oay ubi shime. The jujitsu thumb grip. Old but reliable. I caught his thumb in the webbing of my right hand and bent it back, and down he went. He was on his knees in half a second. And screaming out.
The Rev said, “Let him go!”
“Call him off,” I said.
Instead the Rev, the man of enlightenment, the punk preacher, kicked me in the shin.
I let the big guy go and grabbed a handful of the punk’s hair. That made it easy to manipulate his head. Like riding a horse with a handful of mane.
I jerked his head down. He retaliated by hitting my knee with his nose.
Blood spurted from the holy proboscis. He dropped to the sidewalk.
His followers cackled and cheeped and gathered around their fallen master.
Then I heard one blast of a siren. A black-and-white pulled up. Good. Let the law settle this one. The law was just. The law was fair.
35
“WHAT ARE YOU arresting me for?” I said as one of the patrol officers cuffed me.
“In the car, please, sir,” he said. “Watch your head.”
“Why don’t you clean up the street?”
The officer helped me into the back of his car.
At Wilcox station they marched me in, past a wooden bench to which a skinny old man was shackled. He smelled like he was sitting out a drunk. The arresting patrol officer put his gun in a locker, then had me buzzed in to meet the jailer.
They took my property, scanned my prints, then stuck me in a cell with two other guys.
One of them was a white kid, sitting on the end of a bed. He had his head in his hands.
The other guy was in his early twenties, black, wearing a blue hoodie. He sat on a top bunk, dangling his legs. He studied me as they clanked the cell door shut.
“What you doin’ here, man?” he said, smiling.
“Good question,” I said.
“DUI?”
“No.”
“Why they puttin’ you in a cell?”
“Violence.”
“You?” He said it almost mockingly. “You beat on some guy?”
“Yeah.”
“Cool. What for?”
“Bad religion.”
My cell mate frowned. “What you talkin’ about?”
“Some dweeb out on the boulevard,” I said. “Taking people’s money.”
“Oh yeah. Got it. Whatta you do, man?”
“I’m a lawyer.”
This seemed to please him. I got a clue from the laughter that lasted almost a minute. The guy with his head in his hands finally looked over at me, like I was a new exhibit at the zoo.
The laughing guy said, “Man, I wish a couple of my lawyers’d get thrown in here.”
“That’s nice,” I said. “What are you here for?”
“Ice,” he said.
“How much?”
“Couple of rocks.”
“Man, that stuff’ll kill you,” I said.
“So?”
“So you want to be dead?”
He shrugged. “Gonna be someday.”
“Why rush it?”
“Why not? We just doin’ time. You, me, him.” He jerked his thumb at our silent cell mate.
“So why don’t you do something with the time?” I said. “Besides get high.”
“Like what, man?”
“Find stuff out.”
“What are you talkin’ about?”
The quiet one broke in with, “Yeah, what? We’re in jail, dude.”
“That’s the best time,” I said. “Ever hear of Boethius?”
They both shook their heads.
“He was a guy who had a pretty thing going with a king. He was like the king’s philosopher.”
“This a fairy story?” the Ice Man said.
“No, man, it’s true. This was a real guy and a real king, back in the Roman days. You know about the Roman days?”
“Nah.”
“People in togas and all that.”
“Okay.”
“So this guy Boethius is smart and all that, and then he has some people who get envious of him, and they diss him to the king behind his back. They tell the king he’s a traitor, and the king buys it and throws him into jail.”
“See?” Ice Man said, slapping his thighs. “You can’t win.”
“But you can,” I said. “In jail, with nothing, this guy Boethius has to think. And what he figures out is that what you think about your circumstances is the main thing. Do you like being in here?”
“You crazy?”
“See, that’s only you reflecting on your desire to be out. And desire frustrated is where unhappiness comes from.”
“Do you like being in here?” he said.
“Right now, at this very moment, saying these words to you, I don’t mind it at all.”
The quiet guy said, “Dude’s wack.”
“No, man,” Ice said. “He look like he’s wack?”
“He in here,” Quiet said. “Like us.”
“No,” I said and pointed to my head. “I’m in here.”
They looked at me.
“How ’bout those Dodgers?” I said.
That’s when the jailer came back for me.
36
ZEBKER WAS WAITING for me outside the jail. “Imagine my surprise,” he said.