Chapter 9

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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