Alabama Moon (6 page)

When we got back to the top of the embankment, the constable paused for a few seconds and caught his breath.
Then he carried me over to the car and dropped one arm to pull the door handle. With the pressure off me, my senses came rushing back and I spun around and bit him on the tit. He yelled and pulled my head from his chest.

“Juvenile center my ass! Jail's more like it. Crazy little long-haired bastard!”

He slapped my deerskin hat from my head, and I saw it roll across the road. I tried to cry out, but I felt weak and dizzy. He opened the door to the police car and shoved me across the backseat and slammed the door. I lay there until I caught my breath and the dizziness went away. When I sat up I saw the constable standing beside the car with his mud-covered arms out like a scarecrow, cursing and flapping them to fling the mud off. He kicked his legs from side to side and slung large chunks of mud and grass over the road. Then he noticed the black box clipped to his belt. He stopped and stared at it. He gently pulled it loose and shook it. He walked behind the police car and hurled it at the asphalt, where it shattered and spread across the highway in little black and silver pieces.

After almost ten minutes of pacing and cursing on the side of the road, he threw my things into the trunk. When everything was out of the wheelbarrow, he picked it up and tossed it over the embankment, where it arced out and stuck straight up by the handles in the swamp below. He spit after it, then came around and sank into the driver's seat and glanced at me briefly in the rearview mirror.

“I hope I busted those sunglasses good, too,” I said.

 

I leaned up in my seat and pressed my face against the glass as the car crossed back over the bridge and picked up speed towards Gainesville. Mr. Abroscotto's store flashed past and I stared ahead at the green traffic light, not believing that I'd actually get to see it up close. When we passed under it, I tried to look up and then spun in my seat and watched it fall behind. Then I saw a car rush past us from the other direction. I spun around again, my heart racing. Buildings came at us on each side, all of them bigger than Mr. Wellington's lodge. We sped past them and then I sat back as we started up another bridge. There was only blue sky in front of me through the front windshield. I felt the sickness creeping back into my stomach like I'd felt in Mr. Gene's car. I took a deep breath and held it, but the nausea sat in me like poison. I lay on the seat and drew up my knees and closed my eyes.

It seemed like the ride would never end. Sometimes we would slow down or even come to a stop, but then we'd start moving again. The constable didn't say a word to me, and all I could hear was the road through the vinyl seat and other cars passing us. I was able to keep from getting sick by continuing to take deep breaths and holding them.

After what seemed like an hour, we finally stopped. The constable got out of the car and left his door open. I sat up slowly and looked around. We were parked in front of a brick
building that said
LIVINGSTON POLICE DEPARTMENT
across the front.

The constable came back a minute later, opened my door, and dragged me off the seat. He pulled me by the arm and I hopped along on one foot beside him, staring at all of the shiny cars in the parking lot.

“What about my hat?” I said. He squeezed my arm tighter and jerked me forward. Once we were through the door, he let loose and walked out again. “Clean him up, Earle,” he said over his shoulder.

Earle had on a different-colored uniform and was a lot younger than the constable. His hair was slicked back and as tight on him as his shirt and trousers. He looked at me, shook his head, and said, “Jesus.” I could tell he was nervous about something.

He pointed me into a bathroom where they had a shower. He had me strip naked and stand under the shower head with a big brush in my hand while he turned the knobs. It was the first time I'd ever taken a shower and had so much warm water over me. I shut my eyes and hoped I could stay there for a while.

“You gonna be trouble to me?” Earle said.

I opened my eyes. “I didn't do anything.”

Someone called from the next room over. “You all right in there, Earle?”

“Yeah, I'm all right, Bob. Is Sanders gone?”

“He's gone.”

“You'd think this was his police station the way he just comes in here and tells us what to do.”

“His daddy's the judge, Earle.”

Earle shook his head. He looked back down at me. “Start scrubbin' yourself. I ain't doin' it.”

After my shower, Earle made me put on new clothes that were too big and smelled like Mr. Abroscotto's soap shelf. “I barely found those for you,” he said. “I don't have anything to fit your feet, so you'll just have to walk around in those socks.”

He led me back to where they locked people up and I did my best not to trip over my pant legs and slip on the waxed floor. Pap had told me about jails, so I wasn't surprised when I saw the cages. Earle unlocked an empty one and motioned me inside. “You just stay quiet in here until somebody comes for you,” he said. I nodded to him and he locked the door and walked out.

Jail was the best place I'd ever been. They had good food and a comfortable bed and a sink with running water and a flush toilet.

The only other person in a cage, across the hall from me, was a man who told me his name was Obregon. He said they locked him up for being too drunk and wrecking his car. He was lying on his bed talking at the ceiling and picking scabs on his face.

“What they got you in here for?” he asked me.

“I don't know.”

“Where you live at?”

“At a hole in the ground in the forest.”

“You say you live in a cave?”

“No. It's a shelter that trees have grown over.”

“I seen the story on TV. Your daddy's the one that lived out in those woods, ain't he?”

“Both of us did.”

“What you eat out there?”

“Lots of stuff. Stuff I trap and kill mostly. Some stuff Pap and I used to grow.”

Obregon grunted and laughed to himself. “By the looks of him, you sure gave Sanders a hard time.”

“I told him I didn't wanna go.”

“He's liable to keep you in here for a while, riled up as he is. He's not one that likes to be made a fool of.”

“I don't mind. I like the food here.”

Obregon sat up and yawned. “I imagine you do. You don't look like you get much to eat.”

“I think I could live here for a little while. They let you go outside some?”

“Yeah, they'll let you out to walk around. Least they let me out. They might be too scared of you.”

I smiled at him. I knew he was kidding me. “What're they gonna do with my stuff?”

“They got it stored up front.”

“They stripped off all my clothes.”

“They'll keep those for you, too.”

“I had a wheelbarrow that Sanders threw off into a swamp. I had that wheelbarrow ever since I can remember. I hauled my dead pap around in it.”

“You what?”

“Loaded Pap and took him up to our cemetery in it.”

“Got some special meanin' to you?”

“It's the only way I've got to get stuff around.”

“I never thought of a wheelbarrow meanin' much to anybody.”

“Had a deerskin hat, too. I made it myself, but Sanders threw it away. You think they'll let me have some more pie?”

Obregon shouted towards the door. “Hey, Earle! Earle!”

Earle came through the door. “What?”

“The little feller says he wants more pie. You got any in there?”

Earle looked at me and shook his head. “One more person tells me what to do . . .” He left the room and shut the door behind him. He came back a few seconds later with the pie and stuck it through the bars to me. “This is all you get, you hear?”

I took the pie. “You gonna let me stay in this cage tonight?”

“Let you?”

I nodded. “On this bed here.”

“That's up to Mr. Sanders. He's in charge of you.”

“Where'd he go?”

“He went home to Gainesville. Said to keep you here until he got back.”

“Then what's he gonna do to me?”

“I reckon he'll haul you over to the juvenile home in Tuscaloosa.”

“He said I was more fit for jail.”

“Well, I don't know. We'll just have to see. I just do what I'm told.”

“You're spineless, Earle,” Obregon said.

“Shut up, Obregon.”

“You can tell Mr. Gene and Sanders both that I don't aim to go with 'em anywhere. Tell 'em I can whip a man three times my size. Maybe two at once.”

Earle shook his head. He leaned into the bars of my cage. “I'm gonna give you some advice, kid. You're already in a lot of trouble and don't have to be. You'll be lucky if they don't come down on you for assaulting a lawman. You need to tame that temper of yours and cooperate, or you're gonna end up in a lot of places you won't want to be.”

“Let the kid be,” Obregon said.

“Shut up, Obregon.”

“I just want people to leave me alone,” I said.

“It doesn't work like that. You can't live by yourself until you're older, kid. It's the law.”

“Pap said go to Alaska,” I said quietly.

“What?”

“Never mind,” I said.

 

The next morning another policeman brought me bacon and eggs and a biscuit for breakfast. Obregon said I ate it all like a wild dog. I told him it was the best breakfast I ever had. Not long after I finished, I heard Sanders talking about me beyond the door.

“Where's that little pissant?”

“He's back there,” someone on the other side of the door said. “He's not too upset about it, either.”

“He been givin' y'all any trouble?”

“No. He's been eatin' up everything we bring him. He and Obregon are good buddies now.”

I heard Sanders grunt, and then footsteps came towards the door. He came in the room and looked around until he saw me in my cage. “You ready, boy?”

“Where we goin'?”

“Takin' you to Tuscaloosa. Gonna reintroduce you to your old friend Mr. Gene. Get up.”

I set my jaw and shook my head.

“Don't you shake your head at me, boy!”

I went to the back of my cage and sat in the corner. I drew my knees up to my chest and hugged them there possum-style. Sanders reached to his belt and pulled away a set of keys. He unlocked the door and stepped inside. “I said to get up!”

“That child can't be more'n ten years old, Sanders,” Obregon said. “He got you jumpy?”

“Shut up, Obregon!” Sanders put the keys back on his belt and unsnapped a leather case that held a pair of handcuffs. “Hold out your hands, boy.”

“What's your problem, Sanders?”

I quickly pulled my hands away from my knees and sat on them.

“This ain't none of your damn business,” Sanders said to Obregon.

“Don't tell me you gotta handcuff him?”

Sanders turned around and looked at Obregon. “I thought I told you to shut up.”

Obregon smiled. “I'll bet you used to have bullies on you like wild dogs on meat when you was in school. Never mind, I forgot. You didn't make it past eighth grade, did you, Sanders?”

Sanders ignored Obregon. “Get up!” he said to me.

I shook my head.

“Now!” Sanders yelled.

I didn't move. Sanders reached down and grabbed me by the back of my shirt. He lifted me, still balled up, but with my arms around my knees again. Obregon stood in his cell and clung to the bars. “You hurt him and I seen it all,” he said.

I smiled at Obregon. “It doesn't hurt,” I said.

“At least put some shoes and a jacket on the kid!” Obregon called after us.

Sanders carried me out of the cage, through the main office, and outside. He opened his car and tossed me in the back like I was nothing but a sack of coon hides. He slammed the door behind me and went back inside.

When Sanders returned, I had come out of my ball and was sitting up in the normal way. He glanced at me once and then got into the driver's seat and started the engine. I knocked on the plastic shield between us, but he acted like he didn't hear me.

“Sanders?” I said.

No answer. He pulled onto the road and sped up.

“Sanders?” I said again.

“What!”

“Where are we?”

“First of all, it's Constable Sanders to you. And we're in Livingston.”

Suddenly the window beside me slid down a few inches and the cold air came rushing through and blew against my face.

“Little chilly back there?” Sanders said as he chuckled to himself.

I didn't say anything. I wanted the window down to keep me from getting sick again. As I watched the countryside pass by, I thought about escape. But I'd not been farther than Mr. Abroscotto's store that I remembered, and I knew we weren't anywhere close to that. I reasoned that even if I could get out of the car, I wouldn't know where to go, and I wouldn't have any of my supplies.

“When do I get my things back?”

“You'll get 'em when we're good and ready. Everything except the rifle and bullets you were totin'.”

I felt my face grow warm. “You can't take my rifle!” I shouted. “Pap gave me that rifle!”

Sanders seemed to like it that I was getting upset. He shook his head and smiled. I slammed my fists into the plastic shield.

“Hey!” he yelled. He looked in his rearview mirror at me. He wasn't smiling anymore. “You scratch up my new patrol car and we're gonna have a go at it. I spent two hours cleanin' your stink out of it last night.”

I sat back and looked down at my knees. We drove along without talking for a long time. I thought again of ways to escape, but the situation seemed hopeless.