Three sticks of gum. A screw. A pencil stub. Some lint.
The thing is, Officer Meekins tries to explain to the warden checking him in to the detention center, that he is really just a little lost lamb, sir. He was in the wrong place at the wrong time, is all, that's the truth of it. He was in the wrong place at the wrong time, and then he killed a man, that's the truth too. But sometimes the truth hurts. Sometimes the truth hurts your court case, for instance. But the important part, sir, Meekins keeps insisting to the warden as he empties out his pockets into the little plastic bin, the important part is that he is simply a poor little lost lamb.
A coffee stirrer. His apartment key. A quarter and two dimes.
He's killed a man. He doesn't say that out loud again, but he thinks about it, as he roots deeper in his pockets. He's killed a man with a knife. The man, whoever he was, is dead. Mike's sorry he's dead, he thinks as he tosses a few pennies out to join the quarter and dimes. He's really sorry. Maybe the guy shouldn't have been skulking around in the evidence room—no good ever came of skulking, Mike thinks that was in the orientation powerpoint probably—but he didn't deserve to die for it. Mike wishes he wasn't dead at all.
A rubber stamp. Two paperclips. A movie ticket stub.
"I think it's very strange how quickly things can change, sir," he gulps at the warden, who acknowledges with a grim nod. Mike knows, with more clarity than distinguishes most of the workings of his brain, what the man thinks he means. He thinks Mike means it's strange that one evening he could come home to his apartment and make a cold roast beef and mayonnaise sandwich and stick in a Bruce Lee movie and fall asleep in front of the TV with mayonnaise on his chin, and the next afternoon he could be in jail for murder.
A broken watch strap. An allen tool. A nub of chalk.
But that isn't it. Not entirely, at least. He means it's very strange that he, Mike Meekins, nothing but a little lost lamb, could have all this professional duty and kung fu movies and reflex and training seminars and roast beef and fear and shadowy mystery places jumbled up inside. He means it's very strange that they could be all inside him without him knowing, and that they could rattle against each other in such a way as to make him into a killer, make him into a stranger he doesn't understand.
A mustard packet. A button. A dead AAA battery.
"Lot of weird clutter you've got in there," says the warden.
"Sir, yes sir," agrees Officer Meekins, and doesn't mean his pockets.