Short Story

Still learning my way around this stuff. I think I've clipped a short story to this post. If I haven't, please let me know!

Short Story

Little Wars

I'm still reeling from the deaths of the service members in Afghanistan. I struggle with that war, having spoken to several people disillusioned by what they saw there. I think I understand what we're doing, but the means and methods are lost on me.

At the same time, San Diego PD lost Officer Jeremy Henwood this weekend to a gunshot wound. Three-tour GWOT vet, he was shot in the face at a stop light - ambushed. The suspect was later contacted and killed. I've seen brief articles, read a few things about Jeremy and thought about all of the times I've pulled up to stop lights, surrounded by other cars. I know I'm supposed to keep my eyes on everyone, that the kind of ambush that killed Officer Henwood could be awaiting me. Yet.... It's the "perfect" time to check my car's mobile computer to see what my officers are doing. Call my wife on the cell to check in. Fiddle with the AM radio. Daydream about chores, the weekend, vacation.

While a great big fight is occurring far away, little tiny battles with horrible people are fought right here. Politicians will use the deaths in Afghanistan to make points, or prove themselves right (again!)or announce why they are the sole repository of truth and should be elected. Meanwhile, men and women drive around with a great big bull's eye on them, trusting to luck that what happened in San Diego won't happen to them.

Well-intentioned speakers will try to plumb some kind of deeper meaning from Officer Henwood's death. For me?

What a giant waste of a good and decent man, gone in the blink of an eye and mostly forgotten just as quickly by everyone except friends, and family. There is one great big unfillable hole in their hearts.

A quiet casualty of the little wars fought 24/7, very close to home.

Out of Ideas

Not literally. Okay, I'm not the most prolific blogger. It always seems that, when I have something to say I either put it into a manuscript or text someone. Nevertheless, my new novel - Out of Ideas - is available at Wild Child Publishing, Amazon and at some point Barnes and Noble. It's the story of a California cop dragged off to Wisconsin by her jerk husband. She covers a plane crash and discovers.... Well, check out the cover and you'll see one thing she discovers.

http://www.wildchildpublishing.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=88&products_id=334

News Headline - VA Lacrosse Suspect Threatens Female Cop

Hahahahaha.

Great plan, you coward. Justice, that's what will happen to you.

Book Signing

I did my first book signing today and learned a ton. First, listen to Lisa (the coffee shop owner) when she recommends a conspicuous table instead of a corner one. Smile and be accessible, engage people in conversation and prepare to have some down time. Most of all, be patient.

Thanks to Lisa and the folks at The French Press for the hospitality. Thanks to the folks who bought CDs. I hope that someday the autograph is valuable!

The calls just keep coming.

Doing my morning reading, I was struck by a columnist expressing the latest in a long line of group grievance. She was explaining that, while the latest recession forced companies to downsize and lay off workers, the robust public sector keeps paying their employees huge wages and lavish fringe benefits for jobs-for-life doing work no one wants.

Oh, yeah? Oh, yeah?

Sorry, must be the coffee.

This is a path so well travelled that it should be paved. The sentiment could easily be attributed to envy, to the grass being greener and the other lane moving faster. Etcetera.

But while pundits and babblers seem prepared to throw the stones, no one has any solid ideas regarding demand for city services. Here's an example.

Over the years, my police department has transitioned to telephone and Internet reporting of minor incidents. If a citizen has suffered minor property damage (mailbox destroyed, car window broken, graffiti) an offense report is completed with a desk officer (often someone recovering from an on-duty injury) or a non-sworn employee. Easy, efficient, no waiting around for an officer to arrive. We used to get by with a lone cop doing these chores. Now, we need three or four just to keep up.

The demand for police services is never ending. Everyone in crisis wants a cop and they want them now! Most of the calls we go on require two or three officers just for safety. On top of that the legislature adds mandates, silly laws and goofy pronouncements whenever they're in session. The Supreme Courts (state and Federal) find tinkering with established precedents irresistible, changing the rules for our authority and always adding procedures. Phone volume to our dispatch center has quadrupled since I started my career. The number of officers on the street has doubled and we can hardly keep up with the calls. And we're lucky - our city is in pretty good shape.

Potholes, traffic lights, rec centers, building permits. This has been an especially harsh winter - imagine what the city spends for snow plows, sand, chemicals, fuel. The cost of plowing every city street after a foot of snow (not uncommon in Colorado in the winter) - million dollars. Yet, the phones ring off the hook if it isn't done immediately. We had a tornado this year, several major water main breaks.... That's what tax dollars are paid to address. We have no choice, we can't turn a blind eye.

You could probably get someone to take my place for less money. You don't always need me...do you? I have a law degree and have practiced in two states, university teaching experience, ten years on the SWAT negotiations team and a career that began in the 1970s. I'm a husband, father and grandfather bringing substantial life experience to work every day. I get paid pretty well for my time. Now - do you want me deciding your immediate legal fate, or somebody you pulled in at minimum wage?

And while I'm on this rant - ever watch someone give a two-month-old CPR knowing the child was going to die, while physically restraining the parents from attacking the paramedics out of pure grief? Know what a dead body looks or smells like after a few weeks in a warm room? Ever seen pieces of brick embedded in the skull of a woman pleading with you not to arrest her husband because he's all she has? Ever see anyone pinned in a car? Know what their pleas for help sound like when there is nothing you can do to help them? Finally - do you know what the library at Columbine High School looked like the day of the murders? Many of my friends do. How much will you pay not to have those experiences?

In short, if citizens want to reduce the cost of government they will have to reduce their demand for quality services.

That won't ever happen.

Merry Christmas

To all of my brothers and sisters working today - Merry Christmas. Be safe. This short story is dedicated to you.




“Feliz navidad, amor,” Officer Karen Sorenson said as she walked toward her police car. The late afternoon San Diego sun shone brightly on the substation parking lot, a deep blue sky virtually devoid of clouds. The handsome man next to her grunted when she bumped shoulders with him. For a moment their dark blue uniforms seemed to merge.
“Christmas at work,” Officer Martin Saenz grumbled. “Bah freakin’ humbug.”
“Want a little cheese with that whine?” she persisted. “Maybe eggnog?”
“I hate eggnog,” Martin muttered.
“So what is your family’s Christmas routine?”
“A quiet morning. Cubans generally feast on Christmas Eve. My parents followed that tradition after they immigrated to Miami.”
“Huh. No eggnog?”
“Coffee. Lots of black coffee.” Martin opened the door of his police car. “Where do you want to have dinner tonight?”
“What’s open?”
“Not much. Burritos at 7/11?”
“Great.” She tossed her gear bag into the trunk. Removing her rifle from its case, she examined the optics to make sure they were in order. Satisfied, she snapped it into the rack. “I brought you a turkey sandwich, just in case.”
“I was hoping to cuddle in front of the fire on our first Christmas night as a couple,” Martin said, loading his own police car. “You know, a couple of margaritas, some salsa music and letting nature take its course. Being the junior cops on the watch sucks.”
“Our evening would more likely be me falling asleep on your shoulder because you made the margaritas too strong.”
“Muy robusto.”
“Is trying to get me drunk part of your usual evening plan?”
“Soro, alcohol is the reason guys like me get laid.”
She laughed, and a refreshing and restorative feeling washed over her. Martin’s chiseled body and ruggedly-handsome face oozed masculine virility – a hot-blooded 6’2” lover carved of mahogany. Dating him started with a flaming-hot kiss and landed them in bed within a week. She hadn’t needed a drink to want him then. She wouldn’t need one now, three months later.
“You’re cute, that’s why we do it,” she said. “Well, I’m not going to complain about spending Christmas night working swing shift. At least we’re together. A lot of cop couples aren’t.”
“Putting our gear into separate police cars doesn’t mean we’re together. I might not see you all night.”
“Call me on my cell and say something suggestive from time to time.”
“Love me?”
“With all my heart.” She walked over to him, pecked his lips and offered a brief hug. “You stay safe, amante. See you out there.”
****
“Los muertos no velaron,” Marty muttered, standing over the corpse.
“The unmourned dead?” Karen said, standing in the living room of a modest retirement-community apartment, investigating the death of a man in his eighties.
“That’s him,” he replied as he scribbled into a small notebook. “A man dies on Christmas day and leaves no one to mourn him. He doesn’t have any family that management knows of. This guy was all alone. He’ll just sort of…disappear.”
“Stop it, honey.”
The man lay still on the floor, amid evidence of the paramedic’s unsuccessful resuscitation efforts. A plastic intubation device protruded from his open mouth, pushing aside a purple, swollen tongue. Torn envelopes littered the floor, the EKG patches they once contained stuck unceremoniously on ashen skin. The firefighters left it all behind for the medical examiner, to show what procedures they had used on their patient. They had picked up the sharps – the syringes used to inject pointless drugs into the unresponsive form they had tried to exhort back to life.
“It’s kind of like croaking without anyone noticing,” he said. “There’s an actual day in Mexico, if you can believe that shit, where they put out food for the unmourned. October twenty-seventh, I think. My uncle lives in Cancun, and he once told me--”
“Martin, shut the fuck up, okay?”
“What did I say?” He was more confused than angry. Karen felt things strongly, rising quickly to bristling irritation when he did or said something thoughtlessly. His girlfriend’s passion was one of her best qualities – and most challenging traits. “What’s his name – Tom? Tom’s got no family. No one cares—“
“I care.”
“Soro, what’s got into you? So what if it’s Christmas. It doesn’t matter to him. He doesn’t have a tree, no gifts. He’s just another of the lonely, unmourned dead. We see—“
“Shut up.”
Karen knelt beside the man and rested her hand on his shoulder. Amide the plastic tubes, the torn paper containers and the expended drug vials, she murmured several heartfelt phrases, patted him gently and closed her eyes. She fell silent for a moment, nodded her head and stood.
“I’ll be outside,” she snapped. “You wait with the medical examiner.”
****
Karen stood next to her car, staring west toward the Pacific. A peaceful mood seemed to embrace the waves rolling gently under the pale rays of a full moon. That helped ease her frustration with Martin. A little.
“What’s the matter?” Martin asked, walking slowly up to her. “I’ve never seen you act like that at a DOA. I mean, if we took every one of these personally, where would we be? I know it’s Christmas, but still. What gives?”
“Did you see the plaque on his kitchen counter?” she asked. “The one next to his wedding picture?”
“The thing with the crossed swords? Yeah, he was in the army or something.”
“He was a sergeant in the Tenth Mountain Division. Do you know what that means?”
“He…. I dunno, maybe he hiked in the mountains or something?”
“He trained in the mountains. Trained for war at high altitude in the winter. He was a grunt who dug foxholes, and ate cold food. He probably wasn’t old enough to buy a beer.”
“Where did they train?”
“At the top of Tennessee Pass in Colorado. Camp Hale was built in a valley ten thousand feet above sea level, among fourteen thousand foot peaks.”
“Holy shit.”
“They prepared to fight in winter conditions, in the mountains, because that’s where they were going in Europe. Christmas 1944, he was on his way to war. Maybe on a troop ship at sea, hoping not to be torpedoed.”
“Huh.”
“When he was growing up, street vendors still rode in wagons pulled by horses. My great grandmother used to run out into the street in Philadelphia and scoop the poop for her rose bushes. Horses weren’t lifestyle statements – that’s how people got around. It was a different world.”
“How do you know all this shit, Soro?”
“Dad is an anthropology professor at the University of Colorado. His specialty is military…culture I guess is the best way to put it. He and I roamed Camp Hale one summer because he was writing an article. I heard all of the stories.”
“Are the winters cold up there?”
“Brutal. We camped there one night, a cold clear February, to see what it was like for the troops. It was ten below and we had the best winter camping gear around - Gore-Tex, down, space heaters. We still froze our asses off. These guys had wool and cotton and cork.”
“They toughed it out.”
“Yeah. Then they fought in some of the most rugged terrain in Europe. One night, they climbed up an 1800-foot vertical face in the Italian Alps, in the dark, in winter and attacked a German position with fixed bayonets. Drove the Germans off of the mountain.”
“How many guys did they lose?”
“Over a thousand altogether. Tom’s friends were dying all around him and yet… He got through it and lived to be an old man. He married, he worked all of his life and then one day he died in a little apartment in a modest retirement community in San Diego.” Tears welled in her eyes. “We had the sacred duty to treat him with respect. We had the honor of being with him at a time when the only dignity he had was our prayers. He lived a full life, one that he once offered in the defense of freedom. He was still a teenager when he did that.”
“This guy, esta un guerrero – a warrior.”
“Yeah. This man’s death is worth mourning. When duty called, he answered. He has a warrior soul, just like you and me. He was a stud, a hardbody. Just because he got old and fat doesn’t change that. Once, he could master anything. He endured, he overcame, he prevailed. He sacrificed for us.”
“Faced everything life could throw at him and succeeded.”
“Yes, he did.” She took his warm, soft hand into hers. “Our savior was born on this day. He promised peace on Earth, good will toward men.”
“I wish there was more of that.”
“It’s the great assurance of this season, of the birth of Christ. He intended his message for ordinary people like Tom. Men who have seen war deserve to be at peace.”
“Yeah.”
“I’m sorry we have to work, Marty. But I got the chance to do something meaningful today. I offered dignity to a good man on the day he died. I got to be with you while I did it. I’m blessed.”
Martin turned her around and held both of her hands. The look in his eyes was calm, but around the edges…. He hadn’t given in to keep peace between them. He was reacting to her words as he always did – honestly, without pretense or façade. A tiny smile formed on his lips.
“Merry Christmas, Karen.”
“Merry Christmas, Martin.”