Chapter 9

Table of Contents

Chapter 9

For a breathless moment after the departure of the President-elect there was a stunned silence in the cell block, after which the row broke out in thunderous applause.  Michael Gasden had no idea that the acclamation was for him.  His hands clutched the metal bars fiercely, and the metal almost bit into his face as he tried to squeeze himself out, like Play-doh through a mold.

     "Damn, you a bad ass homes," said a voice in an adjoining cell.  "You really threw a brick at the President?"

     Was this his conscience speaking, or had the prospect of being locked up in perpetuity made Mike delusional?  "Excuse me, is somebody talking to me?" he answered meekly.

     “Chill out, homey.  Damn, we got a genuine bad ass terrorist in Santa Cruz County."

     Mike couldn't see the owner of the mystifying words being flung at him as from the ether,but there was no way they referred to him.  "I'm not a terrorist.  I didn't throw any bricks."

     “Well I tell you what, brother," the voice continued unabated, Mike's protests not making a dent on its opinion, because in prison everyone is innocent, innocence being a matter of psychological survival, "when you get to the big house you got a cell block of brothers here who will make sure you get good treatment, because you got balls, bro.  Just stay away from the Aryan nation because they're a bunch of Trump loving mother fuckers.

     None of this was particularly reassuring to Michael Gasden. He didn't want good treatment.  He didn't want to be anybody's hero.  He just wanted to get out.

     Outside the cell block, Dustin Diesel escorted Trump and his escorts out.  They were more like a spoiled rich kid’s entourage than a President and his security detail, and he wasn't sorry to see them go.  Maybe Santa Cruz County could get back to its normal dysfunctionality now.  With this false hope in mind the Sheriff walked back toward his office. It was a tiny cubbyhole barely containing desk and chair, definitely not worthy of his station, being dwarfed by those of smaller men puffed up with unmerited ambition, pufferfish who pop with the slightest application of the culinary fork.  Doris scolded him about it relentlessly. "You can't even pick a good office,” she chastized in quiet moments when she didn't have anything else to bitch about.

     "Heck honey," he would answer cautiously. He couldn't use the word hell because Doris was a God-fearing woman. "I don't use it for much besides hanging my jacket in.”

     When Dustin squeezed in through the tiny office doorway, Tony Vargas was already there, sitting with his feet up on the desk like he owned the place.  Dustin didn't think his day could get any worse, but now that he saw Tony this was an uncertainty.

     "Good morning Sheriff, have a seat," Tony said with a shameless grin.

     Dustin Diesel immediately closed the door, because the things Tony said were always scandalous enough to get somebody in trouble.

     "Damn, pardner," Tony started. "When you gonna trim that big ass mustache?  Doesn't that bother Doris when, you know, you're doing your business down there?"

     Dustin gave back an I’m not in the mood look.
     "Oh, I forgot, white people don't have sex.  They reproduce asexually, like, what's that called, through miosis." Tony dilated his pupils for emphasis.

     "I believe the word you're looking for is mitosis," Dustin corrected him.

     "Damn home boy, you're smart," Tony said, sounding genuinely impressed.  "How is it you're only Sheriff of this shithole county?  Anyhow, all I'm saying is that you better trim that bush under your lip because if you can't take care of Doris somebody else will, like me.  She’s hot, and she requires a Latin lover, at least once in her disappointing life."

     There were some days when Dustin was genuinely happy to see Tony, but his charm generally wore on you quickly, some days quicker than others.  "So what brings you through town, Tony?"

     "Oh you know me,” said Tony, fingering Dustin’s largely unused fountain pen, a gift from his granddaughter. “I'm never going through anywhere.  I'm always everywhere at once."

     The disturbing thing, Dustin thought, is that there was a grain of truth to that.

     “Hey why don't you sit down homey.  You look tired."

     "How can I sit down?" Dustin said. "There's only one chair in here and your butt's in it."

     "Oh yeah," said Tony, but he made no move to get up.

     "I hate to be a bad host," said Dustin, as if his lack of politeness would matter to someone who had invaded his office uninvited, made disturbingly accurate suppositions about his sex life, then left him standing, "but I have a lot of work to do.  Can we make this quick?"

     "Sure old buddy.  You gotta let the kid out.  Is that quick enough?"

     Dustin rubbed the inside of his cheek with his tongue as he contemplated the request. The identity of the kid was unmistakable, there was only one "kid" sitting in his jail.  Technically there were two people younger than Michael Gasden in there, but the word kid did not apply to them, because they had committed several lifetimes of crime already.

     "I can't let the kid out, and I think you know that," said Dustin. "He has committed a very visible crime.  He threw a heavy, dangerous object at the man who is going to be President of the United States, with the intent of causing bodily harm.  You just don't let people like that out.  He'll get his day in court.  Why do you care, anyway?"

     "Because he didn't do it."

     Dustin's eyes stood out wide on his denuded forehead.  "Who did it?"

     "I did it," said Tony.

     Dustin shifted a little in his big shoes.  He wore a size 15.  He was always catching them on something and stumbling.  He was pretty graceless, for a bad ass. "You expect me to believe that?” This was just a standard question people were expected to ask in certain situations.  It was entirely believable that Tony had done it.  He had fired a slingshot at Lyndon B. Johnson from a rooftop in Tucson once, but LBJ had only been Kennedy's running mate at the time, not the President-elect.

     Since everything Tony said was habitually bullshit, you instantly knew it when he told the truth.  He got a sort of innocent, wide-eyed earnestness on him and started scratching his head, like a monkey picking grubs from its own cranium for breakfast.

"What the fuck?" Dustin was a church going man.  He tried to keep it clean, but people like Tony sorely tried him.  "What'd you do that for?"

     Tony shrugged.  He must have snared a grub, because he was contemplating something small trapped between his thumb and forefinger.  "Seemed like the right thing to do.  Nah, maybe not right, but the appropriate thing to do."

     Dustin Diesel spent his every waking hour trying to keep the criminals at bay in Santa Cruz County, only to have people like Tony, who were not technically criminals -but only for the grace of God, sneak through the cracks.

     “Excuse me?  Would you mind elaborating on that?"

      Tony tapped out the drum line from the Macarena on Dustin's desk with his fingers. "Well, there was this brick on the ground, and I picked it up and I tell you what, it felt really good in my hands.  It took me back to the days when we were playing eight man football for old Wellton High.  You remember?"

     Dustin shook his head. "It wasn't really eight man football.  We just didn't have enough for a full eleven man squad."

     "Oh.  Those were good days though, don't you think?"

     Dustin put a finger through his belt loop and leaned back on his heels, as an alternative to sitting in his own chair.  "It would have been better if you had crossed the river to play Gilbert Christian for the championship.  You were our quarterback and best player.  We got clobbered.  So much for the stroll down memory lane.  Are you going to tell me why you threw the brick?”

     "You still sore I couldn’t cross the river?" Tony said unapologetically.  "That was like 100 years ago.  Hey, but don't short change yourself, you were a damn good offensive lineman and wide receiver all rolled into one."

     "I had no choice.  We were short handed.  I seem to recall I was the entire offensive line."

     Tony's eyes grew distant, looking off to some pleasant oasis of the past.    "I remember that game against Cortez, where you pancake blocked their whole D-line, then I hit you wide open in the end zone."

     “That was one hell of a play."

     "Yeah, I was thinking of that play when I threw the brick.  That damn brick had just about the right weight, and I threw a really tight spiral too.  I didn't mean to throw it, something just came over me.  Trump looked like such a stuffy little prick up there, like he hasn't taken a good shit since 1972.  I wanted to knock the shit right out of him.  You take good shits, right?"

     "Most of the time."

     "I can tell.  That's why you're at peace with yourself, because you take good shits.  Well, aren't you going to arrest me?"

     Dustin Diesel raised his eyebrows so high his normally heavily furrowed brow ironed itself out.

     "Damn Tony you make this tough on me."  Dustin was torn between the laws he was sworn to serve and loyalty to friends.  The Sheriff was incorruptible - he had never taken a dime to neglect his sworn duties.  But he was also fanatical about not micromanaging the spirit of justice.  Dustin had seen too many occasions where Lady Justice on the courthouse had borne witness to a crime in broad daylight, then had thrown the wrong person in jail anyway.  The sheriff was not a Pharisee where it came to the law.  If the law was screwed up or made no sense, unlike Lady Justice on the roof he was inclined to reach for the blindfold.

     "Well, when you look at it, nobody got hurt.  You're lucky the kid got his fingertips on your forward pass.  Hell Tony, you saved my life."

     “Twice."

     "What do you mean twice?  Are you talking about the time I passed out at that strip joint in Yuma?"

     "I pulled you out in the nick of time.  Doris would have castrated you and let you bleed out. Are you going to release the kid or what?"

     Dustin made a palms up gesture of helplessness.  "I got no reason to hold him anymore."

     "What are you going to tell the President-elect?"

     "He's still just a private citizen.  I don't answer to him."

     "One more thing.  What happened to Hal?"

     Dustin had suspected this question would pop up sooner or later.  Trump was changing the dynamic of the Gadsden Purchase.  People were taking sides, jockeying for position like vultures on a carcass.  "What do you mean?"

     "That pint-sized hijo de la chingada deported me the other day.  I mean, really deported me.  Most of the time it's just a joke, he drivess me to the border, then we go get drunk at the Sorry Gulch.  But this time the mother fucker dumped me in Mexico.  It took me a week to get back."

     Dustin chewed on this news.  Some of it stuck to his mustache.  "I think Hal wants to be sector chief, and he senses an opportunity in the new political climate."

     "Hal a sector chief!"  Tony put both hands flat upon Dustin's desk, as if asking to be handcuffed and locked up if this was a world where Hal Owens controlled whole sectors. "Since when does he care about stuff like that? "

     “Since his Mom got home from the sanitarium."

     "They let that looney bitch out?"

     “They couldn’t keep her.  Budget cuts restored her sanity.”

      “She tried to poison the vice president of the Union Pacific because Hal couldn’t get promoted.  That crazy, delusional broad pushes him to the edge.  He turns into Norman Bates when she’s around.  Do you think he’s really doing her?”

    Dustin stiffened up, because the elephant in the room had just shit on his shiny boots.  “How can you say that?"

     “Oh, like I'm the first one.  I find it strange that fucker ain’t never had no pussy.”

     “Are you kidding me?  Hal gets tons of pussy.”

     “He brags like he gets tons of pussy, but I ain’t never seen him with a woman in all the years I’ve known him.  But I caught him naked with his mother once.”

     “Get out of town.”

"I'm serious!"

"No, I mean literally, get out of town! Your big yapping mouth always gets me in trouble, every time you set foot in my town!"

     “Quit kidding around and listen for a change. We was carpooling to the railroad back then because they were on this save the planet kick and gave you free swag like movie tickets.  I went up to the door to get him, but nobody answered so I sorta let myself in.”

     “Sounds like you," said Dustin, eyeing his occupied chair.

     “Whatta ya know, but Hal and his Mother come out of the bathroom butt naked.  Hal says he was sick and his momma was giving him medicine, but what kind of mother gets naked to put medicine on you?”

     “I'm sure there’s a plausible explanation.”

     Tony laughed.  “Yeah right.  Overbearing bitches like that make men do some weird shit.  I don’t get it.”

     Dustin pointed a thick, gnarled forefinger, his trigger finger, in Tony's direction,.  “You don’t get it because you don’t live with a woman.  Why do you think the good book says that a man can't serve God and woman?  While you're out there doing the work of the Lord, we're sitting behind desks plotting how to do evil to people, just to satisfy our women.  While we’re rounding up the poor and helpless in the desert, you're being a Christian steward of the Earth.  Ambitious women will not permit us a moment’s mercy, but the Sonoran Zoo is full of God’s creatures that your mercy rehabilitated.  That javelina Ronald is real popular over there."

     "Roald."

     "What?"

     "Roald.  The pig's name is Roald, not Ronald."

     "What the hell kind of name is Roald?"

     "I don't know.  I heard it somewhere.  It fits him."

     "Well, they're calling him Ronald up there."

     "That's bullshit.  I'm going to fix that.  And I never  meant to give Roald up to any zoo.  He was as sweet as a puppy.  He was happy where he was, and I was happy having him.  Somebody in town called Fish and Game on me.  I didn't have time to hide all my critters.  Some of them got swept up in the sting.  Now they're all miserable, rotting inside some stinking zoo like prisoners.  One day I'm going to go in and liberate the whole fucking zoo."

     “Well," said Dustin. "I'm afraid I would have to arrest you for that one.  But not for this."

     Tony nodded.  Dustin knew this was the closest he would ever get to thanks, but he didn't have a problem with that.  For all his bullshit, Tony was the kind of guy who would say thanks by doing you a favor.  He would do something useful but of marginal legality that the county Sheriff, exposed to the public like a bug in a jar, couldn't get away with.  Tony was a hidden trump card up the sleeve, a trump that could even trump Trump.

     "Do me a favor," said Tony. "Don't tell him I got him out.  Give me a head start too. And oh yeah, do your job.  Do something about Danny."

     There is no day and night in prison. Mike checked out sometime in the afternoon, feeling like he had been locked up for days instead of hours.  He assumed he must look like Tom Hanks after months on an island making love to a volleyball.  His beard felt grizzled and unkempt, instead of the borderline peach fuzz it really was..  His belly groaned.  Here in the Gadsden Purchase officialdom subjected you to all manner of human rights abuses, including but not limited to starvation.  He had dealt with this by just going to sleep.

     Mike tucked in for what he hoped would be a nap of Rip Van Winkle proportions.  The good thing about Michael Gasden was that he could go to sleep anywhere, in any position.  He could sleep standing on his head on hot pavement, his Dad said.  Napping was one of his great talents.

     It was actually only a half hour of snoozing later that the angel rolled back the stone and a khaki clad deputy shook Mike awake.  He woke him from a dream where Mike had been running along a fetid stream in the desert, looking down at strange fish in the water that had human fingers, which they sucked on as if savoring some delectable. A poisonous plant with sinister purple blossoms choked out the banks of the stream.

     "Wake up kid," said the generic deputy.  "You're out of here."

     Mike blinked once or twice and tried to remember where he was.  One naturally tends to distrust strangers who disturb the somnolent state, even when they bear good news.

     "What are you talking about?" Asked Mike.  As a bad ass terrorist, he seemed slightly disappointed for being let out so quickly.

"Just go dude," said the deputy. "Hurry up, we need this cell."

     Mike cautiously walked out the open cell door, suspecting that freedom itself could be a trap. In the corridor he passed the hardened convicts who had sung his praises yesterday, or was that still today?  None of them looked up.  Now that he was free he was nothing to them.

     Mike picked up his belongings.  The pretty deputy behind the desk, the same one who had scowled on the way in, now smiled, the practice being acceptable outside the cage where the animals were locked up. Mike didn't smile back.  Fuck the bitch.

     Mike was free, but didn't feel like it.  At least in the cell he belonged to a certain society.  What society was he part of now?  Where was he supposed to go?  He imagined that this was how men who have been locked up for half a century felt.  He had been locked up for half a day, but half a day was enough for prison to put its tentacles into him. The jail cell was trying to pull him back.

     Mike's temporary celebrity was over.  Once again he was a nobody here in the Gadsden Purchase.  People assiduously ignored him as he plodded out onto the street, where he had half expected to get either a hero's or villain's reception.  Either one would have been fine, but indifference was depressing.  Shouldn't some eager reporter be standing there, anxious for a scoop about the Presidential brick tosser?  There was nobody.  The world yawned at his alleged deeds. The same sleepy, aimless cars rolled by the courthouse, circling over and over, piloted by the same meaningless faces, car and driver locked in infinite orbits around Santa Cruz County's center of gravity.  None of these cars belonged to anybody Mike knew.  Shouldn't Lisa's spray-painted Prius be stopping by to pick him up?  Come to think of it, where was Tony, driving his own fucking truck?  Where were the hoards of cat-calling Dump-Trumpsters?  This was what being a millionaire meant, thought Mike.  Everybody hovered around with a friendly face and a bucket, waiting for a stray crumb, but as soon as you got in trouble everybody bailed.

       While peering out across the endless rolling thorny scrub for signs of anyone he knew, Mike caught a glimpse of a large figure slinking around by a light pole.  Like a lizard on a fence post, the pole's proprietor was making a ridiculous attempt to blend in with it, but his girth gave him away.  Michael could see right away it was Otis.

     Mike stormed over, hoping that as the dumbest of the lot, Otis was only the expendable point man for the rest of the rescue squad.

     "Otis, you big fat son of a bitch!" Mike cried out as he reached the light pole.  He shoved the hefty youth square in the chest and was surprised as anyone, when he thought about it later, that Otis staggered backwards a few paces. Otis outweighed him by at least 120 pounds, but his shame had reduced him to a cardboard cutout of himself.

     "Otis why did you throw that brick, you fucking asshole!"

     Otis covered his hands with his face and cowered like a dog whacked with a newspaper.  "I didn't throw the brick, bro!  I didn't throw the brick!"

      Mike used the opportunity offered by Otis' shielded face totpummel his exposed midriff.  "You lying fuck up!"

     "I didn't do it bro!  I swear I didn't do it!"  Tears were streaming down Otis’s fat face.  The tears intimidated Mike more than his bulk did.  He backed off a little.

     "Are you crying?"

     "I didn't throw it bro.  I really didn't throw it," Otis blubbered.  "I came back for you.  Everybody else bailed, bro, but I came back."

     Mike suddenly felt a pang of pity, but he wasn't sure if it was for Otis or himself.  To him Otis was a non-entity, just a big fat dumb dipshit.  Could it really be true that this halfwit  brute was the only human on the planet who stuck by his side in this crisis?  Did that say more about the quality of the human race, or more about the quality of Michael Gasden as a person?  This thought only deepened his loneliness.  Maybe it was time to redefine loneliness.  Maybe out here in the cruel emptiness of the Gadsden Purchase he no longer had the luxury of picking and choosing who to remedy his loneliness with.

     "Are you serious, Otis?  Everybody bailed?"

     Otis wiped his puffy face with his Hulk sleeve and nodded tearfully. "It was like the Titanic, dude, where that one fat bitch says we gotta go back for the men but the asshole in the front says just keep rowing.  I tried to tell them we couldn't leave you, but Lisa was in a hurry.  She unlocked the front door and booted my ass out.  She stepped on it so fast the tires squealed.  You know what bro?  Everybody says fuck yeh we're ready to go to jail for what we believe but when it comes down to it, nobody wants to go to jail."

     It occurred to Mike then and there that Otis wasn't quite as stupid as he had thought.  He looked at Otis like a primatologist who has just discovered a new species, scrutinizing him with a sort of academic wonder until the fragile oaf stopped sobbing.  It really sucked that Otis was all he had left, loneliness might actually be better, but the hefty lout would never get home on his own.  What had this big doofus been doing, loitering around a light pole outside a jail? Had he been planning to bust in and set the captives free?

     "Come on Otis, let's go home." Mike said gently.

     "I didn't do it, " Otis whinnied.  "I didn't do it."

     "Yeah, whatever.  It's okay Otis. It's ok."



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Photo courtesy of Metro-Goldwyn-Meyer Inc.  Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons

Chapter 8

 

Table of contents

Chapter 8

All Santa Cruz County Sheriff Dustin Diesel wanted to do was coast quietly into retirement with his patched  up, duct taped heart still ticking.  The reason why he had been against Donald Trump for President was because Trump was bringing undue attention to the border region that he patrolled, a scrutiny that threatened the integrity of a beleaguered heart that he kind of needed to carry him along into the sunset.

     Dustin Diesel was a big man who dragged his bulk around like a hoarder lugging a huge trunk filled with useless but coveted secret items. Because of his rather pronounced Baptist belly, the inmates in Dustin's lock up sometimes referred to his jurisdiction as Santa Claus county.  Dustin's houlders stooped and his walrus mustache drooped.  No amount of trimming could keep its bristling porcupine quills, rictal bristles of an insectivorous bird, the macrovibrissae attached to the snouts of any number of species of scrounging rodents, from growing into his mouth, so he often digested them with his food.  Dustin's rather sprawling, amoeba-like physique and unkempt mustache made the Spanish prisoners jokingly refer to him as La Morsa, but not to his face.

     Truth was, Dustin Diesel was a gentle man with a thick skin who was not above a joke at his expense, but he didn't look like it.  All the prisoners in the county jail could think about when he walked by was how he had picked up a desperate gangster by the neck with one hand and flung him across his cell without ever changing the tender expression on his face.  The prisoners also contemplated his legendary dead aim.  Dustin suffered from the early stages of macular degeneration, but could still shoot the cap off a bottle of Bud at 50 paces without leaving foam, which he sometimes did as a party trick when called to break up noisy fiestas.  The parties got quiet quick.  Tommy the deaf, dumb and blind pinball wizard played by sense of smell, and Dustin Diesel seemed to shoot by the same method. Without parallel he was the best shot in the Gadsden Purchase, and all men, hardened criminals as well as upstart young punks wisely feared him.

     Women did not. Dustin Diesel also had a reputation as the most henpecked man in the Gadsden Purchase. The principal reason he worked fifteen hour days was because his wife Doris berated him from the time he hung up his gun at home until the time he went to bed, which was within as little as half an hour if he could help it.  According to Doris, Dustin was a horrible father, husband, and human being in general.  She had been threatening him with imminent divorce since about 1972.  If Dustin had done anything worthwhile in law enforcement, it was only through dumb luck, divine intervention, or because he had been smart enough to take her advice.  Doris chastised him for not being at least a Congressman or Senator by now.  He was relentlessly rebuked for not opposing Arapaio up North in Maricopa, so they could move to a civilized place like Phoenix.  Doris complained about living in only a four bedroom house, even though they occupied just one of the rooms, and not often. Dustin's pathetic lack of ambition was the cause of all of their domestic difficulties and insurmountable social problems in their entirety south of the Gila River.  Truth was, Dustin Diesel lost all of his fabled swagger around Doris, which was why he tried to avoid her whenever he could legitimately duck out.

     A few years ago, after a particularly exasperating and humiliating round with Doris, Dustin had been in his office complaining to his secretary Lupe about it.  The Gadsden Purchase is a small place - Tony Vargas was there too, having decided to drop by and pick up a free donut as he rolled through town.

     "I think if two people don't love each other anymore there's nothing wrong with getting a divorce," Lupe told Dustin in her breathlessly seductive Latina accent as she pressed her sweater puppies provacatively against her desk. Lupe had been trapped in a haze of impossibly unrequited love with the Sheriff for years.  She smelled opportunity.

     "Bullshit," Tony retorted. "You got to stick it out and suffer.  You get points in heaven that way.  It's like airline miles.  You can exchange them for swag when you get up there."

     “What kind of swag?" Dustin growled, his words muffled by his thick mustache.

     "You know, like head of the line privileges in the duty free. Stuff like that."

     "Where the he’ll did you hear that?"  the Sheriff asked cautiously.  All too often, stuff Tony said that sounded like pure bullshit later turned out to be true.

     “Pastor Rick said it." Like most Catholics in the Gasden Purchase, Tony dabbled in evangelical Protestantism when convenient.  There were no first run movies, video games, free snow cones, or rock and roll bands at Catholic mass like they had at the mega church in Yuma. Unlike the pedantic, tired, stodgy priests, Pastor Rick was super chill, like a stand up comic.  Furthermore, people tended to believe him because he had his own airplane.

     "You're full of shit, Tony," Lupe hissed at him, like someone had let the air out of her tires. Dustin had been vulnerable.  He had been on the point of straying. Tony had fucked up her opportunity.

     Dustin knew damn well Tony was full of shit – they were old friends.  It was possible Pastor Rick had preached a sermon about airline miles in heaven, that sounded like his style, but Tony had twisted it out of context.  Dustin Diesel had been raised in a good Christian home.  A sense of guilty acceptance over being a horrible sinner had seeped through his mother's placental walls into the womb.  Womb and tomb rhymed, he thought while he was on the subject, but he didn't know if that meant anything. Anyhow, even though bullshit like Tony's seemed harmless at face value, it often touched a deeper truth.  Maybe there were no frequent sufferer programs in heaven, but even if Pastor Rick's prosperity gospel implied that it was okay to ditch your wife if she was digging too deep into your bank account, Dustin Diesel still looked upon marriage as a sacred deal.  Divorce was like severing a spiritual limb, and heaven wasn't keen on amputees.  His Daddy had taught him that. If you bought the horse on your earthly farm you had to ride the old nag into heaven.  Saint Peter didn’t let you check your baggage at the terminal.

     These were the things Dustin Diesel was pondering in his heart as he went to see the prisoner preventing him from coasting smoothly into retirement.  What was he supposed to do when he retired anyway, get yelled at by Doris on a full time basis?  Might as well get abused at work and get paid for it.

     Sheriff Diesel didn't know what to expect from this brick throwing fiend. He visualized some wild haired, tatooed, crazy-eyed anarchist carpet-bagging punk with piercings trying to stir up trouble in the name of progress.

     The prisoner had his head down when Dustin approached his cell, so the sheriff couldn't see the perp's face through his long mop of hair.  When the door buzzed open the detainee looked up briefly at Dustin, showing wide, intelligent eyes that were not wild at all, but indicated defiant stubborness.  It was a rebellious face, all right, but not the kind of face that belonged to your typical brick thrower.

     "What the hell were you thinking kid?"

     Mike looked straight at the Sheriff.  There was desperation in his eyes, but there was also resistance.  When you have several million in the bank, it is easy to resist.  You can afford to chill in jail a few days when nobody is expecting you at work the next morning.

     “What do you mean?  Like I told everyone else, I didn't do anything." He wanted to add -I actually stopped the brick from hitting that orange haired  jackass- but he was pissed, and it sounded like sucking ass.  He was in no mood to suck ass.

      Dustin laughed.  "That's the first time I heard that one."  He made a sweeping gesture with his arms, like a flabby Atlas holding Santa Cruz County on his shoulders. "This whole jail is filled with people who didn't do anything."

     Mike was not of a temper to get chatty with anybody in uniform. There are plenty of people who claim they hate law enforcement, but nobody really hates and mistrusts the police until they have been at the bottom of a dog pile eating dirt, while at the same time being handcuffed for doing nothing.

     "Look son," continued the Sheriff paternally, because he sensed he was not dealing with a hard core criminal element here, and cops always like to pretend they are there to reform, not punish.  "I've seen police officers do a lot of messed up things to young people like you.  I've seen kids get beaten up just for carrying signs but I've never condoned it and never participated in it.  In fact, I've thrown officers in jail for getting rough when they shouldn't have.  But you can't have this attitude that the law is always wrong.  You can't sit there looking at me all surly because they locked you up for trying to hurt people.  Peaceful protest is one thing, but throwing bricks cannot be condoned."

     Mike couldn't help but think about Krazy Kat getting a brick thrown at him by a clever mouse espousing the doctrine of bricks is love and he smiled despite himself.

     “I don't see what's funny, boy," said Diesel.

     Betcha if you knew I was black you wouldn't be calling me boy, thought Mike.  Black or not, didn't much like being called boy.

     "It's all really frickin funny actually," said Mike, "because I didn't even want to be here, much less be here throwing bricks, which I didn't.  My girlfriend dragged me along, with some of her useless friends.  Now they've all run off and left me.”

     "They left you holding the bag," said Diesel with surprising sympathy.

     Mike looked up from contemplating his hands in an ironic fashion.  Same hands, same capabilities, they could either throw a brick or stop a brick, but they didn't amount to shit behind bars.  "Beg your pardon, sir?"

     Dustin Diesel sighed impatiently.  "You kids today don't understand analogies.  You want to be fed everything literally.  I want to give you steak but all you can chew is oatmeal. Holding the bag is an expression that comes from an old prank called a Snipe Hunt.  In a Snipe Hunt the participants, that is the ones who are in on the joke, sweep through the woods to scare up an imaginary animal toward one sucker they leave in place, holding a gunny sack.  Said sucker is supposed to capture the non existent Snipe when it runs by.  Now, most times a Snipe Hunt is harmless fun, a little rough on the poor sap bullied into holding the bag, but not leaving any long term emotional damage.  In fact, if the bag holder is smart he figures out quick there is no Snipe, drops the sack and goes home alone, or better yet hides in the woods to ambush the jokers.  But not always does the snipe bag wind up empty.  Sometimes something really does get trapped in that bag, and I shouldn't have to tell you that the something is never good.  You, son, got left holding the bag, and now there is something bad squirming around in there.  Like it or not you're going to have to pay the price for that something because in Santa Cruz County, as in other jurisdictions across this nation, saying you were only the bag holder is no defense before the law.  Get some sleep, because tomorrow there’s no telling what will happen.  Good night."

     The cell door slammed into place behind the sheriff.  Mike never felt so abandoned.  He was an introvert by nature, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t comforted by the buzz of people around him.  Yeah, admittedly he was a douchebag who got annoyed easily when people chattered too much, but it felt awfully lonely without that chatter.  Certainly somebody must be waiting for him outside, but he hadn't seen any evidence of that.  Lisa had bailed, her douchebags friends had bailed, even that lowlife Tony had bailed, most certainly with Mike's truck.

     When Mike had arrived in the Gadsden Purchase, he had expected people to be more honest and loyal than in California. The reason he had sold his company and fled out here is because he had been fed up with the predatory nature of people in the Silicon Valley.  Even the bums there were aggressive, ungrateful, and hard to shake off.  The name of the local hockey team was completely appropriate, because everybody was a shark, patrolling the reef, sniffing for signs of blood, ready to rip apart the helpless and weak.  So now he had escaped deep into the desert, only to find that people were the same everywhere.  His Dad had told him that before he left.  It sucked that his Dad was always right.

     Mike really needed some moral support, but the only person he could rely on for that was his father, and his Dad didn't need this shit right now.  If things continued the way they were going he would have to call him eventually, but he was going to hold off as long as possible.  Mike supposed he should call his lawyer, but the number was in his phone and they had confiscated his phone.  Wasn't his Dad always ranting you goddam kids rely too much on your phones?  "I got all the important numbers right here in my head," his Dad bragged, "but you’re helpless without your goddam phone and it is going to come back to haunt you." It had come back to haunt him.

     Come to think of it, weren't they supposed to at least offer him a phone call?   Wasn't that a basic Constitutional right or something?  He remembered seeing that on a shit load of TV shows. Well, nobody in this dusty little shithole of a town had offered him a phone call, and he had the feeling they wouldn’t.

     As Mike sat stewing in his lonesome misery, Dustin Diesel walked wearily down the corridor in front of the holding cells.  The six or seven inmates being temporarily stored here were on their best behavior. Nobody catcalled him or started bitching about their rights.  They could hear his heavy, plodding steps and took that to mean his temper was temporarily on a hair trigger.  Nobody fucked with Sheriff Diesel when his footsteps went below a certain amount of RPMs.

     The double doors at the end of the hall popped open and half a dozen hard bitten G-men pushed through.  The suits were forming a formidable huddle around somebody in their midst, who was hunkered down where he couldn’t be seen. Dustin heaved another somber sigh, recognizing this interruption for what it was and deciding not to let himself be star struck.

     "You gentlemen caused enough of a stir in my town.  Don't you have somewhere else to be?"

     Muffled Brooklynese rose from the center of the huddle, but the Secret Service G-men wouldn't allow the speaker be seen.  It was a situation akin to when the burning bush talked to Moses.  Moses kept looking around for a speaker, because it was stupid to think a bush could be talking to him.  By the same token, it was stupid to think that a President-elect would be hiding like a scared bitch amidst a ring of knuckleheads.

     The burning bush voice coming from the interior of this human Stonehenge encircling the President-elect turned out to be uncharacteristically meek and subdued, not at all like what Dustin was expecting.

     "Excuse me, Mr. Sheriff Sir," sounded the thin east coast whine. "I was wondering if we could impose upon you to release your prisoner."

     Dustin Diesel did not appreciate it when carpetbagger Feds came in and tried to impose their will.  People assumed they were backward yokels here that could be easily walked over.  Hell, maybe they were yokels, but these out of town sophisticates could at least go through the motions of respect, buy us a drink before fucking us.

     "Why would you want us to release him?  He tried to hurt you."

      Dustin leaned in a little, as a test.  The President-elect nearly stumbled as he stooped down lower, and the Stonehenge circle squeezed tighter.  "Heh, heh," the burning bush laughed nervously.  "Without getting into too many details Mr. Sheriff, because this is a delicate matter of national security, probably the most delicate matter of national security in the history of our national security, but we believe that you should either let the prisoner go, or execute him on the spot."

     Never in his decades of law enforcement had Santa Cruz Sheriff Dustin Diesel been ordered to execute a prisoner without due process.  It was such an extraordinarily bizarre request that he actually had to think about it.

     "Well now Mr. President..."

     The President-elect cut him off abruptly.  "President-elect now, President-elect.  Let's not jump the gun."

     “Yes Sir Mr. President-elect.  You do understand that this is the United States of America, and there are a series of trials and appeals we go through before we can legally kill somebody.  Furthermore, we only use it for capital crimes, like murder.  As far as I can see, you're still alive, so there isn’t any murder.  I just can't shoot him on the spot."

     Dustin thought he could hear the scratching of fingernails against bald skin.  "Huh.  Wow.  Constitutional law is complicated. I'm a real estate man by trade. A really fantastic, top notch real estate man, by the way.  I'm sure you've seen some of my real estate. Being a real estate man, I have a whole gang of lawyers to take care of the complicated legal stuff, like executions.  Okay, so why not just let him go?"

     Dustin breathed in some patience.  "Mr. President-elect Sir, from my understanding you still have a month or so to go before you take the oath.  When that happens, I'll gladly respect any executive pardon you might wish to grant my prisoner.  In the meantime, he's a lawbreaker, and I am sworn to uphold the law.  So the answer is no."

     The President-elect poked one of the Secret Service agents in the kidneys, and the agent, who appeared to be a clone of all the other agents, reached back with a handkerchief.  Dustin heard no nose blowing, but couldn't know the President-elect was wiping the sweat off his head with it. "Okay, fantastic, utterly fantastic,” said Trump.  “Well, Sir, in that case, could you let me talk to the prisoner?"

     Dustin's lower teeth bit softly into his upper lip, forming a sort of sandwich out of his drooping mustache hair. "I guess I don't see any harm in that.  But make it quick.  I don't want you to stir up this cell block any more than it already is."

     A frail, pale hand rose to the top of the huddle to give a feeble handshake. "Thank you Sheriff.  I appreciate your remarkable understanding, truly remarkable understanding.  Now, may I impose upon you for one more small thing?"

     "That depends on what it is."

     "A minor detail.  A truly minor detail, probably the most minor detail in the history of details.  Could I ask you to turn off the lights here on the cell block while I hold my conversation with the prisoner?"

     Dustin scowled.  "Now that, sir, is going to create a ruckus here.  May I ask why?"

      "Security purposes sir.  Very weighty considerations of national security."

     It defied common sense that this man had been elected, but he was going to be President in a matter of days and Dustin supposed his decisions had to be respected, even if they were crappy decisions.  If nothing else, Dustin Diesel was a soldier who followed orders.

     "I'll give you five minutes, then the lights go back on," Dustin reluctantly conceded.

     "Outstanding, outstanding.  Err, ahem, may I ask one more question?"

     "You can ask questions all day, sir, but I've got a county to restore to some semblance of law and order, so let's make it quick."

     “Awesome, outstanding," said the President-elect.  "By the way, I'm just a tremendous, tremendous fan of law and order, I’ll have you know.  But my question, Sir, and I don't mean to take up anymore of your valuable time, is whether or not you have a lost and found around here?"

     Dustin's eyebrows lowered suspiciously. "What kind of lost and found?"  These were the kind of questions problem prisoners asked him all the time.

      "Well, you know," the burning bush said with a pathetically un-Presidential squeak. "a place where they turn in found items that were previously lost."

     “Son," said Dustin, forgetting decorum by addressing the future Chief Executive of with this rather diminutive sobriquet.  "This is Santa Cruz County.  In Santa Cruz County, when things get lost, they tend to stay lost.  What kind of items?"

     “No, nothing, forget it," the President-elect whimpeed from behind the safety of his human wall.

     “Okay, five minutes.  I advise you to make efficient use of your time by not repeating the same adjectives twice, like you tend to do.  But it's your nickel."

     The President-elect whispered to a Secret Service man, who whispered back that an adjective was a word that modified a noun.  This confused him even more, so he let it rest.  "Thank you Sheriff.  I'm extremely, extremely appreciative of the wonderful, wonderful work you are doing here in Santa Cruz County."

     The lights went out.  In his cell the sudden darkness startled Mike.  This was the part where they burst in with billy clubs to either beat out a confession or gang rape him, he was thinking. 

     The cell door creaked open slowly, and the featureless silhouette of a man appeared in the doorway, outlined by the faint emergency lights in the passageway beyond.  Mike noted that the visitor was not wearing the Smokey bear hat of his previous visitor.  In fact, his head appeared to be exceptionally round and naked, like Vin Diesel (only distantly, distantly related to the Sheriff of Santa Cruz County), Dwayne Johnson, or other famous bald guys.  Mike had no inkling it was Trump himself.  The silhouette did not jibe.

    Then, as the other prisoners on the block began to loudly protest the lack of light, the shadowed outline opened his mouth, which at once revealed his identity.  "Hello Michael, I think you know who I am."

     "I didn't throw that brick at you," Michael said immediately.

     "Brick? Brick?" the President-elect had to think.  "Oh yes, the brick.  I didn't come here to talk about the brick."

     But Mike was not done talking about the brick.  He wanted to make sure this man knew the truth.  "As a matter of fact, I tried to stop that brick, and I think I kept it from hitting you a lot harder."

     “Hmmm...yes." The umbra of Trump's bald head eclipsed the faint light from the hall in totality. "Aah, I do remember.  The incident is engraved in my mind like a photograph.  Believe me, believe me, the American people and myself are tremendously, tre..." Ah-hah!  That was the double adjective he had been warned about, wasn't it? "I mean, very, very grateful," Damn he couldn't help it but very was a lot shorter and quicker than tremendously, wasn't it? "...about what you did.  But Michael, I didn't come here to talk about the brick.  I came here to talk about something much more potentially dangerous to the security of our nation.  Are you patriotic, Michael?  Are you a patriotic American?"

     Being something of a libertarian, though he did not know that, Michael wasn't a real big flag waver.  He didn't get teary-eyed during the national anthem, but where the hell else was he supposed to live? He was kind of stuck in America, so he supposed he liked it well enough.  Like a wife, for better or worse til death do us part." I guess.  Sure.  Why?"

     "If you love your country, Michael, you have to promise you won't talk about what you saw back there."

     Mike was confused.  The darkness made it worse.  The darkness disoriented him.
"What do you mean?  What did I see?"

     “Exactly, exact- very good Michael. I knew you were a smart kid.  I could tell that right away.  You didn't see anything at all.  But by the way..."  the President-elect leaned in closer to whisper. “Did you happen to see what happened to that thing you didn't see?"

     Now it suddenly occurred to Mike what this man was talking about.  Now that it was brought to his attention, he did remember the brick striking the forehead, then something being jarred loose, then the blinding reflection of the sun and - whoa!  Did this give him some kind of leverage?

     "You mean the - " Mike started excitedly, but the President-elect grabbed his arm to cut him off.

     "I'll have to ask you to keep your voice down, Michael.  This matter is of strict confidentiality.  I thought you loved your country."

     "I want out of here!  You gotta get me out!  If you do I won't tell!"

     The President-elect slowly leaned back again. Somehow, this act was much more menacing than his leaning in had been.  "Easy, Mike, easy.  It's not that easy."

     "What do you mean it's not that easy?  I thought you had special powers to get people out of jail."

     "Get me out too!" Some desperate dude the next cell down yelled.

     "I need to remind you, Michael, that I'm not quite President yet.  Until I take the oath I am powerless, utterly powerless.”  Was powerless an adjective?  He wasn’t sure.  “You have violated the laws of Santa Cruz County, not to mention pissed off the Sheriff pretty badly.  So I'm afraid you are going to have to stew here awhile and think about the consequences of your actions."

     "What actions?  I didn't do anything!  I didn't do anything!  I saved you!"

     The President-elect, supreme wheeler-dealer that he was, was now satisfied that his upper hand, his pimp hand if you will, had been restored. "Michael, Michael my dear, dear friend.  You're just going to have to be patient. In a few weeks I take office, then I'll see what I can do."

      "Lights on in twenty seconds!" a voice at the end of the cell block warned.

      Mike was desperate. "What do you mean, see what you can do?  A few weeks? You have to get me out of here!  I saved you!"

     “Michael, Michael, I'm afraid I have pressing business elsewhere.  Shoot me a tweet in a few weeks and we'll talk."

     A tweet?  A frickin' tweet!  How the hell was he supposed to tweet from inside jail?  He didn't even have a phone to tweet with.  He didn't even have a Twitter account.  He was going to rot in here forever!

     “Wait, wait!  You can't go!  I don't know anything ! I didn't see anything!  I-"

     The cell door rolled shut.

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Image courtesy of Marine 69-71 via Wikimedia Commons.