The gate swung open and we passed through. Once we were inside the fence, he honked the horn and the gate swung shut behind us. We pulled into a paved stretch enclosed by a chain-link fence. The whole area blazed with lights, the rain creating a misty aureole around each flood. A county sheriff’s car had pulled in just ahead of us, and we waited in silence until the deputy was admitted with his prisoner, a vagrant who was visibly drunk and much in need of assistance.
Once they’d disappeared, Kip shut the engine off and got out. He opened the rear door on my side and helped me out, a clumsy procedure with my hands cuffed behind my back. “You gonna behave yourself?” he asked.
“No problem. I’m fine.”
He must not have trusted me because he continued to hold on to my arm, walking me around to Bibianna’s side of the car. He opened the door and helped her out of the backseat and then walked us toward the gate. A female jail officer came out to assist him. The rain was constant, unpleasant, a chill assault on my body, which was already trembling with accumulated tensions. Never had I so longed for a hot shower, dry clothes, my own bed. Bibianna’s dark hair was plastered to her head in long dripping strands, but it didn’t seem to bother her. All the earlier hostility had faded, replaced by a curious complaisance.
Reception at the county jail is approached through an exterior corridor of chain-link fencing that resembles a dog run. We were buzzed in, passing yet another checkpoint complete with electronic locks and cameras. Kip walked us along the passage, raindrops splashing up around us as our heels tapped across the wet pavement. “You know the routine?” he asked.
“Yeah, yeah, yeah. It’s all the same, stud,” Bibianna said.
“Let’s make that ‘Officer.’ Can we do that?” he said dryly. “I take it you’re an old hand at this.”
“You got that right … Officer Stud,” she said.
He decided to let it pass. I kept my mouth shut. I knew the drill from the old days in uniform. It was odd how differently I perceived the whole process now that I was the perp.
We reached a metal door. Kip pushed a button, announcing once more that he was bringing in two of us. We waited while the cameras inspected us. I’ve seen the big console where the MCR operator sits, surrounded by black-and-white monitors showing the equivalent of twelve totally boring Andy Warhol movies simultaneously. The operator buzzed us in. In silence, we walked down one corridor and then turned into a second, emerging eventually into the reception area where the male prisoners are booked in. I was hoping to see Tate, but he’d apparently been processed and taken to a cell. The vagrant, weaving on his feet, was emptying the pockets of his ragged sport coat. I knew him by sight, one of the town’s perennial characters. Most afternoons he hung out around the courthouse having heated arguments with an unseen companion. His invisible chum was still giving him a hard time. The booking officer behind the desk waited with benign patience. I knew the deputy, too, though I couldn’t remember his name. Foley, maybe. Something like that. I wasn’t close enough to read his name tag and I didn’t want to call attention to myself by squinting at his chest.
I turned my head, staring off to the left to avoid any visual contact. It had been a good ten years since I’d last seen the guy, but I didn’t want to chance his recognizing me, blowing the cover I’d set up. I probably flatter myself.
I looked as respectable as the bum they were booking. I fancied I smelled better, but perhaps not. I’ve noticed that most of us don’t have a clue what we smell like to other people. It’s almost as though our noses blank us out in self-defense.
Kip buzzed at yet another locked door, and after a brief wait another female jail officer emerged from the women’s side. Bibianna and I had our pictures taken in the kind of booth you see in Woolworth’s, a sorry strip of poses appearing moments later in the outside slot. In mine, I looked like a suspect in a teen pomo ring, the kind of woman who’d lure the young girls with glib promises of modeling gigs. We moved into the women’s booking area, where we approached a row of holding cells. I went into the first and Bibianna the second. The officer with me did a quick pat-down and then removed the handcuffs.
“Lean up against the wall,” she said. Her tone wasn’t unfriendly, but it was devoid of real warmth. And why not? I was just one more in an endless stream of jailbirds as far as she knew.
I faced the wall, arms straight out in front of me, leaning my weight on my hands, which were spaced about four feet apart. She did a second, more thorough, pat-down, making sure I didn’t have any tiny lethal weapons concealed in my hair. She allowed me to take a seat on a bench along the wall while the proper papers were assembled at the counter to my right. When the booking officer was ready, I emptied my pockets, passing my phony driver’s license, my keys, my watch, my belt, and my scruffy shoes through the window slot. There was something pathetic about the sight of my personal possessions, which were not only meager, but cheap as well. We began to go through the catechism that accompanies the loss of freedom. Personal data. Medical.
Employment. I said I was out of work, claiming “waitress” as my occupation. We went through the litany of facility and arrest data. I was being charged with assault, a misdemeanor, and battery on a police officer, which is a felony with a five-thousand-dollar bail attached. I assumed Bibianna was being booked on similar charges. I was offered the chance to post bail, but I declined, operating on the premise that Bibianna would do likewise. All I needed was to be stuck in jail while she found a way to get herself bailed out. I kept waiting for the booking officer to realize that my driver’s license was a fake, but she didn’t seem to notice. My few pieces of personal property were itemized and placed in a clear plastic boiling pouch, like a Seal-A-Meal. The whole procedure took about fifteen minutes and left me feeling unsettled. Oddly enough, I didn’t feel humiliated so much as I felt misunderstood. I wanted to assert myself, wanted to assure them that I wasn’t what I appeared to be, that I was really a decent, law-abiding citizen … on their team, in effect.
The booking officer completed her process. “You want to make any calls, there’s a pay phone in the next cell.”
“I can’t think who I’d call anyway,” I said, absurdly grateful that everyone was so polite. What had I expected, curses and abuse?
Padding along in my sock feet, I was taken down the corridor to the ID bureau to be fingerprinted. A second set of photographs were taken, front and profile this time. At this rate, I could put together a little album for Mother’s Day. It was 2:13 A.M. by the time I was escorted to the drunk tank, a cell maybe fifteen by fifteen feet. A skinny white woman, with her back turned, slept on a mattress in the far comer of the room. There were no outside windows. The entire front wall was barred, with a lidless commode tucked into an alcove on the right. I’ve seen cells where the toilet seats are removed as well. I had to guess we were being trusted not to try to hang ourselves with this one. The floor was beige vinyl tile, the walls painted cinder block. There was a built-in bench running the width of the room with some one-inch mattresses rolled up and arranged haphazardly against the wall. I snagged one for myself and spread it out on the floor.
Bibianna arrived moments later, along with two other prisoners, a black woman and a weeping white girl in formal dress.
“Hey, Hannah,” Bibianna said. “Old home week. This is Nettie.” She turned to the second woman. “What’s your name, babycakes?”
“Heather.”
Bibianna said, “Heather, this is Hannah.”
“Nice to meet you,” I murmured dutifully. I didn’t have a clue about jailhouse etiquette. The skinny woman in the far corner stirred restlessly in her sleep.
Bibianna pulled a mattress off the bench and dragged it over toward me. “Nettie and me did a little county time about a month ago, right?” No response.
Nettie, the black woman, looked to be in her late thirties. She was tall, with broad shoulders and breasts the size of torpedoes. Her hair was big and brushed over to the right, where the bulk of it stuck out stiffly as if blown by a hard wind. The black strands had a gray cast from all the split ends. She wore blue jeans, an oversize white T-shirt, and white crew socks. Bibianna arranged her mattress beside mine and took a seat, watching Nettie with respect. “She was charged with ‘attempt to inflict bodily injury’ and ‘assault with a deadly weapon.’ She attacked a wino with an uprooted palm tree. I guess it was a little one, but can you believe that?”