A Gracious Plenty (16 page)

But he doesn’t believe me. He says he saw that signed piece of paper—like signing and signing
my name
are the same things.

Between the two of us, we catch a mess of fish pretty quick. Not counting the ones we throw back, we take home eight.

Except we don’t really take them home. We put them in my cooler and stick the cooler in Leonard’s backseat. On the way to the police station, he stops for a bag of ice to keep them from rotting, and he gets us both a Coca-Cola. I tap the bag on the ground a couple of times to break up the large chunks and then dump the ice over the still-floundering fish.

When I get back in the car, Leonard reads me my rights and offers me some peanuts.

I
T’S LATE IN
the afternoon by the time we get to the police station, and then there are complications. As soon as I arrive, Leonard gets summoned outside, and I can’t see him because the door is made of smoky glass. Problem number two: I don’t have a lawyer. The soft-faced boy who’s doing all the paperwork says I’m going to need one.

“Get Leonard for me,” I tell him.

“Leonard ain’t no lawyer, and he’s got another assignment anyway,” the young man says. “There’s a car wreck over on Highway Nine.”

“I ain’t got no lawyer,” I tell him. “And I don’t believe you about that wreck, either. Leonard didn’t
say
he was going to any wreck.”

“It just happened, Miss Nobles. He’s really gone. Now look here. This is a list of lawyers with their phone numbers. You need to just pick one and call.”

“I don’t want to pay for no lawyer,” I tell him. “I ain’t done nothing wrong.”

“You harassed Ms. Lois Armour,” he tells me. He’s too young to listen. He ought not be allowed to carry a gun.

“I’ll represent myself,” I tell him. “You show me the evidence.”

“We have your signature,” he reminds me. He was the boy that got my signature in the first place.

“Show me,” I say.

But the records office is already closed. Closed until eight o’clock tomorrow morning.

“You mean I’m stuck here all night?”

“Yep,” he answers. “You were stuck here all night anyway.”

“Get me the judge,” I tell him. “I wanna talk to the judge.”

“Do you see any judge here?” he asks. “If you want counsel, call a lawyer.”

“Get Leonard,” I say. “He’ll post my bond.”

“Lady, you don’t know much about the law, do you? We got rules here. Rules we follow. Leonard can’t bail you out because your bail ain’t been set,” the boy tells me. “The arresting officer ain’t allowed to post bond anyway—especially not when the officer is a single man and the criminal is a pretty lady,” and he darts his eyes away from me when he says that—’cause he knows I’m a far stretch from pretty. “And besides that, he’s at the wreck. You deaf or something?”

“What kind of police department are you running?” I ask him.

“A damned good one,” he tells me, puffing his chest like a rooster.

“I’d like to see your handbook of the law,” I say, but he just laughs.

He takes my picture and rolls my fingers over a piece of cardboard, but he doesn’t put me in special clothes or anything fancy. He puts me in a big cell all by myself, with my pick of cots.

“You don’t have no other prisoners?”

“No other women,” he tells me. “We got a man on the other side.”

My cell is right beside the desk where I checked in. “It’ll give you something to look at,” the boy-faced officer says.

“What if I have to use the bathroom?”

“Pull the curtain.”

So I sit in my cell, twiddling my thumbs and picking at a mole on my wrist. The officer calls out to me periodically, “You okay in there, Miss Nobles?”

“Fine,” I say. “Thank you for caring.”

“You get ready to confess, you just let me know.”

“Okay,” I say. “But don’t get your hopes up.”

“You get ready to call a lawyer, just say the word. You get a free phone call, you know.”

“Alrighty.”

I sit in there for a long time, feeling kind of bad because I didn’t feed the cats. I try to remember whether or not they had any food left in their bowls from yesterday, but I doubt it. Woe to the birds and mice, to the bugs that live in the ivy.

Then a different police officer brings me some supper, and it’s not as bad as you might think. He brings me candied yams and some rice with gravy and a piece of meat—I can’t tell what kind—and a cup of watery tea. And I eat it, ’cause all I’ve had is a pack of Nabs and a handful of peanuts since breakfast.

My hands still smell like fish, and my fingers stick a little when I press them together. It’s hot in the jail, and that does nothing for the smell. The smell of food and armpit hovers in the air, and I think they ought to get an exhaust fan to make it more pleasant.

Then Leonard comes back, and he brings me a cheeseburger and some french fries. I’m kind of glad to see him, but also miffed that he left me that way, wreck or no wreck.

“I was gonna try to fry up them fish,” he says. “But the accident took me too long. I didn’t want you to get stuck eating mystery meat.” He pulls up a chair and sits backward in it, leaning his fat belly against the backing, and he eats his supper with me, chewing and talking at the same time. “Phillips says you don’t want a lawyer. I got to advise you to get one, Finch. A judge ain’t gonna be kind to you. He’s gonna feel real sorry for Lois Armour.”

“Who would you recommend?” I ask.

“T. J. Wilson?” he suggests.

“I don’t know of him,” I say. “I’d rather have somebody I know of.”

“Wilson’s good,” he tells me.

“Mmmm, I don’t know. I just like the idea of having a lawyer from my own community.”

“Ain’t no lawyers in our community.”

“There’s one,” I say.

Leonard thinks for a second, then jumps up and moves his face right to the bars, leaning in a little, so that his nose actually goes through, so he’s just inches from my face. “No,” he says, and I can see a bit of lettuce wedged between his front two teeth. “Father’s in retirement. And besides that, damn it, he hardly practiced law at all. Once he became an elected official, he only tried four or five cases. He hasn’t been in a courtroom in twenty years.”

“I think that’s who I want,” I tell him. “Can you get me his number?”

“He might not even be licensed anymore. He’s
not well
, Finch,” Leonard insists.

He clings to the bars, and I study his fingers, stained yellow with mustard.

“Mother just came home from the hospital, and Father’s got her to take care of. He’s an
old man
. He’s half-senile already,” he pleads. Then adds, “What have I done to you, damn it?”

“You got me arrested. That’s one thing,” I say. “And then—”

“Oh no,” he interrupts. “You did that to yourself. I’ve been as kind to you as I can be.” He’s red-faced and puffing, with sweat stains arcing halfway down his shirt. “Business is business, and arresting you was my business. Letting you have your afternoon fishing and bringing you something good to eat so you wouldn’t have to eat the jailhouse food, that was something
else
,” and he throws me an apple pie, still warm in its red container, and walks away. “Phillips, get her the telephone,” he says, and he slams the door.

Phillips looks at me, and I look at Phillips.

“I musta said the wrong thing,” I tell him.

“I reckon you did,” he answers. “You want the phone?”

“Not yet,” I say. “I was half-teasing—about calling his father, I mean.”

“Leonard ain’t the teasing kind,” Phillips tells me. “He walks around here half the time like he’s lost his best friend. Yeah, Leonard wears his britches too tight for sure.”

“Well,” I answer, “he’s had a hard row to hoe. Even when we were little, his father didn’t think much of him.”

“You and Leonard the same age?” he asks me, like he can’t believe it. And I know it’s ’cause I look so much older, with my wadded-up face.

“Yeah.”

“Say then, maybe you can tell me what happened to Leonard when he was seven years old.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I was weeding through everybody’s health files the other day, updating them because we’re about to have an inspection, and a letter fell out of Leonard’s folder. It was a permission slip for him to serve as an officer of the law—because he’d had some sort of blot on his record as a young child. The letter referred to extenuating circumstances and childhood traumas—I don’t know. Whatever it was happened when he was seven. But he had to get special approval to become a policeman.”

“Well, he got the approval, obviously, so I reckon it ain’t no business of yours or mine, neither one,” I tell Phillips. ’Cause there’s no reason for some upstart policeman with little willowy sideburns to be tearing a fellow like Leonard down.

“I just wondered,” he says, and he turns on the television, but I can’t see it.

After a while, it starts to thunder a little and Phillips muses and turns the TV off. “I love a storm,” he says—to me, I guess, since no one else is around.

“Me, too,” I tell him.

“It’s supposed to rain,” he says. “They’re calling for rain tonight.”

I sit in my cell until everything’s quiet. As time goes on, Phillips dozes at his desk. Suddenly, I hear it loud on the roof, rain falling fast, and Phillips sighs in his dreams at the sound of it. And as he sleeps, the Poet and Papa come in for a visit, leaking into my cell in raindrops, then taking their regular shapes.

“Hey, sugar,” Papa says. “You all right?”

“Yes, sir,” I whisper. “I’m fine. What’re you doing here?
How
are you here?”

The Dead don’t often stray off in the nights—particularly not when the weather’s bad. They like to sleep like everybody else, and when they get wet, the grave seems even colder.

But even more, the police station is ten miles away, and there are other cemeteries in between. So Papa and the Poet are out of their jurisdiction. They have no real reason to be here.

“An act of self-defense,” the Poet proclaims. “Marcus’s voice has found a new volume. I try to tell him that volume’s a privilege, not a right, but he doesn’t seem to understand.…”

“A lot’s happened since you’ve been gone,” Papa says. “The Mediator sent me here to warn you.
He
just tagged along.”

“I was getting a headache,” the Poet explains. “Don’t worry, Finch. If they don’t let you out before long, we’ll rig up a tornado to take the top off the building. It’ll fly like a kite, and you can be the tail, and you can let go anywhere you like.”

“How’s William Blott?” I ask.

“Just terrible,” Papa says. “Something’s happened. I wanted you to know, in case you got out. Some of those boys came in under the fence and spray-painted bad words on William’s stone.”

“What words?”

“
Faggot
,” the Poet says deadpan. “
Queer. Cocksucker, buttfucker, ass-pirate
—”

“She gets the picture,” Papa says.

“Ass-pirate!” I chuckle. “That’s pretty good!”

“They didn’t make it up.” The Poet sniffs. “It’s a British term.”

“I guess William was pretty upset about it,” I say.

“Yeah,” Papa replies. “Especially when we found out that all those boys went to Glory Road afterward. They were boys from the church. And Reba made them all ham biscuits, served ’em supper for free!”

“How’d you find out?”

“Oh, I was roaming about,” the Poet admits. “I was on the roof of the store when it happened, changing the course of this little storm we located over the Atlantic. I don’t want the whole place destroyed or anything, but if Marcus doesn’t quit crying …” and he drifts off.

“We’ve called in a big,
big
storm,” Papa tells me. “But this here piddly cloud ain’t it. The Dead in these parts ain’t even
involved
in our storm.”

“Oh no,” the Poet allows. “Our storm’s going to make this one look like a measly pissing.”

“Everybody’s ready for William to get his revenge,” Papa explains. “So he can go back to being a good mother and Marcus’ll shut up.”

“And Lucy’s upset, as well,” the Poet says. “Those flowers, you know—those flowers you gave her were quicklime on her heart. And now to think that you’re here—because you contacted her mother again. Aieee. By the time Leonard’s squad car pulled out of the cemetery, she was tearing at her hair.”

“She’s bad off,” Papa agrees.

“Yeah,” the Poet muses. “Lucy Armageddon’s kicking her feet. We’re feeling it underground. She’s riling up oceans. She’s tapped into something big. After the storm comes here, she’s going to push it all the way to Nevada, she says, to wipe out a bad memory.”

“We’ve got to get back,” Papa tells me. “I’m sorry we can’t stay longer.”

“That’s okay,” I tell them. “Thanks for coming by.”

The Poet picks at a mattress, at a place where a cigarette has burned into a cot. He pulls out some fibers from inside and stuffs them in his ears. “For later,” he says.

And they’re gone.

I decide I may as well get some sleep, and so I choose a cot and try to settle down. But the rain continues, and the wind—and my mind picks up on the turbulence. My mind won’t let me rest. It takes me a long time to fall asleep, and then suddenly I’m awakened by an old man in a baggy gray suit.

“Miss Nobles? Miss Nobles?” he calls. He lifts off a gentleman’s hat, to reveal a head slick as a tick, but there are plenty of hairs left on his face. He’s a bald man with a full gray mustache and eyebrows as willful as spider legs.

I stare at him, closing my eyes and reopening to distinguish which world he has come from. He’s not familiar, but he’s not strange.

Then Phillips runs up beside him, puzzled, and says, “I didn’t realize she called you, Mr. Livingston.”

“She didn’t,” he bellows. “I heard it from an associate, you might say. Probably an associate who’s made a wrongful arrest. And what are you sleeping on the job for, anyway? I could have broken every prisoner out of this jail before you woke up. I’ve been watching you snore for nearly an hour!”

“Leonard called you?” I ask, my mouth thick with morning. I approach the bars and peer out.