There were probably fifteen of us crammed in the cell. No benches or beds, just a ledge jutting four or five inches out of the wall. We were all sort of half leaning, half sitting on the thing and I could feel the edge jabbing into my ass. There weren’t any bars like you’d expect, just a door with a square piece of yellow plastic for a window. Over in the corner was an old rusted toilet, not much white to it anymore.

There was me and a couple guys that looked about my age. Then there were some younger kids, who looked scared and uncomfortable, and had already smoked through all their cigarettes. They kept trying to bum cigarettes off the rest of us, but we knew better. You have to make them last.

I lit my second one of the night and looked around the room.

“Hey man” this old guy slurred, pulling at the shirttail of the guy next to him.

“Hey, you got ten bucks?”

The guy shrugged him off.

“You don’t need any money in here.”

The old guy kept at him, but the young guy looked sinewy and had his hair slicked back like a punk and I thought the old guy oughta leave him alone. The old guy must have gotten the same idea, because after a few minutes he started around the room, asking everyone for ten dollars. No one had any money and we told him so.

A guard brought us dinner after I’d been there about an hour. It was this one hotdog on a Styrofoam plate and some baked beans. The beans were cold and runny and smelled like ketchup and the hotdog was cold too. I wasn’t hungry enough to eat the shit, so I just stood there, holding the plate and watching the old guy.

He sort of hobble-waddled around the room, asking everyone for their hotdog. Pretty much everyone gave it to him, because no one wanted to eat the thing. I couldn’t figure out how that skinny old man was going to eat all those hot dogs. He looked so happy, smiling, saying “Thank ya,” and nodding.

He walked over to the toilet in the corner of the room, looked up and smiled, holding that plate full of hot dogs. Then he dropped a hotdog on the floor, tossed the bun in the toilet and flushed it.

The guy next to me shook his head, muttering “Crazy old bastard.”

The old guy waited a few seconds and tossed another bun in and flushed the toilet.

“What’s he doing?” one of the younger guys asked, between mouthfuls of hotdog. That guy was probably the only one eating his hotdog. He was dipping it in baked beans and cramming it in his mouth.

The old guy dropped a third bun in and flushed. And another. And another. And another.

We just watched, just leaned against the goddamn rail that was jabbing us in the ass, hungry and tired and wishing it was tomorrow so we could make bail.

The old man looked up and smiled again, giving the toilet another flush. He kept smiling and laughed, a sort of breathless wheezing noise, and dropped another bun in and flushed.

“Oh fuck no,” one guy said. “There’s no fucking way.”

He jerked the old guy by the elbow and the rest of the hotdogs and buns went sprawling across the floor, bouncing and rolling along. The old guy was still laughing.

“I’m not gonna stand in shit and piss, you fucking lunatic,” he said, slinging the old guy away from the toilet.

One of the hot dogs rolled up to my feet. It was covered in dirt and little pieces of rock.

The old guy was still laughing and saying something I couldn’t hear.

The other guys let him have it, holding the old guy against the wall, spitting in his face while they took turns swinging at him. I took a few swings too. It’s hard not to get in the spirit of things. It only took a few minutes and the guards were there, pulling the old guy out of the room.

Nobody used the toilet all night. I think one of the young guys pissed his pants, but none of us said anything about the ammonia smell. We just stood, leaning on that ledge and smoking cigarettes.

The guards came by in the morning and told us to clean the mess off the floor, but none of us would do it. They didn’t let a single one of us make bail until late that afternoon and by that time my girlfriend figured out where I was. When she bailed me out, she tried to smack me around, right there in front of the bailiff. He laughed and told her I probably deserved it, deserved it just like every other guy.

And I figure that old guy didn’t deserve it. He probably just wanted his own room.

____________________________________________

Brandi Wells is a student at Georgia Southern University, pursuing her B.A. in Writing and Linguistics. Her work has appeared or is soon forthcoming in Ghoti Magazine, Vulcan, Storyglossia, Zygote in my Coffee, Toasted Cheese and Thieves Jargon.

R.I.P. Keith Waterhouse

Twelve hours of heavy rain can not stifle our sunny disposition this Monday. It already feels like fall here in the great Northwest, and that makes us happy. Autumn heralds new books, which instills in us the same spinal glee that comes from the beginning of the college football season and the MLB playoffs. But first, the bad news: Keith Waterhouse, creator of Billy Liar, has passed. He was 80. Donald Rumsfeld. It’s almost enough just to utter his name. But The New York Review of Books goes further, examining the former Secretary of Defense’s lasting impact. Good news: The new books lineup is stacked with talent. Chekhov’s Mistress talks tech, noting the wonders of the literary iPhone. A new tome of Raymond Carver’s work is available. The LA Times pages through. A film version of The Brothers Karamazov? The Onion knows. Teddy Roosevelt was an avid outdoorsman and Douglas Brinkley captured his larger than life persona in a compelling book. Finally, David Foster Wallace was a splendid writer who wrote difficult books. Most people struggle just to read them. John Krasinski, of The Office fame, decided to film one. His adaptation of Brief Interviews with Hideous Men was screened at Sundance. Read an early review and watch the trailer below. Let’s just say the movie is taking on water. Time to break out the galoshes. — Kevin Murphy

(more…)