The Life and Times of Innis E. Coxman (10 page)

             
Saturday Night

Haven’t
shit since Friday morning. No laxatives in the clink. Wouldn’t ask for them
anyway. A small tummy ache. Feel trouble brewing. Lower intestines locking up
and I think I greased a little bit in my jumpsuit. Trying hard to maintain.
Face stays twisted. I snarl a lot. Other inmates avoid me because they think
I’m possessed. Yay for small miracles.

Sunday

Tummy
is starting to bulge. Pain becoming unbearable. Can’t eat anymore. Fearing an
OD from a leaky package soaking into my rectum. Question whether death would
really be a problem. Exhausted. Haven’t slept since
Thursday night
Wednesday
night
Tuesday night
can’t remember due to heavy consumption of coke
prior to arrest. Keep to myself and wait to get out. Hoping I can make it. I
look like shit, thus am deemed too unattractive to rape. Mother
fuck
er,
will tomorrow ever get here?

Monday

Thank
God!

***

A
sheriff’s deputy in a wrinkled beige uniform retrieved me from my cell around
8:45. He stood inches away from the bars and called my name from an old wooden
clipboard:

“Coxman!
Innis!”

I
verified I was me and rolled off the bottom bunk to stand, sweating and looking
like I’d swallowed a bowling ball. Rivers poured down my face as pallor washed
over my body. Wetness coated the chest of my orange jumpsuit down to the third
silver button, matched only by the puddles in the armpits. Patches of my
alabaster skin were scabbed over due to binging.

The
deputy took note of my condition. He crinkled his face and asked if I needed an
ambulance. A speedy,
“No, sir!”
flew from my mouth. (They’d transport me
to a hospital with X-ray machines. Fuck that.) Shrugging his shoulders, he
ordered me to turn around and cuffed me through the grey, flaking bars. I’d
expected ankle shackles, but he said there weren’t any available. I was ordered
to behave under the threat of mace to the eyes and a baton to the head.

Once
my cell buzzed open, I walked out and was held tightly by my left arm as we
muddled past the cells of other prisoners hollering obscenities and outlandish
demands. The foulness of stale urine and sweat was an appropriate accompaniment
to the heckling.

Two
electric doors later, we were at the end of the block, rounding the glass
hexagon control room to our final steel door. The Beluga Whale inside the hut
put down his triple-meat heart attack special with fries and pushed a button on
the control panel. The door opened, and the deputy and I walked under the red,
handwritten “Judgment Lane” sign where he escorted me down a long corridor
connecting the jail to the courthouse. It overlooked the street from three
stories up. I looked out of the tinted five-by-five window panes as we walked
along the brown speckled tile, eyeing the traffic below, the people on the
sidewalk going about their day in fresh sunlight.

I
wondered how long it’d be before I was pounding free pavement.

By
the time we made it to the courtroom I felt like I was going to die, the
sterility of Lysol stinging my eyes to bring additional moisture. The deputy placed
me in the jury box to the left of the judge’s bench. It served as a bullpen for
prisoners awaiting indictment, arraignment, etc.—if you were in cuffs, that’s
where you stayed unless instructed otherwise. I sat slowly, puffing like
Pavarotti on a morning jog. When my name was called, I stood and prepared to
shuffle my parish slippers toward the waist-high podium between the defense and
prosecution tables.

In
every courtroom, the bailiffs are responsible for controlling prisoner movement
during legal proceedings. It’s an essential part of the job. But when this
bailiff came to lead me to the podium, he halted, his face twisting like he’d
been offered a sack of diarrheic dog shit. He never laid a hand on me. I was
treated like a leper and couldn’t help but turn it around on him.

“Oh
no, I trust you, Mr. Coxman. You don’t look like you’ll do anything. Now just
go stand over there. No, sir, I don’t need to escort you. Go stand over there.
Right there, sir. Over there. No, don’t—sir, don’t fucking—get away from me!
Mr. Coxman, I said go stand way the hell over
there!”

I
kept acting like I was going to brush up against him and he was losing his
mind. It was hilarious.

Outward
appearance reflected the distress of internal organs and the silver-haired
judge didn’t attempt to hide his disgust at my rancid state. Sitting rigidly
atop his wooden throne, he looked noble in his black, velveteen robe, but
utterly repulsed at the zombified condition of the defendant stooping before
him. I stood at the podium with my cuffed hands in the small of my back, bent
at the waist like a cattail in a thunderstorm, trying desperately to mitigate
the pain in my midriff. Ill as I was, it looked like I’d taken a full shower in
my jumpsuit. The chancellor’s eyebrows crashed together as he flashed me from
head to toe.

“Mr.
Coxman, are you alright, sir? Do you need medical attention before we
continue?”

“No,
sir, Your Honor. I’m fine. I just have a mild touch of the flu. My unfortunate
incarceration has hastened its umbrage. Hopefully, with the Lord as my healer,
I’ll be rid of this detestable sickness with medicine and cold fluids,
encircled by the grace of my beloved family.” I’m still waiting for my Oscar.

He
gave a gravelly, “harrumph,” his exasperation obvious at having to deal with
another smartass in his courtroom. He slowly swiveled the squeaky leather
chair, never taking his eyes off of me. After forty-five degrees, he turned to
face the Brooks Brother on my left: “Proceed, counselor.”

***

The
city prosecutor wasted no time in painting me out to be an urchin of the first
order, flapping his gums about being under the influence, something about
“possession” that I didn’t catch, and making reference to a “stack of homemade
pornography in the glove box of Mr. Coxman’s vehicle.” Just being a dick and
airing business that made the sexually repressed stenographer fall out of her
chair more than once. Incidentally, the judge told him he couldn’t do anything
about my porn stash and to stick to the transgressions he could actually adjudicate.

I
quoth the coolest magistrate in the history of jurisprudence: “Sir, this court
has no control over Mr. Coxman’s sexual proclivities with other consenting
adults, no matter how much they stray from the avenues of convention.”

Checkmate,
you tweed-coated cocksucker.

Throughout
the prosecution’s finger-pointing I felt like I was going to pop. I hadn’t
blown ass in three days and it was severely affecting my sexy. I was dizzy and
feverish. I was a greedy tick in a dog pound. Had somebody thumped my belly, it
would’ve sounded like a cantaloupe. Anguish clouded even the most basic of
senses. Somewhere in my veil of suffering, I heard the judge say three letters
that had never applied to me before: “ROR.”

Excessive
cocaine ingestion can lead to auditory hallucinations; I thought one of the
packages had burst and I was hearing shit. Either that, or I was so physically
ill that my mind had crossed the line into schizophrenia. But I’d heard the
judge correctly, and in the healthy portion of my brain, I was quietly
celebrating. I didn’t even know if I’d make bail, let alone be released of my
own accord. I was so floored with this turn of events I would’ve filled my
fashionable orange attire with solid excitement had it not been for the
quarter-pound of cocaine blocking the exit.

ROR. Are they fuckin’ serious?

I
was about to get out of there! I was about to escape the Gulag at no cost! I
still had the possession charge to contend with down the road, but it was a
misdemeanor. Nothing a good attorney couldn’t handle. I’d take some Ex-Lax,
blow out this delivery by noon, and be soaking in a hot bath shortly
thereafter. By that time I felt my asshole and I
both
deserved some R
& R.

Then
the
god
damn Jell-O pudding kicked in.

***

The
entire courtroom heard the rumble coming from my bowels as I released a long,
booming fart, permeating the room with viral death.

The
judge raised an eyebrow.

The
prosecutor covered his nose with his overpriced silk tie.

A
black guy awaiting arraignment for killing his wife and her lover with a
nine-iron threw his fist in the air and cheered from the jury box.

The
audience chuckled before shifting to the rear of the courtroom once the turd
blanket descended.

The
bailiff I’d harassed gave me a toothy grin with a double thumbs-up.

And
somewhere in the world, my doppelganger shot up from his chair with
inexplicable assfire.  

My
body had had enough. It was backed up with three days of excrement, some of
which was jail food. I frantically looked around for the closest bathroom.

A
purse.

A
shopping bag.

A
wheelbarrow.

An
empty baby stroller.

An
occupied baby stroller.

A
fucking red wagon.

Then
I spied the witness stand.

Adrenaline
quenched my arteries like the mighty Colorado breaking the Hoover Dam. I
grimaced, pulled with every muscle in my haggard body, and broke free of the
ancient, rusty handcuffs. Jumping out from behind the podium and brushing the
prosecution table, I slipped passed the bailiffs and ran to the closest
salvation I could find. When I got to the witness box, the judge screamed and
lifted his arms to guard his face, thinking I was going to hurdle the bench and
assault him. But the only thing I needed from his eminence was his
wife’s
hot box
big, wooden box.

Once
in my guano gulch, I stripped out of the jumpsuit like it was stitched of
pedophiles. Amidst confused faces and screaming cries of protest, I kicked the
rolling witness chair behind me to squat in the privacy of my public shithole.
The front of the stand provided me with a screen as I blasted out a load of
ordure
that is still responsible for His Honor’s policy of forcing prisoners to use
the bathroom before they enter his court. He looked down at me with perplexion
and odious contempt. Everyone else could only view me from the chest up as a
look of orgasm settled across my face.

It
was plentiful. Bountiful. Copious enough to match an anthrax outbreak. Load
after load of pudding cups, coke, and dry baloney sandwiches blew from my ass
like brown snow in a shitty blizzard. The prosecutor threw up in his briefcase,
spectators fled the courtroom, the bailiff drew his parish issue Glock, and I
didn’t notice any of it until my bowels were thoroughly evacuated.

The
judge never moved. He sat in his chair the whole time, awestruck. He just
stared at me and my smile of satisfaction when it was over. Still squatting,
but smiling, I faced him and asked if I could use some paperwork from his bench
to wipe my ass. His reply was an open mouth and befuddlement.

Fuck it. Silence doesn’t necessarily mean “No.”

Snatching
up the closest sheet of paper, I cleansed myself—wipe, fold, wipe, fold—before
crowning the mound with a steaming page of legal grandeur. When I stood and
buttoned up, the jumpsuit fit better. My tummy was flat again.

After
rounds of vomitous from the dwindling occupants, I was re-cuffed by the
bailiff—this time with new, sparkling cuffs and ankle shackles—before he
gingerly led me back to the cell block. He didn’t even hold my arm as was policy
for prisoner escorts. A ten-foot gap was purposely maintained for our hike back
to lockup.

Call
me crazy, but I could’ve
sworn
I felt a smile warming the back of my
neck.

***

Reality
set in after ten minutes in my cell: it wasn’t just a pile of waste in the
witness box. A great majority of the substance was pure cocaine.

Alfonse’s
cocaine.

What
if, by some fluke, I’d actually gotten out that day? Even replacing my ROR with
a high bail, it was possible. Taking into account all that’d transpired,
probably not, but stranger things have happened. I began to worry heavily about
Alfonse’s reaction when I showed up with no money and no product, as well as
brooding over the mountain of offal now sitting in a courtroom. The discolored
contents of my colon were surrounded by a judge, some sheriff’s deputies, and
anyone else who wanted to investigate the anatomical miracle of saran-wrapped
shit.

My
worry over the latter was all for naught.

Apparently,
three nights in a hot sphincter is the half-life for cookie’d cocaine. Upon
expulsion, the two substances blended evenly to match a dessert topping at a
family reunion.