Free Snapper by Brian Kimberling Page B

liked it. Mustache was stealing his thunder.
    Aiding and abetting a fugitive from the law, he added.
    This went on for a while. Every time I avoided a question I got another count of obstructing justice and a couple more charges besides. In hindsight I think they were bluffing.
    I figured it wasn’t my fault to begin with, so I gave him up. Name, address, hometown, drinking habits.
    I was allowed one phone call. Bail was one hundred dollars. The list of people I knew with cash reserves was a null set, but my friend Flynn had a new girlfriend who drove a red convertible. Flynn grew up in Evansville and had been a model of personal responsibility since the age of six. I prepared to grovel.
    It turned out John had been busy. He never went home, just in case I squealed. Instead he had gotten onto every mutual friend we had, never mind the hour, begging for bail. Flynn knew about it already. No, he hadn’t talked to him personally, no, he didn’t know where he was. Sometime later he’d come down with the money if he could get it.
    He wasn’t very convincing.
    I went back to my cell and tried to get used to it. There were a couple Westerns among the books downstairs that I thought might last me a while. The black guy came in to ask for another square.
    Surprised you’re still here, he said.
    He was cool. I asked what he was in for.
    Dealing cocaine, he said. We all federals up here but they got no room in the state pen.
    Up here?
    We Cell Block D. We maximum security, top floor. We get guys like you when the drunk tank’s full. We the only block with empty cells.
    Overnight guests, he added, chuckling.
    How long you here for? I said.
    I got another eleven years and two hundred thirty-four days to go.
    I whistled.
    Ain’t nothing. Guy here looking at sixty years for his third offense. They’ll move him to Terre Haute when there’s room. Prolly move me too eventually.
    What’s your name?
    They call me Banjo.
    I think the younger guys all had names like Ice Dawg, but Banjo must have been past forty. I talked to him some more and I got the outlines of his life. He was from Evansville, grew up ten blocks from my house, and went to my high school twenty years before I did.
    Years later I met Banjo’s nephew out on the street in Bloomington. A black guy sitting on a doorstep with a piece of paper asked me for help. The paper was a job application and he said he couldn’t read or write so he asked me to fill it out.
    I was taking down his address, education, and work history when certain parallels and some family resemblance suggested Banjo to my mind. I asked and it was a match.
    He got the job and kept it for three days. Can’t stand washing dishes, he said. I had graduated by then, and working mornings in the forest left my afternoons completely free. I offered to help this guy learn to read—I had become a volunteer literacy tutor at the local library, mainly to impress Lola, also a volunteer. I’d see this guy sometimes in the Video Saloon and we would knock back beers and talk and I said just bring the Sports page over sometime. Anything you like. I gave him my address. He never came.
    Sometimes during those conversations he would put hisbeer down and walk off to make a deal in a corner, leaving me and all the black dudes in his entourage just staring at one another. Then he’d come back and we’d talk like nothing had happened.
    On one occasion I alerted him to blue flashing lights in the window at the end of the bar. He didn’t freak out. He gave some whispered orders to the henchmen around him and they left in a hurry and he turned to me and said thanks. If I ever did anything jail-worthy, that was probably it.
    One day he just stopped showing up at the Vid, and I’ve always wondered whether he is in jail. If so, I hope he’s down in Terre Haute with Banjo.
    The reason they make you wear an orange jumpsuit is so you won’t talk back to the judge. When someone says you’re free to go, and you’re wearing