IT WASN’T EVEN A JAIL CELL. It was a locked room in town hall next to the sheriff’s office. There was a cot and a chair. The walls a dull yellow. The man lay on his back on the cot and Myer had waited long enough. He unlocked the door and walked over to the man and poked him in the ribs with the butt of a billy club.
The man snorted. Turned on his side. Myer poked him again and said wake up. You’ve been here long enough. The man opened his eyes and then sat up. He grimaced and raised his hand and touched the knot on the side of his head. Myer slid the chair over to the cot and sat down.
“It’s time me and you have a good talk,” he said.
“I ain’t ready,” the man said. He raised his hands over his head and stretched and then poked his index finger in the corner of one eye and scratched.
“You get ready.”
“Who put that knot on my head?”
“That’s what I was about to ask you.”
“Don’t figure how I’d know. Seems like that’s the one you should be talking to.”
“I’m gonna be honest. I don’t care about that knot or who did it.”
“Then why you got me sitting here?”
“Because I got up this morning and put on this shirt and tie you see me wearing. I went to church with my wife. Me and a whole bunch of other people. When we got done we came outside to have lunch and found you laying right there next to the food tables, knocked out cold. Besides that you smell like you been dipped in cowshit and you’re pretty much covered in a layer of dirt even dogs don’t have. So I want to know what the hell is going on with you and your woman and boy.”
“I ain’t seen no woman.”
Myer huffed. Stood up from the chair and walked over to the window. Outside the dogwoods bloomed, bright stabs of white against the rich green of June. Myer folded his arms and wiggled his nose against the rank smell of the man. He wanted to be on his porch drinking coffee and watching the hummingbirds dart to and from the feeder that hung next to the ferns. He wanted to be reading the newspaper. He wanted to have his feet propped up. He then turned back to the man and said it occurs to me I didn’t start in the right place with you.
The man sucked at his gums. Shrugged.
“What’s your name? That’s the first thing I should’ve asked you in the parking lot. So let’s go back to that.”
“It don’t matter,” he said.
“Yeah,” Myer said. “It does.”
The man turned his eyes to Myer and for an instant they seemed to come clear. As if he had just realized something about this world that no one else could know.
“People like you been wiping their feet on my name for long as I can remember,” he said.
“I’ve never done a thing to you.”
“It’s the same face. You all got the same face.”
Myer hesitated. They are way down in a hole, he thought. And you can’t get them out.
“Where’s the woman and the boy?”
“I ain’t seen no woman I said.”
“Then the boy?”
“Go ask him where he’s at.”
“Enough of this bullshit,” Myer said. “What’s your damn name?”
The man’s eyes fell to the floor. His lips moved but nothing came out.
“What?” Myer said.
“You leave me alone,” he said. “I ain’t done nothing to you.”
“Tell me your name or in the morning you’ll be out there with the road crew filling potholes and we’ll keep doing that every day until you decide to say it loud enough where I can hear it.”
The man stood from the cot and spit on the floor. He touched the knot on his head. He wiped his grimy hand across his grimy forehead. And then he said my name is Boucher. Now open this goddamn door and let me out of here.