Jim Kane - J P S Brown (56 page)

"
If it were easy for me to pay, I would pay it.
It is not possible because I have neither the money nor the lack of
principle to pay it. How much would pay his bills?"

"
Only six thousand pesos. Four hundred eighty
dollars American money. "

"I am sorry it cost him so much."

"
He has bad damage to his mouth. His leg is
broken. Also he lost a good shirt torn in the fight. "

"
I can't even pay for the shirt."

"
Then you won't consider paying?"

"
Absolutely not. I am happy he retains the
privilege. I could not have hoped my
chingazo
brought him so much fine trouble."

"
Correcto
," the
Ministerio Público said with crisp finality. "Will you come
with me, please?"

Kane followed him back to the police station.

"Wi11 you take this man to his hotel?" the
Ministerio asked the two police who had brought in the unfortunate
huarachudo
. The police
walked outside with Kane. The Lion was sitting on the fender of the
Ford talking to two plainclothes police, probably the two secrets who
had wasted all their time skulking after Kane.

"
I have my car here," Kane said to the
uniformed police who accompanied him. "I'll go back to my hotel
in my car."

"
We'll take you," one of the escorts said
and they got on each side of Kane, bracketing him on a path to their
car.

"
¡Ah jodido!
"
the Lion said and he watched the police load Kane in the caged back
seat of the squad car. The police drove the car in the direction
opposite Teresita's restaurant.

The Bastille-like jail with its high walls and corner
towers was in the village of Ladrillera outside Rio Alamos. Kane was
led into an anteroom where a cheerful guard allowed him to empty his
own pockets and put the contents into a manila envelope. The guard
then misspelled Kane's name on the envelope and locked it away in a
steel cabinet. He then manipulated his keys with great verve and led
Kane through the first steel door, swung it shut, asked Kane to
precede him down a concrete corridor, through another steel door, to
a squat building in the center of a courtyard. The special place the
guard had for Kane was in this building. This was the bullpen, the
tank where the weekend drunks and brawlers were drying out and
cooling off. The guard shook the keys musically in his hand, chose a
key, opened the barred door, good-naturedly showed Kane the way in,
and banged the gate behind Kane without telling him how long he was
to be in there.

The bullpen was a square, concrete, low-ceilinged
room with no windows and no furniture. Twenty men were in the pen
besides Kane. Nearly everyone in the place was hungover and each of
the hangovers had his turn being sick at one of the two seatless and
waterless toilet bowls at the end of the pen opposite the door. The
wash basin taps gave no water. The hangovers needed water for their
morning-after thirsts. Kane was not hungover or thirsty but he was
giddy from the drinks of so long ago the night before and the
absolute sleeplessness.

"
Absolutely not," he remembered telling the
Ministerio Público.

Kane recognized the pugnacious queer Juan Vogel had
unmasked at the dance of the mascaritas in Old Town the night Kane
had arrived in Rio Alamos. This queer was short and slight in build
with a heavy beard and plucked eyebrows. He paced barefoot up and
down the length of the bullpen, his hand on one hip. This was the
hand with the painted fingernails. Once in a while he would go to a
bowl and throw up. Then he would continue his promenade, his
expression unaffected by the ravages of his throwing up. Periodically
he would check his
paseo
at
the bars of the door to the pen and inquire politely, quietly, but
with much perseverance, for a drink of water. He would put his
forehead to the bars, stick his nose through the bars, gaze down the
side of the building, and when he saw a movement of someone in the
courtyard would utter quietly, "Ssssst, ssssst, agua. We have no
water. Sssssssst, sssssssssst, ssst. " Not achieving a response,
he would gaze another long moment and then resume his promenade,
speaking to no one, noticing none around him, with one plucked
eyebrow raised.

The pugnacious queens partner in crime, the one who
had been accompanying him when he had been caught breaking the law,
was a tall, well-built queer who was evidently not
crudo
,
rawly hungover, nor thirsty. The tall queer was busy putting on his
face. He lounged on his pallet of blankets, arching his arches and
keeping his bare toes pointed while he daubed a blue cream on his
face with one hand and held a small mirror daintly to his face with
the other. His hair, which he was careful not to muss as he probably
had not the tools or concoctions to care properly for it in jail, was
done up high and well lacuered in a wild-beehive-like, nest on top of
his head. He told another prisoner conversationally the blue cream
was for removing his whiskers.

One of the wheels of the bullpen was a lightweight
professional fighter called the Combustible Kid. He was serving two
years for burglary. He rated a private room off the courtyard but was
well-liked by the guards and the mayor's son and so was allowed his
preference of staying in the bullpen for the companionship it offered
him. Kid Combustible's chest, back, arms, hands, and abdomen were
covered with tattoos. He was telling the other wheel of the bullpen,
a tall, narrow shouldered, potbellied, spindly-legged, blue-eyed
Indian about the brief-day's respite the Kid had enjoyed in town the
day before.

The mayor's son had needed the Kid in order to settle
an account with a citizen of the town. He had promised the Kid the
day off and supper and a movie in town if the Kid would help him
settle the account. The mayor's son wanted the citizen pasted in the
mouth.

The Kid had rapped on the citizen's door at
suppertime. "Telegram for Señor Fulano," he had called.
Señor Fulano came to the door chewing on a bite of his supper and
the Combustible Kid hit him and the bite stuck on the porch ceiling.
After the Kid's supper and movie the mayor's son had taken the Kid
back to jail altogether satisfied with the account. The Kid's scarred
face was contented as he told the story of his Sunday outing.

The Combustible Kid and the tall, blue-eyed Indian
kept the bullpen very much in order. They supervised the morning
sweeping and the arranging of the pallets. They had their pallets
spread next to those of the queers. Everyone else in the bullpen
except a reserved, very noble-looking, quiet, young Indian, was
either too old, too young, too senile from wine and age, too idiotic,
dissipated, unconcerned, too hungover, or lacking the will to have
any force in the bullpen. Anyone that had cigarettes or received
extra food from outside always offered some of the booty to the
wheels before partaking themselves, showing an inclination to keep
the brains and the power of Blue Eyes and the Kid on their side. In
order to keep this balance of power Blue Eyes and the Kid befriended
Kane since Kane was bigger than they were by at least fifty pounds
and they knew Kane was in there for fighting and they had no idea how
long he would be in there. Neither did Kane. He also wanted to be
friends. "Absolutely not," he had told the Ministerio
Público loftily.

The two wheels were also in control of the bullpen's
social betterment program. They joked with the queers and the
feeble-minded without bullying them, making it clear to the community
that these lowest companions were also human and had equal rights in
the bullpen. They advised the hang-overs about what they could do
under the cell's meager facilities to relieve their aches and carried
water to those who were too weak to get up when the water ration was
brought in by the guards. A gallon of water disappeared like a drop
of sweat in hell. The Kid and Blue Eyes saved their cigarette butts
for those who had no means of getting their own tobacco. They were
respectful and compliant to the feeble, old, and demented.

The guards, knowing the extreme thirst of their
charges, drank cold, giant Cokes outside the bullpen door. They hoped
in their warm hearts that the thirsty prisoners would thus, to a
small extent, vicariously find relief The guards saluted each other
before the bars of the door, clinked the full bottles together,
crooked their little fingers on the bottles, and sipped Coke
unctuously. The Combustible Kid told Kane that Kane could tip the
guards and extend to them the correct submissive tone and be allowed
to pass the day in the sun and fresh air of the courtyard. Kane said
he did not wish to overcrowd the courtyard and perhaps take the
guards away from their business of relieving the thirst of the
prisoners. He preferred to stay in the bullpen where he would be no
trouble to the guards.

Kane wasn't worried about his comfort. He was only
cautious about not sitting down and not leaning against the walls
because of the lice. He would have to spend a full night there before
he stopped guarding against the lice. He calculated he would possibly
be able to go one night in there on his feet without sleep and maybe
another day with hopes he would get out of the bullpen in the day. He
already had one sleepless night in his head. If he didn't get out
tomorrow he would have to relax his vigilance against the lice and
let them graze on him for no one can go two nights on his feet
without sleep and without knowing when he is going to get out of
jail. Other than the discomfort of worrying about the lice and having
to stay on his feet away from the wall, Kane was getting along well
enough in jail because he was sure the Lion was going to get him out.
Kane had suffered other forms of jail and he didn't feel as though he
was losing a maidenhead. The jail was no different than other ways of
being closed up with other people with no way of getting away from
them and nothing to do. Kane felt discomfort only because in this
situation everyone in the cell was forced to become the complete
social animal and show only the sides of himself that were common to
everyone else in order to subsist under bullpen conditions. The real
life of everyone in the bullpen had been suspended. The selves they
showed were their most unattractive selves because they were all
alike.

The bullpen life was to Kane worse than solitary
confinement for in the bullpen his every act—his eating, his
drinking, his bowel movements, his smoking, his talking—would have
to be done as carefully common to everyone else as possible. This
sort of existing was deadly as it had absolutely no human object.
"Absolutely not, " Kane remembered stating to the
Ministerio Público. "Absolutely."

It seemed to Kane that passengers on an express bus
suffered a sort of bullpen confinement except that they had the
objective of destination. But if the express had motor trouble and
suddenly stranded the passengers way out, frighteningly lost to the
destination, with no idea of when the destination would be attained,
the real lives of the passengers stopped and the ugly, social, common
selves emerged more with each hour of the suspension. Kane didn't
mind the bus too much when it barreled along smoothly. He could cover
himself on the bus with a newspaper or he could go to a bar during
the rest stop to drink as many gin and tonics as possible. Almost
nobody that rides the express bus goes to the bar during the rest
stop.

The guards finally came for Jim Kane and took him
back across the empty courtyard they had been guarding with their
Cokes, through the steel doors, and down the corridor. He saw big
hats on the other side of the last door and Juan Vogel and the Lion
were under them, grinning at him. Kane talked and answered their
questions offhandedly, half-consciously, while he waited for the
guard to come on and open the last door. Then Juan Vogel said
Chavarin was going to settle for $200 and that Kane had better pay it
and get the trouble finished. The Lion said the police had officially
taken Kane back to Teresita's restaurant because they had reported
this on the mileage ticket of their squad car. No charges had been
filed against Kane and there had been no warrant for him. Officially,
the Ministerio Público didn't know Kane was in jail. Vogel and the
Lion weren't going to be allowed to see him anymore because he wasn't
going to be in the jail officially anymore. They also said a lawyer
would probably cost $200 and Kane would have to wait in the jail
until he got a trial. Kane did not say "Absolutely not"
this time. He called the guard and got his money out of the envelope
and handed it back through the bars to the Lion. Kane was then
escorted back to the bullpen where his fellows expressed sorrow he
had not been released.

Time stopped for Jim Kane. He thought, here I am
again in the very old familiar place here and now again and he
presented himself to himself again. He realized he had not seen
himself for some time. He allowed that realization to pass because he
might realize something unbearable about the here and now and he
didn't want anything unbearable hanging around for the unknown time
he had left to him in the jail. About sundown Juan Vogel and the Lion
were back and Kane was passed all the way out until the last
indifferent iron gate shut behind him.

Driving back to Rio Alamos in Juan Vogel's car, Juan
Vogel started shaking with quiet laughter.