The county clerk recorded the indictment, charged Rigby with shoplifting. Other charges followed. Gene also filed for public intoxication and disturbing the peace. The woman whose boy Rigby had tripped wanted assault and battery to a minor thrown in too. He was not indicted for those crimes but to appease certain citizens of Oscar, Rigby was laid away in a cell in the Allamakee County jailhouse.
Five days and nights he lay about on the stiff bed counting the cracks in the plastered ceiling. A parade of drunks came and went. One early morning a man screamed about a rat. There was singing at night down the concrete corridor and Rigby pressed the thin pillow they’d given him over his ears and thought about Mary Belle.
The first night he slept with his head to the bars and was woken by the errant spackling of piss against his face as the man across the hall peed through the bars at him. On the third day they led him out into the yard to air. It was raining and he stood hunkered against the wall in what little dry space there was, holding his collar closed tight against his chin. He asked the guard for a cigarette but the guard said he didn’t smoke. Supper each night was beans and cabbage.
On the third night he was woken by the man in the next cell over, telling him to quit his blubbering.
The man said, Quit goin on bout her.
I ain’t goin on bout anybody, Rigby hissed. Leave me be.
He rolled to his side, facing the wall. Thought it was all done.
A small period of time, and the man said, Who’s Lila DeWitt?
In the yard the next day, under a white-hot sun, the man in the next cell found him, said, You the one blubberin bout yer mam last night?
Rigby craned his neck to see his interrogator. Was squatted on his hams, held his hand like a visor. The man stood directly in front of the sun and the light nimbused his head.
Are yeh? the man asked.
I ain’t got no mama, Rigby said.
No yeh ain’t, the man said. Because she dead. Ain’t a DeWitt no more neither. Died a Hobson.
Still squatted there, plucking brown grass, Rigby listened as the man told him what he knew. When he was finished Rigby said,
Why yeh tellin me this?
The man shrugged. Cause yeh was cryin bout her.
I think yer lyin a me.
Again, the man shrugged.
Alright, he said. See yeh round.
On the fifth day he was released. Sheriff Fielding told him to quit stealing. It was raining that day and by the time he walked the five miles to the houseboat he was soaked through and his heels in the soggy brogans had blistered. Mary Belle was seated at the table where he’d left her. And seeing her face, and what he took for disappointment, he ran to the mattress and clapped his hands over the back of his head and wailed like a hound into his pillow.