Amateur Barbarians
Page 20
He turned off the engine and struggled out of the Accord, closing the door quietly behind him. The last thing he wanted was to wake everyone up.
Though from the lights on inside the house, and the sound of people talking in the foyer, and the hoarseness and volume of Bruno’s barking, everyone appeared to be up already.
As he trudged up the steps, his head sloshed back and forth like a fish tank. The taste in his throat was like unslaked thirst. And yet he’d had a great deal to drink. How long had he been at the bar anyway? It felt like years. He thought of old Rip Van Winkle, another small-towner, returning home from his prolonged debauch to find that nothing was quite as he remembered. The porch light was not on. The door was not open. Bruno was not whining at the screen to greet him.
“Uh-oh,” he heard someone—Mimi?—say. “Speak of the devil.”
True, it was a very singular and memorable event, being arrested in one’s own living room. Breathalyzed and handcuffed and read one’s rights, then led down the front stoop like a yoked ox while one’s wife and daughter trailed behind, their faces gone sallow with wonder, or pity, or fury, or relief.
“My God, Bear,” Gail said, “what on earth did you do?”
“Nothing,” he called over his shoulder. “Absolutely nothing. It’s just some dumb mistake.”
“What did he say?”
“He said he didn’t freaking do anything,” Mimi said.
“Watch your language, please.”
“All I did was invite the young lady out for a drink. Did I touch her? Nooo. I did not. Nooo sirree.”
“Would someone please tell me what he’s saying?”
“I complained about my life, she complained about hers. Is that a crime? Not everything that goes on in a parking lot is a crime, you know.”
“We’re at .20 on the blood alcohol here,” said Bruce Germaine, the sheriff. “For what that’s worth.”
“Is that so high? That’s not so high.”
“It’s high enough. Along with the other.”
“What other? You keep talking about an other.”
“I’ve got to take him down to the station. We’ll talk in the morning. You’ll most likely be getting a call from Social Services tomorrow too.”
“Why?”
“We’ll talk in the morning.”
Then Gail and Mimi disappeared from view, or rather stayed right where they were; it was Teddy who vanished, fell into the black hole of the police cruiser. It was no place to be. The backseat, though less than two years old—he remembered the budget initiative that made its purchase possible—was scarred and abused; it reeked of motor oil and old vomit. Wrappers for several weeks’ worth of convenience-store snacks lay strewn on the floor like the detritus of a cheap picnic. Ruffles. Slim Jims. Peppermint Patties. Hard to take the authorities seriously when they insisted on eating such childish foods. He tried to roll down the window to get some fresh air. The handcuffs proved an impediment. He supposed that was their function.
Nonetheless under the circumstances he felt remarkably calm. Somehow it wasn’t as surprising as he might have expected, to be arrested in the middle of the night for doing nothing wrong. Maybe doing nothing wrong was the crime, he thought.
Bruce Germaine opened the door and fell into the driver’s seat with a grunt. “Well, some fun, huh Ted?”
“Yeah.”
“I’m too old for this night work. I’m going to have to find me some new drugs.”
“I hope you’ll share them with me when you do.”
“I believe you’ve had enough, friend.” Germaine opened his logbook and began to write. He was a methodical writer. Though like most men his age Teddy maintained a vestigial loathing for police officers, those he knew personally, such as Bruce Germaine, he rather liked. The two of them had coached Little League together one year, had overachieved with a lousy squad. When he needed an officer to come down and address an assembly, or open a kid’s locker, or file a report on a vandalized window, Germaine often showed up himself, tall, amiable, and wide-bodied, patient in the face of complexities. It was easy to like him. He was a bass player, a scratch golfer, a sensei at the local dojo; his jazz quartet was one of the few in the state to feature a bona fide black person on bona fide vibes.
Now he chewed the eraser end of his pencil, as if racking his mind for the mot juste that would complete his lugubrious report. The radio gargled and spat. Lights had begun to come on in the neighbors’ windows. The taciturn Harts, the elderly O’Learys, the riotous, pool-happy McDurfees…all these good law-abiding citizens had left their beds, roused by the commotion, and were moving back and forth attentively behind the curtains, like shadows on the wall of a cave.
“What say we get going, Bruce? We’re kind of creating a spectacle here.”
“What do you mean, we?”
“I’m trying to remember if I even voted for you last time.”
“Not many did. Luckily I was unopposed. Now shut up for a second while I finish this.”
What the hell, Teddy thought, let them gawk. New Englanders liked their public humiliations. All those stocks, pillories, and scaffolds, that hardware of punishment; it was cheap entertainment. He sat up tall in the seat, made his profile high and proud like an Indian nickel. Farewell, neighbors! Let them look upon his trials and learn what life was like out on the frontier. The sudden raids, the broken treaties. Being hunted down and persecuted for things you hadn’t done. He sat there unmoving, his face a stoic mask, like a mannequin in a diorama. The last of a martyred species, frozen behind glass. Hail to the departing chief…
“But what did you do?” he heard Gail saying, back in the house. “Would someone mind telling me what he did?”
He was beginning to really sober up now. It seemed an unavoidable fate.
At last the sheriff put down his logbook and backed the car down the driveway and out onto Montcalm Road. Teddy watched his house and those of his neighbors recede into darkness, their lit windows blown out one by one, like candles after a dinner party. He leaned back against his seat and closed his eyes. Voices puttered on the radio. The engine hummed a monotonous tune. It was nice to be the driven for the change and not the driver, to let go of the wheel and be taken somewhere new. He supposed they were passing the dairy farm now; he could hear the cows bellowing in their stalls. Smell them too. But that was how things were out in the country. You had to be willing to take the whole package: the smell of shit and the green things it fed.
“Let’s get this straight up front, Ted,” Germaine said, after they’d parked in the underground garage, wound their way through the labyrinthine corridors, and arrived at the center of the station house, at whatever the penal-system equivalent of a reception desk was called. “I’m figuring you’re right, that this is all some stupid mix-up and a total waste of time. That’s the assumption I’m operating on right now.”
“Good. Me too.”
“But I have to do this anyway, okay? So stand still. These cuffs can be tricky. It’s harder than it looks in the movies. You’d be surprised.”
“I’m already surprised.”
“The DUI you’ll have to deal with, naturally. Whatever happens with the other. I hope you realize that.”
“Sure,” Teddy said. “Of course you’ll have to deal with some stuff too.”
“Oh? Like what?”
“The lawsuit for starters. I’m married to an attorney, remember? We’re going to sue you for false arrest. We’ll bleed this town dry.”
Big Bruce nodded pleasantly, though his eyes went hard. “Which is your right as a citizen, absolutely.”
“Sheesh, hey Bruce, I’m only kidding. Let’s not lose our sense of humor.”
“You’re right.” The sheriff gave a wan smile. “Absolutely. You’ll forgive me if I put my sense of humor aside and go ahead and book you now though.”
“Sure. Book ’em, Danno. I bet you hear that a lot, huh Bruce?”
“Yeah. Now how about emptying those pockets.”
“The law, I believe it’s called.”
“Never read it.”
“Well, you may want to start,” the sheriff said. “’Cause you’re coming up in front of Judge Tierney on Tuesday morning, and he’s likely to have read it pretty closely.”
“Tuesday! But it’s only Thursday now. Can’t I come up tomorrow?”
“The judge goes fishing on Fridays. He’s got this little camp in Quebec. Also it’s a holiday weekend.”
“I can’t spend four days in this dump. It’s cruel and unusual.”
“Oh, it’s not so bad. You’ll get used to it. We try to keep things spiffy if we can. Got a new thermal coffeepot in the kitchen? Keeps the stuff hot for hours. See that watercolor over there? The loons over the lake? My mom did that one at her care facility. What do you think?”
“I think they look like squirrels.”
“I thought so too. Keep looking though. It gets better over time.”
Something about the way that last phrase resounded in his head made Teddy apprehensive. “You know, Bruce, I’m trying to be a good sport and everything, but I’m starting to wonder why I’m here.”
“Ah, the big existential questions. I was wondering when we’d get to those.”
“Okay, I had a few beers, and I roughed up my garage a little. But isn’t that between me and my insurance company? I’ve got comprehensive coverage.”
“In my experience, there’s no such thing as comprehensive coverage.”
“Only what was your car doing in my driveway in the first place? That’s where I’m foggy.”
“I explained that to you back at the house,” Germaine said. “Weren’t you listening?”
“No.”
“Usually it gets people’s attention really focused, being put into handcuffs.”
“I was under stress back at the house. Tell me again.”
The sheriff explained one more time about the charges. It was a pretty astonishing story. When it was over, Teddy laughed. “C’mon, what’s the big deal? So I got into a little tussle with that kid at the photo lab, and now he’s getting even. It’s not like I’m some criminal.”
“Why would you feel like a criminal? Just because of the handcuffs, you mean, and the bars on the doors, and the fact that you’re about to surrender all your valuables to our safekeeping?”
“You’re taking this way too seriously.” Teddy watched Germaine write out a receipt for the valuables in question. “How’s the band by the way? Any good gigs? I love that word: gigs. But I hate jazz. No offense, it makes me want to scream.”
“Yeah, I get that a lot. Now hold still. I’m going to pat you down.”
But of course holding still was the problem. Teddy thought about this during the whole tedious and demeaning interlude of strip-searching, form-filing, mug shots, and fingerprint-taking that followed. He’d had enough of holding still. He’d never been good at it in the first place. And now he had to hold still some more, submit himself to these procedures, the ones written down in the book they’d thrown at him. The book would accompany him everywhere now, he thought. Its lines would be imprinted on his skin.
“Now the clothes.”
“Christ,” he said, “it’s a regular police state down here.” But he did as he was told. He kicked off his shoes, undid his trousers, wrestled free of his shirt. When one of the buttons popped off his sleeve, he watched it skitter across the floor and disappear. He understood the importance of not stooping over to retrieve things in a place like this. His leather belt, with its bulges and bruises, its misshaped holes, was next. As he released the clasp, he felt the last of his resistance go with it. His chinos collapsed as if from shame into a heap around his ankles.
He stood on the concrete floor in his boxers and his socks. His belly gleamed like glass. The hairs around his navel bristled. He told himself that he had finally arrived at the end of something. The end or the beginning. Either way, he was determined to hold nothing back from here.
As a new arrival, he was given his own holding cell—small but tidy, and discreetly set apart from the others—along with a set of name-brand toiletries, some clean bedding, and a foam pillow. The door slid closed behind him. He sat down on his cot to wait. Institutional confinement he could do, he thought. After all, he’d been confined to institutions for years. Painted cinder blocks, corrugated ceilings, hot-water pipes with fire-retardant wrappings. Even the meals he’d be served over the weekend—the chili, the hockey-puck chicken patties, the too sweet applesauce—were more or less the same as the middle school. As why shouldn’t they be, both contracts having been won by the same supplier.
No, institutional confinement was nothing new. The question was what you made of your confinement. Were you one of those men who, stuck in a cell, soared inwardly to freedom (he thought of the great prison diarists, the birdmen and madmen, the revolutionary thinkers), or one of the others (he thought of himself ) who secretly enjoyed losing their freedom, who felt tyrannized by freedom, afflicted by its possibilities and temptations, and wished only to retreat behind solid walls?
It seemed the American condition: to be blessed with so much open space you experience it as vertigo. To hole up in your big house and shut the door.
Well, he was in the big house now.
At last the sheriff went home to his big house, and the jail grew quiet. The only sounds were those of Tahir, the trustee on night duty, at work in the narrow, windowless kitchen. He was fixing a sandwich for the new inmate. A few minutes passed, then it came sliding through a slot in the door, fat and salty-smelling on brown bread.
“Thanks,” Teddy said. “Very considerate of you.”
Receiving his food on a tray made him think of the old Eighth Avenue Automat where his father used to take them for lunch on their biannual trips to Manhattan to consult Dr. Schein, the specialist, about Philip’s arches.
“Do you want milk with that? They bring the milk in fresh, you know, from the dairy in town. It’s quite good.”
“This’ll do me fine.”
Schein had lived way up on West End Avenue, in an overheated apartment choked with draperies and cushions and rugs, like a pasha’s den. His wife, plumpish and rouged, gave the boys butterscotch candies and fondled their cheeks on the way out. All gone now, of course: the Automat, Schein, his poor childless wife, Teddy’s parents, Philip…they’d all slid off the globe like seals off a rock. He was alone in an empty cell. He did not just feel as if he were alone in an empty cell. He actually was.
“It is our tradition,” Tahir informed him. “Every new member of our community is to be greeted with a sandwich. Food for thought, quote unquote.”
Teddy forced a smile. “Good one.”
“One must make do in a pleasant fashion. It does no good to complain of adverse circumstances, do you agree? Things are what they are. We must emphasize the positive elements, take what is good. Sundays for example there are pancakes in the morning. Pancakes and bacon with your famous maple syrup.” Tahir studied him through the bars, as if assessing his capacity for such enjoyments. He was a handsome, long-faced young man with a fanatical-looking buzz cut. “I give my bacon to the other guys. But you can have it if you would like.”
“That’s a nice offer, thanks. But I’m not allowed to eat it.”
“You are a Jew?” Tahir’s gaze narrowed.
“Actually it’s a cholesterol thing. Doctor’s orders. I’ve got to change my ways.”
Tahir nodded. He seemed relieved. “So, well, this is very common I think. An obstruction in the walls of the heart. A result of excessive fatness and decadence in your society, do you agree?”
&
nbsp; Teddy shrugged. He was no one to talk about excessive fatness. “Wait, how do you know they always serve pancakes on Sunday? How long have you been here anyway?”
“Let me see. Sunday will make”—Tahir’s thick brows came together to consult on the math—“eleven fine pancake breakfasts I have enjoyed so far, quote unquote.”
“Hell, but can they do that? Hold you here that long without a trial?”
“Apparently they are very busy, your authorities. Very busy and yet also quite remarkably inefficient. Though perhaps in your case it will be different.”
“It’s already different.” Teddy chewed his sandwich thoughtfully. “What did you put on this chicken? It’s really good.”
“There is some turmeric, and cardamom also. A pinch.”
“Pretty fancy spices for a jail-house kitchen.”
“Sheriff Bruce has a liberal policy. I give him a list of what I require, he sends someone to get it.”
“Well, you’re an excellent cook, no kidding. You should open a restaurant.”
“No kidding, I did. A very profitable establishment it was too. Back in Kabul, Crown of the Air. You know where is Kabul?”
“I read a book about it once,” Teddy said. “It was written by a guy named Elphinstone.”
“Yes, I know this book. Only there are two guys named Elphinstone in our proud history. One was indeed a distinguished writer. The other was an incompetent general who was massacred thankfully at the Battle of Kabul.”
“It must have been the first one then.”
“Yes.” Tahir’s face grew pouchy and reflective, the eyes sloping downward like commas. “They say you know that when Allah made the world he had left over a great pile of stones. With these stones he created my country. And then came the people to make things worse. And then came the invaders. And so on and so forth.”