Plea To The Jury

Oct 11, 2007 23:16

The handcuffs are biting me, well first of all they’re cold but more importantly the pig’s got his hoof pressing down on my hands, so the sharp edges cut into my wrists. And needless to say the pig, the dirty cop, he locked ‘em up real tight. I didn’t do anything, and I’m here spitting out dirt, choking on my breath like an oversized wad of gum on this asshole’s boot. Two other cops are cross-checking the ID they found in my wallet with some gadget in one of their cars. In about a minute they’re going to find out that’s not me, and I’ll be taken down to the station, I’ll be taken from Ana, and right now, I can’t hear a word anyone is saying, all I can hear is Ana crying, all I can see are Ana’s eyes, like melting glaciers. I’m trying to figure out why this is happening. I guess this would be a bad time to ask if I could smoke a cigarette.

We’d been watching the correction officer assigned to us for about two months before the plan was executed. Ana and I, we met in the cafeteria a few days after I got locked up there. Utah State Correction Center, a subsidiary of the Utah Juvenile Services, is basically an old apartment building they turned into a mad house for juniors like myself. We’re the kids who start fires, push our little brothers into ravines, torture cats, piss in the well and take candy from the 7-11. I’m not saying I did any of those things, but they’re good examples. I don’t know what Ana did, well I know what Ana does but I don’t know what they caught her with. I don’t know how long I had in there, but two months was quite long enough. Anyway like I was saying I met Ana, and the first thing I’m always talking about is that correction officer, Davis. He’s tall with a chiseled face, looks like a fucking G.I. Joe. Davis doesn’t carry a gun, but he tries to act like it. The best Davis has got is the stick, and he loves to use the stick. After a while it didn’t hurt anymore, but anytime you’re being beaten into submission it’s going to piss you off. The trick is not to get mad, to act like you don’t care, and then he’ll get bored and tired and he’ll stop. Ana told me that, and Davis stopped hitting me so much, and then altogether after a while; it’s not because he corrected me, it’s because he gave up on me. They didn’t assign a new officer because Davis didn’t say anything about it, didn’t report any progress or any problem. It was the same for Ana. I don’t know if Davis hit other kids too, or if it was just us, but what I did find out about Davis is that he drives a silver Jetta and he carries the keys on his belt. All the correction officers have their own assigned parking, their own ID badge, key for the building and keys for the rooms of the children to whom they are assigned. Ana told me all of this at lunch. We had spaghetti that day.

From there it was a matter of examining routine. Together Ana and I compiled a rough schedule of Officer Davis’ day; he checks on me at four-hour intervals beginning at 11am and so forth into the next day; for Ana it’s the same, but the rotations begin at noon. I figured it took him about 15 minutes in each room, so he’d got a couple rooms between Ana and me. The plan was flawless other than that point, but I lent some trust to the fact that no kid in his right wrong mind is going to call the office if his officer doesn’t show up. So twenty-two days ago I knocked Davis out cold with the side railing from my bed when he walked in the room. I took his uniform, his keys, his badge and wallet and I even took his stick. Now I’m no G.I. Joe but I’ve got probably the same height, and the hat covers up most of my hair, so if you weren’t looking for anything you might think I was Davis. I walked Ana right out of there, had her hands tied in a little rope like I was walking a dog. No one asked a damn thing.

I can’t say I truly saw Ana until after we had escaped. Yeah, I knew what she looked like, could pick her out of a crowd, but she didn’t look like herself. Everyone in there looked like they’d thrown in the towel for good. Everyone in there looked medicated. It was dark and every smile was a lie. But now I can tell you what she looks like in earnest, because in the light, Ana is beautiful. She has arctic eyes that always gaze but never stare. Her hair’s that perfect shade of autumn, and it flows like a waterfall down her head.

We took the Jetta to the next town over and covered our tracks. I ditched the outfit, badge and all that far behind me, but kept the wallet with the money, and I kept the ID too in case some jackass cards me when I’m buyin’ a pack of smokes. We’d been sleeping on park benches and in trolley stops, behind churches and in unlocked warehouses. Ana wouldn’t sleep in the car, says she’s too cramped, and well I feel pretty vulnerable with the keys in my pocket passed out in a parked car too. At one point we found a little shack full of glitter, that kindergarten shit they put on papers with Elmer’s glue, you know, the stuff you could never really get off of you. I ask her what the hell this is, because why is there a warehouse full of glitter? And Ana, she goes, “A leprechaun lives here,” and I laugh like I hadn’t laughed before. I was sober, sober and laughing. But then I realized I wasn’t sober, I was drunk off the rush of attraction. Jesus, you know, all the cocaine I could buy wouldn’t get me that sick and stupid. Next to her, I’m dying, my heart’s beating faster than the blood can travel, my palms are crying sweat.

So I needed a pack of smokes, and I go up to the burly guy behind the counter and motion to the Camel Reds, and he asks for my ID, just like I thought he would. This point I’m shaking a bit; it’s not like I look radically different from Officer Davis, but what if the guy knows him? So I show it to him and he looks at it just long enough to see the name, and he goes, “Davis? You Gerald’s son, boy?” I don’t know what to say, I mean the rational thing would have been to say no, right? Act like I don’t know him, ‘cause I don’t know him at all, but I say yes, because well, Ana’s still right next to me, and I’m still crazy, and I had a crazy idea just then. I say yes and he laughs, a hearty laugh, and he says, “Shaved your head I see, boy. I didn’t know you smoked. Four bucks is fine. Ol’ Gerald didn’t tell me you were moving out here.” I nodded again, that stupid, rigid nod, but then I swallow, and I clear my throat. I’m trying to sound more like this guy here, trying to throw all my information in before letting him speak. I hate that, you don’t know what to respond to when someone tells you four fuckin’ things at the same time.
“I just got here, I’m visiting, actually. Ol’ Gerald… I mean, papa, he’s real sick right now. Actually, I can’t even go to his place, they’re tellin’ me it’s contagious, you know, like I might get sick if I walk in there. I didn’t know that comin’ down here. Came all the way from Kansas, don’t know what to do now. Say,” and I peer at his name tag here. “Say James, man, you know my father, right? You think you could put me up for a night, and we’ll go see him together in the morning?” Ana’s tugging on my coat, she doesn’t like it, she doesn’t know what the hell I’m doing. But I know what I’m doing.

He starts to stutter, chokes on his words a bit, but finally he takes that big breath to clear it all out and he looks at me and he goes, “Well I don’t have room in my place for the both of ya, but if you don’t tell anyone you could probably sleep in here.” I look around; it’s not a big place. This is one of those little quick marts on the sides of gas stations where you go for your cigarettes and munchies. But there’s carpet some places, and I don’t give a damn so long as I’m not getting rained on. I tell him yes, and Ana just nods, because she’s finally getting the point of all that lying I did back there.
I want to remind you that we’re not criminals. We haven’t hurt anyone but ourselves. Ana and I are not thieves, we are people just like you, just like the police harassing us. This next part, I don’t want you to get the wrong idea about us. We have the best of intentions, the both of us, and nothing that happened during the night has to do with anything the police should concern themselves with. I’m telling you, this has all been blown way out of proportion.

When we settled into the store it was about 9:00 p.m. Originally Ana and I were just going to go to sleep, because we haven’t been in anyplace over night for about a week, but Ana couldn’t sleep, so I couldn’t sleep, and it turned into a long night. We were in aisle 3, candies, because Ana has a sweet tooth, and wherever she wanted to sleep was pretty much fine with me. I was at the other side of the aisle from her, I’d pulled out a small mirror from my pocket and laid it out on the porcelain. And here’s my vice, here’s me in my most vulnerable and pathetic state, ducked down in the corner of a closed convenience store like an anteater with my rolled-up dollar bill, frying my brain with cocaine and probably a little bit of talcum powder, maybe a pinch of Comet, baking soda. It could be anything, all they have to do is crush it up and make it white, someone’ll buy it. Ana slides on her knees like an interested slug down the aisle and sits herself down right next to me, her long waterfalls of hair dangling over the mirror. I thought that was dangerous, I was gettin’ scared so I tell her move back a bit, but Ana she gets pissed off, thinks I meant away from me or something, so she sneezes. I’m watching $45 fly carelessly onto the filthy porcelain, most of it lost, too scattered to collect, and I lose it. I’m not an angry person, certainly not violent, only I’m an addict, and I don’t have a lot of money, you know? I think I hit her. I remember screaming, I guess the coke hit me, I called her a dumb bitch and closed my eyes while swinging a fist. I don’t remember anything after that, except that I woke up five minutes ago to the cold pinch of handcuffs hitting my skin. Ana’s next to me on the ground, lumped in a sitting position, not cuffed, she’s crying. And I see the store owner, good old James, glaring down at me, almost ashamed of himself for having believed such bullshit. And the cops are all looking at me, shaking their heads, like just because I’ve got dirt on my face I ain’t got nothing to say.
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