by Drew Perry
I snapped right back in. “Who?” I said. “Mid?”
She put a finger in her other ear. “Is he alright?”
“What’s going on?” I whispered.
“Did he know?” she said. While Carolyn answered, Alice took a sip of her smoothie, winced. “What is this?” she asked me.
“It’s an Eric the Red. What the hell’s happening right now?”
“Carolyn, hold on a second.” She covered the phone. “Mid’s in jail,” she said. “The police raided Island Pizza this morning, and somebody was selling pot out of the kitchen. I think. Or out of the stockroom. Carolyn’s freaking, so it’s a little hard to understand.”
“Who was selling the pot?”
“I’ve been on the phone three minutes.”
“Was he there? Why is he in jail?”
She said, “What is it you think I’m doing right now?” She took her hand back off the mouthpiece. “What?” she said. “He’s right here. I just told him. Is that OK?” She tried her smoothie again. “Of course we can come. We’ll leave right now.” Carolyn said something on her end. “That’s crazy talk,” Alice told her. “It’s got to be a mistake. We’ll meet you there. We’ll be right there. Just tell me how to find it.” She made a gesture for a pen. I didn’t have one. She looked around, then went to a counter-height table in the center of the food court where there were customer comment cards and ballpoint pens on chains. She wrote a few things down, hung up, came back to the table. “Let’s go,” she said.
“What happened?”
“She’s half-hysterical, and she probably should be. We’re supposed to meet her at the—” She looked down at her comment card. “The St. John’s County Jail.” She looked at me. “The jail. How could he be in jail?”
“Was he selling?” I asked. “Was Mid the one selling it?”
“All I could get out of her is that he was there, for some reason, when the police got there.”
“But do they arrest you for just standing around?”
“How would I know? I don’t know anything about this kind of thing. Where did we park?”
“Blue level,” I said.
“I thought it was green.”
“Level G,” I said. “But it was blue.”
We found our way out of the mall. Everything felt heavy and bent. On the drive back south, Alice kept talking about how she knew something was wrong, how she could just tell.
“But he doesn’t seem the type for jail,” I said.
“What is the type?”
“Fiercer?” I said.
She chewed on her lip. “Walter,” she said, twisting in her seat. “The check. Do you think they can trace the check?”
“Do I think they can what?”
“The police. The check. Do you think we’re in this?”
“OK,” I said. “Wait. We don’t even know if there’s a ‘this’ to be in. And, yeah, they can trace the check. We deposited it. It’s ours. But we haven’t done anything. If somebody needs the check back, we’ll give it back. That’s all.”
“Are you sure?”
“I’m sure.”
“When you were with him,” she said. “When you were with him, did you see anything like this?”
“Are you asking me if I’ve been dealing marijuana for a week without telling you?”
“I’m asking you if there’s anything you know about. Anything you haven’t told me.”
“No,” I said. “Jesus Christ. I mean, I can’t figure out exactly how all his money works, but we haven’t been in any gunfights in the town square, if that’s what you’re asking.”
“That’s not what I’m asking.”
“What are you asking?”
“I’m not. I’m not asking anything.”
I changed lanes, passed two trucks carrying culverts, worked a little bit on the math of what might be happening to me, to us, to Mid. Whatever it was, it was not good. Only motivational speakers and singers were better off for having gone to jail. For your average pizza house owner, jail time was probably not R&D.
“How could he do this to her?” she said.
“We don’t know if he did.”
“He did something.” She put the ultrasound pictures in the glove compartment. “Also, what was going on with the smoothies?”
“They were named after explorers. They were all combo deals.”
“Why?”
“I didn’t ask.”
She said, “Don’t ever get arrested, OK? Don’t ever make anybody come to jail to get you. This is awful.”
“I’ll try.”
“I’m not kidding around. You don’t get to go to jail. Neither of us does.”
“I bet he didn’t choose this,” I said. “I bet this isn’t what he had in mind for today.”
“I still want us to make a rule.”
“OK,” I said. “It’s a rule.”
“Thank you,” she said, and right then it occurred to me that if I’d been riding with him that morning, chances seemed better than average that whatever it was that had happened to him at Island Pizza would have happened to me, too.
The jail was a low cinderblock building set into scrub, with grassy areas cleared out all around. It was also the sheriff’s office, the DMV, the courthouse, the tax and tag, and city hall. It took us four tries to find the right door.
The inside was nowhere near as nice as the waiting room at Varden’s office, but it was the same basic idea: chairs and a window with somebody official behind it. You gave your name, you sat down, you held tight. Carolyn was already signed in on the register. We assumed she was in the back, wherever that was, with Mid. We were the only ones in the room. “I hate it here,” Alice said.
I said, “I think you’re supposed to.” The woman behind the glass looked up at us and frowned. There was a Coke machine off in the corner, unplugged, its door half-open. There wasn’t anything in it except a few cans of Tab. I asked Alice if she wanted one.
“They won’t be cold,” she said.
“Still,” I said. “They’re right there.”
“You can’t just take one,” she said. “You can’t steal from a jail.”
I went back up to the desk. “Do you have a water fountain?” I asked.
The woman said, “We do not.”
“What about the soda?”
“That machine is out of order.”
I said, “Would you mind if we—”
She said, “Sir, please sit down. Someone will be with you in a moment.”
I walked the edges of the room. Alice sat by the window, staring out into the parking lot. There was a clock, childhood-era industrial, the kind that plugged into the wall and ran its second hand around. Carolyn finally appeared out of a door in the side of the room that said UNAUTHORIZED ENTRY PROHIBITED, and when she saw Alice, she went straight to her, put her face in her shoulder. I couldn’t tell whether to watch or look away. I heard her say, “Goddamnit, Leecy, I didn’t sign up for this.” I looked away.
Alice took her outside to get her calmed down. I sat inside with the Tab. By the time they came back in, I had a plan going where I would just grab one, start drinking, see what happened. The machine bothered me, standing open like that. Alice and Carolyn sat down, and Alice said, “He asked to see you when you got here.”
I said, “Me?”
“He asked specifically,” Carolyn said. Her face was puffed up.
“What do I do?”
“They call you,” said Carolyn. “I asked them to give us a few minutes first.”
“I just go back there?”
“They come and get you,” she said.
I wasn’t thinking right. “Are they not letting him go?” I asked, and Carolyn started crying again.
“They’re keeping him overnight,” Alice said, almost whispering. “They can’t find a judge who can see him before tomorrow.”
I said, “A judge?”
Alice mouthed not right now, rubbed her hand across Carolyn’s back.
The door opened again, the UNAUTHORIZED ENTRY door. A policeman dressed in brown and green said, “Walter Ingram?” I raised my hand. “Come with me,” he said. Carolyn pushed her hair out of her eyes, then leaned back into Alice again. The officer let me through the door. “Empty your pockets for me, sir,” he said, and I put my keys and my wallet on a beige table in the middle of a beige room. Change and receipts. Little bits of sand. There was a camera up in the corner by the ceiling. The officer said, “Please hold your arms out from your sides.” I held my arms up and he passed a small black wand over my body. It beeped at my belt buckle. He made me take that off. Once we were beepless, he let me through another door and into another tan room, and there was Mid, in a pair of jeans and a Hawaiian shirt and sock feet. He was not in handcuffs. He was sitting at a table with a paper cup of water in front of him. The table was too small for him, or the chair, or both. He said, “Did you bring me a beer?”
“They took everything I had back there.” I turned my pockets inside out.
Mid said, “They took my shoes and shoelaces. Apparently I’m not supposed to hang myself.”
“Are you wanting to hang yourself?”
“Not yet.”
“Good,” I said. “Right? That’s a positive.”
“One way to look at it.” He picked up his water, set it down again without drinking. “Thanks for coming.”
“Anytime.” I sat down across from him.
“This isn’t me,” he said. “I wanted to make sure to tell you that to your face. This isn’t me.”
“OK,” I said.
“But I can’t really talk about it. The lawyer’s telling me not to discuss it until we get to court.”
“It’s good you have a lawyer,” I said.
“He’s a tax attorney, but he said he’ll have somebody by tomorrow. Somebody who does criminal.”
“Criminal,” I said.
“It’s just a precaution.”
“Alice says you might be in overnight?”
“We have to set bail. Then I’ll be out again.”
“What is this?” I said. “Are you alright? Are we—”
“I’m fine,” he said. “We’re fine. Everybody’s fine. This is a setback. I’ll be out tomorrow.” He sounded tired. I felt bad for him, but I also wanted to ask him how he’d managed to achieve this.
“Is there anybody I should call?” I said.
“Just go over to the fish camp tomorrow like we planned. Go on with your day like it was any other day.”
“Any other day I’d be riding with you.” It was a stupid thing to say, a kid thing, but I couldn’t help it.
“You’ll be fine. Go get a lay of the land. I’ll be out by the afternoon, and we’ll be back to normal.”
“That’s all?”
“I just wanted to tell you this wasn’t me. And I’ll tell you the whole thing, too,” he said, waving a hand at the ceiling. “But, you know, anything you say, and all that.”
“It can’t be that bad if they’re letting you talk to me.”
“That’s what I thought. But I still get to spend the night for free.” I could hear the lights humming. He said, “Carolyn’s OK?”
“She’s with Alice. She seems alright.”
“You’re lying.”
“A little. But she is with Alice.”
“It’s good you guys are here,” he said. “I’m glad you’re down here.”
“Alice is good in a crisis,” I said.
“Well, we found ourselves one of those.”
The door opened. The policeman put his head through. “Time, gentlemen,” he said, and shut the door again.
“They only give us five minutes,” Mid told me.
“You’re OK,” I said. “You’re sure?”
He looked down at the table. “It could be worse. The guard back there told me they go out for barbecue for dinner, so that’s what they’re bringing me tonight.” The cop knocked on the door again, but didn’t come in.
I said, “Maybe if you just apologize, this’ll all clear up.”
“I tried that. No dice.”
I looked behind him, at another door. “How is it back there?”
“I’m the only one here,” he said. “So far, anyway. So I haven’t had to make a shiv out of my toothbrush.”
“Funny,” I said.
“I’m here all night. Tip your bailiffs.”
“Mid, what happened?”
“I’ll tell you tomorrow,” he said. “When it’s all over. I will.”
The cop came in, and there was a moment where I felt like I might be supposed to hug Mid, to pull him close and say something that would get him through the night, but by the time I got any of that worked out, the cop had turned him around, walked him through the door in the back of the room, and he was gone. A minute or two later the cop came back for me, took me out the way I’d come, gave me my change and belt back. He locked the door behind me. Carolyn and Alice were in the same place I’d left them.
“They’re bringing him barbecue,” I said.
“He likes barbecue,” Carolyn said. She blinked, squeezed her eyes shut. “This is so wrong,” she said. She stood up. “I need some air.”
Alice asked me to finish up whatever needed finishing. I told her I would. I held the door for them, let them out into the afternoon. I went to the desk to ask the woman if we needed to sign back out, anything like that, but she wasn’t there. It was silent in the room. No radio, no TV, nothing through the walls. I turned around, and Carolyn and Alice had gone past where I could see them, and for a moment I had this unshakeable feeling that I might be the only person left on the planet. Like Mid and Carolyn and Alice and the woman behind the counter and the baby and Varden and all of them had winked out of existence, and I was who was left. Me. I would survive on Tab and sheer force of will. I would leave messages for future civilizations. I would paint elk on the walls of the jail. Then the woman reappeared behind her desk, stared at me, said nothing. I said nothing. She slid her glass closed, and I went outside.
In the parking lot, Carolyn was sitting in the open side door of their SUV. The clouds were banking up out west like we’d see a thunderstorm later on. This was what happened most afternoons—three thousand degrees, then an afternoon storm, then three thousand degrees again. Carolyn said, “I don’t know what I’m supposed to tell the kids.”
“Would you like us to come over?” Alice asked.
“Maybe. But I need to tell them first.” She seemed far away. You couldn’t blame her. “I have to tell them first,” she said again.
“We can call you,” said Alice. “We can bring you dinner.”
Carolyn thumbed her car keys around the ring. “That sounds fine,” she said. “Let me get home, and I’ll call you.”
“Or we call you,” Alice said. “Either way.”
Carolyn pushed a button on the truck key, and the horn honked once. She pushed it again. Same thing. “Leecy?” she said. She was crying again.
“Yeah.”
“What the hell?”
Alice sat down with her. “He’ll be home tomorrow.”
“What if he isn’t?”
“He said he will be.”
“But you know, this morning, he didn’t mention any of this might happen.”
“He probably didn’t know,” I said, trying to help.
Carolyn looked up. “He better goddamn not have.”
“Let us cook you dinner,” Alice said. “Get home and get settled in and call us, OK?”
“Settled in?” she said.
“You know what I mean.”
Carolyn sat still a long time. “Thank you,” she said, finally.
Alice said, “You don’t have to thank me. This is what happens.”
Carolyn said, “This is definitely, definitely not what happens.”
“Go home,” said Alice. “Go home, and then call us.”
“I guess I’ll do that,” she said, and she got up, got herself in behind the wheel, hugged Alice thr
ough the open window, and then drove away, left us standing in the parking lot. We walked over to the car. I let Alice in on her side and she sat down, left the door open. I did the same on my side.
“Jesus,” she said, leaning her head back against the rest. “Is it me, or are we at the jail?”
“I don’t think it’s you,” I said.
She took the keys from me, put them up on the dash. Then she ran one hand down her side. “The Bundle of Joy does not care for this,” she said. “The BOJ does not care for this at all.”
By seven o’clock, we still hadn’t heard from Carolyn. Alice wanted to go over there. I managed to get her to agree to at least wait until eight before we called to see what was going on. My position was: Give her some privacy. Alice’s position was: Shut up. I’d left her sitting in the condo, at the glass-topped table, holding the phone in one hand, and picking at a shell-shaped pink vinyl placemat with the other. I was out on the balcony overlooking the parking garage. It’d been a tense afternoon. We’d fought about which balcony was the front or the back, whether the ocean side was the front or not. Once we’d worn that out, we moved on to whether there was any food in the house, whether the blinds on the beachside sliding glass doors were rusting, what kind of problem it would be if they were. I guess we felt like we couldn’t go at each other over Mid. I kept making the wrong moves, choosing the wrong sides—and through it all, I couldn’t stop thinking about the ultrasound room, how dark it had been in there, how bright the picture of the baby on the screen looked. I was certain Alice was working on that, too. She had to be.
I was running the scores and highlights in my head, watching the sun try to go down, wondering if Mid had any kind of view from his room, his cell, whatever it was, when the Camaro showed up, parked itself lopsidedly across a couple of spaces. The driver’s-side door jawed open. At first there was nobody, and I had the crazy idea the car had driven itself over, some yellow reinvention of a dead TV show—but then there was Delton, standing on our parking deck. I opened the front door. I said, “You’re probably going to want to come out here.”
“I’m busy,” Alice said.
“Has Carolyn called?”
“No.”
“Well, if she calls, tell her Delton’s here, OK?”
“Who?”