The concrete was painted a warm kind of gray, something not so depressing as snow clouds but more of a gray like an old woman’s perm. It was a thick, shiny kind of paint like might’ve been used on a floor, and it reflected what little bit of light shone down from two fluorescent tubes flickering and dying. Sound came through the cuffing hole on the steel door and white light beamed through the thin rectangle of glass. Every once in a while footsteps tromped closer, voices grew louder, and I’d watch a bull or two slide by the door, their eyes cutting in at me as they passed.
While I’d let the tongue fly when I wasn’t under arrest, the minute it was official, I zipped it. That deputy had gone to talking even more with the battle won, asking all sorts of questions about my family and about my father, but Daddy had taught me well. Talk shit when you’re free. Shut up in the cuffs. Lawyer up first chance.
That was the call I’d made.
I’d never been to jail before, and that’s why it took so long to get to the cell. That jail was the embodiment of, “When one door closes, another door opens,” only there wasn’t anything bright on the other side. When the bull had driven up, one fence opened, he pulled up to another fence, stopped, the fence behind closed, and the one in front opened. When we headed through the back door, we entered into a small room, and when the door behind closed, the one in front opened. The whole place seemed to work like that, until I got to booking and they fastened my cuffs with chains to a chest-high shelf in front of a window. The woman on the other side asked all sorts of questions about when I’d been born, what sorts of scars and tattoos I was marked with, any aliases I might have, or any gang affiliations. That’s what had taken so damn long, and though I didn’t like being there, I was looking forward to the fact that future visits, and I was certain there’d be future visits, would only require updating that file. Hell, by then I might have a good nickname.
They’d put me in a smaller cell after booking, one right beside the magistrate’s office. I reckon they took the warrant into the office and had the magistrate recheck a bond amount he’d already signed off on when he issued the arrest. I’d been charged with assault and battery, and that old codger must’ve figured me for the running type, setting a secured bond for ten thousand dollars. When the bulls had explained the charges, I was awfully certain of the battery. I reckon I’d batteryed the ever-living hell out of that boy, but the assault, or “threatening of violence” as they put it, was a question I needed answered. I’d never said a word. Not one goddamned word. I’d moved straight into the batterying. Seeing as they said Avery was in the hospital with a shattered orbital, likely to need some reconstructing, I must’ve been a pretty good batteryer. And seeing as how that son of a bitch deserved every lick he took, I figured the fifteen percent needed to post out wasn’t too high a tab: fifteen hundred dollars in crisp bills and I’d be lapping up supper on The Creek come dinnertime. Daddy might even spring for a steak dinner considering how proud he’d been.
I hadn’t seen hide nor hair of Daddy, the lawyer, or any friends of the family for the duration of that first cell, and the bulls were about to escort me into a finer abode, so I could have neighbors and company and such, when I heard someone screaming. Two deputies were leading me down the hall, my arms stiff and cuffs cutting into my wrists.
“You two! Deputies! Stop right there! You just stop this goddamn instant!”
The three of us all turned together like a drum line, and once I got facing that way, I could see that little pudgy bastard shuffling down the hall, his bald head beaming reflective. Mr. Queen had been born with fourteen rattles and a button, just about the snakiest son of a bitch to ever come off of Caney Fork. The whole family of snakes had been denned up in that cut for generations and had a long history of clanking jars and copper worms, but I reckon he’d seen early on that the battle waged against lawmen was fought and won in courtrooms, in fancy suits and ties. Every bit of moonshine a McNeely ever swallowed had come from a Caney Fork Queen, so when things got big enough to need full-time representation, Daddy’d snatched him up. So far there hadn’t been a friend of the family who spent more than a few days clinked up, and we had that vole-faced peckerwood to thank for it.
There was a bull close on his coattails and as Mr. Queen shuffled that bull reached out and grabbed ahold of Queen’s sleeve.
“Unhand me, you maggot! This suit was tailored custom by Jos. A. Bank. Ever heard of him? Can you spell it?” Mr. Queen stopped pacing just long enough to yank his coat sleeve out of grubby hands and then on he came. “That boy you’ve got there, now you need to get those cuffs off of him this instant. His bond is posted and he’s a free man till trial.” Mr. Queen continued until he was standing directly in front of me. He scrunched his nose to lift glasses over squinted eyes, and he kept that scowl long enough to shoot both bulls an I’ll-have-you-for-dinner-on-the-stand kind of look. “How are you, Jacob? I hope these gentlemen have treated you well.”
Mr. Queen held out his hand to shake mine, but I was still hemmed up and could only offer a nod. “Been better.”
“Well, say no more, son. Don’t say one word, and we’ll be taking you home for supper. How about that?”
“That’d suit me fine.”
“Sure it would.” Mr. Queen turned his stare back to the bulls. “Now, I want my client out of cuffs immediately.”
The bulls looked at their ringleader standing behind my lawyer, and that older bull shook his head okay. That quick and the key clicked, the teeth were loosened, and I was rubbing the red bracelets left behind off my wrists. As quickly as I’d come, I was headed out in true McNeely fashion. Like I thought, I’d be home by supper.
—
MR. QUEEN AND I walked out of the front of the Jackson County Administration Building through doors that opened with a push rather than buzzing. It was almost night now, yellow fading into darkness over the peaks. He led me to a long, fat Lincoln trimmed in gold where most folks would’ve settled for chrome. While I’m certain it had cost him a pretty penny, I personally found the touch a tad gaudy. The look was a bit jarring to me, reminiscent of those thick gold earrings old women with blue hair wear in church, the kind that drag their earlobes down and make the piercing holes stretch long.
“Nice ride you got here, Mr. Queen.”
“Irving.”
“What was that?”
“I said call me Irving.” Mr. Queen shot me a smile and scrunched his glasses back up over his eyes. He hit a switch on his key chain, the headlights blinked, and I could hear the latches flick up on the inside of the Lincoln.
The car smelled of stale cigar smoke with a hint of baby powder, an offensive odor that fit him well. Leather seats were stained with coffee spills and the passenger-side floorboard was littered with empty coffee cups and pints of whiskey. He had classed it up a bit on the inside with one of those air freshener trees hung on the vent.
“Think you might want to trash these liquor bottles?”
“For what purpose?”
“In case you were pulled over.”
“Pulled over for what?”
“I don’t know, just pulled over.”
“Now, if you’re going to start throwing around scenarios, you’re going to have to be specific. Generalities won’t get you far in this line of work.”
I kicked my feet through the swamp of trash, and Mr. Queen headed down the hill out of the parking lot. “Let’s just say you came up into a traffic stop. Let’s just say the law had one of those roadblocks they like to set up so good, and—”
“I’m assuming this roadblock is perfectly legal? Not set up in a racially profiling manner, you know? Not set up on a road traveled primarily by migrant workers, is it?”
“Perfectly legal, and let’s just say you pull on up there, and they get to seeing all these liquor bottles.” I kicked my feet around until the hollow bottles clanked against one another. “Let’s say they ain’t too keen on a man in a fancy car with liquor bottles piled up in the floorboards.”
“Ain’t a damn thing illegal about being a good community steward, Jacob.”
“Community steward?”
“Yes, a community steward. Litter cleanup is all. I just have a habit of keeping the highways clear of litter.”
“And I reckon it’s whiskey bottles making up the majority of litter on these highways.”
“Well, of course it is. Folks guzzling RC Cola certainly don’t throw bottles out of car windows. No, sir. It’s the drunks you have to worry about.” Mr. Queen pulled a mashed-out cigar from the ashtray and put the butt end between lips that wrapped around his face like kielbasas. He struck a match and nearly veered across the white line as we headed into town. He puffed hard to get that cigar going, his cheeks sucking and blowing till fat wads of smoke started pouring out of that old potbelly. As the fire crept, snubbed leaves of tobacco peppered lit embers into his lap. “Goddamn it! Goddamn it!” he screamed, and yanked the car onto the shoulder as his right hand patted hard in his crotch. “Not the Jos. A. Bank’s! Not the goddamn Jos. A. Bank’s!”
We rode through town in silence. I think I’d crossed him a little when he damn near lit his junk afire and I laughed, but as we passed the university, he finally continued the conversation.
“Remember what I was saying about trial?”
“No. Not exactly.”
“Remember I was telling those deputies that you were a free man till trial? Remember that?”
“I reckon so.”
“Well, don’t you worry about that, Jacob.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean there isn’t going to be any trial.”
“How’s that?”
“Well, there was a reason I was the one that came to pick you up this evening. You see, your father went to have a little talk with Mr. Hooper and it seems they’ve come to an understanding. Seems it couldn’t have been you that did that to his son, seeing as you were with your father at home on that night. I reckon the victim must’ve been mistaken.”
“And it’s all going to work out like that?”
“Why, yes, Jacob. I just need to have Mr. Hooper accompany me to the district attorney’s office, the district attorney and I go way back, and Mr. Hooper will explain that this was all a big misunderstanding, you see. After that, free and clear.”
“Free and clear, huh?”
“Free and clear.”
We rode past the Moonshine Mini Mart, a cream-colored building with a cobble foundation where bear hunters often stopped to shoot the shit. The parking lot was always filled with pickups covered in antennas, dog boxes filled with dead-tired hounds. Anyone with a lick of sense had known for a long time that the owners were running a shake-and-bake lab right beneath the register. It was bad, cheap yellow dope that only the lowest folks turned to when the money for McNeely quality ran out. I’d always been amazed at how none of the bulls stumbled onto the man running that operation. Every time he handed out change to deputies buying tins of tobacco, it was plain as day that his hands were eat up from burping bottles, the lithium strips just bubbling in the syrup beneath the register. How those bulls never caught a whiff of all those chemicals, I’ll never know.
Mr. Queen shot a glance up Caney Fork Road, and to me, it seemed he was looking way back into the place he’d come from. He resituated himself against the leather seat and tugged on his Jos. A. Bank’s lapels. There was pride in the way he jerked on that jacket. He’d come a long way, I reckon, a long way from that holler he’d slithered out of. But if it had been me, I’d have slithered a little further. If I were going to leave, it would be to a place where nobody knew me, a place where McNeely was just another name. Folks like us needed aliases.