There just wasn’t any reason to hold him longer, so Tommy was released from the jail two days short from the end of October. The skies threatened rain, but the sun, a bright orb was up for the battle against the steely grey. Tommy was waiting outside of the gates smoking the cigarette the lady guard, Bonnie, had palmed him on his way out. ‘Fuck, kid, calm down. Most kids are excited to be leaving here.’ She shook her head at him.
Poor fucking kid.
“Thanks for coming to get me, Momma”, he said, as she pulled herself out of the backseat of the taxi. She fussed with her hair; a brighter blonde than he had seen on her before.
“What a bunch of bastards, Tommy,” she declared, as she threw herself around him, “We can sue.”
“Yeah, Momma,” he whispered, pushing her away, “I don’t think so.”
Tommy looked at her as though she were crazy. And Momma flinched. “Let’s just go home,” she said.
Tommy stared out the window, as they drove through the country roads. It was so nice to see trees, and houses, and cars again. He wanted to ask the driver if he could roll down his window; just to feel the air, but he did not want to make anyone else cold. It had been cold every day in jail.
Momma soon started again. “If we sue, we can talk about deplorable conditions. I am sure everything was terrible there, wasn’t it, Tommy? Besides just falsely arresting you…..”
Inmates pissed on everything they could. In the corner of their cells for the hell of it Most of the prisoners would not drink the coffee, but Tommy wouldn’t eat the eggs or potatoes either. He knew they were powdered mixes.
(More)
It had been bad.
But Tommy just snorted out a laugh at her, “Momma, quit showing-off to cab drivers.” And that had shut her up real quick.
When they were home at the entrance of the apartment building, she grabbed him by the back of his shirt, “Just get in the fucking house, Tommy,” and she added, words of no thought tumbling out of her mouth; just anger. “Since you think you are a big man now, you need to start carrying your weight. And since you are mostly a good-for-nothing, I don’t see how else you can come into some money to support yourself. Because that’s what men do. Support themselves. So, you’ll have to sue. I’m not gonna keep paying for ya.””
“Momma, all I want to do is go home and go to sleep in my bed…”
“You don’t have a bed anymore,” Momma said. “Until you pay some rent, you got the couch.”
There was nothing for dinner that night. “Men feed themselves,” she told him.
“Where are you going?”
“Out.”
“Where?”
“Men don’t need to tell people where they are going,” Tommy slammed the front door behind him.
Minnie would not answer his raps on the window. Not even when he drummed out her favorite Judas Priest song.
His footsteps slapped the slick sidewalk, the rain came when the moon climbed higher than the sun.
He heard the car behind him and knew who it was without looking.
“Out looking for new victims?”, the cop sneered out his rolled-down window.
“Hey, man,” Tommy answered, “I’m not looking for any trouble here.”
And he kept on walking.
*Needs to get here
-Not even in a free country were their acts tolerated.
Rolling My Eyes 