baloney into tin plates and setting them on the iron aprons of the cell doors. The uneven stone on the floor hurt my bare feet, and my right eye, which had started to stretch tight from the swelling in my temple, watered in the hard yellow light. The deputy and I went down the corridor and up the stairs to the sheriff’s office. The fat in his hips and stomach flopped inside his shirt each time he took a step. His black hair was oiled and pasted down flat across his balding pate, and he used the handrail on the staircase as though he were pulling a massive weight uphill.
The sheriff sat behind his desk with a hand-rolled cigarette between his lips, and my billfold, pocketknife, and muddy boots in front of him. He wore steel-rimmed glasses, and his ears peeled out from the sides of his head. His face was full of red knots and bumps, a large brown mole on his chin, and his gray hair was mowed right into the scalp, but his flat blue eyes cut through the rest of it like a welder’s torch. He put the cigarette out between his fingers in the wastebasket, and started to roll another one from a package of Virginia Extra in his pocket. The tips of his teeth were rotted with nicotine. He curved the cigarette paper under his forefinger and didn’t look at me when he spoke.
“My deputy wanted to charge you with attempted assault on a law officer, but I ain’t going to do that,” he said. He spread the tobacco evenly in the paper and licked down the edge. “I’m just going to ask you to go down the road, and that’ll be the end of it.”
“Your man is pretty good with his feet and a billy.”
“I reckon that’s what happens when you threaten a law officer, don’t it?” He put the cigarette in his mouth and turned toward me in his swivel chair.
“I don’t suppose that I could bring a charge against him here, but I have a feeling the F.B.I. might be interested in a civil rights violation.”
“You don’t seem to understand what I’m saying, Mr. Holland. I got my deputy’s report right here, cosigned by a city patrolman, and it says you were drunk, resisting arrest, and swinging at an officer with your fists. Now maybe you think that don’t mean anything because you’re an Austin lawyer, but that ain’t worth piss on a rock around here.”
“You’re not dealing with a wetback or a college kid, either.” My head felt as though it were filled with water. Through the window I could see the sun striking across the treetops.
“I know exactly what I’m dealing with. I been sheriff here seven years and I seen them like you by the truckload. You come in from the outside and walk around like your shit don’t stink. I don’t know what you’re doing with them union people, and I don’t really give a goddamn, but you better keep out of my jail. The deputy went easy with you last night, and that’s pretty hard for him to do when he runs up against your kind. But the next time I’m going to turn him loose.”
“You might also tell your trained sonofabitch that he won’t catch me drunk on my hands and knees again, and in the meantime he ought to contact a public defender because I have a notion that he’ll need one soon.”
The sheriff struck a match on the arm of the chair and lit his cigarette. He puffed on it several times and flicked the match toward the spittoon. The knots and bumps on his face had turned a deeper red.
“I’m just about to take you back to lockdown and leave you there till you find some other smart-ass lawyer to get you out.”
“No, you’re not, because you’ve already been through my wallet and you saw a couple of cards in there with names of men who could have a sheriff dropped right off the party ticket.”
“I’ll tell you something. Tonight I’m going out on patrol myself, and if I catch you anywhere in the county you’re going to get educated downstairs and piss blood before you’re through. Pick up your stuff and get out of here.”
“What’s the bail on the others?”
“Twenty-five dollars a head, and you can have all the niggers and pepper-bellies and hippies you want. Then I’ll get my trusties to hose down the cells.”
I picked up my billfold from his desk and put four one-hundred-dollar bills before him.
“That ought to cover it, and some of your water bill, too,” I said.
He figured on a scratch pad with a broken pencil for a moment, smoking the saliva-stained cigarette between his lips.
“No, we owe you fifty dollars, Mr. Holland, and we want to be sure you get everything coming to you.” He opened his desk drawer and counted out the money from a cashbox and handed it to me. “Just sign the receipt and you can collect the whole bunch of them and play sticky finger in that union hall till tonight, then I’ll be down there and we can talk it over again if you’re still around.”
“I don’t believe you’ll be that anxious to talk when you and your deputy and I meet again.”
“I’m going to let them people out myself. Don’t be here when I get back,” he said. He stood up and dropped his cigarette into the spittoon. His flat blue eyes, staring out of that red, knotted face, looked like whorls of swimming color without pupils. He stuck his shirt inside his trousers with the flat of his hand and walked past me with the khaki stiffness of a man who had once more restored structure to his universe.
I sat down in a chair and put my boots on. They were filled with small rocks and mud, and when I stood up again I felt the dizziness and nausea start. I wiped the sweat off my face with my shirt and I wondered how in God’s name I could have ever become involved in a fool’s situation like this. I was glad there were no reflecting windows or glass doors or mirrors in the sheriff’s office, because I was sure that the present image of Hackberry Holland — ripped silk shirt, mud-streaked trousers, swollen temple and blood-matted hair, and face white with concussion and hangover — wouldn’t help me resolve my torn concept of self.
I walked outside into the sunlight to wait for Rie. The sun and shadow sliced in patterns across the lawn, and a warm breeze from the river carried with it the smell of the fields. I sat on the concrete steps and let the heat bake into my skin. My clothes and body reeked of the jail, and the odor became stronger as I started to perspire. Two women passing on the sidewalk looked at me in disgust. “Good morning. How are you ladies today?” I said, and their eyes snapped straight ahead.
A few minutes later Rie and the others came out the front door. The faces of the Mexicans were lined and bloated with hangover, and the guitar player and college boy looked like definitions of death. Their faces were perfectly white, as though all the blood had been drawn out through a tube. Rie carried her sandals in her hand, and she looked as lovely and alive as a flower turning into the sun.
“Thanks for going the bail,” she said.
“I’ll mark it off on my expense account as part of my expanded education. Right now I need to pick up my car, unless our deputy friend set fire to it last night.”
“Rafael’s brother has a truck at the fruit stand. He’ll take us back.”
“Yeah, I don’t think I could walk too far this morning,” I said.
“Say, man, you really took on that bastard, didn’t you?” the college boy said. His face was so wan that his lips moved as though they were set in colorless wax.
“Afraid not,” I said. “It was a one-sided encounter.”
We started walking across the lawn toward the open-air market. My head ached with each step.
“No, man, it takes balls to go up against a prick like that,” he said.
“Stupidity is probably a better word,” I said.
The shade was cool under the trees, and mockingbirds flew through the branches overhead. Across the street a Mexican was wetting down the rows of watermelons in the bins with a hose. Their fat green shapes were beaded with light in the sun. We crossed the street like the ragged remnant of a guerrilla band, and people in passing automobiles twisted their faces around and stuck their heads out of windows at this strange element in the midst of their tranquil Tuesday morning world.
One of the Mexicans and Rie and I got into the cab of a pickup truck and the others climbed in back, and we headed into the poor district. The driver pulled out a half-pint of Four Roses from under the seat and took a drink with one hand on the steering wheel. His face shook with the taste. Then he took three more swallows like he was forcing down hair tonic, and offered the bottle to me.
“Not today,” I said.
He screwed the cap on and passed the bottle out the window of the cab to one of his friends in back. The bottle went from hand to hand until it was empty, then the Negro banged on the roof when we passed the first clapboard beer tavern on the road. He and the Mexicans piled out and went in the screen door, pulling nickels, dimes, and quarters from their blue jeans. Before the truck started up again I could already hear their laughter from inside.
