The girl in jail

In August 1955, Momma went to the hospital to have Patty. Carolyn, Frances, Bill and I went to stay with Mom and Grandpa. Carolyn was 11, I was 9, Frances was 6 and Bill was 5.

Mom and Grandpa lived in a big unpainted house on the north side of the square in Boston, Texas, just across the street from the courthouse. The courthouse was three stories, brick, painted white. It had a steep roof.

The county jail was behind the courthouse. The jail was two stories, painted brick, like the courthouse. Sheriff’s Department offices were on the bottom floow. The second storey was higher than the first and held all the prisoners. All the windows had bars, the lower normal size windows and the second floor windows, more than twice the height of the lower ones.

Mom and Grandpa had been married about 40 years. Mom was 55, Grandpa was 63. They had eight children. That year, three of their kids – Ruby, Betty and David -- and two grandchildren – Bobbie and Jim -- lived with them.

Jim was 16 that summer, and David was 15. They were the coolest boys ever, especially David. They had reputations. Not the serious kind, not yet. David’s reputation would become more serious later on, while Jim would go into the Army for more than 20 years. He went to Vietnam in 1961, and probably later, too.

For a week that summer, the future was a thing unthought. It was August, and a time to play in the big sandy yard, in the shade of three huge oak trees.

It was a time for bicycle riding, too. Jim and David each had a bicycle, but they were so taken with the girl in jail that I got to ride the bicycles as often as I wanted. I rode around the square and around, a short way west and north on Highway 98, and around the square.

One afternoon in the kitchen I asked Mom, “Where are David and Jim?”

She said, “They’re talking to that girl over at the jail.” She waved a wooden spoon as she talked, and from her tone I knew she did not approve of the girl in jail, nor of David and Jim talking to the girl. But from what Momma and Daddy said, David and Jim got by with a lot of things Mom didn’t approve.

I walked across the street and around the courthouse and to the jail. The doors and windows were open, so I went inside and then up the stairs to where the cells were. The floors were white tiles, square and maybe an inch across, like the ones in banks in those days. There were eight cells, each with bars across the front and each separated from the adjoining cell by a brick wall. The cells were at the south end, and there was a wide place north and then the north wall and four high and wide barred windows.

I sat on the tile floor. It was cool. David and Jim leaned against the bars on the front of the third cell. They smoked cigarettes.

A pair of hands rested on a cross piece of the front bars, a girl’s hands, with a cigarette between her right index finger and middle finger. Now and then the hand went inside the cell and then back to rest and white exhaled smoke went through the bars.

David and Jim and the girl talked in low voices. I couldn’t hear what they said. I think David and Jim knew the girl. Probably from school and other places.

After a while I got bored. I left the jail and walked around the courthouse and across the street and got a bicycle and rode around for a while.