The spinster, who turned out to be Uva Clot and was infinitely older than he had thought when he’d first spotted her in the distant darkness, approached his Cadillac, wrote down his plate number, and started yelling for help. As Reverend Justice sped away, the police were on his butt with their sirens screaming and lights throbbing like his head.
“So, what you in for?” the reverend asked the dark area of the cell where Trader filled up the bed like a huge sack of potatoes.
“I’m a pirate, ” Trader said in an ugly tone.
“Lord protect us all!” the reverend exclaimed in shock. “You ain’t one of them pirates that beat on that poor truck driver and stolt all his pumpkins, I sure hope?”
“None of your business!”
“Lord help us!”
“And I take pleasure in harming small animals, ” Trader added, for he knew enough about psychopaths to be aware that all of them began their monstrous lives of violent crime by tormenting helpless creatures.
He, for example, had never felt a hint of remorse when he’d torched the crab plantation, murdering mothers and little babies and other molting crabs who were temporarily without their protective shells. He didn’t care a bit about the bateaus that had burned up, and it wouldn’t have bothered him at all if Hilda’s Chesapeake House had gone up in flames or if most of Tangier Island had. Nor had his peace of mind been disturbed when he had set up Hammer’s Boston terrier to be stolen by Smoke and his ruthless road dogs. Trader hoped Popeye had long since been put to a cruel end. It would serve that bitch-superintendent right.
“Whoa, ” Stick’s disapproving voice sounded in the dark cell. “That one thing I never done and never would. I think we should drown him in the toilet, ” he said to the others. “Two of us hold him and whoever’s hands is free can shove his head in. ”
“Someone run over my puppy when I was still in the eighth grade. ” Slim Jim sounded sad and upset. “I never did get over that, and the asshole who done it didn’t even stop. ”
“What’chu mean, still in the eighth grade?” Snitch was curious as he sat up in bed and shoved the pillow against cinderblock to support his cramping back.
“You know, I just couldn’t get out, ” Slim Jim replied. “Kinda like this place, you know? Every year, they said I had to repeat the eighth grade, all ’cause of that Mrs. Knock, my homeroom teacher. ”
“Bet they was all kinds of knock-knock jokes flying around the eighth grade, ” Stick observed.
“Un huh. That was one of the things that pissed her off, ” Slim Jim replied as he drifted back to that frustrating time in his failed life. “Knock-knock?”
He waited for a response from his cellmates. Finally the reverend caught on.
“Who’s there?” he asked.
“Shut up! “Trader blurted out in disgust.
“Shut up, who?” the reverend asked, relieved that a distraction had presented itself.
“Shut up the fucking pirate in the toilet bowl and flush his fucking brains out!”
“Yeah, how I know it wasn’t you who run over my puppy?” Slim Jim accused Trader’s bed.
“Because, for one thing, ” Trader’s voice coldly replied, “it is highly unlikely I frequented your trashy neighborhood. No doubt you lived in federally subsidized housing and spent all of your time on the street eating free cheese and wearing stolen sneakers. ”
“You dis me one more time, ” Slim Jim threatened, “and I’m coming over there and popping you in the head before I stick it in the toilet and flush your soul to the sewer where it belong!”
“Please!” the reverend protested. “This is a time to pray for forgiveness and seek peace and love thy neighbor as thyself!”
“Ain’t never loved myself, ” Snitch admitted, getting morose.
“Me, neither, ” Slim Jim said sadly. “When my puppy got smashed in the road right in front of me, I quit loving myself. I ‘cided never to love nothing again after that, ’cause if you love something, look what happens. ”
“Tell it, ” Stick chimed in.