The Truth is in the Wine (20 page)

The officer approached and tapped on the driver's side window.

“Sir, are you all right?” the officer said, looking as much into the car as he was at Paul.

It was dark out now, around eight o'clock and the cop shined his flashlight into Paul's face.

“I'll be doing better if you didn't have that light in my face,” he said.

“Why did you stop in the center of the intersection?” the officer said, the light still in Paul's face.

“I got confused, officer,” Paul said. He got the words out, but did not enunciate as clearly as normal. “I'm visiting here for a few days and I was looking around at the town and looked up and it seemed like the light turned red and I lost where I was. I thought for that second I was behind the crosswalk.”

“I see,” he said. “Can I see your rental car contract and license?”

Paul looked in the car's glove compartment, but the contract was not there. He feared Ginger took it with her, as she was holding it some of the ride to Napa from the airport. Then he checked the center console, found it and handed it over to the officer.

“Sir, have you been drinking?” the police officer asked.

“Yes, I just left the wine lounge, 1313, a few blocks away,” Paul said. He figured lying was not going to work, so he surmised that giving him something would be the better strategy. “I had the best glass of wine in my life. A 2008 Caymer: amazing wine, especially considering it was so young.”

“Where are you staying?” the policeman said.

“Not too far away, at the Marriott,” Paul said.

“Can you turn off the engine and step out of the car?” he told Paul.

“Is this really necessary? I got confused about the light and where the crosswalk was,” Paul said.

“Yes, it's necessary,” the officer said, his tone much more
aggressive. “The fact that you couldn't determine where to stop is a problem. You admitted you were drinking and you smell like more than one glass of expensive wine. And your eyes are glassy.”

“I'm just sleepy,” Paul said as he exited the car. “I've traveled all the way from Atlanta. Still trying to adjust my body to the three-hour time change. If I were at home, it'd be going on eleven-thirty and I would already be in bed.”

The officer was not having it. He directed Paul to the side of the street away from traffic. People walking around and driving by in the quaint town could not help but notice Paul going through a field sobriety test.

He was not happy. He was embarrassed. And he felt the pressure of proving that he was not inebriated. But he didn't. He couldn't. Too much drinking impaired his center, so he could hardly walk a straight line in the awkward fashion cops demand: one foot literally in front—heel-to-toe—then turn around and do it again. Stand on one leg with arms stretched out, extend right hand away from body but touch the tip of the nose. Then do it with the left hand.

“This test is not a fair test,” Paul told the policeman. “How can you test me on something I have never done before?”

“Sir, that is the law and nothing I can do about it,” he answered. “Furthermore, turn around please and place your hands behind your back.”

The officer placed the handcuffs on Paul and walked him to the police car when he did what people see on television all the time when someone gets arrested: He put his hand over Paul's head and held it down as he folded into the back seat. He even said, “Watch your head.”

Paul sat in the scrunched-up seat totally uncomfortable and completely humiliated. His high was gone. He was going to jail,
and that fact ripped away all the feel-good of the wine he experienced a few minutes before.

Worse, he started to feel nauseous and lightheaded. It was warm in the car and he began to sweat. The officer stood outside the car speaking on a wireless device about having the rental car towed. Paul began breathing out of his mouth to get more air, trying to prevent a panic attack. For someone who had a fear of flying, being confined in cuffs in a cramped space was tantamount to torture.

He felt caged, trapped…like a prisoner. The officer finally came back to the car.

“I don't feel good; it's hot,” Paul said. “Can I get some air, please?”

The cop turned around and looked at Paul and saw the distress on his face, the sweat on his brow. He nodded his head and blasted the air.

“We have to wait here another ten minutes or so for the tow service to get here,” he said. “Meanwhile, I'm going to do some paperwork to make this whole process quicker.”

“Can I get a phone call? I'm not trying to spend the night in jail,” he said.

“Well, you're likely going to do that,” he said. “By the time you get a bail bondsman and he gets it over to the jail, it'll be several hours. Unfortunately, it's not a quick process.”

“What's the charge?” Paul said.

“Suspicion of driving under the influence of alcohol,” he said.

“Ah, man, come on now because of that sobriety field test?” Paul said. “That's pretty unfair.”

The officer did not respond at first. Finally, after an extended pause, he said: “You'll be able to make a phone call when I get you to the station. You have someone here who can post bail for you?”

He said, “Yes,” but it was not a call he wanted to make. He was fortunate that he even remembered Ginger's number. Hers, his mom's and Helena's were the only phone numbers he committed to memory.

His instinct was to call Ginger, but the pettiness in him moved him to call his mother. This would be a slap in Ginger's face. Not on the same level as her getting an abortion without consulting him, but a slap in the face nonetheless.

But that would have to wait. It was another fifteen minutes before the tow truck arrived. The officer filled out paperwork in silence and Paul listened to the calls from the dispatcher come in on the radio.

There was an arrest at Lincoln and California of a man who ran a red light—on his bicycle. The bigger problem for the guy was that he was in possession of a meth pipe with meth in it. He was headed to the Napa County Department of Corrections/County Jail.

Then there were officers and medical personnel called to the 700 block of Lincoln Avenue. A two-year-old male was suspected of taking medicine a two-year-old child was not supposed to take. He was transported to Queen of the Valley Medical Center for evaluation.

And then there was a fifty-nine-year-old man who was caught walking out of the local Target on Soscol with a jacket and sweater he did not purchase. An employee made a citizen's arrest, holding him until police arrived.

Focusing on those crimes helped Paul to calm down and take his mind off the discomfort he felt. Finally, the officer began the short drive to the jail on First Street. Paul looked at the people on the streets going about their lives without the specter of being placed in a prison cell. It made him feel worse.

They arrived and immediately Paul was struck by how the correction officers had either disdain for him or looked at him as if he were invisible, not even a person. He was lumped into the lot of criminals because he drank too much and got behind the wheel. He felt less than whom he was.

The cuffs were finally taken off and he rubbed his wrists that were pained by them. He wiped the remaining sweat from his face and poised himself. The police turned him over to the correctional officers, who would “process” him.

The place did not look horrible—it wasn't Alcatraz. But there was an air of oppression about it, a feeling of troubled souls resonating the place.

Shit got real for Paul when he was told to stand on the blue line and look at the camera, turn to his left and to his right—his mug shot. That didn't feel good at all. Then he was taken to the finger-print area where a woman did the honors, one by one placing his fingers on a machine that resembled a copier that captured his prints.

He was amazed at how routine the processing in process was. It sobered him up. He was as coherent and observant as he could be. He understood completely that he was an inmate.

“Excuse me,” he said as an officer led him to a cell that was narrow and smelly, with aluminum benches on either side. Best of all, it was empty. The last thing he wanted was to have to deal with others. “Can I make a phone call?”

The correctional officer led him to a phone that sat on the desk at the command center. On a pillar next to the phone was a list of local bail bondsmen. Under it was a sign that read: “5 Minute Limit on Phone Calls… No Exceptions.”

Paul dialed his mother's number. He was worried that she would not answer; she did not take calls from numbers she did not know.
But Brenda was concerned about Paul after Ginger told her that he left in a huff and without his cell phone. She was hoping it was her son.

“Vino?” she said into the phone with a sense of desperation, bypassing the traditional, “Hello.”

“Ma. Hey,” Paul said. “I'm in—”

“I know,” she interrupted. “Don't even say it.”

“Jail, Ma,” Paul said.

“DUI?” she asked.

“He said ‘suspicion of DUI,' which makes it, to me, hard to prove,” Paul answered. “I didn't take the breathalyzer. So he's going by what he believed.”

“It's his judgment as an officer to determine if you're a threat behind the wheel,” she said. “Why the hell did you leave us here at the hotel anyway? Ginger wouldn't say.”

“We can talk about it when I get out of here,” Paul said, “which is the reason I'm calling.”

He gave her three options of bail bondsmen from the list by the phone. He could hear Ginger's voice in the background, and she was not singing.

“Here's your wife,” Brenda said.

“Paul, you're in jail?” she said.

“Yeah.”

“So why didn't you call me? You called your mother?” she asked.

“Doesn't feel good, does it,” Paul responded, “when something important happens and you turn to someone other than your spouse?”

“This is why I had an abortion; you can be so mean,” she said.

Paul heard Brenda's response in the background. “Abortion? You had an abortion? Madeline, you knew about this?”

Then he heard all three of the women's angry voices talking all over each other. It was audio confusion.

“Hey, hey, hey,” Paul said so loudly into the phone that a correctional officer came over and warned him about his volume. Ginger finally got them to stop bickering. “Can y'all do that later—
after
you get me out of here?”

“Well, I'll let your mother handle that since that's who you called,” Ginger said with attitude.

She passed the phone back to Brenda. “You OK, Vino?” she said as if she were talking to a kid.

“Ma, I'm fine,” he said. “I'm at the Napa Correction Center/County Jail. It's not that far from the hotel. They just told me my fine is five thousand dollars, but I can bond out for five hundred. Can you work on this now so I can get out of here? Please?”

“OK, I will,” Brenda said. “But we've got a lot to talk about—you driving and drinking and your wife having an abortion? Really?”

“OK, I gotta go, Ma. I won't be able to call you again, so please get me out of here now.”

And with that, he hung up and was led back to the cell, which, in those few minutes had welcomed three guests: a twenty-something young man who reeked of alcohol and the streets; an elderly man who seemed to be either drunk or mentally challenged; and a man close to fifty who laid on his back on one of the benches.

It was close to ten o'clock at night the day after Thanksgiving and Paul Wall was in the Napa jail, a place he never even considered when he planned the trip to his dream destination.

“Y
ou can forget about getting out of here tonight,” the elderly man said. He was disheveled, with long, dirty-blond hair and thick facial hair, a sort of a filthy Santa Claus. Paul studied his face and determined there was a younger man than he first thought beneath all that hair and behind those wrinkles.

Paul was not interested in having conversation with his fellow inmates, but had to respond to the man.

“How do you know?” he said.

“How do I know?” the man responded. “You ever seen
The Andy Griffith Show
?”

“Andy Griffith? Yes,” Paul said.

“Well, I'm Otis from
The Andy Griffith Show
,” he said.

“Who's Andy Griffith?” the younger man asked. He had tattoos of snakes and a skull and bones and other random images on his arms and shoulders and around his neck.

The man looked at Paul, who explained: “He's an old-school actor who had a TV show before you were born. He was the sheriff in a small town called Mayberry. Otis was…he was…”

“He was the town drunk,” the older man said, “who spent a lot of his weekends in jail, so he knew how the system worked.”

“So you saying that about yourself?” the young man asked, smiling. “You're the Napa town drunk?”

“Pretty much,” he said. “But you can call me Otis. Funny thing is, that's actually my name.”

“You,” he went on, looking at Paul, “you don't live here.”

“How you know that?”

“Because you have a Southeastern accent, probably from Georgia,” he said. “The way you almost sing certain words. Your accent is not as bad as could be. You're educated. Went to college, but probably in the Northeast, didn't you? In Virginia or Washington, D.C., or Philadelphia. That region.”

Paul looked on in astonishment. The man was right about everything.

“How could you know that?” Paul said. “I haven't even said ten words. Haven't been sitting here but three minutes.”

“Wait,” the young man said, “he's right? All the stuff he said is right?”

“He's right,” Paul answered.