Spontaneous Radiance
(Published in Jubilee City, 2005)

At the lake we all looked alike. The same long parted in the middle sun bleached hair, tan, cutoffs, and under aged. The girls with curves and tube tops.
We came from east Tulsa and we traveled there in pickups and Harleys if we were lucky.
Our sport was sex and drugs and beer.
The objective was to get fucked up.
The lake was perfection, a state of grace.
Once I went contrary to the flow and trouble started.
I showed up in a new (and weird but fast) Monte Carlo and because of that I declined to partake in the barbiturates that were there that day. This caused resentment in the ranks and someone put downers in my beer.
Around dusk I could hardly walk.
But I could drive I thought and I wanted to go for one in my new gold car.
I recruited two old pals to ride around the state park with me. My two friends didn’t refuse anything that day and were as fucked up as I was.
We get in and turn the music way up.
It was getting dark and immediately I almost ran a pedesteran over and he shot me the finger. I get out to defend my manhood and never land a punch. He knocked me out cold and I was dragged to the passenger side and one of my friends gets behind the wheel and the other is in the back seat.
I’m sitting up, my heads down, and I’m out.
The pedestrian is a very angry young man by now and he’s yelling at the driver through my passenger side window over my limp body to get me outta here. The driver can hardly keep his head up or find the ignition much less drive, but has the pedestrian yelling at him and my pal in the back seat is too.
It gets so loud and I come to just as the car is turned on. I hear the engine revving way too high and hear all the yelling and then I see the pedestrian. He doesn’t know I’m awake. I grab his hair or shirt and hit him with a flurry with my left as he fights back. My friend is screaming from the backseat to go go go. We’re fighting through the window as my driver finally figures out how to put it in gear, floors it and my powerful new car burns rubber straight into a tree. The pedestrian tumbles just before I bust the windshield out with my head.
I managed to get out my new car that was now hugging a medium size tree on the side of the road overlooking the lake. A head light was still on and my friends left. Bleeding, I threw out all the beer bottles. Then the highway patrol came and found some beer bottles, pot and papers in the ashtray.
I’m handcuffed and driven thirty miles to near the Arkansas line to the court house in Sequoia County in the town of Stillwell.
The jail was in the court house and that was a big old territory sand stone building. They booked me then took me deep into it. It was cold and poorly lit with a big cage of men.

It was Saturday night and it was full.
Being the youngest I had to sit in the least desirable place against bars near the stopped up and overflowed toilet, which a homeless looking old crazy man was tending to by using his foot as a plunger. Disgusted, he would pace the length of the cell talking to himself, and tracking shit and paper back and forth.
There were Cherokees and Seminole Indians in various conditions. Some were speaking Indian to each other. Sitting next to me was a friendly Indian man who told me I looked like a raccoon because I had two black eyes. He said I bet you wish you weren’t here. He was right, I hated it.
My long hair was matted with blood and white t-shirt was nearly all red from my bleeding head.
It was cold in there- I didn’t sleep and when coffee came at six am prisoners came out from the shadows. I didn’t realize there were that many. I had to take my t-shirt off to hold around the tomato sauce can the coffee was in because it was too hot.
Shortly they started to take some of us out. Each time there was a flurry of messages from the prisoners to tell the outside world.
Then they came to get me. I forgot my big flurry of messages immediately as I walked toward the morning light coming from the front of the building.
Then I stepped into the sunny storefront room where my parents were. The sun was pouring in, I was squinting but I could see the shock of my parents seeing their bloodied and battered son.
My father stood over my mother as she burst into big tears.
At the first opening he says to her “Honey why you don’t go down the street and get a piece of pie.”

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