Atticus Lish - Preparation for the Next Life

Skinner used his torn shirt to wipe his face.

The police walked up the driveway behind him.

Hey, howyadoin this afternoon, sir? Is this your house? Step over here for me. You got any ID for me? You have a fight with somebody? A kid who lives here? Where do you live? Why’d you fight?

The police radio was making noise. Skinner pointed at the house and tried to talk, and a river of fuck words came out his mouth. Take it easy, they said. Don’t get excited. The daughter observed him from the doorway. He’s crazy. He scares everybody.

A cop who looked like a high school football coach with fuzzy hair on his arms said, Whaddya say let’s go inside, and urged Erin inside. Lifting up his shades, he stepped slowly and carefully through the Murphy’s doorway and followed her into the house. Where’s the other guy? Is he in here?

The police were feeling through the pockets of Skinner’s basketball shorts in the driveway.

They keep sayin I’m crazy. They don’t know shit about crazy.

Four cops stood in a semicircle around him.

Last chance, one said.

Skinner gritted his teeth.

They knocked him down and kneeled on his spine, where the shrapnel damage had been done, and handcuffed him.

You gonna calm it down now?

They put a nightstick between his forearm and his shoulder blade and made him walk down to the street. Someone opened a car door.

I got him. Quit fighting.

I’m not!

They put him in the backseat and closed him in.

Kid’s strong.

Take him in?

See what’s what inside first.

Now he was sitting in the caged area in the backseat of a patrol car, twisting his head, looking around, his dark pained eyes staring out like a panicked horse, trying to see what was going on. He leaned forward without his hands and wiped his nose on his knee, squeezing a bubble of blood out of his nose and smearing it on his leg.

About ten minutes later, the cops came out and got in and talked up front without including Skinner. He asked them if he was going to jail. One of them looked in the rearview.

You’re going.

What about the other guy?

What about him?

Skinner hit his head on the window. They told him what would happen if he broke it.

Fine, he said staring at his lap.

THEY DROVE HIM TO Chinatown. His head was down the entire way. He listened to the police radio. He felt the world going by outside the windows and he didn’t want to see. Saturday evening was gearing up on the street. He could hear the cars gunning their engines and the music. The handcuffs were digging into the bone of his right wrist. At the traffic lights, he felt people looking at him. One member of a group of guys in white undershirts and afros observed him cynically while smoking a cigarette. The police car turned onto a crowded street that led past markets selling fruit. Skinner could hear Chinese being spoken. He could feel the sunset without looking up to see it.

They pulled over and parked on a block he didn’t recognize. The smell of Chinese food was so good, he asked the cops if they could let him eat something. One of the officers said that they would work something out, but it was just to get Skinner to come along. Neither of the policemen looked at him. One of them held his elbow with a black leather glove, the other — a pale, slightly overweight blond-haired man with soft arms — went ahead carrying a clear plastic iced-coffee drink cup from Dunkin Donuts that he was throwing out. The garbage can in front of the precinct was too full to throw the cup out and he had to set it carefully on top of other trash and hope it didn’t fall. Then he went ahead and held the door for them and the other cop walked Skinner inside and pushed him through the turnstile.

A phone was ringing, being answered by a woman who sounded like his landlady. He saw the elevated desk and the six-foot men in dark blue uniforms standing behind it watching him come in. There was a gold-fringed American flag in the corner.

The cops who had arrested him lifted up their shades onto their foreheads and exchanged their paperwork with an officer behind the desk — a young guy no different from a lot of six-foot guys who served in uniform. And he was chewing a sandwich. He put his sandwich down and brushed the rye seeds off his hands and talked over Skinner’s head.

What’s this?

This is the assault.

Skinner stood there with his hands behind his back while they called him the prisoner and handled him with gloves. Heavily sunburned men came in carrying gym bags to start a shift, and someone said, Mikey, how was the shore? A short guy with a gray crewcut and raccoon eyes without his sunglasses, said, I’ll tell you later, and trudged up the stairs, past the child abduction bulletins. The arresting officers checked if Skinner had warrants. Skinner shook his head.

I told you I didn’t. I told you I shouldn’t be here.

Open your mouth and let me see inside, the senior arresting officer demanded — a big man with a brush mustache and a roll of fat on the back of his neck. Pretend you’re at the doctor.

His wallet went in a manila envelope, and the guy behind the counter dropped it in a drawer. They took his bootlaces. He looked down, sucking in his waist, while they cut the drawstring out of his basketball shorts with a Spyderco. The big cop’s partner, the pale slightly overweight blond guy with soft arms, snapped the lock blade shut and said, We’re going over here. Skinner followed him across the tile floor, his boots flopping under his feet. He saw the stairs, a dented steel door, a sign saying No Firearms Beyond This Point. The cop held the door for him and Skinner entered the arrest room. He saw the yellow-ocher benches inside the mesh cage of the holding pen, the paint blistered off the lock. His cuffs were removed. Skinner’s wrist had a double red line in the skin. The cop unlocked the cage door with a set of flat gold keys and told him to take a seat. Do not lie down. Skinner stepped inside and the door clashed shut on him, and the entire metal webwork thrummed.

From inside the cage, he saw everything outside the cage through the black lines of the wire mesh. The convex mirror on the ceiling showed a warped scene of stillness — fluorescent light and tile the color of an olive in a jar. Even when he moved, when he doubled over and rested his head on his knee, his movement was nowhere reflected in it. Nor when he raised his head and sighed Fuck at the yellow ceiling. Nothing moved except the clock. A poster on the wall said No Hope In Dope.

An hour later, the door opened and the blond cop came back and let him out. He told Skinner where to stand and what to look at and took his mugshot from across the room with the click of a mouse on a computer just like the DMV. They went through the fingerprinting process together. The cop held Skinner’s finger on the platen glass of a copy machine-type scanner, and Skinner’s fingerprint appeared on the computer screen next to the image of his sweating face.

How long am I gonna be here?

Could be a couple hours depending on what else is going on. We do the paperwork, do what we gotta do, the DA does their thing. It varies.

I mean how much time am I gonna get?

That depends. You got priors?

I had a disorderly conduct.

When was that?

Before the army. Way back when.

You were in the army?

Yeah.

You a vet?

Yeah.

Iraq?

Yeah. Three tours. This is my shirt. I thought you could see what it says. This is my shrapnel.

Oh, shit.

Ten-thousand feet per second, dude. Collapsed lung. Listen, that fucking motherfucking shitbag fuckhead I was fighting with. You gotta listen to me. That motherfucker’s bad news. He’s the one who oughta fuckin be here. He’s a fuckin convict.