The Mars Room(62)

Cut to a commercial for Martha White Flour, sung by Flatt and Scruggs.

The doctor said that brain injuries could do that. Make you see a memory clearly, or hear music, or in this case both.

Doc’s sadistic foster dad, Vic, had been fond of the Grand Ole Opry and watched the TV show. Porter Wagoner was his foster father’s favorite. Porter Wagoner wore denim jackets with cutaway tails to showcase his fry-pan-sized rodeo buckle. His face was tall and oval-shaped like the canvas opening of a covered wagon. His slack creases could have sliced ham, slacks that were too form-fitting to need any belt, much less a rodeo buckle, and the idea that a dandy like Porter Wagoner had been a winner or even a contestant in any legitimate rodeo was not realistic, but it was part of the culture.



* * *



Time pedaled past, Doc’s thoughts free-floating, giving the days and nights a seamless sameness, dazed wakefulness, a fresh IV bag, an exchange of lighthearted hostility with the guard by the door, and knockout sleeps.

One day they put him in prison clothes and shuttled him back to New Folsom, but not his former block. Doc had to go to the skilled nursing facility, because he slept twenty hours a day and had balance issues, fell over when he tried to walk.

He knew what year it was. He knew where he was. He could not remember why he hated Lodi, but maybe it wasn’t important. Fuck you, I’m Rich. The information was back, more or less, but he felt changed. Altered. Not just on account of the country music piping in through one ear, or via some other entry point, piping in and filling him with sounds and images from the past. The most extreme difference was his temperament. It was like someone had gone in there, into his head—not the biological goo packed into the skull, but the real him, the memories and feelings, the images stored up. As if someone had gone in there and mucked around, changed things, while he was in the coma. He felt different. He felt good. Even if he suffered from debilitating headaches and did not always have words when he went to say them. He had this feeling that everything was going to be okay. Which was strange, because nothing would be. He was serving a sentence of life without parole. And he was a cop, and now that well-guarded secret was out. Everyone knew, which was why his cellie had tried to kill him. Doc was greenlighted. His future would only be shitty. He would be transferred to a prison that was all protective custody. Once there, if his cover got blown, if people found out about his background, there would be no place left to transfer. It was likely Doc was going to die a violent death. And yet, he took things one hour at a time and didn’t panic. He felt a sense of peace, and it was new, a new feeling for him. Probably his edge had been blunted, just like the pamphlet for his imaginary loved ones had warned.

“I feel good. I feel pretty fucking good,” he said to the blank walls of his little cell.

“What did they dose you with, honey?” a voice from the next cell called out. “I want some. All they give me is Ultram.”

“I don’t get any drugs,” Doc said. “I just feel good. It’s ’cause I got my brains bashed in. What happened to you?”

“I was jumped, and the cops watched. No one helped me.”

His neighbor had a high voice. Doc liked the sound of it. He had overheard the nurses. His neighbor was a powder puff, a “she.” Her name was Serenity and Doc wanted to know all about her.

“Are you white or black?” he called through the wall.

“I’m all colors, honey.”

But he saw, through the slim window in his cell door, when they took Serenity to the showers, that she was black. She was thin and delicate-boned and had the face of an angel. A fucking angel. He saw it. Chick was good-looking. But the poor thing. Her arm was in a sling, and her leg was in a cast. They rolled her down the hall in a wheelchair. The way she smiled when she turned back to her nursing attendant amazed Doc. She had a woman’s smile, and something about her smile, it made the world worth smiling over.



* * *



He tried to get a glimpse of her every time he heard the commotion of her cell being opened.

“Hey, All Colors,” he said one morning. “I think you’re beautiful.”

“You’re not my type, love.”

“How do you know?”

“?’Cuz I seen you. Your head looks like a softball, with all that stitching.”

Doc laughed. “I seen you, too. They really messed you up, didn’t they?”

They had beat her unconscious. She cried as she told him about it.

Later, when Doc thought back on what Serenity told him, he knew he wasn’t completely changed now. He knew he was still the old Doc, because he could stoke his own anger by thinking about what had happened to Serenity. He wanted to obliterate the two people who’d hurt her. Put bullets in their skulls. Put their bodies in his trunk, and eject them into the dumping ground of desert between LA and Vegas.

He was growing fond of the voice next door. The girl next door. He used to insult the powder puffs, and why? These were ladies, in a men’s joint. He had enjoyed their boobies but he didn’t treat them like humans. Serenity was pretty close to a genuine lady; she had no pecker. There was nothing “down there.” She made fun of him for saying it that way, but in the presence of a woman he didn’t want to talk crude. She’d had a sex change but it was prison cell surgery, performed on herself in a moment of bravery and desperation. She almost died from blood loss. She got better. They put her in general population. She was attacked, raped and beaten, by two men in her unit. The prison wanted to keep her permanently in ad seg.