Chapter 10: The one place in Hamilton County where sexual favors are available for cigarettes

The sergeant took me right down to the jail. My civilian clothes were taken away, all of them, and I was provided with jail-wear, from underwear outwards. Regarding underwear: the only option offered was jockey shorts. This was the single worst thing about jail. The food was awful, the whole cell block smelled awful, the toilet practices of the entire floor were continually under public view and olfaction, and it was mind-grindingly boring, but wearing grippers instead of boxers was the worst. The few remaining items of personal property remaining in my pockets were taken from me and indifferently listed, and I was led to the jail proper, on a different floor. Until that point I had been in holding cells, now I was a full-time guest.

The smell of some faintly disagreeable fried food was wafting in the air. Ground turkey cutlets, maybe, with okra.

There came a point where we passed through several steel doors that could only be opened by people who were behind bars or bullet-proof glass. I understood as I passed through these barriers that I was now incarcerated. Odd feeling. Kind of like being sent to the principal's office, only with the certainty of criminals near at hand.

Once inside, the Hamilton County Jail was a semi-airy, extremely rectilinear arrangement of grey metal bars and white floors and walls. It was maybe fifteen or twenty cells on one floor. The cells were separated only by bars, and the many-layered grey paint on them showed signs of extensive flaking over many decades, kind of like a battleship-colored puff pastry. The cells were each maybe eight feet by eight feet, with a cot, a small table, and a toilet. The tables were all bolted to the floor. There were no walls or partitions between the cells, just bars so you could see from one side of the floor to the other, if you stood in the right spot. From some positions the cell bars kind of stacked up and prevented a clear view. Only three or four of the cells were occupied.

The jailer showed me into my cell, which was adjacent to a cell occupied by a large black man who was lying on his cot, smoking on a cigarette and exhaling his smoke in a narrow stream that broke down into chaotic turbulence soon after it left his lips. He was studying the patterns of the curlicues of smoke like they meant something.

He looked familiar. I looked again as the cell door clanged shut behind me.

Ah, shit. It was Warren, who'd threatened to kill me in New Orleans.

“Warren,” I said. He was trouble on at least two levels. He looked at me and I could see the recognition in his eyes. He exhaled a long plume of blue smoke at the ceiling, about fifteen feet up.

“Name’s Wade, white boy,” he said.

Pause. Okay.

“There’s a guy looks a lot like you wanted to kill me in New Orleans for getting spaghetti sauce on his raincoat,” I said.

“Name’s Wade,” he said, without looking at me. “Got that, Henry?”

“Name’s Leon,” I said. He looked at me again, one eyebrow cocked.

Pause.

“Since when?” he asked.

“Since you became Wade.”

He looked at me through the cigarette smoke and thought things through. He’d done two life terms at Angola and was no doubt enrolled in his current institute of higher learning under a nom de plume because whatever crime he’d been arrested for violated the terms of one or more of his numerous paroles, and if the Hamilton County Sheriff managed to connect the dots he’d be back in Angola for several more years. It was logical to assume that he would be motivated to avoid this. Even if you are the toughest son of a bitch in the Valley of the Shadow of Death, it’s still a good idea to stay the Hell away from the whole damned Valley if you are a parolee who aspires to a life of ease and repose. If we’d been diplomats we might have recognized this as an opportunity for détente, but as it was, Wade/Warren was still trying to work it around to where he could fuck with me and I was make him reluctant to do so.

“What you playing, white boy?” he said.

“The name’s Leon, always has been,” I said. He frowned. “It was Leon back in New Orleans.”

Long pause.

“You must have a real strong reason for talkin' at me this way,” he said.

“Whatever my reason might be, I got no parole violations to worry about.”

He thought, scowling.

“So as long as you be Leon, we be cool?” he asked.

“Yep. And as long as I’m Leon, you’re Wade.” He didn’t like it because he didn’t like not being in charge. Across the aisle a skinny redneck with bad teeth and a shag hairdo stood up to make an announcement. Until then, I had thought his cell was empty. He cleared his throat ceremoniously.

“You girls have a harder time figuring out who’s who than any two jailbirds I ever saw,” he said.

Pause.

“That’s Sparky,” said Warren/Wade. “He’s in for grand theft auto. This time.”

“Naw, I ain’t,” said Sparky. “I’m in for petty larceny. If that heap had been worth $500 I’d be in Brushy Mountain. All I wanted was the starter motor anyway.” There was a tale here I figured I had thirty days to hear.

“How long is everybody in for?” I asked.

“A hundred and eighty days,” said Sparky. “I done 'bout half of it.” I looked at Warren/Wade.

“I got about two months left,” he said.

“Me, I’m in for thirty days for engaging in violent affray,” I said.

“Yeah. Violent affray,” Warren/Wade said. “Me, too. How’d you get off with just thirty days?”

“Don’t know. It just happened. It was twice what my lawyer expected.” Wade/Warren seemed to think some injustice had passed because I was going to be released before him, but wasn't interested in pursuing conversation. Over the next few weeks, my suspicion that Warren/Walt had been the victim of some kind of racial discrimination were assuaged somewhat by the story of his violent affray. He had taken the guns off of the first two cops that had been sent to arrest him, and the SWAT team had been called.

My thirty days of confinement passed excruciatingly slowly. I had nothing to read. There was no jail library. The only book available was the Bible, and that only on request. I requested one, which shocked the guard. The residents of my floor apparently weren't avid readers. It took them almost a full day to find one they were willing to give me, and as the jailer handed it to me, my old friend the Gideon, he had an odd instruction.

"Don't you set fire to this," he said.

"What?"

"You heard me--don't you set fire to this. That's the Good Book. The Word of the Lord Jesus. You set fire to it and I'll come in there and kick your ass and rebuke you in the name of Christ."

"I think I can live within your rules," I said. "Just out of curiosity, have you had a problem with Bible burning in the past?"

"Ain't never anybody asked for one before."

"Okay. Well thanks for the heads up," I said. He stormed away angrily.

Of course, having it wasn't much of an improvement, boredom-wise. Reading it was like refreshing my memory before a history test. I knew it all pretty well.

I asked repeatedly for something else, but the guards were convinced that the Bible would redeem my sorry character. I tried to convince them that I was already familiar with it, and they scoffed. I offered to submit to a Bible quiz, and they scoffed some more. After several days of this, one of them said he'd consider bringing another book if I would explain the Trinity.

"Well, that's not really in the Bible," I said.

"You're trying to get me to believe you know the Good Book, and you're trying to tell me that the Trinity isn't in the Bible?" he asked, using the tone of voice he might otherwise used to address the feeble-minded.

"It's not. I'm sorry but it's just not."

"How about the Lord's prayer, Ace?" he asked, with the self-confidence of a wise Baptist Sunday School teacher.

"It doesn't mention the Trinity at all," I said. "It appears in two places: in Matthew and again in Luke. Neither one mentions the Trinity. Trust me. Here, I'll look it up for you."

"It may not use the word Trinity, son, but it says 'in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, Amen.' And that's close enough for me," he said, shaking his head.

"But it doesn't say that," I protested. "In both books it ends '...and deliver us from evil. Amen,'" I said. "Here it is, look for yourself."

"Son, I have said that prayer every Sunday for at least the last fifty years. I just don't need you telling me what it says." He shook his head tiredly some more and turned to go. "I'd say you failed your little Scripture quiz," he said, walking back towards the guard station.

"If you'd just look," I called after him. He shook his head and started whistling "Onward Christian Soldiers," but couldn't quite get the tune right, so started it several times in different keys. He never found it.

"Boy, you sure showed him," said Warren/Wade, from his cloud of smoke.

About a week later, in the middle of my ninth recent re-reading of Deuteronomy, I called out “Has anybody got any cards?” in an anguished voice. That day the jail was mostly full, but I got no response for several minutes.

There were more residents between Saturday and Tuesday, as people made bail following their weekend arrests. Warren and Sparky were still there, and a few other longer-termers further down the aisle that were too far away for conversation. A few minutes later somebody way down towards the American National Bank end of the corridor yelled out he had some, but there wouldn’t be a way to play cards with him.

“What you wanna play?” asked Wade/Warren. He was lying on his back on his cot, smoking a cigarette. He never seemed to get bored.

“Gin. Poker. Anything.”

Pause. He blew a smoke ring. I tried to watch where it went, but couldn’t follow it. I had 23 days to go and was more bored that at any previous time in my life. The smoke ring disappeared against the ceiling.

Pause.

“In jail, we only play poker,” said Warren/Wade.

“Why’s that?” I asked.

“Because that’s the way it is,” he said.

“Okay, I play poker,” I said.

“It’s a gambling game,” he said.

“True enough.”

“What you gonna gamble wit’?” he asked.

“I dunno. I got nothing.”

“I noticed. None of us got no money on us, on account of we’re in jail, and you got no cigarettes,” he said. I don’t smoke, but that wasn’t his point. In the Hamilton County Jail, cigarettes were currency. I’d had no money when arrested and so couldn’t buy any at the commissary. Warren/Wade seemed to have an inexhaustible supply.

That seemed to end conversation for the nonce. Warren/Wade was still blowing smoke rings at the ceiling. They still didn’t bounce.

After a minute, I said “Yo, Wade.” He seemed not to hear.

“Wade,” I repeated. No response. “Yo. Large black tattooed bad-ass smoking Marlboros in the Chattanooga Jail.” He looked at me.

“You talking to me?” he asked.

“Yeah. ‘Wade,’ remember?”

“Oh, yeah, right. What you want?” he said. It was odd to have him actually look at me. He almost never did.

“I want to borrow some cigarettes.”

“Wha’ fo’?”

“To play poker.”

“Who you go’n’ play?” he asked.

“I don’t know. Skeeter. You. Zach. Any other inmate. I’m bored out of my fucking mind,” I said.

Across the aisle Sparky sat up on his bunk and swung his legs around to stand. He was missing half of his teeth and hadn’t washed his shag or shaved in days. An unfiltered Pall Mall dangled from his lips. He dusted himself off ceremoniously and drew himself to his full height. “If you were referring to me,” he said, “my name is Sparky, not Skeeter, thank you very much. All the Sparkies I’ve knowed have been arsonists, and all the Skeeters I’ve knowed have been annoying, so I’ll thank you to remember that. Second, we ‘uns in this cell block are not inmates we are prisoners. The only times I myself personally have been referred to as an inmate is when I was in prison. I am not in prison. I am in jail. I believe if you will inquire amongst the other prisoners you will find their experience accrues with mine.” He sat on his bunk and took a long drag off his cigarette.

“Thank you, Sparky, for that insight. Will you loan me some cigarettes?”

“What? Oh, fuck no," he said.

"Why not?"

"You got no way to pay me back,” he said.

“I’ll pay interest. Loan me ten, and I’ll pay you back twenty.”

“No, you won’t. And since you’re across the aisle, there ain’t no way for me to fuck with you after you don’t. If you was next door I could piss in your cell or throw shit on you when you were trying to sleep or something.” He became contemplative, thinking about the ways he could annoy me if we had adjoining cells. “You know, maybe set fire to your mattress, or bribe Joey down in the laundry to give you nothing but shirts next week. Or tell the guards you confessed that your real name is D.B. Cooper. Oh, I got it. I’ll tell the guards you got a little container of drugs you hide inside your ass, but it’s really small and really hard to find, but that when you want to you pull it out and sell cocaine to Walt. They’d look for that a good long time.”

“Are there no adverse consequences for lying to the sheriff?” I asked.

“Come again?”

“Assuming you tell the guards that I have drugs in my ass, and they go looking and don’t find any, don’t you get in trouble?”

“Oh, fuck no,” he said. “Aside from fights with guards it’s kindly hard to get in trouble in here.”

“Okay. So. Back to the cigarettes. Assume you can fuck with me in all the ways you described. So loan me some cigarettes,” I said.

“Oh, no. As I was sayin’, it’s real hard to fuck with somebody across the aisle. Besides, it wouldn’t help you if I did. Won’t nobody gamble with you for Pall Malls.”

“Why’s that?” I asked.

“Nobody but me smokes ‘em. If you’re gonna gamble and buy shit with your smokes you need to use Marlboros, Kools or Winstons. I got it," he said. "I could set that Bible on fire then tell Thumper 1 you been planning it all along. Or stop flushing my toilet for three or four days. That'd show you. But still I'd have to be in the next cell over to do any of that shit."

"The one about hiding drugs up my ass you could do from over there," I suggested.

"I'm telling you, won't do you any good. Won't nobody gamble with you for my cigarettes."

"Well, wouldn't you gamble for them?" I asked.

"No, sir, I do not gamble," he said. "Nor drink neither. My mama done raised me right."


“Wade, what do you smoke?” I asked. No response.

“Wade?’ No response.

“Goddammit, Wade, you thieving deckhand motherfucker, listen up,” I said.

“Oh, sorry white boy,” he said. “I keep forgetting.”

“You smoke Marlboros, right?” I asked.

“Marlboros, yeah,” he said. “I don’t really like ‘em. I like them Pall Malls like your arsonist buddy does, but won’t nobody trade nothin’ for ‘em. So I stick to ‘boros.”

“So loan me some cigarettes. I’ll pay interest.”

“Don’’ need no interest,” he said.

“What do you need?”

He stared at the ceiling. “Some relief,” he said.

“Excuse me?” Long pause.

“Here’s yo’ deal,” he said. “I been thinkin'. I give you a fresh pack o’ ‘boros. You got a hour, maybe two, to do whatever you wanna do. Gamble, make deals, whatever. It’s just now comin’ on three o’clock. If you ain’t paid me back twenty ‘boros by the time the guards bring up supper, you have to blow me.”

“Excuse me?”

He flipped an unopened pack of Marlboros onto my cot and said “I get twenty ‘boros back before dinner or you honk on my big black wing-wang.”

“I’m not gay,” I said.

“Not my problem,” he said.

“Really, I’m not,” I said.

“I could give a shit,” he answered. “I’m going to close my eyes and imagine you’re my first wife, anyway,” he said. “You could be Bozo the Clown for all I care.”

From across the aisle, Sparky cleared his throat. “Ahem. Um, Wade, you don’t really mean Bozo the Clown. The clown nose would get in the way of that particular activity.”

“Oh for Christ’s sake,” said Wade/Warren. “Sparky, do you think you can shut the fuck up for maybe twenty seconds?”

“Didn’t you kill your first wife with a hammer?” I asked.

“No, no, no, no,” he answered. “That was my second wife, Norelle. I’d’ve never did nothing like that to Angie. It would’ve been disrespectful. I loved her.”

“What happened to Angie?” I asked.

“I shot her,” he said. I cocked an eyebrow at him. “She done pissed me off,” he said. “But it’s not like I hit her with a hammer.

“Okay,” I said. “So the deal is, if I haven’t repaid your twenty cigarettes by the time they bring in the baloney sandwiches, I owe you a blowjob, is that about it?”

“I knew you was smart.”

“You ready to play cards right now?” I asked.

“Sure,” he said.

Sparky stood up again and cleared his throat. “May I say,” he said, looking directly at me, “Jack Wrangler you ain’t,” and sat back down.

“Does that make any sense to you?” I asked Warren/Wade.

“Naw. Most of what Sparky say is crazy,” he said.

Taking this bet may sound like a like a difficult calculation, but it wasn’t. Cards is all math, and whether to play cards is all math, too, if you have enough accurate information. Warren was the source for Marlboros on our cell block, and if I’d played against anyone else I’d have gotten a mix of Kools, Winstons and Marlboros, which would dilute my chances of paying Wade/Warren back his twenty Marlboros before the baloney sandwiches showed up. If I played Warren/Wade, I’d be playing in all Marlboros, so it was win or lose straight up. No dilution of currency. Also, playing Wade/Warren, I’d be playing a man who had done two life terms at Angola and at least one indeterminate term in Hamilton County, so we could assume a certain lack of impulse control was part of his nature. Impulsive men are terrible gamblers. My chances looked good.

Still, it was an odd bet.

I shellacked him. He tried to bail out when I was nineteen ahead but the other prisoners started throwing crap at him and yelling at him for being a sore loser, so he played a few more hands.

Then, he and I played cards most of every day for the rest of my sentence. I taught him gin and he taught me every possible variation of poker . The day before I got out he asked me a question.

“So you learn anything in here?” he asked.

“Yeah, sure.”

“Like what?” he asked.

I shrugged. “How to bet on Acey-Deucey. That the best thing on the lunch plate is the cottage cheese, so don’t trade it to Rooster for two Winstons or one Kool. Strange-looking grown men will pay for hand-jobs in cigarettes, which they’re getting from other strange-looking men.”

“You worry about that too much,” Said Warren/Wade.

“What? Situational sexuality?”

“What?” he asked. We were playing gin, and I had figured out from his draws that he was playing for threes and jacks and something else I hadn’t picked up on, and I had a jack as my last discard, so I couldn’t knock, and it looked like he couldn’t win without me.

“As I understand it, situational sexuality is engaging in homosexual sex when heterosexual sex is unavailable,” I said.

He shook his head. “That’s just bein’on the down low,” he said. “If you like gettin’ it sucked, it don’t really matter who’s sucking. Just close your eyes.”

“Your imagination may be better than mine.”

“Yeah, maybe. One thing I figured out that you ain’t,” said Wade/Warren.

“What’s that?” I said, drawing the four I needed. “Gin,” I said, discarding the jack and showing my cards.

“Well, shit,” said Warren/Wade. I caught him with a bunch of points in his hand. He was the kind of card player who believes he can draw inside on a straight. He started laying down his cards and figuring out how many points were involved.

“So what is it you’ve figured out that I haven’t?” I asked.

“Take your money out before you ditch your wallet,” he answered.

“Good point. Let me ask you something,” I said. “If you’d been out of money and I’d offered you the deal of twenty cigarettes with a blowjob as collateral, would you have taken the bet?”

“Fuck no. What do you think I am, a homo?”

They let me out two days later. Mrs. W came to pick me up.

Chapter 9: My First Court Appearance

The next morning a fat and unpleasant man of about forty in a sheriff’s uniform with sergeant’s stripes walked me down a series of hallways that would give Icarus a headache. The reason I was given was that I had requested to meet with the public defender in advance of my arraignment.

“I don’t want to meet with the p.d.,” I said. “I have my own lawyer.”

“Then why did you request a meeting with the p.d?” asked Sgt. York.

“I didn’t. The intake officer told me I could call my lawyer, but I told her I wanted to call somebody else, and I wanted to wait ‘til the morning so I wouldn’t wake anybody up.’

“What time was this?” he asked.

“Not sure. Lost my watch. But after midnight.”

“Who did you want to call?”

“An old friend of mine. She’ll know how to get in touch with my lawyer, and she can help me out in other ways, too.”

“And Intake wouldn’t let you do that?” he asked.

“No. She got all mad and me when I told her who I wanted to call.”

“Do you happen to remember the name of the admitting officer?” he asked.

“Dot.” He glanced around without looking at me as though he now had an explanation for something he hadn’t previously understood. We had arrived at a grey steel door. He fished in his pocket and retrieved seven loose keys and two loose coins. He peered at the keys for a minute, then selected one and unlocked the door. We stepped into a fluorescent-lit room with concrete block walls painted the exact color of Crest toothpaste.

“So now you got an appointment with the p.d. Explain it, and he can explain it to the magistrate. They’ll sort it out. Your lawyer will come through that door in about three minutes. I have to wait with you here until he comes. Mind if I smoke?”

I didn’t, and just as promised, three minutes later, another cueball-shaped man opened the door that had been specified and stepped in, a stack of files under his arm. “Hi, Mike,” he said to the sergeant.

“Hi, Dick,” said the lawyer. They gave each other a brief, manly hug.

“Hey—we’re brothers. I love this guy,” said the lawyer. “Okay, bubba, better leave me alone with this miscreant.”

The sergeant left and the lawyer sat down at a steel chair in front of a formica table like my grandmother had in her kitchen. “Okay, champ. So what do we got?”

“What was that with the sergeant?” I asked.

“He’s my brother. He got me this job. Love him to death. He raised me after Mom died.”

“Got it. And it doesn’t ever cause friction at family functions that you’re on opposite sides of the law, as it were?” I asked.

“Oh, Hell, no,” he said. “He knows there’s nothing I wouldn’t do for him. Plus, I’ve applied for a job with the DA’s office, and they tell me that I’ll get hired as soon as Beville quits.”

“Okay, well, sorry for the confusion, and thanks for looking in, but I already have a lawyer.”

“Oh, yeah? Where is he? And why did you ask to meet with me?”

“I didn’t. I told the intake officer that I wanted to call somebody other than my lawyer first, and she misunderstood, and set all this up over my objection.”

“Who was on intake last night?” he asked.

“Dot,” I said.

“Hmmm.” He thought a few seconds. “Who’s your lawyer?” he asked. “I’ll call him for you.”

“I really want to talk to Mrs. Wertheimer first,” I said.

“Who’s she?”

“An old friend. A high school teacher.”

“What did she teach?” he asked. Why are people so curious about this kind of thing? What could it possibly matter what she taught?

“Algebra and Geometry,” I said.

“So you want to call your Algebra teacher instead of your lawyer.”

“You got it,” I said.

“Why?”

“I’d prefer not to say,” I answered.

“Look, you don’t have to worry about talking to me. Everything you say to me is protected by the attorney-client privilege. That’s a very serious obligation,” he said, quite earnestly.

“I’m not sure if that would work if I don’t hire you as my lawyer, which I didn’t.”

“Yeah, sure it would,” he said. “I’m pretty sure that pretty much any far-out thing you tell me in this kind of context, where I’m giving you legal advice and all, would be privileged. It has to be. I think.”

“Thanks, but I still think I’d like to wait to discuss it with my regular lawyer.”

“But you don’t want me to call him?”

“No, I want to talk to Mrs. Wertheimer first.”

“Your Algebra teacher.”

“Yes,” I said.

“Okay, well, I’ll explain to the magistrate and see what he says,” he said. He rose and shook my hand, and with that Sgt. York’s brother left.

May I comment without overstressing the issue that spending an hour alone in a Crest-toothpaste-colored room that reeks of cigarette smoke with absolutely nothing to do, nothing to read, and no one to talk to can give rise to near-hallucinatory levels of boredom. Nevertheless, at what I presume to be a few minutes before10:00 a.m. Sgt. York returned and said it was time to take me to the courtroom. The drab, linoleumed halls ended at a varnished wooden door that opened to the court.

It was a picturesque and light courtroom, with a high ceiling and high windows, and dark wood paneling on the walls. Inherit the Wind could have been shot there.

I was shepherded into the jury box with six other young men about my age and a man in his mid-forties who smelled strongly of urine. Several of the younger men smelled of vomit, sothe jury box was strongly-aromaed. In a few minutes a man in his fifties, balding, in a black robe, opened a door behind the bench and stepped in. The bailiff stood and said “All rise,” at which we all stood, then he said “Oyez, oyez. The Magistrate’s Court for Hamilton County, Criminal Division, Superior Court Judge Pinto presiding, is now in session. All be seated and come to order.” We all sat down and the judge took his seat. Public defender York and the man I presumed was the prosecutor exchanged troubled glances. The judge didn’t notice.

“People v. Sharpe?” he called out. The clerk made a note, and one of the young men who smelled like vomit stood.

After exchanging another worried look with Mr. York, the man I presumed was the prosecutor stood up. “Your honor, I must admit we’re surprised to see you here.”

“Hello, Mr. Clydesdale,” said the judge. “Magistrate Arabian is under the weather, so he called me and asked if I could sit in for him.”

“Your honor, we’re not used to seeing Superior Court judges in magistrate session,” said the prosecutor.

“Ah. I see. This is perfectly legal and you need not worry. Judges of superior jurisdiction can sit for judges of inferior jurisdiction, and it’s perfectly legal. If Magistrate Arabian were to come and sit for me in the Superior Court on Wednesday, that might cause problems, but this is proper. Are we okay?”

“Yes, sir,” said prosecutor Clydesdale. He and York both looked down. They were accustomed to dealing with the magistrate who usually appeared in this court, and now they had to deal with someone else. “Your honor, with all due respect….” he said. Wow. What a moron. “Your honor, we think of you as a civil court judge,” said Clydesdale.

“Counsel, I am a Superior Court judge of Hamilton County and I have jurisdiction over this court. Do you have any further questions?” He had this long-ish mane of white hair and was wearing Elvis-style glasses that were clear at the bottom and shaded at the top.

“No sir, your honor.”

“People v. Trotsky,” he said. I stood up, the prosecutor sat down, York remained standing, and Sharpe, who still smelled like vomit, sat down. He seemed to have low expectations and extensive experience with chaotic environments.

“Um, your honor, this is an odd one. Mr. Trotsky has a lawyer, but hasn’t called him yet because of a misunderstanding with the officer on intake last night. He wants to make a phone call to one of his high school teachers, who will then, presumably, make the call to the lawyer. I offered to call the lawyer for him, but he refused this offer, for reasons he could not explain.” I’m not a lawyer, but everything he said struck me as too much information.

The judge peered through the shaded part of his glasses at me. “You’re Trotsky?” he asked.

“Yes, sir,” I answered.

“And you don’t want to call a lawyer, you want to call a teacher?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Why didn’t you call your teacher last night? Why are you wasting my time with this?” he asked.

“I wanted to, but apparently the intake officer thought I was making a joke, or something,” I said.

“Who was on intake last night?” he asked the prosecutor.

He stood to answer the question. “Dot,” he said.

The judge nodded. “I see,” he said.

“And you want to call a history teacher?” asked Judge Pinto.

“Geometry,” I answered. His eyes clouded and he frowned at me.

“What are you saying?” he asked.

“Mrs. Wertheimer was my Geometry teacher,” I said.

“Margaret Wertheimer? He asked.

“Yes, sir.” I never called her by her first name and just didn’t think of her that familiarly, but her name had been all over those legal documents Mr. Morgan had drawn up.

“Well, why didn’t you say so? Counsel, we’ll continue this one over to the 1:00 call. Mr. Trotsky can call Mrs. Wertheimer in the mean time and make whatever arrangements he needs to make.”

“Thank you, your honor.” I sat back down.

The call to Mrs. W was a little odd. She picked up on the second ring.

“Hello, Mrs. W, this is Mr. Trotsky,” I said.

“Is it?” she answered, not sure what was going on. “Am I mistaken, or do you sound very much like a friend of mine who was once a pupil?”

“You are not mistaken.”

“And yet your name is Mr. Trotsky,” she said. I could hear her taking a drag off of her cigarette.

“Yes. This is partly due to the fact that I am calling from the Hamilton County Jail.”

“Are you now?” she asked. There was a pause while she considered this. “Did your arrest have anything to do with gambling?”

“Not really. I broke up a fight, sort of. I hit a policeman’s son in the course of doing so.”

“Okay. So what can I do?” she asked.

“You can call Mr. Morgan for me and explain to him about how he needs to look for Mr. Trotsky. If all I owe is a fine, you can help me pay it. I have been separated from my wallet.”

“Oh, I see,” she said, voice brightening. “You didn’t have your wallet when you were arrested and so felt free to exercise your imagination.”

“Since you’re not a lawyer, do you think the cops can listen in on this call?” I asked. I could hear her flick the Zippo over the line.

“Maybe,” she said. “I’ll get Atchley to come on down. What time’s the hearing?”

“One,” I answered. “If I understood what they were saying. By the way, do you know Judge Morgan? He seemed to know your name.”

“Ed Morgan? Sure. He was in my geometry class. During the War. Pretty bright, but mainly really persistent. A little paranoid about the Red Menace. Look, I’ll come down and be ready to bail you or pay a fine or whatnot, but for a drifter with no i.d. who was involved in a violent affray, I’m guessing you’re looking at some jail time,” she said.

Ah, shit.

“All right, Mrs. W. Thanks for the help.”

An hour or so later, Mr. Morgan showed up, in suit and tie. I was waiting in the Crest toothpaste room, which still smelled like cigarette smoke.

“So, Mr. Trotsky, is it?” he asked.

“Yes. Thanks for coming.”

“As a lawyer, I need to tell you something about my professional responsibilities,” he said. “All lawyers owe a duty of candor to the tribunal.”

“Meaning,” I said.

“I can’t knowingly mislead the judge,” he said.

“No shit?” I asked.

“None,” he answered.

“You can’t lie in court?”

“I can’t lie to the judge.”

“Then what is it I see on t.v. all the time? Lawyers making up stories to let their clients get away with murder and all that.”

“We do not actually practice law like they do on t.v.,” he said. “Placing the known facts in the best possible light is one thing. Standing before a judge I have known for twenty years and telling him someone I know to be known as Baida is in fact Trotsky is something else.”

“So you can’t help me?” I asked.

“Yes, I can help, but I must be very careful. Why was it necessary to use a pseudonym? What did you do?”

I explained the fight. “Then, one of the patrons told me that this kind of fight happened a lot there, and that because the guy I fought with’s father was a captain with the sheriff’s department, I was probably going to be arrested. I’d just as soon not have a police record, so I hid my wallet and tried to get away. They caught me, so I used an assumed name.”

“Mr. … Trotsky, there are all kinds of other things they can charge you with if they figure out who you are. This is a very risky thing you’re doing.”

“I know all that, but I’m pretty good with odds. From what I hear, court proceedings go on and on, and I’ll be dealing with this for months, is that right?” I asked.

“Well, yeah,” he said with a shrug. “Adjudication isn’t a speedy process. Nor should it be.”

“Okay, I want to speedy it up. What would happen to me if I just pleaded guilty?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “Maybe a fine of a thousand dollars. Maybe a couple weeks in jail. Why would you do that? Most of the time in an assault case, you can show you were acting in self-defense and get it busted down to a misdemeanor battery and time served.”

“But I’d have to hang around, or be back here every few weeks for arraignments and shit,” I said.

“There would need to be a certain amount of involvement with the judicial process, yes,” he said.

“Let’s just plead guilty and I’ll pay or serve and we’ll be done.” He didn’t like it. He was averse to having a client in jail, which is actually a pretty good quality in a lawyer. He sat for a minute and thought morosely.

“All right. I’ll go see what I can work out with the prosecutor.” He stood and left, and again I was left alone in the Crest toothpaste room with nothing to read. There was no paper, no pencil. Seven chairs and two tables. I re-counted the concrete blocks in each wall, and calculated the number of tiles in the ceiling. After seven years had passed, Sgt. York slammed the door open.

“Okay, pal, you’re up.” He led me into the courtroom, where I found the judge on the bench, Morgan to my left, and Clydesdale, the prosecutor, to the right. As I passed through the courtroom, I noticed Mrs. W, sitting on the back bench, smoking a cigarette. I was shown to a chair next to Morgan.

I sat. The judge looked at me sternly. “How is Mrs. Wertheimer?” he asked.

“She’s fine. Very helpful, as always.”

“I haven’t seen her since I graduated from City High forty years ago,” he said. Best teacher I ever had.” I resisted the temptation to point her out. I figured she’d wave if she wanted to catch up with him. “They tell me you want to waive arraignment and enter a plea, Mr. Trotsky,” he said. “Is that true?”

“I’m not sure what arraignment is, but I did tell Mr. Morgan that I wanted to plead guilty.”

“And why is that?”

“I move around a lot. I’d just as soon get the sentence done and be over with this, rather than have to come back for court appearances and trials and such,” I said. “Your honor,” I added, as an afterthought.

Judge Morgan looked at me and pondered things a minute.

“Were you to go to trial, from what court personnel are telling me, it is possible or even likely that the accusing witness, Mr. Reed, would fail to show up, in which case the charges against you might be dismissed,” the judge said.

That sounded just. Of course, if anybody asked around at that bar, a district attorney’s investigator, for example, he or she would learn that I was known there as Henry, and somebody would turn out to know my last name, which would lead to awkward questions. Best avoid it.

I looked at Morgan. What d I do? He stood.

“I think, your honor, that my client has thought this over and is ready to enter his plea. He is also ready to wave his right to a pre-sentencing probation report and be sentenced today.”

“Mr. Trotsky, you understand that regardless of whatever discussions Mr. Morgan has had with the prosecutor, I will sentence you as I see fit?”

“Yes, sir,” I said.

“All right, then. Do you wish to enter a plea to the charge of voluntarily engaging in a violent affray?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And how do you plead?”

“Guilty, your honor,” I said.

“Plea accepted.” The lawyers looked at each other nervously, and I got the impression that the judge was supposed to have done something he failed to do. Nobody said anything.

The judge looked at his stack of papers through the unshaded part of his Elvis glasses. He cleared his throat and spoke in a loud voice. “In the case of the prisoner Leon Trotsky, which the court has every reason to believe an assumed name, the court has considered and rejected the plea suggested by the attorneys in the case, and instead imposes a sentence of thirty days in the county jail, commencing upon his admission at intake last night. Bailiff, deliver him to the jailer.” He rapped his gavel, we all stood, and he left.

Morgan turned towards me with a half grin.

“I thought you said two weeks or a thousand bucks,” I said.

“You never told me your first name was Leon,” he said. “Ed Morgan hates commies.”

Sgt. York led me away to the prison elevator. “Did you get fucked or what?” he said, shaking his head and lighting a cigarette.