Downstairs was different. The faces at meal time weren’t always the same. The black kid’s trial got under way, but he still ate his meals with us, and heard how his soap operas were doing from Peabody; I think it was a week exactly before we got out that he got his ten years in prison and left, and Peabody seemed very lonely at meals after that. Sometimes there would be just a few of us, just basically the Bull Pen regulars and a handful of others in the jail (there were also women prisoners in jail, but we never saw them). Other times it would be fairly crowded, if the drunk tank had filled up; we had crowds for the Saturday and Sunday meals, usually, as a lot of drunk-and-disorderlies got tossed in jail on the weekend. We didn’t pay much attention to the shifting faces at mealtime. We were a clique, Elam, Hopp, Wheat and me. We played cards together, after all. We lived here.
One day in jail was pretty much the same as the next. Only the first few days, and the last few, really stand out distinctly in my mind. Oh, yes, there was that Tuesday when Wheat’s folks came around. That stands out in my mind, too, though nothing much happened, outside of some yelling from Wheat’s mom, though it wasn’t as bad as Wheat had imagined it would be. But then, nothing could be.
The day before we got out, Hopp shuffled the cards and said, “Let’s up the stakes. Double ’em.”
Wheat and I exchanged muted grins, said, “Sure,” simultaneously. Elam and Hopp were into us for five bucks each and we didn’t mind giving them a chance to make their money back.
Elam said, “Hold it, Hopp. I can’t see doubling the stakes. We’re into these guys enough as it is.”
Elam was kidding, of course, and Wheaty and I laughed, which made Hopp kind of mad.
“Okay, punks!” Hopp said. It was like somebody opened the door on a blast furnace. “Self-confident little smart-ass punks. You got the guts to play for a little more, or not?”
The laughter caught in our throats. We’d been around Elam and Hopp so long we’d begun to forget (or maybe accept) what they were, which was crooks. My first impression of Hopp, remember, was that he looked like a killer. I’d gotten used to him, considered him kind of a grouchy comedy relief, a Wheaty in reverse: short and fat and unhappy and harmless. But I all of a sudden realized that one element of that equation was off-kilter: that Hopp was Wheat in reverse, all right but Wheat was the one who was harmless and Hopp, well...
Hopp slapped the metal table with his hand and it was like he’d hit it with a trowel. The sound was a kind of pinging echo bouncing off all the bars around us.
“Well?” he demanded.
Elam said, “Hopp. Cool off, man. We’re all friends here. Ha! What the hell? Why not sweeten the game up a little bit? It’s only money. You guys willin’? Okay. Twenty/forty she is.”
That was in the morning. We won till eleven o’clock. By lunch we had hit the even up point. After lunch we kept on losing. It was all downhill. We never rallied. They weren’t cheating us or anything: the odds were just catching up with us. We’d had nearly thirty days of predominantly good cards. It was time for a losing streak.
We kept playing trying to climb out of it, ending up throwing good money after bad. We played most of the evening. We lost $15 each.
Neither of us felt too terribly bad about it. After all, we were getting out of jail tomorrow.
Hopp’s reaction, however, was rather intense. For Hopp, that is.
He went around smiling, which was unsettling.
Chapter 12
I hadn’t seen the sun for thirty days. It was good seeing it again. It hurts to look at the sun, you know, but I did anyway, and loved it. Looking at the sun is just one of the many trivial things that seem important after you’ve spent time in jail. The sky is very blue in the summer, in the Midwest, and the clouds are very white. I studied them. Wheat was doing the same.
Walking outside in fresh air—not the stale, supposedly air-conditioned stuff we had breathed inside—was pleasurable beyond words. It took us half an hour to walk the couple blocks back to the apartment at the Nizer house. We would just stand on a street corner, breathing, feeling the hot sun on our skin, looking at cars drive by with pretty girls in them. Not all the cars had pretty girls in them, of course, but a lot of them did, and a lot of girls seemed pretty to me today that maybe wouldn’t have before I went to jail for thirty days.
Next door to the Nizer house is a carry-out food place, a minor league chain restaurant that combines elements of several of the major leaguers, selling fried chicken, hamburgers, ice cream, you name a kind of junk food and this place sold it. The place was a huge plastic-looking red barn with a four-foot statue of a chicken on top.
Between us we had a few dollars left from what we had taken with us to jail (Mr. Nizer had loaned us twenty bucks each to spend on cigarettes and candy and what-not, while we were inside) and we proceeded to order and eat five cheeseburgers and two double malts and a pound of French fries between us. Wheaty ate one more cheeseburger than I did, but I ate more French fries than he did.
The food at the jail had been good, but we had developed an insane craving for some nice, greasy junk food. And the nice, greasy junk food at this particular carry-out joint was served by some very young, very pretty girls in short white dresses like nurses wear in cheap sexy movies.
Maybe you’ve guessed by now that pretty girls are another of the not-so-trivial things you miss spending time in jail.
As we sat and ate our cheeseburgers and malts and fries, Wheat said, “We’re gray.”
“Huh?”
“Our skin is gray.”
“No it isn’t. What do you mean, our skin is gray?”
“See for yourself.” He held out a hand as evidence. It was not gray. It was largely yellow and red, being smeared generously with mustard and ketchup.
“What are you talking about, Wheat?”
“You skin’s just as gray as mine is. Everybody’s skin’s gray after they get out of prison.”
“We weren’t in prison, Wheat. We were in jail. And we weren’t in jail long enough for our skin to turn gray.”
“What would you call it, then? The color our skin is.”
“Pale. Regular pale skin color. Eat your cheeseburger.”
“Here it is summer. The middle of summer, Kitch! We ought to have real nice tans by now.”
“It’s hard getting a real nice tan in the Bull Pen.”
“I know. Your skin turns gray in there.”
“You’re incredible. You loved jail, while you were in there! Couldn’t get enough of the place! Now that you’re out, you’re complaining. You’re something else.”
“I guess you’re right. I guess I am going to miss the old Bull Pen at that.”
“Wheat. Forget what I said. Go ahead and complain.”
I was in no mood to wax nostalgic about that hole. I was in a mood to revel in sun, cheeseburgers and pretty girls.
“Come on, Kitch. Admit it. You enjoyed yourself. All those cards. Even if we did end up losing.”
“Aw, I was getting tired of playing cards. Give me the salt.”
“Here. The hell you were tired! You never get tired of cards. You’d play cards tonight, Kitch, if ya got the chance.”
“You’re wrong there... no more cards this summer. Sun and fun, that’s where it’s at.”
“Now you’re talkin’!”
“Only...”
“Only what, Kitch?”
“Only I suppose we really ought to get out and find ourselves some jobs. We’re going to have to raise the cash for school this fall. And it won’t be easy finding a summer job at this late date.”
“We could go back and work at my dad’s store, back home.” Wheaty’s dad is manager of a furniture store, which is where we had worked for a year between high school and college.
“Think he could use us?”
“He always runs a big sale in August, Kitch, you know that. He’ll be able to use some extra help.”
“And till August rolls around, sun and fun?”
“Sun and fun.”
We toasted malt cups.
“We’ll call Dad tonight,” Wheat said. “Collect. You know something, Kitch? I’m gonna kind of miss our ol’ pals Elam and Hopp. What a couple zany guys.”
“Zany? Zany? Those guys are crooks, Wheat! Didn’t you hear what they were saying? That they knocked over this place and that? Those guys are robbers.”
“Well, for robbers they’re a couple zany guys. They weren’t such bad company.”
“I for one am glad I’m not going to be seeing either one of them again.”
“But we are gonna see them again, Kitch.”
“What d’you mean?”
“They’ll have to come around in a week, when they get out, to collect the money we owe ’em. We’ll see ’em then.”
“Yeah. I suppose you’re right at that. They’ll come for their fifteen bucks a piece we owe ’em is right. What the hell. Maybe they’ll stay for some cards.”
Chapter 13
There was a police car waiting for us. Pulled in behind Wheaty’s dust gathered Volks in the Nizer driveway. It was a very familiar-looking police car. So were the two cops sitting inside, motor running, windows rolled up, enjoying the air-conditioning. Friendly was driving this time, and Burden, who had spotted us walking up, rolled his window down and leaned his head out and said, “Get in.”
For a moment I thought Wheat was going to make a break for it.
He had this panic-stricken look in his eyes and I caught his elbow and whispered take it easy.
I said to the cops, “What do you guys want?”
“Just get in,” Burden repeated.
“This is Sycamore,” I said. “Do you have jurisdiction here?”
Wheaty said, “We want to see our lawyer, you guys.”
“Just get the hell in the car!” Burden said. “It’s hot out, and the longer I got to talk to you smart asses with the window down, the hotter it gets!”
We got in.
“We haven’t done anything,” Wheat said. “We just got out of jail.”
“Don’t get so excited,” Friendly said. “Keep your shirt on.”
“We’ll keep our shirts on,” I said. “We shower with our shirts on these days. We’re reformed. So why don’t you just tell us what this is all about?”
Burden turned and looked at us—at me, in particular, wilting my burst of tough guy courage—and put a disgusted sneer on his face and said, “Shut your smart-ass traps. The Chief wants to see you.”
“The Chief?” I said.
“The Chief?” Wheaty said.
“The Chief,” Burden said.
“The Chief,” Friendly said.
The DeKalb Chief of Police whose, daughter’s wedding reception we had nakedly disrupted wanted to see us?
Burden said, “You don’t have any objections, do you? To seeing the Chief?”
“I want to see my lawyer,” Wheat said. “I want to see my mom.”
I said, “We don’t have to go with you. We haven’t done anything. We’re getting out of this car, right now.”
Burden flicked something on the dash that locked our back doors, and then proceeded to back out of the alley and drive toward DeKalb.
We didn’t go to the police station. We went to a residential area, a nice, quiet, upper middle-class neighborhood, with a lot of shade trees lining the streets and big houses with big lawns. Not mansions, but not exactly prefabs. We pulled up in front of one of them, a white one with black trim. A heavy-set guy in a yellow sportshirt and tan shorts was watering the grass in the front.
At Friendly and Burden’s bidding, we got out of the car and walked across the big green yard.
The Chief was not a good-looking man. His head looked small for his body; his facial features looked big for his head. Receding gray-black hair, bushy eyebrows over rather bulging gray eyes, fat round nose and a wide mouth, the sort that smiles all the time but never really does, really.
“So,” he said.
His voice was low. Rumbling bass.
“So,” I said.
Wheat said nothing.
“So you’re the boys who took their clothes off at my daughter’s wedding reception.”
“I guess so,” I said.
Wheat said nothing.
“Got some publicity out of it, didn’t you?”
“We didn’t do it for publicity, sir,” I said.
Wheat said nothing.
“What did you do it for?”
“What did we do it for?”
“What did you do it for?”
So I told him briefly, of our gambling debt to Shaker and how we’d paid it off, and that thirty days in jail, the hundred dollar fine and losing out on summer school had been punishment in spades for what seemed to us a relatively harmless prank.
“I agree with you,” the Chief said.
“What?” I said.
Wheat said nothing.
“That’s why I asked you boys here today.”
I didn’t point out that we hadn’t been asked: that we’d been brought.
“Come on inside and sit on the porch with me and have some ice tea.”
It took a few moments for the invitation to sink in.
That low, rumbling voice of his sounded sinister even when he was being friendly. Finally, we followed him to his porch, took tall glasses of lemoned, faintly sugared iced tea and sipped tentatively, half expecting the drinks to be spiked with something lethal.
“You pulled a bad judge, boys,” the Chief was saying, sipping his own iced tea. “A real hardnose and I want you to know the harshness of that sentence wasn’t any of my doing.”
“That’s... that’s nice to hear, sir,” I said.
Wheat said nothing.
“As a matter of fact,” the Chief said, “I really brought you here to tell you thanks.”
“Th... thanks?”
“Yes. What I’m going to say now is strictly confidential, you understand... but actually I’m grateful to you boys for streaking through that reception. It made my little girl’s wedding a wedding to be remembered. She thought it was wonderful!”
“Wonderful?”
“Great sense of humor, that little gal. And how many girls have their wedding reception written up in papers all over the country? The President’s daughter, but who else? So, we’re delighted, my little girl, her mama and me. Of course, officially, I have to be outraged. I hope you can understand that. For example, because the wedding photographer sold that picture of you to that wire service, I threatened to sue him... since that picture legally belongs to me, having paid him to take pictures, after all... and he settled out of court. Gave me back all the money we’d paid him to take pictures, and that thousand bucks he made, too. He still came out good, from the publicity. Anyway, I wanted to thank you. I can only say I’m sorry that you boys couldn’t have fared as well as we did in this affair. At least you can have the peace of mind to know that as long as you’re in this area, you don’t have to worry about the police chief bearing a grudge for what you did. I feel bad about the thirty days. It’s a crying shame. More tea?”
“Uh, no thanks,” I said.
Wheat said nothing.
“If you boys ever need anything, he said, “just holler. And thanks again. You can find your way out, can’t you?”
We found our way out.
The cops took us back to Sycamore.
Friendly and I chatted about the weather, politics, baseball. Burden grunted an opinion now and then. Wheat said nothing.
Finally, after we were back to the Nizer place and the cops had gone, Wheat turned to me and said, “Thanks?”
Chapter 14
So everything seemed to be falling into place for Wheaty and me, for a change. First, there was the DeKalb Police Chief not being mad at us, which had initially stunned us, then relieved us, and finally amused us. Second, Wheat’s father had come through with the furniture store job, meaning we’d make enough money during the month of August to come back to the Uni
versity and finish up those few courses in the fall. And third, the Nizers, who were going on vacation to Colorado, gave us the key to their lake home in Wisconsin, in return for doing some minor, menial repairs and painting and such around the place, after which we’d have plenty of time to pursue our visions of sun and fun.
Other, less-earthshaking blessings were heaped upon us by a temporarily merciful providence. For one thing, Wheat’s Volks didn’t overheat on the drive to Paradise Lake, where the Nizer lake place was, despite a day so hot we almost longed for the air-conditioned jail. Almost. And for another thing, we were able to find Paradise Lake, which is one of the least developed and most hard to get to of the many lakes in that area, though I think it’s unfair of Wheat to call it “Paradise Swamp,” and I’m sure he was just kidding when he pointed over to the wet, weedy vacant lot next to the Nizer cottage and said he saw an alligator crawl out of there.
The cottage itself, though, was pretty nice, by Wheaty’s standards or anybody else’s. It was an A-frame with two bedrooms, one up and one down, and lots of burnished wood paneling, with early American furniture and a somewhat incongruously modern kitchenette, with a microwave oven we cooked TV dinners in. We did all the repairs and painting the first day. We spent Thursday and Friday chasing girls at the beaches at nearby Twin Lakes and Lake Geneva.
Late Friday afternoon, Wheaty and I were sitting in the high-ceilinged living room of the Nizer cottage, drinking Olympia beer (which is Clint Eastwood’s favorite brand, by the way, all us two-fisted types drink Oly, you know), discussing where we would go that evening in pursuit of pretty girls, when somebody knocked at the side sliding glass doors.
“Wonder if that’s the girls from last night?” Wheat mused aloud.
“Maybe,” I said, and went to answer it.
I drew back the drape that covered the glass door and it was Elam and Hopp standing out there on the sun-dappled porch.
“Hey!” I said smiling, genuinely glad to see them. I was glad to see them because jail was already fuzzing up in my mind, an experience viewed through the soft-focus camera of memory, turning those thirty days into an interesting, youthful experience that would make for some funny anecdotes in the years to come. Also, I was glad because I was on my third Oly.
Shoot The Moon (and more) Page 5