Уолтер Мосли - John Woman

With that the young white man laughed and laughed as if the best joke ever told had just escaped his lips.

“So you Hopi?” John asked his new friend Andrew.

“Navajo,” the nonviolent thief replied. “Largest reservation in the U.S. What you do?”

“I’m a history professor. At least I used to be. I guess after my arrest they’ll be letting me go.”

“How does a college teacher get mixed up with murder? Was it a woman?”

“Suspicion of murder,” John corrected. “It happened seventeen years ago.”

“Seventeen? You don’t look no more than twenty-five.”

“I was sixteen when the crime they say happened.”

“‘Crime they say,’” Andrew quoted. “You sound more like a jailbird than a teacher, unless you teach law.”

“John Woman,” a voice from outside the cell called.

“That’s me,” John said, rising from the floor where he and Andrew leaned against the flattened, crisscrossed bars of the holding cell.

“Come with me.”

Three jailhouse guards brought John to a small room where they made him put his hands behind his back. After his wrists were cuffed one of the men led John to a subterranean hallway lined with lime green metal doors. Using a key from a huge ring hanging from his belt the black-uniformed, pimply-faced young white man unlocked a door halfway toward the end of the dead-end corridor.

“Get in.”

“What about these manacles?”

“When the door is locked turn your back to it. I’ll open the slot to take them off.”

The cell was a fraction the size of the one he’d come from. There was a cot, a tiny sink, and an aluminum commode. The ceiling was low and the walls pale gray.

The guard took off the handcuffs and then slammed the slot closed leaving John alone, missing the society of his cellmates.

The cell was virtually soundproof. No phone, computer, TV, radio or sounds through the wall. There wasn’t even paper and pencil to jot or doodle with. John had never imagined a life bereft of pencils and paper or even a knob on the door.

Sitting on the cot John tried to remember what life had been before he came to that cell. His last lecture was interrupted, now lost. His mother was gone — again. There were no lovers, children or friends who would seek him out.

This solitary jail cell, John suddenly realized, was the distilled metaphor of his life, like a living art installation. This was the shell he carried like a hermit crab taking on a discarded tin can for a home.

The first time he’d ever been in a true colony of his kind was in the holding cell. There he could admit his crime if he wanted, say the name Chapman Lorraine. He could be Cornelius Jones, son of Herman and Lucia, heir to hard-bitten mobsters and deep libraries.

He lay down on the cot and masturbated as he used to do in the secret closet of the projectionist’s booth. The orgasm was powerful and he cried out behind it. For a moment he was embarrassed but then he remembered that no sound penetrated his shell. He masturbated again, experiencing an even more intense climax. After this he turned on his side and sleep fell like a chain-link blanket.

Sometime later, he had no idea how long, John awoke with the glare of the paneled ceiling light in his eyes. On the floor at the bottom of the metal door was a cardboard tray arranged with a sandwich of white bread and processed American cheese, a flimsy plastic tub of green Jell-O and six wilted leaves of lettuce. No fork or spoon, no napkin. John ate then masturbated then slept.

“Hey... you... Woman,” someone said.

John awoke with the paneled ceiling light in his eyes.

“What?”

“If you want breakfast then pass me your tray.”

The cardboard food tray was on the floor beside the cot. He took it to the door where an open square panel revealed the man talking to him.

There was a smaller slot at the floor.

He could see a young black man peering through the square panel.

John tried to push the tray across to him but the face backed away.

“Through the bottom,” the guard said. “You have to pass it under the bottom. That’s the rules.”

John went down on a knee and slid the tray out. Immediately a new tray was passed in. On this cardboard platter there was a slug-like, white-flour burrito.

“Breakfast is the best in here,” the guard said. “Scrambled eggs and turkey bacon. Not too dry or nuthin’.”

“What time is it?”

“A little after eight... in the morning.”

“Do the lights ever go out?”

“No. Never.”

“What are they going to do with me?”

“They want you for extradition to New York.”

“How long does that usually take?”

“There was this guy in here one time that fought for nine months before Wyoming got him on manslaughter. If the crime’s not too bad sometimes they give up but they want you for murder. On murder they can’t give in. Politicians afraid that their voters might hear.”

“So I just sit here?”

“At least they took you outta the holdin’ cell. Sometimes it can get pretty rough in there. Some niggahs just don’t know how to ack.”

John had no reply to the guard’s wisdom and so instead took a bite out of his burrito.

“My name’s Marle Josephson,” the guard allowed. “I’m gettin’ ready to take the test for Phoenix PD.”

“Oh?”

“You a college professor, right?”

“Yes I am, at least I was.”

“Maybe you could help me with the test.”

“I don’t know anything about civil service exams. I mean, all you have to do is memorize the facts they give you and hope that the psych portion doesn’t make you seem too crazy.”

“How can I fool that?”

“Got me.”

“So what good are you?” Marle Josephson asked.

John took the question seriously.

“What’s a name like Woman anyway? I never heard’a nobody called that.”

“Josephson!” a bodiless voice boomed.

“Yes sir, Captain Anton.”

“Stop talking to the prisoner and get back to work.”

The upper and lower slats slammed shut and John was left again to his adopted shell.

John had been in the cell for seven more meals when Marle Josephson opened the upper slot and said, “John Woman.” It wasn’t another meal because he’d just finished lunch: an exceptionally dry, overcooked skinless chicken breast and a paper tub of mustard. If he dipped the fowl in the condiment, taking only small bites, it was possible to chew the jerky-like flesh. There was something very satisfying about all that chewing. He felt full and sated.

“Marle,” John said.

“Stand at the line with your back to the door and hold your hands toward me.”

Marching through the subterranean catacombs of the deceptively large jailhouse John and his guard passed other uniformed men; some in guard-black and others in bright yellow, orange and red prisoner coveralls.

“How come you have me in cuffs, Mr. Josephson? None of the other prisoners are wearing them.” John thought that calling Marle mister might get the silent sentinel to speak, but it didn’t.

They came to a blue metal door.

“Prisoner for interrogation room nine-A,” Marle said to the door as if it were a living sentry.

Various metallic pings, rattles and clanks emanated from the sturdy portal making John postulate the words a sentient door like this might speak.

The door swung inward.

“Go on,” Marle said.

John and Marle walked through between two uniformed guards down an aisle of wooden doors with proper knobs. Each portal had an identifying number painted on it, in red. They stopped at 9-A.

Marle knocked three times.

“Come in,” a woman said.

Marle had a key for this door too.