The company we keep

Have you ever seen that movie?...
You know the one. The possession of Emily Rose. That's who's sitting in front of me on the hospital bed. Her dark hair is a snarled tangle of dirty brown. She looks like a skeleton. She looks broken, but her eyes are alive with a wild crack induced fire. She's high and can hardly sit still. Her arms wave in strange contortions as she tells me about the gunshot wound to her wrist.

Her first name is Deanna and she has at least four different last names that I know of. In another life she wanted to be a cop. She even attended the Law Enforcement academy. The same facility I graduated from.

She was married and has two children that someone else has raised. Now the only thing she cares about is crack.

As I look at her I am convinced she would smoke a two hundred pound rock if she could stuff it into a crack pipe. I've never in all the years I've dealt with her seen her anything but high.

I talk to her a bit about her life before asking her how she was shot. I've already looked at the wound. It's superficial. Just grazed her wrist and it's already stopped bleeding. She's very lucky.

We talk about her kids and her ex-husband. Her kids are doing well she tells me. I don't know how she would know that. She says her daughter is studying to be a nurse and will maybe go on to be a doctor.

I tell Deanna I saw her mom a few days ago.

"My mom?"

"Yep, she was drunk but she talked about you. She worries about you."

"She's always drunk." Deanna says, while her arms flail around excessively in strange archs and swoons.

The doctor peaks into the room and Deanna asks for a xanax to "calm her nerves." I cynically wonder if she didn't hurt her wrist herself so she could come to the emergency room and get some pain meds.

In my experience dealing with crack heads, Xanax and crack seem to go together like peanut butter and chocolate.

"You got crack in my xanax, you got xanax in my crack" I think to myself in a dark humorous sort of way. Dark humor seems to take the edge out of dealing with the human condition day in and day out. You just have to be careful with it. Not everyone understands it.

I finally ask her how she got shot. She tells me that a bunch of guys were at the house drinking and began to argue. She said several of the guys started shooting at each other and a bullet grazed her wrist as she dove to the ground....No she didn't know who any of the guys doing the shooting were, and really she's fine.

I ask her if she isn't getting tired of her life. She says she is. I don't talk to her about changing her life as I know a pep talk about a better, crack free, life will do her no good.

she simply says she wants off crack, and we leave it at that.

"Where is Louis?" she asks me. I tell her I don't know.

Louis is her boyfriend. Louis doesn't use crack. She says she and Louis have been fighting a lot lately about her drug addiction.

Louis wants her off crack. Louis wants her in rehab. Louis loves her.

Ironically Louis is the biggest dealer of Crack cocaine in the area. He is so big in fact people often come from out of state and the surrounding counties to buy from him.

Louis is big time and knows how to play the game.

Louis is respectful to law enforcement.

Louis is one of the smartest men in his chosen profession that I have met thus far.

I've had long conversations with Louis late at night while he sat in his cell block the last time he was locked up.

Louis didn't rat anyone out last time he got caught.

Louis did his time quietly, serving his sentence and never complaining about anything.

Louis knows what the game is about.

Louis is a millionaire and to look at him you would never know it.

The feds never found his money. Neither did we.

Louis is a smart man.

One time several years ago, a crack head came to the house Louis dealt out of with no money. Just a bad crack habit and a shotgun. He put the gun against Louis' chest and demanded cocaine and money...

...Louis promptly took the man's shotgun away from him and beat him into the hospital with it. To my knowledge no one has tried to rob Louis again.

I try to be the best cop that I can be and Louis tries to be the best drug dealer he can be. I have a sort of morbid respect for that.

Louis comes into the room. Louis smiles at me. "Hey how are you man?" he asks. He looks at me as if I'm an old friend. I guess in a weird sort of way we are. A sort of way where what we do is nothing personal. It's just what we do.

It's just part of the game.

We shake hands and chat for a moment. He's worried about Deanna and is relieved when I tell him she's fine.

She's discharged, still high and wild. We all shake hands again and say our goodbyes, knowing next time we meet we might all be trying to kill each other. We stand there. Deanna. Louis. Me.

She thanks me for talking to her like a real person. No one's done that in a very long time she says. Especially a cop.

We all leave.

As I drive my squad car out of the parking lot I begin to think of how bizarre the encounter was, or must have seemed to an outsider.

Deanna...High on crack.

Louis...A well known drug dealer.

Me...A cop.

Just talking in a civil manner about anything but our differences.

All of us knowing it's just part of the game.

Off in the distance

Two A.M. I got off work two hours ago...
I sit on the porch, smoking a cigarette and this is one of those rare times I'm drinking a beer.

As I smoke my Marlboro and drink my drink I wonder how I have gotten to this particular moment in my life.

As I smoke my smoke and drink my drink wondering how I've gotten to this point in my life, somewhere off in the distance, a lonely dog barks a deep lonely song.

And while the dog, alone n the cold, barks his song I wonder what else my life could be and who else I could have been under a different set of circumstances.

And as I smoke my smoke and drink my drink listening to the lonely song of the dog while wondering how I got where I am and became who I am and who I could have been it occurs to me that I might have, with a tweak in upbringing, been a drunk or a drug addict.

I could be beating a wife, who in her twisted sensibilities, needs the beatings.

And as I smoke my smoke and drink my drink listening to the lonesome barking dog, realizing that I could be a wife beating drunk I think that, perhaps, if that was my life then my son would probably be watching.

And as I smoke my smoke and drink my drink, off in the distance a second dog begins barking with the first and as I think of how, in another circumstance, I could be teaching my son how to drink and angrily beat a woman, there is a high probability that I wouldn't take any accountability, or perceive this cycle at all and to me, my perception would be that I was the victim. That everything in my life had made me this way, a victim every day of my life, and that everyone I lashed out at in some way was to blame for my abuse of them.

And as I smoke my smoke and drink my drink and think about who I might have been and the life I could be living, with a small tweak in my upbringing, a third dog joins the barking night time song and it no longer sounds very lonely. I realize that my life doesn't seem so askew.

I'll go to bed, wake up in the morning and face the same problems I went to bed with. I'll be thankful that my upbringing gives me the strength and fortitude to do so.

Twenty random facts

Twenty random facts about me...


1) My biggest regret in life is having been a boy scout for years and never applying myself to earn the rank of eagle scout.

2) I deathly detest maggots. They make me gag nearly every time I see them.

3) I am an insomniac. I often live on only three hours of sleep a night.

4) I want to ride my bicycle a hundred miles in a day without stopping.

5) I like to sit on my porch late at night and watch cars go by.

6) If I could be anything other than a cop I would get into graphic design.

7) I've never in my life been on a real vacation or left the country.

8) I used to regret having never been in combat when I was in the Marine Corps.

9) I'm now thankful that I never had to go to combat.

10) I believe that most (but not all) people who report being of crime against their person are full of Bologna and most true victims never report being victimized.

11) I have a recurring dream that I am sitting in a white room at a steel table and across from me sits someone (varies who from dream to dream) that I find elicits, in real life, very strong emotions of hatred and disdain. In the dream I feel only content and we sit across from each other talking about our lives and, for that moment we are just two people talking like friends.

12) For years I dated women who reminded me of my first girlfriend. I enventually realized what I was doing and stopped.

13) I married my wife in large part, and against my better judgment because it would have felt to me like a failure to not marry her.

14) One of the most rewarding things I've ever done is carve a jack-o-lantern at my son's school with a little girl who's father didn't show up to do so even though he had assured the school on two previous occasions that he would. When I heard the father's name I realized he was someone frequently arrested and was notorious for fighting the police.

15) On a domestic between a meth/crack addict man and woman, I played catch for a few moments in the driveway with a cute, withdrawn, blonde haired three year old boy. The boy was the nephew of the young man my wife was having an affair with. The child's place in life made me very sad.

16)I get teary eyed when I watch Lance Armstrong's Nike commercial entitled "Magnet". Especially the part where he rides by the hospital and the cancer laden children inside flock to the window to watch as he peddles by holding his fist up urging them to defy the disease and be freed from the I.V.'s they drag to the window with them.

17) I secretly envy coast to coast truck drivers.

18) I find ducks wildly funny with their angrily quacking, waddling social structures.

19) The first book I ever read was Stephen King's Pet cemetery.

20) I like to hold the door for other people but feel uncomfortable when the door is held open for me.

Summer 1995

It was a humid Saturday night...
and we had the keg set up in Joe's front yard. It must have rained the night before because I can remember there being a large mud puddle in his driveway.

I was two years into my contract serving with the Marine Corps. Joe had just gotten orders to be sent to Japan and we were celebrating his impending departure. The local P.D. had already responded to Joe's house for our loud music that night. Each time we turned the music down and apologized but the music seemed to return to full volume a few minutes after the cops left. We were, after all, twenty five or so half drunken young Marines and I'm sure they didn't particularly want to start a big brouhaha over some loud music.

There were about nine guys drinking beer across the street and we invited them over to our party to share our keg. We didn't know these guys as they were from a different unit. Those guys were already pretty tore up, they had started drinking waaaaaaaay before we began our festivities.

The dude that lived across the street began yelling at everyone and generally being a large pain in the ass. He started calling his wife a "Stupid Bitch!!!" and promptly pushed her down into the mud puddle, then threw a lit cigarette into her face. Joe's wife told the guy he needed to leave and he began yelling at her and spit on her.

I snatched old boy up, threw him over my shoulder and began to run down the road with him. I was telling him to calm down and go home to sleep it off, we didn't want any trouble at our party. He began screaming profanities in my ear and started tearing the belt loops off my pants. The next thing I knew I was surrounded by seven or so of his boozed up pals. They began punching me in the head telling me to let their friend go. I took the guy on my shoulder to the ground sending him face first into the pavement, he went unconscious upon eating the road. One of his buddies dragged him out of the circle while the rest of them kicked and stomped me.

I don't remember feeling any pain. All I remember is the ferocity and relentlessness of their attack and wondering how a group of people could be so animalistic. I got to my feet with them still kicking and punching at me, managed to punch a couple of them in their grimy mouths and then hearing someone yelling that they had called the police. The attackers ran away.

I walked back to Joe's house with a new realization that I've carried with me since. Sometimes you have to fight like hell for what's right even when the odds are stacked against you. You have to go for your enemies throat with as much ferocity as they are coming at yours. That is all they respect and understand.
Incidentally that guys wife called me a "Mother fucker!!!" for knocking her husband unconscious. Welcome to the wide world of helping out the victimized.