Chickenhawk: Back in the World

“No, sir,” Agent Cook said. “We found a Winchester forty-four magnum, lever-action rifle on their boat. It was unloaded and stored in a case. We presume it was used as a shark gun.” That was true, and it was also incredibly fair of Agent Cook not to imply that the gun was part of our crime, considering it would’ve been easy to do so and would’ve added much to the seriousness of our charges. Who’d believe otherwise?

The magistrate nodded. “And approximately how much marijuana did you find on their boat?”

“Approximately three thousand pounds, sir.”

The magistrate nodded, looking over his glasses at us. It sounded like an awful lot, but it was also five hundred pounds short of what we thought we’d brought in. John and I glanced at each other.

“And what do you estimate is the value of that amount of marijuana?” the magistrate asked.

“At present street prices, we estimate that amount of marijuana is worth about two point four million dollars,” Agent Cook said.

The room was quiet for a moment. The stenographer looked up at us. When people start talking about millions of dollars, it attracts attention.

“Okay, gentlemen,” the magistrate said. “I have what I need in order to establish bonds for you. It’ll take my office a few days to check your backgrounds. I’m sure you understand?” He waited until we had all three nodded that was obviously the case. “Good. Then I will have a deputy take you to the Charleston County Jail, where you will be held until I’ve made my decision. Thank you for your cooperation.”

We waited in the holding tank down the hall while the federal deputies got the transportation details arranged. We asked for food, but they said we’d get lunch at the jail. A secretary from an office a couple of doors away brought us three cups of coffee on a plastic tray.

“You the pot smugglers?” she asked as she handed us the Styrofoam cups through the bars.

“Yeah,” John said. “That’s us.”

She let the tray drop beside her skirt, smiled, and shook her head. “Business isn’t so good today?”

“Not so good,” John said.

She watched until we sipped from the cups she’d brought and then smiled and went back to her office, a room like ours except it had no graffiti on the walls and no bars on the door.

An hour later, two deputies, one white and one black, let us out of the cell and escorted us to the elevator. They took us to the basement, where they fitted us with chains. They put fat leather belts on our waists which had metal rings on them through which they threaded long chains so we were chained together. If we made a break for it, we would look like three handcuffed mountain climbers in a rush.

“What’s this?” John said. “We’ve been walking around this place all day with no cuffs, no nothing. Why you chaining us now?”

“Regulations,” the black deputy said. “I got no choice.”

The white deputy opened the door and we walked out, trailing each other. They guided us to a big Ford and let us in the backseat.

It was about two in the afternoon as the Ford drove up a ramp onto an expressway. The sun was bright, the air chilled. We drove along the expressway. The sun hit my face, feeling pleasant. The people in the passing cars seemed so different now. They, any of them, could, on a whim, just turn off at the next exit, go anywhere they wanted to go. They were free.

The black deputy apparently got a lot of complaints about the chains. “I had to transport this guy once, a farmer,” the deputy said. “He was in jail for making his own liquor. Judge let him out of jail temporarily to go harvest his tobacco crop, you know?”

“They let people out of jail to do that?” Ireland said.

“Yeah, they can. This judge did. Anyway, this old boy had been home for over a month, the harvest was over, and the judge said I should go fetch him back to jail. So we, Billy, here,” he said, nodding to the white deputy next to him, “Billy and me, we go out to the sticks to this guy’s house. Damned if he wasn’t waiting for us, all cleaned up and ready to go; been out there for a month, could’ve just took off. His wife is saying good-bye; his kids are crying. Then I tell him I have to put on the cuffs. Damned if he didn’t get crazy! He says, ‘What? I been out here by myself, trustworthy as you fucking please, and you want to put me in chains?’ And I say, ‘C’mon, now. This is just regulations. If it was up to me, I wouldn’t do it, you know?’ Well, the guy just didn’t understand it, the regulations, you know. Took it personal. He proceeded to get real loud and nasty and me and Billy had to draw our guns. By then he had worked himself into such a state that made him even madder. He got started looking like he was going to hit us, and we ended up having to shoot the guy.”

“You shot him?” John said.