Travis Starnes
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Going Home - Chapter 6
🕑 Added 2022-03-31 15:17:11 +0000 UTCAs expected, the next day I got the third degree about what happened with Terri. Annoyingly, both my parents thought giving up my car to get the divorce settled was a good deal and somehow I’d gotten lucky. I hadn’t been in the NFL long enough for either to see me, and it had been in storage the one time they’d come to New York, so they’d never actually seen the car. To them, it was just an abstract thing they’d heard mentioned once or twice, and so didn’t really hold any value.
Considering it had been, quite literally, the last major thing I owned, I kind of wished someone would have had my back on it. Belatedly, it occurred to me that Rosita had when I’d told her about it, but she didn’t really know the situation, so that seemed more like her being supportive of her new friend, or acquaintance, or whatever was going on there.
After a few hours, I’d had enough of the badgering and just needed to get out of there. My first thought was to go see Rosita, but the closer I got to her place, the more I started second-guessing myself. She was already doing me a huge favor by driving me to Charleston the next day and I didn’t want to be a pest.
Besides, except for the several hours a day I spent trolling through job boards and checking to see if there’d been any updates on the school districts I’d applied to, I spent the rest of my time just wandering town or slowly nursing a beer to kill time. I didn’t really want to give her the all-too-accurate impression that I had nothing better to do with my life, even though I’d more or less said this aloud to her already.
Despite all that, I drove towards her place anyway, half thinking I was being silly and it would be okay to go see her when I got right up to the turnoff, but the spots in front of her restaurant were all taken up and I could see a bunch of people inside through the window.
So instead of pulling into the strip center’s parking lot, I pulled into the high school instead, not wanting her to see me drive by and thinking I was some kind of creep or stalker or something. I knew I was overthinking everything, but while I’d been with Terri, I hadn’t so much as looked at another girl, despite having plenty of opportunity as a college athlete. It occurred to me that having basically only one romantic partner for my entire life was doing me something of a disservice now.
Since I was here and had time to kill, I decided maybe walking around the football field would help clear my head. Besides, I’d already walked, or at least swung, down main street a dozen times and it was starting to get old.
Pulling out my crutches, I locked up the truck and started my way towards the football field. Even as a kid, I’d always thought it seemed so much smaller in the daylight than at night, when the stands were full of people and everything outside of its high-powered lights was pitch black. Then, it had seemed like the center of the world. Now it barely looked big enough to fit all of the people who lived in my apartment building back in New York.
I swung past the stands, losing sight of the field, and remembered the times Terri and I had snuck under there to make out after practice. It hadn’t been all that private, but I think that’s probably what made it more exhilarating than getting in my truck and driving out to the middle of nowhere.
I couldn’t help shaking my head at myself. It was sobering to realize you were one of those guys who peaked in high school and college. Back then I’d known exactly what I wanted to be and who I was, and here I was a decade older and not really all that much wiser, back in the same place but with absolutely no clue about either.
I made it to the end of the field and was about to turn around and go back to my truck, thinking enough time had passed for me to leave without seeming like I’d only driven out to see Rosita, when a sound caught my attention.
The strip center and the high school were at a four-way intersection, with the strip center and the high school parking lot facing each other on Oak Ridge, which was the major road running south into town, joining with main street at the only stoplight, and north off towards one of the county roads. Besides the main parking lot with its entrance across from the strip center, there was a second, smaller parking lot with an entrance off of Smithfield Road which was a small street, barely two lanes, that went east to west. The parking lot had a small driveway connecting the two between the gym and the football field.
In my day, the small parking lot was the teachers’ parking lot, and it might still have been, since there were three cars in it probably belonging to administrators or custodial staff. Down towards Smithfield, just in from the driveway, I saw a man and a woman. I couldn’t see her face, but everything from her posture suggested the woman was terrified and the man was clearly menacing her.
I don’t think either of them saw me and I wasn’t even sure what had caught my attention but some residual cop inside of me had me swinging though my crutches in their direction. I briefly considered just calling the sheriff and not getting involved, but out here the sheriff covered the entire county and, if things were like they used to be, only had two officers on at any given time. Evan and I had used their slow response time to our advantage many times, which is why I knew that, unless this girl was very lucky, it would take at least twenty minutes for anyone to get here, by which time whatever was going to happen would have been over.
I wasn’t bothering to be particularly stealthy, since it was impossible with the crutches crunching against the beat-up asphalt of the parking lot. Instead, I was just trying to eat up as much ground as I could with each swing, so I could be close enough that he’d only have a choice to run away or deal with me, instead of hurting the woman.
I saw the woman notice me when I was about ten yards from them and I’d hoped for a second she might just keep him talking until I got closer, since with my bad knee the element of surprise would have gone a long way.
My luck, however, wasn’t that good.
“Help me!” she screamed at me, although she didn’t make a move to run away.
The reason why became clear when he took two steps to the right, turning so he was half facing both myself and the woman, showing a knife in his right hand.
“Don’t come any closer,” he yelled, kind of awkwardly holding the knife out towards me as I ignored him and kept closing the distance.
I didn’t stop until he turned the knife back towards the woman, who was within stabbing distance, and yelled, “I mean it.”
I was close enough at this point to see his face clearly, and instantly recognize what was happening. He had the strung-out look I’d seen on the faces of other emaciated men and women as a cop. Although it wasn’t a major problem in New York, where crack and heroin were the drugs we encountered the most, Meth was practically an epidemic in poor rural towns like Buxton. While I don’t remember it being a problem when I was a kid, it was definitely a problem now and this guy was clearly strung out and probably looking for some money to buy his next fix.
“No one wants any trouble. How about you let her go and we can all forget about this?”
“How about both of you give me your wallets?”
“I’ve only got ten bucks on me, but you can have it if you let her walk away.”
“I’m the one with the knife and you’re a fucking cripple. Maybe I should just do you and take whatever you have right now.”
“There’s no need for anyone to get hurt. Just let her go,” I said, putting my weight on my left leg and right crutch, to brace myself as best I could.
“You know what? Fuck you,” he said, and charged at me knife first.
The guy was still coming down off of something or maybe he was so strung out he just didn’t have any coordination, because even his charge was barely in a straight line. If he’d had a gun or been a little less messed up, the whole situation would have probably gone differently but I saw my chance with the way he was running, both arms extended and reaching for me, like he couldn’t decide if he was going to stab me or hug me.
I’d already lifted my left crutch off the ground and as he got within range I swung it up and jabbed forward. The guys’ brain was going so slow he didn’t even react to the crutch swinging up, let alone try to cover himself or block the stab with the crutch.
I caught him straight in the solar plexus as the combined force of my stabbing the crutch forward and his awkward run pushed every bit of air in his lungs out. His mouth made a perfect O in surprise as he wheezed and then dropped to his knees, sucking in air. He still had the knife in his hand, but he’d basically forgotten about me as he tried not to asphyxiate, giving me time to bring my crutch back down, this time on the back of his hand using all of my body weight.
He made kind of a gurgling sound, as the knife skittered away. As soon as I moved my crutch off his hand he grabbed it and dropped into the fetal position, alternately holding his hand and his chest, gasping for air. While some people would probably tell me that was enough, I knew I’d gotten lucky and that I might not get so lucky a second time, and I needed to make sure he was down for the count, just in case.
Bracing myself again I swung my crutch with all of my might, catching him in the temple like his head was a golf ball. He’d been so focused on his hand and his trouble breathing, he’d not seen it coming and wasn’t ready for it. The way he flopped over and rolled twice before stopping, I’d at first thought I might have killed him, but then his chest started to move, which meant he was breathing.
“Are you okay?” I asked the woman, swinging over to her.
She took a half step back, like she was afraid of me, but I didn’t take it personally. In situations like that, the fight or flight instincts are in overdrive and it takes a second for the brain to kick in and actually evaluate threats.
“I’m fine. He jumped out from behind that car and grabbed me, trying to pull me into the parking lot,” she said, holding out her wrist.
I could already see a little discoloration on her arm and she’d have a hell of a bruise by the next day.
“You’re okay now. I’m going to call the cops. Can you stick around? They’ll want you to give a statement.”
She looked down the road and for a second I thought she might just take off. Even in small towns, people were always hesitant around police, like maybe the cop knew something they’d done wrong somewhere else and arrest them, no matter how small or legal the offense. Maybe it was an extension of the fight or flight response or just some ingrained fear sowed by the news, TV shows, and movies. Thankfully, the moment passed and she half shrugged.
“I guess. Is … is he going to get back up?”
“Not any time soon, and he’s going to feel like shit when he does,” I said, pulling out my cell phone and calling 911.
I gave my name, a detailed description of where we were, and a brief description of what had just happened, trying to be succinct as possible, since the dispatcher would have to relay that all to whoever was responding. I made sure to point out the attacker was still there and on the ground unconscious, as was the knife he’d had, and that they should probably send paramedics to make sure there wasn’t any permanent damage.
In this kind of situation in New York, dispatch would have kept me on the phone until a patrol car arrived, but out here they didn’t have enough dispatchers to stay on the phone and it might be a while before the sheriff or one of his deputies showed up.
I was only off of my estimate by two minutes. A brown and white SUV with sheriff written across the side pulled into the parking lots, lights flashing but siren off. It wasn’t surprising that, even with the long response time, the sheriff had beaten the paramedics, who were even thinner spread out than law enforcement and would have had further to drive.
“Brewer?” The officer who got out of the car said, his eyes flicking over the woman and the body on the ground.
Even though Evan had told me he was Sheriff now, it took me a second to recognize Orville as the much more fit and serious-looking man standing in front of me now.
“Hey, Orville,” I said once it hit me who he was.
Orville walked up next to the guy on the ground and bent down, putting two fingers against the guys’ neck. Seeming to find the pulse, he then moved his hand to the guys’ chest until it moved up and down with his breathing.
Apparently satisfied that the guy was alive, he stood up and said, “Sarah said there was an attack?”
I assumed ‘Sarah’ was the dispatcher I talked to. It wasn’t exactly how police work was done back in New York, but out here things were more informal.
“I came around the corner of the school and found that guy was holding this woman at knifepoint. I subdued and disarmed him, and then called 911. I didn’t see what happened before he had a knife on her.”
“He jumped out from behind that car,” the woman added helpfully, pointing at the guy and then a small red car closest to the road. “He grabbed my arm, pulled out a knife, and started pulling me into the parking lot, telling me I needed to give him my money. That’s when he came along.”
Orville’s head was bouncing back and forth as she pointed at the guy, the car, the road, back to the guy, and then finally at me, like he was watching a tennis match. I had to admit, he was very calm and seemed to be listening intently, even though this situation wasn’t that hard to figure out. He reminded me of some training sergeants I’d had when I first got out of the academy.
“You put him down like this?” he said.
To his credit, his words didn't sound incredulous or have a sneer behind them. He seemed more curious how a guy on crutches had taken out a guy with a knife.
“Yeah, although don’t let that fool you. Mostly I just got lucky. He had a serious case of the shakes and was already half out of it. A sober guy would have dodged my crutch.”
“You didn’t know that when you came over to help though, right?”
“No. Mostly I’d hoped the guy would see someone else and maybe runoff. But yeah, it could have turned bad, though.”
“Did …” he started to say and then stopped as an ambulance and another sheriff’s SUV came pulling in.
“I’m surprised two of you came out for this,” I said, nodding my head towards the other SUV as we both stepped back to allow the paramedics’ room to work.
The woman, who’d been watching us talk, stepped back after seeing us do it, but still seemed kind of confused.
“Al’s parents live out near Summersville and he’d been planning on going up there tonight anyway, so he agreed to accompany Toby here to the hospital.”
“Toby?” I asked, looking down at the guy on the ground. “You know him?”
“Yeah. Toby is one of our frequent flyers. His mom will probably bond him out before he gets released from the hospital and he’ll be back out trying to steal something else tomorrow.”
“Orville, can I go?” the woman asked.
“Yeah. Just stay at your mom’s until I can get up there and get your statement, okay?”
“Sure,” she said, giving me a nervous nod and heading back out to the street.
“You’re going to go get the statement later?” I said, surprised.
My sergeant would have had my ass if I had let a witness go before having them give their statement and signing it. They’d drilled into us over and over again as one of the ten commandments of working an investigation.
“Sure. Toni’s mom is on dialysis and her uncle usually drops her off around now. He has to work second shift and so Toni has to be home to be there with her, since her mom is pretty shaky after her treatments. She’ll be there when I go by later.”
I just shook my head. I might have grown up in a small town, but it hadn’t occurred to me how policing would be different here than my experiences in New York. It kind of had my head spinning.
“I’d heard you were back in town,” he said, walking to stand next to me while his deputy made notes on the knife and checked Toby’s pockets, probably for drugs or paraphernalia, as the paramedics worked on him.
I couldn’t help but notice how much this seemed run of the mill to them, which made me wonder how bad the drug problem had gotten out here. Especially if they had guys like this that the sheriff could recognize on sight.
“Yeah. I got medically retired and decided to come stay with my parents while my leg healed.”
“I heard you were separating from Terri too.”
I might have made my way around town a lot lately, but other than Rosita, I hadn’t really talked about Terri or what I had been doing in New York, leaving everything mostly to small talk about the weather.
“How did you hear that?”
“You know what it’s like in a place like this. Your mom mentions it to someone at church, who mentions it to someone else, and before you know it, everyone knows. Besides, you’re one of the biggest things to happen around here in a while. Home town boy is getting a divorce from the prom queen and gets shot while on the job in New York. It’s big news.”
“God I hate small towns,” I said, looking up towards the sky.
“It’s got its charms, but yeah, it can suck when you’re the center of the gossip. So how was it, being a big city cop?”
For a second I considered giving some placating answer and finding an excuse to leave. Orville and I weren’t exactly friends, after all. If anything, the guy had every reason in the world to hate me. Maybe it’s because I found seeing the police work and how it compared to what I learned interesting or maybe it was because I was bored and didn’t have anything better to do, but I didn’t follow my first instinct, instead, I settled into my crutches and twisted to face him.
“It sucked,” I said, and then paused, reconsidering my answer. “No, that’s not fair. It had its good moments. I walked the same beat for the last year and got to know some of the locals. They were pretty good people and it felt good to help them when I could. What sucked was not being able to do much to help them most of the time. All I could do was take reports and file them, where they’d just collect dust until enough time had passed where the department could archive them.”
“Ooof, that’d be frustrating.”
“No kidding. And as good as the normal neighborhood people are, the rest were just the worst pieces of crap you could ever imagine. I’ve seen people do some really screwed-up stuff to each other. It’s honestly depressing.”
“Did I hear right that you got shot by a kid?”
“Jesus, is there anything you people won’t talk about?”
“Apparently not. I gotta admit, I am curious how that happened.”
“It happened ’cause of New York. I’m not kidding when I said I’ve seen some of the most screwed-up stuff you’d ever imagine. I was on my way to work and walked into a local bodega, that’s kind of like a convenience store, and this kid had the owner at gunpoint, forcing him to open the safe.”
“And he got the drop on you?”
I shrugged and said, “Kind of. I had my service weapon out, but I couldn’t bring myself to shoot a nine-year-old. I think that’s why the department pushed me out. They seemed to think not shooting a child was poor judgment.”
“That’s pretty screwed up.”
“Tell me about it.”
“Still, I think it’s a good thing you thought twice about shooting a kid. I think anyone who doesn’t think twice shouldn’t wear the badge. If you have no choice, then you have to do what you have to do, but it shouldn’t be your go-to.”
“I think my lieutenant would have argued I didn’t have a choice.”
“I got the impression you tried to talk him down first, or did I get that wrong?”
“No, that’s what I did.”
“That was the right call. We’re here to protect and serve. Are there are people like Toby there who can’t seem to stop screwing up? Sure, but we’re here for them, too. We’re here to keep the peace and make sure he doesn’t hurt anyone, but we aren’t judges and executioners. If they screw up and let Toby out on the streets, we’ll deal with it, but I’m not gonna shoot him down just ’cause I know he’s a screw-up. Not unless he has someone in imminent danger and he leaves me no option.”
“I guess,” I said.
I actually hadn’t thought about it like that. I guess the police academy tried to make that point, but once I started training on the street, there was definitely an ‘us versus them’ mentality that covered just about everyone who wasn’t a cop. Considering the shit that we continually got and the stuff we saw, it was pretty easy to fall into that mentality. I’d done it myself.
Things might be easier out here, where you know everyone you deal with, so they aren’t just nameless faces. Maybe it’s because I was embarrassed that I didn’t have the same mentality, but I didn’t really want to tell Orville that the reason I didn’t shoot the kid was because I froze and not because of some higher-minded ideal.
“Have you ever thought about going back to this kind of work, when your leg heals?”
“Not really. The more I look back at my time in New York, the more I realize I hated it.”
“Yeah, but that was New York. You said you liked the times when you felt like you were really helping people, well that’s what it’s like out here.”
“I hadn’t really considered.”
“Just something to think about. Well, I gotta run. It was good seeing you again,” he said, tipping his hat and heading back to his SUV.
My head was reeling from the entire encounter. I would have thought Orville might have held some kind of grudge after the way I’d treated him in the past. Not only had he been friendly, but that last part almost sounded like a job offer, although not one I was considering.
It was going to take me some time to wrap my head around all of it.
Comments
Idaho Spud56
Nice chapter, thanks.
