“We’re home free,” I told John. We had to be. It’d been three days since we left California’s Humboldt County, the lush, remote hill country near the Oregon border, and now we were nearing the Mississippi River. We could be in New York tomorrow if we drove straight through. “Pull over at the next gas station,” I said. “I need caffeine.”
The Circle K parking lot was brightly lit. As the car idled I sprinted through the pissing rain to the door and got two cans of cold double espresso and a six-pack of Red Bull. John watched me down three cans and buckled my seat belt. As I pulled out of the parking lot, we passed a cop car coming in. Two cops were in the front seat and they turned to look at us as we passed. I nodded a quick greeting, like passing drivers do. I wasn’t worried at all—even though I had 10 pounds of high-grade marijuana in a duffel bag in the trunk.
As I steered onto the interstate access road I caught a flash in the rearview of the police car turning to follow us. Even then it never registered. Just before the on-ramp, the cruiser flicked on his blue-and-white flashers. I pulled over carefully. John said, “Don’t worry, probably a tail light.” No one would look in the trunk. “Yeah,” I said. “No biggie.” My heart rate stayed steady. Why would he look in the trunk?
The cops approached us from either side of the rental car, a Chevy Malibu. I rolled down my window.
“Is there a problem, officer?” I asked, in my casual voice, like I was ordering a salad. “You crossed the white line back there,” he said, his voice rich with back-country twang. “I just want to make sure everything is all right. Y’all aren’t too tired to drive, are you?”
“Nope,” I chirped, and held up a can of Red Bull. “I’m excellent.”
“Sir, please step out of the car.”
Here we go, I thought. Here we go.
It was raining hard now, so the cop told me to sit with him in the front seat of his cruiser. “Let’s chat,” he said. He had the heat on. “It’s nice and cozy,” he told me. He ran my New York State license, asked why I was driving all the way from California to New York. “Why didn’t you just fly?” There were long silences. We stared through the window at his partner, who was talking to John in the Malibu. Then the other cop stood back, the door swung open, and John stepped out. Pretty soon we were all four of us standing in front of the trunk.
You know that old saying: “Whenever anyone, anywhere, reaches out for help, I want the hand of AA always to be there.” Well I was reaching out, through the payphone, the caged windows, the Plexiglas. It always made me cringe, but it makes a lot of sense to me now. I was blessed. I was fucked, too, but blessed.
The next thing you know, the trunk is open. Then the big black duffel is placed on the ground. It is unzipped and there it is, in the headlights and the blue-and-white flashers: a shitload of very green, top-shelf Humboldt weed portioned out in big vacuum-sealed plastic bags. The cops didn’t really say much to us. Voices barked over walkie-talkies, and most of me just shut down. I barely reacted as the cuffs went on. I just rocked a little as I looked up the embankment at the cold moonlight glowing above some evergreens and shook my head slightly. For a second I wondered if I just took off up that little hill how far I could get with my hands cuffed behind my back. I was definitely faster than these big old boys. But I just stood there in the rain. John kept saying “fuck” over and over, and “sorry” and “oh man.” I told him it wasn’t his fault. At this point, what did it even matter?
This is a story about unsober behavior. All those things they tell you in recovery about what not to do in your first year of sobriety—no relationships, no big changes, no geographicals, call your sponsor, get to a meeting. Each suggestion basically says that early sobriety is not the time to be making adult decisions, so don’t even try. Logically, I figured that after that year passed, I could start mixing it up with the big boys. When I was arrested in this shitty little Arkansas town in the pouring rain, I was three-and-a-half years sober, and it is by far the dumbest decision of my life—drunk or sober. I guess I agreed to do this out of desperation. I had injured my leg in a marathon a couple months earlier and lost my job in a film production art department, which requires lots of running around. So I needed cash. Then I got a perfectly timed call from an old friend who was growing pot in Humboldt County. He asked if I knew anyone in New York who could move 10 pounds of weed, and I could stand to make $10,000 if I helped make it happen. I should have put down the phone and called my sponsor. Instead, I said, “Sure. Yeah. Of course.”
The cruiser moved slowly through the pounding rain and we arrived at the county jail. I didn’t say anything. Just shook my head slowly. This could carry a 20 year sentence. I had some dark thoughts, mostly about getting raped in a prison cell, but also about years of shitty food, head lice, having to join a white power gang just to get through the day. I also thought about never being able to drive the misty, magical Pacific Coast Highway into Big Sur.
The officer who checked me in at the jail was fat and pimply, barely older than a teenager. He looked at my ID, pointed to the wall clock, and observed that in a few minutes, at midnight, it would be my birthday. “Happy birthday,” he said, smiling. I felt like kicking him. I was going to turn thirty-five in an Arkansas jail. It sounded like the lyrics of a really boring country song.
He led John and me down a narrow hallway in an orange jumpsuit. When he opened the door to the lock-up, a cloud of cigarette smoke and frenzied voices hit me like a fist. A narrow passageway separated two large cages, each holding 20 men, and someone was yelling, “Give me a fucking cigarette, you stupid n****r.” I don’t think he was talking to me.
We were shut into a cell with twenty or so other inmates, all dressed in the same orange suits. I found out where the yelling was coming from—a short, tattooed guy with a red crew cut who had climbed as high as he could up the bars. He’d stripped down to his boxer shorts and was hanging on with his hands and feet, gyrating and yelling across the passageway. “Give it up, n*****r,” he continued, until he hopped down and approached John and me and introduced himself.
“How you guys doin’?” he asked. “Got a cigarette?”
It was a sad and horrible night.
The later it got in the cell, the more I regretted having downed all the energy drinks. It was like a bad acid trip, coupled with severe indigestion. I suddenly wanted a beer to take the edge off. There was an exposed toilet in the corner of the room, and eventually, I had no choice. I must have sat on that filthy throne thirteen times that night, but not one person complained. The racist wall-climber even gave me a roll of toilet paper from a private stash. As he handed it to me, I wondered what price I’d eventually have to pay.
Prisoners were sleeping on mats strewn around the cell floor. What they would try to do to me while I was asleep? John found us a place for our two mats along a wall and he lay down and seemed to fall asleep pretty easily. The Red Bull was still working through my blood, and I lay looking at the grey ceiling as the minutes passed slowly. Two guys in the cell across from ours were smoking cigarettes. One was ribbing the other guy.
“You’re going to the pen tomorrow, man. They’re gonna fuck you, man. You know they will.”
“Bullshit. No one’s touching me,” the other guy said, with a nervous laugh.
“Oh yeah, man. They’ll get you.”
I was really in it now. Life as I had known it was over. I felt like I was turning into stone.
In the morning, a couple of friendly cellmates told me they’d seen a guy a week ago walk after getting busted with fifty pounds. I was skeptical. I met a guy in my home-group back in Brooklyn who got busted in Illinois for a lot less than what I was carrying and he spent five years in a very dark place. I was sure we were going away for a long time.
My first phone call was to my sponsor. He asked me outright, “Are you sober?”
I looked at the pink bail slip issued by the county jail, and it said, “Arrested for possession of marijuana with the intent to sell.” Nothing about how much marijuana I had. Maybe that guy was right. Were the cops going to sell the pot?
“Listen,” he said. “No matter what happens, you will make it.” I leaned my forehead against the wall and tears ran down my face. I couldn’t speak. I felt blessed. There’s that old saw in the rooms about responsibility, “Whenever anyone, anywhere, reaches out for help, I want the hand of AA always to be there.” Well I was reaching out, through the payphone, the caged windows, the Plexiglas—all the way to AA. It had always made me cringe, but it makes a lot of sense to me now. I was blessed. I was fucked, too, but blessed.
John and I saw the judge separately. Military medals from Vietnam hung behind his desk. He was a tough guy, but he was soft spoken and fair, I guess. He set bail at $50,000, which was a little disconcerting. Then I met the bondsman and the lawyer and I agreed to pay them each their five percent. The bondsman said everything would be taken care of.
“You’ll be out of here tomorrow,” he said.
“I don’t understand how that’s possible.”
“Trust me.”
By the time we’d got back to the cell, we’d missed dinner, but some of the guys had saved our plates of cold hamhocks and grits. Southern gentlemen. Most of them were in for minor drug violations and petty crimes that fed their crystal meth habits. One guy named Troy said we’d never stand trial.
“Shit man, the cops are going to sell the pot,” he says, like he’s seen it all. “Look, they only make $1,200 a month. They got to feed their families.”
The next day my bail bondsman walked John and me out the door into the bright winter Arkansas sunlight and drove me to a Western Union where we picked up the money my mom had wired. I looked at the pink bail slip issued by the county jail, and it said, “Arrested for possession of marijuana with the intent to sell.” Nothing about how much marijuana I had. Maybe that guy was right. Were the cops going to sell the pot?
I gave the bondsman $5,000, and then he drove us to the impound lot to pick up the rental car. John asked him what would happen next.
“It’ll be a little while before you know if you have to come back down here to Arkansas,” he said, and added, “Want to know why you were pulled over last night? Small town cops like we got here actually monitor the interstate for drugs moving east from California and Mexico. Your big mistake was the rental car. Rentals these days have a little red light in the center of the front of the dashboard where it meets the windshield. They see the little red light, they pull the car over, then do anything they can to get in and search the car. California plates on a car headed to New York with a guy driving with a New York State driver’s license. Shit, Miller, you guys were sitting ducks.”
I didn’t know if he was bullshitting me or not, but it made sense. John never should have consented to letting the cops search the trunk in the first place, the bondsman continued. It was that simple. There hadn’t been any probable cause to pull us over, much less search our vehicle. Stuck in the moment, in the pouring rain, John had figured we better play along with the Good Ol’ Boys lest we find ourselves in a James Dickey-type of backwater nightmare.
I kissed the ground when I got back to New York City, but I was still sweating it. I swam thousands of laps in the basement pool of the local YMCA, hit two meetings a day. I called my lawyer back in Arkansas every couple days, but he rarely took my call. One day he did, and, with grandly unintentional irony says, “It’s Miller time!” He didn’t know I was sober.
“All good, my man,” he says. “It’s settled. You don’t even have to come back down here. Your buddy John has to show up for court, but I’ll get him out of having to go to jail.” John had apparently pleaded with the judge on my behalf, telling him I had very little to do with the whole thing, other than helping with the driving.
“I wish you’d told me that two months ago,” I said. I collapsed on my floor. After a moment, there were tears in my eyes.
“Hey man, you’re lucky you’re not in the Penitentiary.”
I thanked him, and never talked to him again.
John eventually got a felony charge, but never had to do jail time. I really had lucked out. I had to start living my life with the idea that I had been given a huge break. Since then it has been really hard to find the complications of life being anything more than mere complications. I am sober, healthy, have both legs and I am not in jail. I rarely have much money but so what? I don’t think having a lot of money is really what I want anyway.
Maybe those two clumsy officers were the hand of AA reaching out for me. I don’t know. Maybe driving a trunk full of marijuana was a final, useless rebellion against my disease. I’d always fought coming into AA—from the moment I first dragged myself through that church door. I never really made that transition into working a program. A friend of mine who’s a Vietnam vet said returning to the States after the war was like being “back in the world.” My experience ain’t no Vietnam, but that whole horrible experience—deciding to traffic, getting busted, locked up, and let go may, brought me to a better sobriety. The same sponsor who I called from jail also said something that helps me often: “When in doubt, don’t.”
