Shake My Cage

Chapter 9: Mad Max

Shake my cage and free me from it.

There he was again, in County jail. Max’s life was looking like an old country song, “I’m in the Jailhouse Now.” He tried to decipher the confusion… thoughts ran wild… “Pardon me, Hank Williams, but I don’t want to be in one of your songs at this moment, eh?” He thought he’d broken that cycle when he got sober but here he was, thinking “Surely, I ought to be able to get out on O.R. first thing in the morning… no outstanding warrants or fines… living pretty clean too…what does all this have to do with a cosmic plan?”

A newly familiar calm came over him as he sat on the bunk once all the noise of the concrete and steel settled down after lights-out. Max was at peace and it felt as though a hand was on his shoulder. He turned to look but no one was there. So he sat with his back to the wall of the cell… Hell, he was given a private cell, isolation they call it, and he waited there while his mind leafed through old catechism stories… thinking again, “Would an angel appear before me, shake my cage, and unlock it?” The gentle hand on his shoulder assured him and he fell into a deep sleep.

            The next morning Max still had the feeling of that hand and everything became clear... all this shit. He didn’t know how it would turn out or what motives and powers were behind it but he knew for sure that he was to play an important part in some sort of cosmic drama. It was a cosmic drama that made perfectly clear what his next step would be. He hadn’t known such clarity since that day in the hooch with Kuka a decade before.

He slept and every night a dream, or vision, of a Kachina Jaguar... sometimes with Kuka’s face... danced around him singing a chant... “you are back in the tall grass”. About a week later that he was awakened at three in the morning, “McGee, roll it up, you’re goin’ home.”

“What… Someone bailed me out?”

“I don’t know… just roll it up!”

Three in the morning: What the hell? He didn’t like the feel of it. “Was I out? I could get a ride home from another cab driver, but shit,” he noticed that Richards was parked at the far end of the parking lot. Just for the hell of it he walked over to the squad car. When Richards opened his window, Max asked, “Don’t suppose you could give me a ride into town… eh?”

“I don’t think so. You know you’ve been snitched out by your junkie friends.” Richards rolled up his window and pulled away.

The cab finally arrived; his sponsor, Jim, behind the wheel. They’d been on the road for a good five minutes before Jim asked, “So, what did that cunt do to get you in jail this time, Max?”

At that moment he had a newfound distaste for the “C” word… especially when applied to Adrienne. He glared, “Drop the ‘C’ word, Jim.”

“Yeh, yeh, okay,” Jim grinned, pleased at this change in attitude. “It was on the front page of the News Suppress… but I wanted to hear your side.”

“I can’t believe it Jim, but, back there in my cell, a calm came over me and I felt a hand…” he gave Jim all the details.

“The Hand of Gawd, eh?”

“Something like that. I told you about Kuka. She came to me in dreams.”

“Awe, c’mon, Max. Don’t go psychedelic on me.”

“No, Jim, it is just that I now know there is a cosmic dance going down here and I’m in the middle of it.”

“The center of the universe, eh.” Jim scowled, “You know where that bullshit takes you.”

“Yeh, maybe you’re right...” Max admitted, “But there was this peace and clarity in knowing.”

 “Most of us didn’t think you did it and you still have your shift on the roster at the cab company.” Jim assured him, changing a subject that gave him the creeps.

“I have to check and see if the city hasn’t pulled my license,” Max would’ve been surprised if they hadn’t.

“I’m sure you can still dispatch if they did… you got everyone in the office behind you.” Jim had one eye on his rearview mirror, “A cop is tailing us.”

Sure enough, Richards was following the cab, making no attempt to make his presence unknown all the way back into town. He even parked at the end of the cul-de-sac just past Max’s place.

“Did the company bail me out?

Jim hesitated before he answered, “Naw… Sue is too tight with the cash to do that,”

“Well then, have you heard anything about Adrienne’s condition?” Max wondered if Adrienne might’ve…

“Say, you ain’t still in love with that bitch, are you?” Jim asked as Max opened the door.

Max sat back down a few minutes as though he was going to say something before Jim continued, “Y’know, maybe you’re right. You got some karma with that chick. She comes all the way to Santa Barbara… across an ocean and the whole damned continent to hook up with you. It is cosmic… it is what it is, damned karma.”

Max tried to sleep but couldn’t nod out while thinking of Adrienne… of Ryan; of Richards out there, and wondering what those damned S.O.B.’s were up to. The clarity he’d experienced in the jail cell clouded up once more.

Adrienne didn’t bail Max out. All charges against him had been dropped. The DA saw no chance for a conviction once she became able to communicate through her own lawyer. She’d also lifted the restraining order on Max. No one was charged with her beating either. It was very unusual for charges of spousal abuse or assault against any woman to be dismissed so easily. The State usually pursues charges even if the victim doesn’t want to. Max was curious about this lapse and suspected it to be a covert corruption of the justice system. He seriously wanted to know but he decided it was best to leave it be.

It was his powerlessness over it all that bugged him the most. He was damned if he was going to do nothing about her beating. Hadn’t he just spent a week in jail without an apology or a howdy-do from the law? But, he already knew that the justice system rarely, if ever, apologizes for its mistakes. Once they sink their teeth into you, no matter whether you are guilty as charged or as innocent as the baby Jesus, an ambitious prosecutor will comb the books to hit you with anything to get a conviction… unless you have connections and Max thought that he didn’t have any.