Chris should be getting out before me. The guards were stoic and not interested in answering our questions. They led me down the waxy hall in silence. It wasn’t until I talked to the woman at the front desk that I learned I was being transferred.
Outside, the night air was cool. I looked over at the stop sign across the street and wondered if Chris was watching. A moment later I was on a seat aboard a bus bound for Geiger, a minimal correction facility on the outskirts of town.
I got my degree and doctorate on the street and my advanced degree in jail.
--Tommy Chong
Geiger was nothing like county; it was a paradise. I had three bunkmates in a room on the third floor, and there was a window that overlooked the courtyard. It was a big window, and I could see the rolling hills in the distance. Although I saw them over the chain link fence which wrapped around the facility, they gave me a sense of expansive peace, especially during sunset when the sky was full of pastel flames. Around Spokane there were farms, and the land was dotted with sporadic swatches of Ponderosa pine trees. If only Chris were here to see it. Although there was no chance of seeing a cosmetically enhanced female, I thought he would appreciate the view.
During the day, the inmates could wander from room to room as we pleased. Not only were there playing cards, but there were chess sets, dominoes, monopoly, cribbage boards and all sorts of games I had never seen before. There was also a small library and a TV room.
Instead of soggy sandwiches, we enjoyed big helpings of delicious food for every meal. I could hardly believe that there was a soda fountain in the cafeteria to help wash down the lasagna, burgers, fries and pizza. As there was no requirement to get up early, most mornings, I decided to sleep through the 6am breakfast. Sometimes I regretted missing out on the french toast, bacon and eggs--which Harry praised as being the bee’s knees--but lunch and dinner were more than enough.
The place felt more like a boy scouts camp gone rogue than a correctional facility. The difference was that scouts were encouraged to earn merit badges and further themselves, whereas we lounged about playing games all day. Guys in here were more like the boys that corrupted Pinocchio before morphing into donkeys. No, Geiger was a far cry from the boy scouts. There was nothing of integrity or self betterment except an optional church service that only former alcoholics attended. Geiger was a joke, and I found myself laughing along with my good fortune. With free gourmet meals, and a rich tapestry of various distractions, I couldn’t understand why anyone would want to leave.
Of the three buildings, I was in the one designated for the Cheetos, the west wing reserved for other men in orange. I could have just as easily been designated a Smurf in a blue jumpsuit on the eastern wing, but I counted myself lucky as I preferred the vibrancy of fire.
Harry, my favorite roommate, told me that both the Cheetos and Smurfs were the lowmen on Geiger's pole of social stratum. The northern wing was the upper echelon of Geiger and the envy of the Cheetos and Smurfs alike. Whereas we had a TV room, each of the north men’s bunks came with a private set. The other perc was a white T-shirt which could be worn underneath their green jumpsuits. The greenbacks, as they were known, were also permitted to work to help pass their time. I didn’t understand how working was viewed as a privilege. In fact, I suspected some psychological shenanigans used to prop up the assertion. Unless we were going to turn into donkeys, I didn’t see a downside to all the games in the life of a Cheeto.
Except Harry, most of the inmates that hung out in my room were a boisterous bunch. Harry read a lot, but the rest played endless rounds of spades. Everyone I talked to had missed a court date or been caught driving with a suspended license. All were perpetrators of victimless crimes, and most saw themselves as victims of a broken legal system. They were caught up in bureaucratic tape, and their charges were unfair. Unlike me, they didn’t see Geiger as anything but a stroke of bad luck. They wanted out of my utopia.
“Shit man, your feet stink like expensive cheese,” Dennis told me the first night. He was on the bunk above me, and didn’t appreciate the odor as I slipped my feet out of the flimsy Bob Barker made shoes. Bob Barker provided the jumpsuits, soap, toothbrushes and laceless shoes for the inmates.
“Yeah, I used to go barefoot in Hawaii. My callouses are coming off, sorry about that,” I said.
“Don’t say you’re sorry; take a fucking shower.”
“Will do.”
Dennis was well over forty with gray stubble on his chin and a few extra creases here and there. Most of the ravines around his eyes were from his ear to ear smile. It curved like a crescent moon, but none of his teeth were real.
“Look good, though, don’t they?” he asked after telling me about his flawless grill. His laughter was a fully bellied stutter, a series of uh-uh-uhs, each one louder than the last .
The next day, I looked in the shower room with a little trepidation. In the big tiled room there were a dozen showerheads. There was only one inmate showering off, but I didn’t want to get caught dropping the proverbial soap.
“What are you looking at?” said a hoarse voice from behind me.
Startled, I spun around. A beast of an inmate with a big swastika tattooed on his forearm was glaring down at me.
“Nothing,” I said, feeling cornered. “My roommates said my feet stink, so I need to take a shower.”
“Well there’s someone in there. You a fag?” The troglodyte grunted his question.
“What? Oh, no,” I said. “I’m not gay.”
“Then whatchoo looking at?”
“Absolutely nothing,” I said and stepped away from the door.
“One at a time,” said the extra large Nazi.
“Fine by me,” I said. “Honestly, that is the way it should be.”
Still suspicious of my orientation, he nodded and said he wished the niggers had a different shower room. He hated them almost as much as faggots.
“Right,” I said. Although I felt his social phobias to be preposterous, I would have readily agreed with anything he said. If he hated the sun, then so did I. When in Rome...
“You a Jew?” he asked.
“Nope, not a semitic drop of blood in me.”
“Why you got your hair in them nigger locks?”
“It got tangled from the ocean in Hawaii,” I said. “This will be the first shower I’ve taken in over a month.”
“Yeah, well you should cut that shit off.”
“Good idea,” I said.
He seemed to decide that I wasn’t the enemy. With a final warning, reminding me about the one-at-a-time rule, he lumbered off down the hall.
In the shower, I raked my fingernails over my feet, but the callouses wouldn’t give. The price must not have been right for Bob Barker to shell out socks for the inmates. It was unfortunate, and Dennis never tired of giving me hell for my rotten smelling feet.
For a week, I did little but write. Unlike county jail, with its little stub of a pencil and napkins, I had a pen and as much paper as I wanted. It was easy enough to tune out the sounds of the card game. Most of the time I was so deeply engrossed in my story that the din of the room seemed distant, as if floating across a vastness and dissipating into unintelligible garble by the time it reached my ears. It was all I could do to keep up with the pen as it raced across the pages. I did my best to accurately recount the two month mushroom trip. Describing the auditory hallucinations of my unseen companions was a challenge, and I kept falling short as I tried to capture the profundity of the moment when I realized that I was Jesus--realized that Jesus was a metaphor for psilocybin mushrooms. As long as I partook, Jesus abided in me and I in him, but the epiphany came out sounding fantastical and unconvincing.
Every two hours, we had a fifteen minute break where we were let outside. There was a basketball court and a few free weights, but I spent the recess listening to Cori. He had magnanimous way of storytelling. Having been thrown in Geiger for grand theft auto some months earlier, Cori knew everyone in the place.
“He got lucky,” he said of the cop who caught him.
Cori was a trove of information and told me all sorts of ways to improve my life of crime. There were a few ways to make methamphetamine, but cars were his forte. The other guys around the smoking tower agreed that there was nothing like carjacking a sweet ride.
“Most car alarms have wires that you can rip out of the front door, and if that don’t shut off the beeping, it ain’t no thing. Just pop the hood, disconnect the battery cable, done. Piece of cake.”
Cori told me the best way to break into someone’s vehicle was by using the porcelain end of a spark plug.
“What, you ain’t never heard of a shatter rock?” he asked.
“No, but I’ve never jacked a car.”
“Shit fool, you’re missing out. Ain’t no rush like tearing down the highway with sirens wailing behind you,” he smiled in reverie. “But anyways, you take a spark plug and tie it onto a piece of dental floss and then pop”--he made a throwing motion with his hand--“the porcelain goes right through the glass and then you pull it back real quick. Easy money.”
“Hmmm,” I said. “Easy until you're busted.”
“Yeah, tell me about it. I still have five more months in this shit hole.”
By his account, he’d stolen over twenty cars, but he slipped up in a car that he legally owned.
“When the cop went back to his car, I shoulda split. If I woulda run into the woods, I wouldn’t be here. Stupid. Got greedy. I had a half pound of meth in the seat lining and was hoping I could sweet talk him into letting me go. But I had warrants, so he took me in.”
“A half pound of meth?”
“Yep. Still there, or at least it should be. The car’s probably been auctioned off by now, but I’ll hunt it down. It was a piece of shit, but that meth is worth five grand. Maybe more if I can cut it.”
On the second week, I was deep into my writing when I heard my name blasted over the intercom.
“Whoa Jasper. What’d you do?” Dennis asked, looking up from his card game.
“No clue,” I said. I stacked my pages together and looked down at the Smurfs in the courtyard. It was good to be a Cheeto. Something about the blue jumpsuits looked depressing.
At the downstairs office, one of the monstrous guards explained that I was being transferred.
“Again?” I asked. “Where to this time?”
“Moving up in the world,” he said.
Someone had deemed me worthy, and I was led over to the north wing to join the greenbacks. A promotion. I was handed plastic bag with a green jumpsuit and the much coveted white T-shirt. Not only this, but socks--greenbacks got socks! I was lucky, the guard explained. A lot of Cheetos would gladly trade places with me.
The new dormitory wasn’t at all as lush as it was rumored to be. Each bed had a TV, but the screens were small, and the room itself was smaller.
While it was supposedly a privilege to have a T-shirt to wear under the jumpsuit, I wasn’t sure that I agreed. It may have been nice in the winter, but August was hot, and the extra layer of fabric added unwanted insulation. After I donned my new duds, the guard explained that I was to report for kitchen duty at five the next morning.
“Cooking?” I asked.
“Dishes,” he said. “But if you mind your Ps and Qs, you can work your way up to cook.”
As I climbed onto my bunk, I noticed that the other men in the room were quiet. They were much more reserved than the unruly Cheetos. The man across from me on the lower bunk was watching his television set, but the volume was off. I thought about watching my TV, but the noise would probably irritate the others.
The following morning, I decided to rebel. This “promotion” was bullshit. It was like moving from an outdoor playground with friends and toys into a library. So, like every other day, I slept through breakfast and didn’t show up for my shift in the kitchen. Three times I heard my name on the intercom, and three times I rolled over, holding the pillow over my head.
“Jasper,” said a guard as he entered my room.
“Yeah?”
“Follow me.” He escorted me back over to the west wing. I didn’t ask about the reasons for my demotion. It was obvious enough. Playing hookie wouldn’t be tolerated.
My former cell mates told me I was a fool, especially Dennis who couldn’t believe I passed up time in the kitchen.
“What were you thinking?” he asked. “The kitchen is where the food is at. You could have been stuffing your face with cake.”
“Cake wouldn’t be worth it,” I said. “Washing dishes at five in the morning would be a shit job. Why on earth would I want to wash dishes for a slice of cake?”
“To help pass the time,” Harry commented without looking up from the book he was reading.
“The time? I can do anything I want in here to pass the time. As can you guys.”
Dennis tried to talk sense into me by saying, “I know you like to sit and write all day, but the time would fly by if you got to hang with the guys in the kitchen. They have it good in there.”
“Do you hear yourself?” I asked. The room was in agreement about greenbacks having it better. “You guys get to play cards, or whatever else you want to do. Are you telling me you’d rather wash dishes?”
“Wouldn’t be so bad,” Harry said.
“But preferable?” I asked.
“It’s not like you have to wash dishes all day,” Dennis said.
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. They were serious about wanting to wash dishes.
“Just to be clear,” I said, “you’d all get up at the butt crack of dawn to scrub out some greasy pot for kicks.”
They nodded, except Gary who scratched behind his ear.
Dennis told me that he got sick of playing spades. There were worse jobs than washing dishes, and he’d be a greenback in a heartbeat.
But would he really trade in his freedom for the structure of such a menial chore? Dennis said he liked his job on the outside. He drove an eighteen wheeler, for SWIFT and joked that it meant, ‘Sure Wish I had a Faster Truck.’ As his uh-uh-uhs of laughter shook the room, I decided to drop it.
There was no use in arguing. Dennis and the others were team players. They didn’t see Geiger, or life in general, the way I did.
There were several game rooms to check out, so it wasn’t as if Dennis were restricted to the marathon of spades. Gary, Joseph and a few of the other spades enthusiasts relied on him to be there, but he could quit at any time. Of course they’d racked up all sorts of debts to one another, betting ridiculous things like their houses, cars and wives. Debt was their on going joke. They’d talk about paying the debts--swear to it, and then laugh about how that would be after the lawyers.
“After I pay my lawyer off, I’ll give you everything that’s left,” one would say.
“You mean jack shit?”
“How bout my old lady then?”
“She won’t be around neither when you’re broke.”
I thought the joke had been told too many times, in every conceivable way, but they always laughed uproariously. Then Gary went too far and wagered his daughter. I didn’t understand why the room went silent until Dennis told me later.
“It’s really as shame, Jasper. No one knows for sure, but there was a rumor going around that Gary is a pedophille,” Dennis whispered. We were walking to the TV room to watch Family Guy.
“Whoa, they wouldn’t send pedophiles here, would they?” I asked.
“Keep your voice down. Its unsubstantiated, but that joke he made about betting his daughter was inappropriate. For Chrissakes, he already told us she was just entering middle school.”
“Unsubstantiated, like wrongly accused?”
“Maybe he’s not a pedo. It’s just a little birdie that told somebody something. You know, just a rumor. We didn’t think nothing of it until he made that stupid joke, and now Harry doesn’t want him coming around no more.”
“Yeah, I can see that,” I said.
“The thing is, Jasper, Harry wants me to tell him to leave. He says it’s my job.”
“Yeah, I get that too. Gary plays spades with you, and it’s not like Joseph or Tim is gonna tell him to kick rocks. You’re the spades chief.”
“But Gary is my friend, Jasper. So I was wondering if you could do me a solid. Jasper, I swear to God, I’ll give you my house. Jasper, I’ll give you my house, if you do me this one small favor.”
“I heard that one before, but no. I’m not about to tell Gary where he is and isn’t allowed or welcome. That’s not my place. Don’t try and mix me up in the drama.”
“Jasper, what about a brownie, man? I’ll sneak one out after dinner. I’ll do it for a week. All you need to do is have a talk with Gary. What do you say, Jasper?”
“No chance. Cake doesn’t do it for me.”
“Come on man, do me just this one small favor,” Dennis whined.
“I have no problem with Gary. It was a stupid joke, but I’m not going to cast any stones. Besides, it’s a rumor. Innocent until proven guilty. You guys are always talking about that.”
“What about a month’s worth of brownies?”
“I’m out of here this week, but why would I believe you’d come through? It reminds me of the cop that tried to bribe me with a hundred dollar bill. She promised she’d give it to me if I told her my name.”
“Was she cute?”
“For a cop, yeah.”
“Should have taken the deal,” Dennis said.
As we arrived in the TV room, I saw that all the seats were taken. Jerry Springer could draw in a crowd, but the room was never so packed as when Family Guy aired. Dennis headed over to a couple of the spade’s guys near the window.
The room was segregated into different factions. Three men with swastika tattoos sat in the left flank of the fifty plastic chairs. I wondered if one of them had challenged Chris in county before arriving at Geiger. Constantly competing to see who could walk up and down the stairs the most times on their hands, they were all alpha males, reminding me of gorillas as they bumped chests, red in the face from being inverted. Slasher Ben had the record, having gone up a total of forty six steps on his hands while Bruce held his ankles.
Sitting to the right was a group that Dennis said was “treading on thin ice.” They were a mix of chicano and whites, which was ballsy enough in this segregated place. But it was the fact that they played dominoes which seemed to piss off the Aryan brotherhood. Apparently it was a game for the blacks which made them race traders. Dennis said that S.S. Jim was going to step in and break up their dominoe game once and for all. It never happened, but there was an underlying tension when they glanced at one another in the cafeteria.
There were only five black guys who all stood together near the window. They played dominoes two rooms beyond the bathroom on my floor. Other than the cafeteria, Family Guy was the only draw big enough to get them in the same room as the Nazis. But the guards also liked Family Guy, and stood around making sure that things didn’t get out of hand. It never came to that, and as everyone thought the show was hilarious. Laughter was a point where we could all unite.
After the show, it was time for an outdoor break, and I looked for Cori. As always, he was chatting by the smoking tower. It was a ten foot high rectangular monolith in the courtyard with inset electric coils for lighting cigarettes. Cori and the other gearheads talked nothing but cars, but they didn’t mind me. With money on his books, Cori could afford cigarettes and offered me a smoke the second day I was inside.
Since then, he’d been sparing with the smokes, but always gave me a nod to join him and the others. He took it upon himself to educate me. From collecting receipts and returning stolen items to hacking ATM machines, Cori had done it all.
“Shit man, when you get out of here, you’re gonna have some skills to put to work. After all I taught you, you better not be eating out of the trash.”
“What are you talking about?” I asked. “You jack cars; I raid dumpsters. Different strokes for different folks.”
“You gonna at least try, right? Remember what I said: All you need is a screw driver to start any Mazda. Just pound that sucker right in the ignition, twerk it with a pair of vice grips and you got yourself a ride.”
“For you, maybe it’s that easy. I’d get caught,” I said.
“If it’s your first time, you wouldn’t do much time,” Cori encouraged.
“I’d probably end up back in Geiger,” I said.
“Right!” Cori exclaimed. “Ain’t no thing for a happy-go-lucky guy like you. When are you getting out again?”
“A few more days is all.”
“Then what? I probably won’t see you on the outside.”
“Probably not. I’m probably going to hitchhike to Montana.”
“Hitchhike? After everything I done taught you?”
“To be honest, yeah. I like hitchhiking.”
After the break, it was onto the next chapter. I looked at the blank page while tapping the pen on my front tooth. How would I explain that the antichrist was going to kill me? I wasn’t sure until the pen hit the paper, and then the words flowed through me like a waterfall. Far from calling it quits for the night, I was interrupted by Harry who told me that I’d missed one of the best casseroles he’d had.
“I missed dinner?” I asked.
“Sure did,” he said. “I hope that story you’re writing is worth going to bed hungry for.”
It was well after midnight when the door opened. The gargantuan guard must have been working later than usual, and he didn’t sound happy as he said my name. A bit groggy, I followed him down the hall.
Having just come back from the greenbacks, I didn’t know what to expect. Maybe they had another transfer lined up. Maybe I was to become a Smurf. I hoped not. On the first floor, the guard shut me inside a small room under the stairwell. There was a dim yellow light on the ceiling and a toilet in the corner. It was little more than a bathroom stall sized room, and there wasn’t a bench or anything to sit on. Tired, I lay down on the floor. It wasn’t the most comfortable way to spend the night, but I slept sound enough. Having spent a few years hitch hiking, I had grown accustomed to sleeping on all sorts of surfaces. As long as I wasn’t going to get rained on, I considered myself lucky.
Without a window to let in daylight, I wondered what was taking them so long. The holding cell wouldn’t have been so bad if it had a bench to drum on, but without one, I was bored. Feeling restless, I hoped someone would stop by so I could ask for a pen and paper. My story was just getting to the good part. There were angels all around me, and I was headed into the mouth of darkness.
As time drizzled by, I could hear people on the floor above me. Had the guards forgotten I was here? But then a lunch tray was slid through the slot in the bottom of the door. Having missed dinner, I was famished, but more than anything I was relieved that I hadn’t been lost in the shuffle. Perhaps there’d been a hiccup in paperwork, and they were waiting for a room to open up. But why would they want to move me again? There was no one to answer my questions, and the room was getting hot. I stripped down to my underwear and lay on the floor. The cement was cool, and soon my eyelids grew heavy. Sleep descended like a blanket of sedation, and a few hours passed with dream riddled clouds of consciousness.
That evening, the door opened, and I was taken back up to the third floor.
“What was that all about?” I asked the guard.
“Didn’t anyone tell you?”
“No, I thought I was going to be transferred again.”
He shook his head and said that it was unbelievable. “You got 24 hours in the hole for not showing up to work. They called your name on the intercom.”
“When I was a greenback?”
“You didn’t report to the kitchen.”
“Oh, I guess that makes sense. But that was the hole?” I asked with a smile.
“Yeah.”
“I thought the hole was some lightless pit with cockroaches and a dripping ceiling.”
“No, that’s Hollywood. But I want to ask you why you didn’t tell them that you didn’t want to be a greenback? Plenty of other guys would have appreciated the northern wing.”
“I didn’t think it was an option, but I don’t see what’s so great about the north,” I said.
“Don’t you get bored just sitting around all day with nothing to do?”
“Nothing to do? I’ve been writing my ass off,” I said. “But even if I wasn’t writing, there’s games and TV. You know? Shit, I think there’s a helluva lot more entertaining ways to spend the day than washing dishes.”
“Watch your language,” he said with a warning tone. “About your writing, you might want to thank Harry. They were going to throw that journal away, but Harry went to bat for you. He said it was all you had.”
I did thank Harry.
“No problem,” Harry said. “I told them you could be doing a lot worse things than writing.”
All my cell mates were interested in hearing about the hole.
“It wasn’t so bad,” I said.
“Not bad?” Dennis asked. “I would have been banging my head against the wall.”
“Maybe a week would have been brutal. I’m not comparing it to the paradise up here, but we’re spoiled. That place was more like a punishment.”
“Paradise. I think you got it backwards,” said Harry.
“There ain’t no pussy in here,” Dennis said. “I get sick of beating off in the shower.”
Everyone laughed at that.
As all good things eventually must come to an end, my court date came much too soon. I wasn’t ready. I had written over a hundred pages and gone through three ball point pens, but I was only half way through the story. With so many distractions of life on the outside, how would I ever finish?
The bus ride into Spokane reminded me that there was a great big world to explore beyond the chain link fence. Although it had only been two weeks since my arrest, the music on the radio seemed inexplicably sweet. I felt as if I’d been deprived for a long, long time.
Shackled, we were led off the bus and filed into the courthouse. The guards made faces as if they were the ones being punished as a couple inmates sang Sweet Home Alabama. The song had been playing as we stepped off the bus. Lynyrd Skynyrd had a way of transforming the metallic jingling of our chains into the chimes of our approaching freedom. It was like Christmas morning, and we couldn’t wait to be unwrapped.
“Jasper, city theft, huh?” asked my public defender.
“Is that what they’re calling it?” I asked.
“Yep. You didn’t pay for a meal, and… he looked over the paperwork. Two weeks?” He seemed shocked. “That seems excessive.”
“Not even,” I said.
“So here’s what we’re going to do,” he said. He was an amiable man, and my cooperation with his plan was a foregone conclusion.
“You’re going to plead guilty to city theft, and they’re going to drop the charge of a false and misleading statement.”
“Well, they should. I didn’t lie, so they better drop that.”
“You told them you were Jesus, and it says here that you’re Jasper.” Like everyone else, he said ‘hey-soos’ and I had to correct him. He chuckled and said it was no wonder they locked me up for two weeks. He had been expecting me to be more hispanic looking. “You can’t go around saying your Jesus to an officer of the law,” he said.
“But I am Jesus,” I retorted.
“But we’re not going to talk about that in the courtroom. Agreed?”
“Fine,” I said and sighed.
He jotted something down on a yellow legal pad.
I waited on a bench in the hall while other Cheetos and went in the courtroom before the judge. I thought about the backpack I had stashed in a bush. Would it still be there? Where would I go from here? Life had been so easy in Geiger, but I supposed it was back to the road. There were countless freeway onramps to hitch, and a myriad of soup kitchens to drop in on. Maybe I’d head for the east coast. It was the last week of August, and maybe I should see the rockies before autumn could freeze the morning dew.
In front of the judge, I said one word: guilty. I signed on the dotted line that affirmed the plea. His honor stamped a form, tapped his wooden gavel, and issued a hundred dollar fine. The number struck me as ironic.
I thought about the broken penal system, and how everyone but me considered Geiger to be a shit hole of an institution. But they had families and jobs on the line. They had impounded cars and houses with mortgages. With all the deadlines in the modern world, a little stint in Geiger could derail them. They had bills to pay and people to answer to. I had a backpack in a bush. I hoped. It was most likely someone else's backpack by now. With nothing, I had nothing to lose.
After we had all finished with our business in front of the judge, they loaded us back on the bus. House of the Rising Sun was playing on the radio. There were big smiles all around as we sang out, “Now mother, tell your children, not to do what I have done,” and I wished Dennis were among us. It hadn’t even been a day, but I already found myself missing his uh-uh-uhs of laughter. I wanted to be back at my desk, wanted to be looking down in the courtyard with my pen in hand.
I figured it would be a week of hitchhiking east on I-90 and over lookout pass. The last week of August in Idaho would have blue skies, or thunderstorms, or both at the same time. The road was unpredictable, but I found myself ever closer to the promised land. All I needed was a little faith that I was exactly where I should be at any given moment.
I looked out the bus window and made elaborate plans that were then revised and edited. Roxanne was on the radio, and someone up front was playing air guitar. The inmates in the back were swapping stories of the girls they had waiting for them on the outside. One of the guards told them they better clean up their language, and that started an argument about freedom of speech. We were on our way back to be discharged from Geiger, and one of the guys thought that he now had the right to voice his opinion. He was speaking calmly, but that only pissed off the guard who barked out, “You must wanna go to the hole! You don’t need to get out today. I can see to it if you don’t shut your mouth.”
Unwilling to call his bluff, the rest of the ride was somber. It would have been silent if it hadn’t been for the classic rock.
Back at Geiger, I was handed a tray containing my shorts and greasy T-shirt.
“Damn, I wish I could keep this orange jumpsuit,” I told the gargantuan guard who had thrown me in the hole.
“You want to spend another week in here?” he asked, thinking that my tone contained a note of insubordination.
“Not in the hole, but I wouldn’t mind spending another week as a Cheeto. Or Smurf, maybe. I never got to be one of them.”
His glare was ferocious, and I dropped my eyes.
“Just saying,” I said, and shrugged.
“Yeah, well say it to someone else.”
When the gate opened, I stepped out into the evening air. I had been given me a bus pass which was good for the day, and it wasn’t long before one rolled to a stop. With my story tucked in a plastic bag under my arm, I boarded the bus headed for downtown.
The horizon was immense and full of opportunities. There were adventures to be had, and now it would be onto the truckers and Grateful Dead buses and old grouchy men determined to tell me what’s wrong with the the world. From vehicle to vehicle, I’d be dropped off and find my way to the next onramp. Thumbing for a ride under the anti-thumb sign was but one of the many zen aspects of my travels. The best way to hitchhike to be like The Fool in the Thoth tarot card deck. He is a zen master, a zero, and takes whatever comes his way with a smile. As he stumbles blindly into the future, he thinks that everything along his journey is meant to be. The good and bad are received with dispassionate acceptance. He is guileless, sure that it is all divinely ordained by someone he once knew, someone that he can trust. He can’t quite remember who it was set things in motion, but he’s confident that the puppet master is holding invisible strings. He has faith. The only downside is that he can be naive and easy to deceive. It doesn’t take much to fool him, but without a red cent in his pocket, he has nothing to lose.
