Diesel

 

“You’ve gotta tell me why I’ve been arrested,” I say, when the weasel-looking bastard pushes me into the holding cell. “You’ve at least gotta tell me that, dammit.”

 

The man smashes his nightstick against the bars of the cage. “Shut your fucking mouth!” he roars. He’s one of those small men who hate men my size, I guess. There were a lot of those in the slammer, guards mainly, who’d signed up just so they could bully men who’d made them feel small in high school. “If we want to talk to you, we’ll talk to you. Otherwise, shut your cunt mouth.”

 

I almost laugh at the man. I’m not sure if I’ve ever been called a cunt before. But I know how the slammer works. If I laugh at him, later on tonight he and four of his buddies will find me in the dark, come at me with Tasers and sticks, and I’ll have no way of fighting back as they beat me to a pulp. I swallow, stepping back into the cell, dropping into the hard metal seat. I sit there for a long time, wringing my hands, wondering if they’ve got me on the fires or something else. When they got me for hitting my dad’s police buddy, they told me straightaway what I was arrested for. This is damn weird.

 

I close my eyes at some point, but I can’t sleep. I keep thinking about prison, about how I was a target for everyone in there because of my dad, and even with Grimace’s protection I still got more than my fair share of beatings. I think about the time some asshole shanked me twice in my side, blood pissing everywhere. Even when I kicked his legs from underneath him and broke his arm, I didn’t feel better.

 

The worst part about prison is how you’re not a person anymore. They lock you up and treat you like cattle. Move here, eat now, sleep now, do this, do that. For a man who lives with an engine growling under his ass, the open road telling him he can go anywhere he wants, it’s terrifying. I don’t know if I’ll survive prison a second time, especially since the only reason I wasn’t killed last time was Grimace. I don’t think Grimace is going to be sending me help now.

 

At some point I fall asleep sitting up, a skill I learned on my first run in prison. When I wake up, it’s morning and my head is groggy. I was dreaming of Willa and my kid. We were at the park and Willa was wearing a pink dress which fluttered in the breeze, and soon the dress was fluttering so much it covered the whole park, and then the whole country, and then the whole world. At the end of the dream I was looking down at a pink-covered planet. I’ve never been much for dream interpretation. I have no idea what it means.

 

After a watery oatmeal breakfast, the weasel-looking cop walks in with two skinheads in tow, both of them in cuffs, both of them with racist tattoos in between their eyes. They’re smaller than me by half a foot, and I know that pisses them off. It always pisses tough men off when they see me. It’s like my height and my size are a personal challenge to them. I grit my teeth, and then spit. There’s going to be fighting as soon as the weasel has retreated.

 

The weasel walks away, throwing me a worried look. Maybe he isn’t the asshole he seems like he is. I reckon he knows exactly what’s going to happen, but he’s leaving me anyway. Maybe somebody is twisting his arm. One of the skinheads is wearing a white tank top and dirty jeans, his arms and chest covered in tattoos. The other is wearing a black hoodie, his neck plastered in similar tattoos. Apart from that they look almost identical.

 

They sit down on the opposite end of the cell, whispering together. And then Hoodie grumbles, “Tough guy over there.”

 

His friend laughs. “Yeah, real tough man.”

 

I sigh inwardly. I’ve gotta respond. If I don’t, word might get around that I’m a pussy. That’s how prison works.

 

“The fuck, you say?”

 

I stand up to my full height, staring the men down. The one in the tank top looks a tiny bit worried, but Hoodie speaks for the both of them. “Sit down, faggot, before you make me stand up.”

 

“Stand up,” I say. “Go ahead.”

 

It all happens predictably. What these men don’t know is that I’ve fought bastards like them countless times. Hoodie charges at me, aiming at my face with a clumsy right hook. I step back, catch his wrist, and snap it as hard as I can. His wrist and his hand go limp and he screams like a little girl. By the time the other one is on me, I’m free to throw some punches of my own. I knock him twice in the belly, not too hard, just enough to send him sprawling to the floor.

 

The cell door buzzes as it opens. I get ready for the mace, and the sticks, and the cattle feeling. I wish I was back in bed with Willa. I can hardly believe I’m not in bed with Willa. I’m going to have a child, and now this.

 

But they don’t go in on me. Instead, Weasel grabs me by the arms and hisses in my ear, “Orders from the top. We’re moving you.”

 

“Moving me?” I say, as he slaps cuffs on me. “Moving me where?”

 

I’ve been in the system before, and this isn’t standard procedure. Chino, I think. Could it be fucking Chino? Or Grimace? Whoever it is, I have no choice. Weasel has a gun and a man with a gun can be as short as he likes.

 

Soon I’m sitting in a prison van, nearly empty apart from me, the driver, Weasel and another cop. The sun glares through the glass.

 

“Where are we going?” I call down the bus. “You been paid off by someone, is that it?”

 

Weasel’s face winces. Paid off by someone, then. But who? Grimace means I’m saved. Chino means I’m dead.