The Lost Get-Back Boogie

There were no keys to the Plymouth. No one was sure what happened to them. Buddy possibly broke one off in the trunk and lost the other one while wandering around in the snow after all his reefer blew away in the wind. I said good-night to Harold, the owner, took a glass of Jim Beam with me, and while Melvin, Buddy, and Pearl slept in a pile in the backseat, Beth held the flashlight for me under the dashboard, and I used a piece of chewing tobacco tinfoil to wrap together the wires behind the ignition.

She sat close to me on the drive back to Missoula, with her hand inside my coat, and each time the draft would come up through the floorboard, she would press her thigh against mine and hold a little tighter with her arm. I forgot about Buddy in the backseat and what he would think later. I just wanted to be with her again upstairs in her house with the tree raking against the window. She knew it, too, as we came through the Hellgate into Missoula, with the water starting to freeze into white plates on the edge of the Clark. She leaned her breasts into my arm and kissed me with her tongue against my neck, and I knew everything was going to be all right when I came around the last curve on the mountain into Missoula.

The sheriff’s car pulled out even with the Plymouth from the gravel turnaround, the bubble-gum light revolving in a lazy blue-and-orange arc. His souped-up V-8 motor gunned once when he went past us on a slick stretch of ice. He braked to the side of the road and got out with a flashlight in his hand, the collar of his mackinaw turned up into the brim of his Stetson to protect his ears. He walked back to the Plymouth against the wind, as though his own weight was more than he could bear, and opened the door with the flashlight in my face.

“Don’t kick over that glass trying to hide it with your foot, son,” he said. “You don’t want to spill whiskey all over the car. Now what’s those wires doing hanging under the dashboard with tinfoil around them?”

I took a cigarette from the pack inside my coat and tried to pop a damp kitchen match on my thumbnail, but it broke across my finger. He clicked off the light and pulled back the door a little wider for me to get out.

“Sometimes you get caught by the short hairs, Paret. You ought to look out for that,” he said.

ELEVEN

Fifteen days. I thought I would get out of it with a fine when I went to guilty court the next day, but the sheriff put in a few words for me with the judge to make sure that would not be the case. (He mentioned, as a casual aside, that I was an out-of-state parolee.)

They put me in a whitewashed eight-man cell on the second floor with the usual collection of county prisoners: habitual drunks, petty check writers, drifters, barroom brawlers, and hapless souls in for nonsupport. There was no window in the cell, the white walls were an insult on the eyes, and we got out only one hour a day for showers. It was going to be a long fifteen days.

I was angry with myself for getting busted on a punk charge like driving with an open container, but I realized that the particular charge didn’t make any difference. That fat cop was going to nail me one way or another; it was just a choice of time and place.

Buddy came to see me during the visiting hours that afternoon. I didn’t want to talk with him after the scene in the bar, and in fact I wasn’t in a mood to talk with anyone. The men in that crowded cell were generally a luckless and pathetic lot, but nevertheless each of their movements (their knee bends and push-ups) and attempts at conversation to relieve their boredom were irritating, eye-crossing reminders of all the wasted nights and days and the impaired, lost people I had known in Angola.

The hack unlocked the cell door and took me downstairs to the visitors’ room by the arm.

“You want some cigarettes from the machine while we’re down?” he said.

I gave him some change from my pocket and sat on one side of the long board table across from Buddy. There were still grains of ice on his mackinaw, which hung on the back of his chair. His face was white with hangover, and his hand with the cigarette shook slightly on top of his folded arm.

“You have thunder in your eyes, Zeno,” he said.

“Room service was bad today.”

“I’m sorry, man. That’s a bad deal. I thought they’d just lighten your wallet a little bit.”

“It could have been worse. They might have tried for drunk driving.”

He paused and looked away.

“You want a butt?” he said.

“The screw’s bringing me a pack.”

“Hey, man, I didn’t mean to go over the edge last night.” His eyes came back into mine.

“Everybody was drunk. That stuff’s always comedy, anyway.”

“You want the guitar? The jailer said you can have it up there.”

“I better not. A couple of those characters would probably try to screw it,” I said.

“Look, I feel like a piece of shit about it.”

“Forget it. I’m going to take up yoga.”

“No, I mean getting it on about Beth.”

The guard put the package of Lucky Strikes in front of me, and I peeled away the cellophane from the top.

“I wouldn’t have brought it out like that unless my head was soaking in acid and booze. Shit, I know I can’t make up ba