Taps

Thirty-two days to go.

It wasn't life this time.  He should have gotten life in the clink, but somehow, he'd talked his way through another maelstrom of half-truths and accusations.  Getting off the hook was simple.  With another trial behind him, he wonders why and how jails still remain full.

It's too damn easy, he thinks with a smirk.  A raindrop falls across his head.  Its partners splatter across the grime of the floor- a testament to his three months of misery.

The rain dripping across his face and down his greasy ponytail is the remnants from last night's storm.  The leaks often trickled down from the flat rooftop of the pen and down through to the sixth floor cells- the minimum security ones.  

Concrete chips and broken glass filtered down through the cracks as well.  They ran within the pools of browned water through the bars of his cell on the worst nights.
Handcuffs and manacles click outside the whitewashed, bare cell.  The rustle of uniforms, bark of turnkeys and the scuffle of boots across the floor- somebody is being moved.  Moved or released.

His ears brush the bare flaked steel of the bunk, fingers drumming out a street beat across the bare wet surface.  

It isn't life this time.

He can be thankful for at least that.  The beat rolls out across his tender fingertips and rough, callused palms, steady and firm.  Through the lock-up and the trial, he hasn't lost his touch, despite losing his sticks, drum, and his place in the line.  The two-step tango would be leaving without him this time.  Every battalion had marched out this morning with the band.  

None of the squad had visited him once.  Three days ago, he'd been awakened to the harsh roll of a cadence.  

He stands, grinning slightly despite the cold and the damp.  His cot creaks as he crosses the eight-foot wide room to the bare wall.  There's a sliver there, a piece of glass picked up from a brawl in the cafeteria a week ago.  It serves as a mirror.

The face that appears is sharp and angular- the visage of a predator.  A whip-thin body stands perfectly straight at parade-rest, dressed in the billowing fabric of a torn prisoner's uniform.  It hangs awkwardly across his bony shoulders.

The greasy ponytail that drops across his face is black and unkempt.  It had once been buzzed short.

He leers at the grotesque figure.  His fingers grasp for the shard.

Lift it.

Shatter it against the dirt across the floor.

He's still been tapping the street beat against his leg.  He can't stop himself.  It changes, to a slow gliding march; a slow march, a dirge.

Taps rings out in his head, clear and crisp and mournful.  The trill of the pipes and the dull thud of the drums echo through his head as rank after rank of statues present arms as one body, one motion.  

The symbolism is obvious to him.  The unit has marched on and left him to rot and run in their footsteps.  While they may regret, they will soon forget.  

He falls to the bed.  He isn't sure if he's sorry, but he is sure it will happen again.  Light hands and soft words are in his nature to give.  

All that remains of his worldly possessions lie at his feet.  A medal of service, tarnished and rust-festooned.  The double-stripes of a drum corporal, ripped from his coat.  A pair of sticks- his first, in fact.

He drops to the grime and snatches them up.  They quiver in his hands, alive, anticipating.  His fingers trace every whirl, every dent and ding and scratch along their length.

He thinks he knows what he can do.  It's humble, simple, and low, but it's a way forward when the turnkeys come for him.  If the uniform won't have his sticks, the street might.

He smiles- a genuine one, not a leer, and leans against the wall of his abused cell as taps rings out across the city from the place d'armes.

Thirty-one days to go.