Before The Storm

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The last we seen her, she was out in the green wind, gathering up her hens.

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Sometimes I think it is that I have a great and abiding love for humanity in general, and it is just the individual example of it that I have such poor regard for. 

Then other days I am certain it is the other way round.

I don't suppose I'll ever get to the point where I feel the same about both sets of data.

Which can be good or bad.

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If I were brave I would give more. 

I am not yet there.

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I was thinking the other day about this guy, he was crazy. He fought with his father and his uncle and he hit his mother in the mouth and busted up a bunch of windows in the house. They called the cops a bunch of times to take him to mental health and every time it was touch and go.

One day, I got the call out there. He had busted his uncle's nose with a rifle butt and cracked him a good one on the side of the head and the uncle left out of the garage bleeding and dazed. They called up and hunkered down at the neighbors house.

I got there, its a little old paraplegic man sitting in front of the walkway. He's telling me how the kid inside is a good kid and all and I don't need to go in there all cowboy and bust him up. He's a good kid. So I point out I just want to get him outside and get him and everybody else a little bit of help, calm things down some. 

The cripple says I can't go in. 

We go around and around for a while, and I know he means well. But eventually I have to go and pick him up bodily and set him in the back of my car. I don't want him to get hurt. 

He yells out something awful.

I feel about this big.

When I'm buttoning up the cripple, old boy comes out and stands on the front porch. He motherfucks me a good while, standing there screaming bloody murder, his arms akimbo, shaking like a furious newborn and as purple as one too. 

I move up real, real slow. Kind of whispering into my mic, 'hurry up, now.' The new kid is my back-up and I don't know about him yet. He is a skinny little computer geek college boy, but he seems alright. I guess we're both about to find out something.

Old boy is shouting now he's gonna end it all. Go run up his room and blow out his brains with the same rifle he took to Uncle Bob a minute ago. 

I'm edging towards him, my hands up like I'm settling a spooked horse. He's eyeing me and edging back towards the open door.

I can't let him get back inside.

Just then I catch the wail of a siren down the block, and I can hear that old Crown Vic engine moaning deep and loud. He's got his foot in her good, and that makes me glad. Old boy hears it too, though, and in a flash he's got through the door and trying to slam it shut. I get my boot in there and throw in my shoulder for good measure. He's a beefy old boy, but he grunts some and the door gives. I reach in and grab a hold of some part of him and latch on and thats what drags me on in as he tries to lumber on into the depths of the house. We do a little dance in the hallway, and that's when I kinda notice that one wall of the hall is regular old dry wall and doorways, and the other side is floor to ceiling glass that opens out to a eight or ten foot drop-off into some bushes. It's real pretty. Modern looking. 

Old Boy's got me in a bear hug and his red and purple face looms over me. His green eyes are wild and now they narrow to slits. It is fixing to get bad is what I'm thinking. Then here comes the kid, all ninety-eight pounds of him, and he's screaming and running to beat the band and he just flings himself at Old Boy's back and mounts up top of his head and tries like mad to pull it off. Old Boy spins like a wounded bear and now all three of us are teetering toward the vast expanse of glass and I figure we go about four, five hundred pounds between us and we don't none of us have brakes and now I'm just kicking like mad at his pins, trying to knock 'em out from under him and eventually I get a good shot in at the side of his knee and I feel it and hear it at the same time. He gives way and we all go down and then it's nothing but assholes and elbows for a good while. We manage to fight him to a draw until the other guys arrive and get him all packaged up.

Afterwards the kid was grinning from ear to ear. 

Shit, so was I.

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Happy fourth, everbody.  

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