When the Bottom Falls Out by H. Nigel Thomas

Author:H. Nigel Thomas
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Short Stories
Publisher: TSAR Publication
Published: 2014-10-28T00:00:00+00:00

When the Bottom Falls Out

They are now six. Rob stares at the new cellmate, newly awakened and rubbing his eyes, and probably wondering where he is. He’d stumbled when the police unlocked the handcuffs and shoved him into the cell about three hours earlier. He promptly stretched out his skeletal frame on the floor as much as he was able to and promptly fell asleep. He’s too tall for the length of the cell and has to bend his knees. His jeans are stiff with dirt, and the front of his grey shirt is splotched with dried blood. He stinks—is probably a vagrant— looks fifty or sixty, white but quite likely mixed, has grime on his face and a three-inch slanted wound on his forehead. The lips of the wound are bubbly, like caviar, and the blood has clotted a dark red. His eyes are bloodshot, but even in the dim light Rob can see that they are grey. Now those eyes are squinting and focused on Rob. Couldn’t they have at least bandaged his head? That wound should be sutured.

“Hey, I know you,” the man says.

Rob says nothing.

“All Isabella Island knows you.”

Rob remains silent.

“How come you didn’t get bail? Your boyfriend did.”

Rob doesn’t respond.

“Look, I ain’t got nothing against your type, and don’t you go getting all huffy with me ‘cause you is a school teacher and I is a drunk. We’s all in jail, ain’t we? It don’t matter who we was or is. I tell a policeman that was bothering me to go fuck his mother.” He laughs. “And the son of a whore buss me head, buss me head and handcuff me and bring me in here. This world build on pure injustice.” The prisoners listen attentively. With the exception of Fyfe, they all came to the holding pen after Rob.

“What’s your name?” Fyfe asks the new man.

“My mother calls me Simon. But everybody calls me Doggie, and I prefer that. Look at me forehead. Ain’t you see they treat me worse than a dog? And you is?”

Fyfe states his name and the other cellmates do likewise. Rob is the last in line, but doesn’t have a chance to say it because Doggie says he already knows, and reiterates that everybody the length and breadth of Isabella Island does too. “Most o’ the pictures only show your face, but in a couple you and your boyfriend are naked.” Rob knows all this: for the sixteen days he has been here, he has had similar encounters with each new accused brought to the holding pen.

“So his papa didn’t put up bail for you, eh. Now ain’t that a bitch?” Doggie continues. “White people. Whaddya know! My Papa a white man too. Poor-trash white. Drunkard like me.”

Rob wants him to stop talking. He wishes Fyfe would shut him up. Yesterday he’d shut up the fellow—he left this morning—who kept asking Rob how he could ignore “all that sweetness in pussy and turn to bulling. Disgusting. Man, you ain’t know what you missing.

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