Bruce story: Too Kind
Dec. 25th, 2015 06:07 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
drewkittyAnother Bruce story (brand new to you folks) for the holiday. Copyright 2015.
Warnings for violence, holiday reminders of human evil, child abuse and the usual nastiness.
“Too Kind”
I really don't like the holidays. Last year's holiday shopping trip to WalMart had been improved by an officer-involved shooting taking place about fifteen feet from me. Of course, this is vastly preferable to having any human beings zipped into body bags.
On the other hand, my involvement in the incident plus a few other favors had resulted in something which I had never really imagined happening.
I looked at the card again to be sure it was real.
“Tree City Police Department. Carry Concealed Weapon (CCW) Permit issued...” and here was the truly shocking part. My name. “Bruce Anders.”
Understand that I don't live in a state where concealed weapons permits are like a driver's license or voter registration. In my jurisdiction, police departments “may issue” permits to those they like, which generally means “No!” and if not “Hell no and what was that address again?”
In fact, about a decade ago I'd filed a CCW permit application on which I'd scrawled in crayon as my reason, “Improving police-community relations.” Of course it had been denied, which is only what any reasonable person would do – let alone a city and county in which non-police permit holders numbered in the low hundreds. As in less than two hundred.
In the ensuing decade I'd been shot, stabbed, beaten, burned (as in with a hot iron while tied up, and there was no shred of either decency or consent involved), mugged, thumped, hit with a car and a truck and an ambulance (long story), and generally been the punching bag of every mid-level thug in Tree City. (Low level thugs tended to be the punching bags instead. High level thugs and I gave each other a wide berth.)
None of this had justified the issuance of a CCW despite so many verifiable death threats backed up by police reports that my CI (that's Confidential Informant) file was rumored to take up an entire drawer in the detective's cage at Tree City PD. No, I do not have a file in the Gang Intelligence room . . . although one cop has described me as a “one man gang,” I think he was talking about me and his ex-girlfriend and three days in a Motel 6. (She loved it, see “consent.”.)
I'm not a rat. But I do talk to people, and this is known. Occasionally I end up as a messenger. See variations on “shoot, stab, [etc.] the messenger” listed above.
But after WalMart, I'd filled out a CCW application in all seriousness (not that there was anything in there which Tree City PD did not already know) and been interviewed by a detective, again in all seriousness, and approved to go to the city range with the departmental armorer. He and I had talked shop while I let brass fly, and I qualified with three handguns I was willing to admit to the City that I owned. A friend who owed me a favor hooked me up with liability insurance ($300 per year for $1 million umbrella) and I stayed awake through the CCW training class, showing my knife scars at one point to help justify to the rest of the class why the instructor and I were so adamant about “shoot them lots if they draw a knife on you.”
Amazingly, the approval went in, signed by the police chief.
The executive admin had waved me over to her computer (yes, I'm in the PD that often) and let me read an E-mail on which she was not supposed to be CC'd.
From: Police Chief
To: [Ambitious] Deputy Chief
RE: Bruce Anders CCW?
>> >> Yes.
>> Just to confirm, you wish us to issue Bruce Anders a CCW?
Yes. There are three possibilities. 1) We issue it, he fucks up and we prosecute. 2) We issue it, he drops more bad guys in a year than SWAT drops in a decade. 3) We don't issue it and his bitch of a lawyer sues our socks off. No thanks. I'd rather climb the flagpole naked in front of the Mayor than sit across from her at a deposition again.
ISSUE THE PERMIT.
So I therefore now carried with me everywhere I went one of three handguns: a .357 airweight revolver, a single-stack 9mm semiauto, or my choice when I couldn't have a gun: a .44 2 shot Derringer, the type a gentleman used to carry in a coat pocket while cheating at cards a century ago.
Obviously everyone at Tree City PD knew, which in turn meant everyone in the criminal element knew, and a few members of the public.
Today I was carrying all three. Derringer in a boot holster, the small semiauto on a pancake holster on the small of my back, covered by a jacket, and the airweight tucked under Mr. Happy in my groin. The derringer and semiauto were fully loaded; the airweight's first chamber was empty to avoid a negligent (as opposed to desired) discharge in a very uncomfortable spot.
No particular reason. I just felt like it. I swapped them around: sometimes just the derringer, sometimes even in a pocket. Often the revolver, although it was the first gun I took off whenever I was home. The semiauto when I felt a reason, because I carried with an extra mag and I could feel the weight on my belt.
I mention all of this to explain why I didn't want to take off my jacket. In fact, legally I couldn't.
It would also be, practically speaking, a really bad idea. Because I was surrounded by a flock . . . a herd . . . a gaggle . . . something or other . . . of my least favorite species ever.
Children.
Understand that I don't hate children. I don't like them, but I don't hate them. I however cannot stand being around them. What I especially can't stand and don't like, however, are abusive parents. Even now, it takes some squinting for me to tell the difference between “discipline” and criminally actionable abuse.
(I had most of my physical scars before I was fifteen, all earned at home from loving hands.)
So being surrounded by children was to put it mildly, an unusual event. In an elevator with fourteen angry police, on a bus with an equal number of more heavily armed gangbangers, in a dark alley with one man possessed of fourteen personalities and a very big knife . . . those I could handle. And had.
But when Sheila asked me for a favor, I simply could not say no. She needed me to watch the kids at the playground for a “hour at most” as she went down to the DMV.
Two were hers. I knew them.
Five were not hers. I did not know them.
All seven were cheerfully hollering, yelling, running around, carrying on, and doing the various incomprehensible things kids do when . . .
. . . a bloody stranger wandered up begging for help and bleeding out.
. . . a shifty-eyed guy wearing a trenchcoat started to open it.
. . . a woman clutched briefly at her chest and fell bonelessly to the grass.
. . . a thug flashed a knife and demanded a purse of a little old lady.
. . . a different thug pushed a little old lady down and ran off with her purse.
All situations I felt comfortable handling.
But not this situation.
Sitting here watching kids play, sitting in the hot sun wearing a jacket covering my handgun.
That's all. Nothing special.
I've been accused of being an adrenalin junkie. The accusation is accurate.
Add to this my innate gift for provocation and what you get is a recipe for good story telling, but not a good life.
(Provocation: when someone flashes a knife and demands your money, flashing a big grin instead and saying in a fast food cashier voice: “Welcome to the Emergency Department. How many stitches would you like?”)
(Provocation 2: when pulled over by an aggressive incompetent cop for a non-broken taillight for no reason, asking how her most recent citizen complaint went in front of the review board.)
(Provocation 3: when told in no uncertain terms by three men with baseball bats that I was to
butt out of a situation involving illicit debt collection, replying “You can pretend I owe it to you if it makes you feel any better.”)
None of these things were good ideas while wearing a handgun. 1) and 3) would end up with dead people. Admittedly better dead, but still . . . needlessly killed. Tacky at best. 2) would damage what was beginning to become a relationship based on wary mutual respect.
Killed another minute thinking about that one.
Kids: still playing. Sun: still shining. Jacket: still hot Gun: still an unaccustomed weight on my belt.
Nothing bad is happening here. There is nothing that is going to let me off this particular hook.
So I sat there watching the kids play – something I had no memory of doing myself – and doing something so incredibly toxic and dangerous that I'd avoided it for the thirty-odd years of my existence.
Taking stock of myself.
Shit.
Assets: lots of friends and connections and contacts. Some cash in the bank. A hell of a lot more tucked away in various places. An apartment that basically qualified as free rent at this point, plus or minus some minor maintenance and tune-ups (of stray thugs who had not gotten the memo). Yet another of a long line of beater automobiles lovingly maintained by several mechanics who vied to take turns to do it for free, with promises of prompt replacement should I feel the need to wreck one. Entries on the little black books of several women, more than one of whom was available at any given moment. A doctor and two vets who would lose medications and/or sew me up as needed.
Debts: some friends and connections and contacts, but nothing major. No cash, no credit except a few burner phones and cards.
No lovers. No prospect of a serious relationship. Certainly no kids. (I have always viewed birth control as the only sure way of avoiding child support. Not wearing a condom: It's A Trap!)
No house, no picket fence, no nice car. (With my kind of enemies, a nice car would be dent enriched in a few hours at most.)
No rest for the wicked. Walking out of my apartment without basic precautions would be a quick form of suicide.
Hell, while sitting here watching the kids, I'd seen two contacts and an enemy cruise on past.
Fact is, I could not dare be sitting here in a public place for hours _unless_ I were wearing a handgun.
I remembered something I'd been told by one of many probation officers I knew. (No, I'd never been on probation. Community service, fines, and so on, but not probation.) They had to break the news hard to probationers, that if they made another mistake, that the rules and restrictions of probation could be rapidly replaced with a long stay at the Graybar Hotel, where the bars never close but alcohol is never served. This phrase was one of their favorites.
“The world is your jail cell.”
Sure enough. Not because I'm on probation. But because of my own reputation, my friends, my enemies, my life.
Fuck.
And here comes one of the jailors.
A park ranger. He looked me over, the kids over, smiled, waved, said “Hey, Bruce” and wandered off.
I had no idea who he was.
Frankly, I had no idea who I was.
The kids kept playing. I sat there wearing my jacket in the shade until Sheila returned.
Nothing of any interest happened.
Sheila took the kids home.
I hung out, still wearing the jacket. Alone with my thoughts.
Ultimately the sun started to set and the park ranger – a different one – did his first polite spin around the parking lot.
I got up, stretched muscles that had stiffened, took a long drink from the water fountain then addressed the urinal in the restroom . . . and walked home.
Still thinking.
Only after I got home did I realize that I'd interrupted a mugging by walking through it.
The muggee hadn't noticed. Ipod oblivious.
The muggers had dropped their shit in the bushes and ran.
Bad, bad Bruce. Bad situational awareness. They could have stabbed or shot me and I wouldn't have noticed until I began to bleed out.
I took off the jacket, then my belt. I took off the holster and left it – handgun inside – on my bed stand. I didn't need to worry about child safety. No child would ever come into this apartment.
I laid on my bed and stared at the ceiling for a while.
This thinking thing is really bad for you, I thought.
Then I fell asleep.
* * *
The Christmas tree was on fire. Burning merrily as “Baby It's Cold Outside” played in the background. Or maybe it was the Christmas tree lights, blurred by tears.
My hand was bloody from where I'd held the back of my head.
I was curled up in a ball trying to protect my head and gut from the kicks.
I was determined not to cry. I needed not to cry.
Too young to talk but I knew that one already.
If I cried, I would reveal that I was being hurt. That would lead only to more hurt. Begging for mercy meant the worst of all worlds, that you would get some. Lots. The kind you get with your body fluid stained underclothes ripped off.
But I was too small to fight back.
The next kick found my solar plexus and I involuntarily “wuffed” from losing my breath.
He laughed and laughed and laughed.
While he was laughing, his feet were not moving.
My teeth found his ankle and I bit as hard as I possibly could.
I tasted salty wetness.
Bite harder.
“FUCK! AUGH! LITTLE SHIT! STOP THAT! STOP!”
Cling hard, bite harder.
Never mind the blows raining down on my head and back. Take the hits, see nothing but the shock of white across your brain from being punched in the head by an adult over and over again. Pass out, wake up, bite harder. Cling to that leg, bite that ankle.
* * *
I woke up on my hands and knees with a pillow between my teeth.
I spit out polyester and batting, swept the room for threats and picked the pistol up from my nightstand, still holstered, holding it in a loose grip as I crouched on the bedroom floor.
Then and only then did I catch my breath, slow deep breaths.
You learn a few tricks when you live with nightmares.
I put the gun back on the nightstand and spat out more batting.
Poured myself a few glasses of water, drank them. That helped.
Needed to take a piss, ignored that for the moment.
Oddest part of that nightmare: that one wasn't me. Oh, seeing the Christmas tree through tears from my own beating, that was me. But that was after the beating, after stepmom had persuaded me that we were all made up now and that pretending everything was OK in front of Dad was the way to make sure he had as good a Christmas as we could manage.
But the six year old biting the child abuser in the ankle so hard he lost most of the use of that leg and nearly bled to death … that was up the street. The kid had died that night.
Brain injury. The abuser had died in County. Jail, not hospital, of a lacerated rectum from masturbating with several broken bottles. One after another until he bled out.
Not very plausible? Not even an ACLU lawyer would agree with that.
I'd vaguely known of the family – but if you want to find an abused child in the town you live in, you'll find one within fifty households, a hundred at most. Hadn't seen the scene. Heard the radio call – the shit had called the medics for his leg and tried to hide the kid before they got there -- stuck my head out the window to see the units pour in from all over town, realized I couldn't get over there fast enough to make any difference, poured another cup of tea and gone back to my TV show. Read about it in the paper two days later.
So why would I wake up with crystal clear memories of a dead kid's final moments?
Not like justice wasn't done or anything.
Well, it hadn't been. Justice would have been a grown man never, ever thinking for an instant of his life that it's OK to hit or kick a child, once he's no longer a child himself.
Justice would have been the medics rewarded for their bravery – you try talking down an enraged, bleeding all over the place drunk while you are armed with a pair of scissors and polyester cargo pants – instead of getting that call the next day, “Sorry, Jane, he didn't make it.”
Justice would have been the surgeon doing a secret high-five with the anesthesiologist before somberly going out to the Child Services representative to say cautiously, “Yes, it was looking iffy there but we're seeing strong signs of brain activity on the PET scan, he's got a good chance” instead of reading the test results three times, having the test run again, reading those results five times, and calling in Hospital Legal Services to witness the explanation that “We have exhausted all of our resources and based on the repeated flatline results and gross physical lesions to the neural matter, there is zero chance for any recovery or improvement at all.”
Justice had to settle for some trusty kitchen staff to move some items, a civilian kitchen employee to leave that cabinet unlocked by accident, an understanding guard who took a long walk and a less understanding guard who allowed himself to be talked into taking a long walk, a control room staff who took their break at the right time, and some stone cold evil bastards who understood that even when you are a hardened thug and a righteous killer, There Are Limits.
And several socks twisted together to use as a gag.
Yes, I'd heard the story. True story? I don't know. Probably not.
Too kind.
Warnings for violence, holiday reminders of human evil, child abuse and the usual nastiness.
“Too Kind”
I really don't like the holidays. Last year's holiday shopping trip to WalMart had been improved by an officer-involved shooting taking place about fifteen feet from me. Of course, this is vastly preferable to having any human beings zipped into body bags.
On the other hand, my involvement in the incident plus a few other favors had resulted in something which I had never really imagined happening.
I looked at the card again to be sure it was real.
“Tree City Police Department. Carry Concealed Weapon (CCW) Permit issued...” and here was the truly shocking part. My name. “Bruce Anders.”
Understand that I don't live in a state where concealed weapons permits are like a driver's license or voter registration. In my jurisdiction, police departments “may issue” permits to those they like, which generally means “No!” and if not “Hell no and what was that address again?”
In fact, about a decade ago I'd filed a CCW permit application on which I'd scrawled in crayon as my reason, “Improving police-community relations.” Of course it had been denied, which is only what any reasonable person would do – let alone a city and county in which non-police permit holders numbered in the low hundreds. As in less than two hundred.
In the ensuing decade I'd been shot, stabbed, beaten, burned (as in with a hot iron while tied up, and there was no shred of either decency or consent involved), mugged, thumped, hit with a car and a truck and an ambulance (long story), and generally been the punching bag of every mid-level thug in Tree City. (Low level thugs tended to be the punching bags instead. High level thugs and I gave each other a wide berth.)
None of this had justified the issuance of a CCW despite so many verifiable death threats backed up by police reports that my CI (that's Confidential Informant) file was rumored to take up an entire drawer in the detective's cage at Tree City PD. No, I do not have a file in the Gang Intelligence room . . . although one cop has described me as a “one man gang,” I think he was talking about me and his ex-girlfriend and three days in a Motel 6. (She loved it, see “consent.”.)
I'm not a rat. But I do talk to people, and this is known. Occasionally I end up as a messenger. See variations on “shoot, stab, [etc.] the messenger” listed above.
But after WalMart, I'd filled out a CCW application in all seriousness (not that there was anything in there which Tree City PD did not already know) and been interviewed by a detective, again in all seriousness, and approved to go to the city range with the departmental armorer. He and I had talked shop while I let brass fly, and I qualified with three handguns I was willing to admit to the City that I owned. A friend who owed me a favor hooked me up with liability insurance ($300 per year for $1 million umbrella) and I stayed awake through the CCW training class, showing my knife scars at one point to help justify to the rest of the class why the instructor and I were so adamant about “shoot them lots if they draw a knife on you.”
Amazingly, the approval went in, signed by the police chief.
The executive admin had waved me over to her computer (yes, I'm in the PD that often) and let me read an E-mail on which she was not supposed to be CC'd.
From: Police Chief
To: [Ambitious] Deputy Chief
RE: Bruce Anders CCW?
>> >> Yes.
>> Just to confirm, you wish us to issue Bruce Anders a CCW?
Yes. There are three possibilities. 1) We issue it, he fucks up and we prosecute. 2) We issue it, he drops more bad guys in a year than SWAT drops in a decade. 3) We don't issue it and his bitch of a lawyer sues our socks off. No thanks. I'd rather climb the flagpole naked in front of the Mayor than sit across from her at a deposition again.
ISSUE THE PERMIT.
So I therefore now carried with me everywhere I went one of three handguns: a .357 airweight revolver, a single-stack 9mm semiauto, or my choice when I couldn't have a gun: a .44 2 shot Derringer, the type a gentleman used to carry in a coat pocket while cheating at cards a century ago.
Obviously everyone at Tree City PD knew, which in turn meant everyone in the criminal element knew, and a few members of the public.
Today I was carrying all three. Derringer in a boot holster, the small semiauto on a pancake holster on the small of my back, covered by a jacket, and the airweight tucked under Mr. Happy in my groin. The derringer and semiauto were fully loaded; the airweight's first chamber was empty to avoid a negligent (as opposed to desired) discharge in a very uncomfortable spot.
No particular reason. I just felt like it. I swapped them around: sometimes just the derringer, sometimes even in a pocket. Often the revolver, although it was the first gun I took off whenever I was home. The semiauto when I felt a reason, because I carried with an extra mag and I could feel the weight on my belt.
I mention all of this to explain why I didn't want to take off my jacket. In fact, legally I couldn't.
It would also be, practically speaking, a really bad idea. Because I was surrounded by a flock . . . a herd . . . a gaggle . . . something or other . . . of my least favorite species ever.
Children.
Understand that I don't hate children. I don't like them, but I don't hate them. I however cannot stand being around them. What I especially can't stand and don't like, however, are abusive parents. Even now, it takes some squinting for me to tell the difference between “discipline” and criminally actionable abuse.
(I had most of my physical scars before I was fifteen, all earned at home from loving hands.)
So being surrounded by children was to put it mildly, an unusual event. In an elevator with fourteen angry police, on a bus with an equal number of more heavily armed gangbangers, in a dark alley with one man possessed of fourteen personalities and a very big knife . . . those I could handle. And had.
But when Sheila asked me for a favor, I simply could not say no. She needed me to watch the kids at the playground for a “hour at most” as she went down to the DMV.
Two were hers. I knew them.
Five were not hers. I did not know them.
All seven were cheerfully hollering, yelling, running around, carrying on, and doing the various incomprehensible things kids do when . . .
. . . a bloody stranger wandered up begging for help and bleeding out.
. . . a shifty-eyed guy wearing a trenchcoat started to open it.
. . . a woman clutched briefly at her chest and fell bonelessly to the grass.
. . . a thug flashed a knife and demanded a purse of a little old lady.
. . . a different thug pushed a little old lady down and ran off with her purse.
All situations I felt comfortable handling.
But not this situation.
Sitting here watching kids play, sitting in the hot sun wearing a jacket covering my handgun.
That's all. Nothing special.
I've been accused of being an adrenalin junkie. The accusation is accurate.
Add to this my innate gift for provocation and what you get is a recipe for good story telling, but not a good life.
(Provocation: when someone flashes a knife and demands your money, flashing a big grin instead and saying in a fast food cashier voice: “Welcome to the Emergency Department. How many stitches would you like?”)
(Provocation 2: when pulled over by an aggressive incompetent cop for a non-broken taillight for no reason, asking how her most recent citizen complaint went in front of the review board.)
(Provocation 3: when told in no uncertain terms by three men with baseball bats that I was to
butt out of a situation involving illicit debt collection, replying “You can pretend I owe it to you if it makes you feel any better.”)
None of these things were good ideas while wearing a handgun. 1) and 3) would end up with dead people. Admittedly better dead, but still . . . needlessly killed. Tacky at best. 2) would damage what was beginning to become a relationship based on wary mutual respect.
Killed another minute thinking about that one.
Kids: still playing. Sun: still shining. Jacket: still hot Gun: still an unaccustomed weight on my belt.
Nothing bad is happening here. There is nothing that is going to let me off this particular hook.
So I sat there watching the kids play – something I had no memory of doing myself – and doing something so incredibly toxic and dangerous that I'd avoided it for the thirty-odd years of my existence.
Taking stock of myself.
Shit.
Assets: lots of friends and connections and contacts. Some cash in the bank. A hell of a lot more tucked away in various places. An apartment that basically qualified as free rent at this point, plus or minus some minor maintenance and tune-ups (of stray thugs who had not gotten the memo). Yet another of a long line of beater automobiles lovingly maintained by several mechanics who vied to take turns to do it for free, with promises of prompt replacement should I feel the need to wreck one. Entries on the little black books of several women, more than one of whom was available at any given moment. A doctor and two vets who would lose medications and/or sew me up as needed.
Debts: some friends and connections and contacts, but nothing major. No cash, no credit except a few burner phones and cards.
No lovers. No prospect of a serious relationship. Certainly no kids. (I have always viewed birth control as the only sure way of avoiding child support. Not wearing a condom: It's A Trap!)
No house, no picket fence, no nice car. (With my kind of enemies, a nice car would be dent enriched in a few hours at most.)
No rest for the wicked. Walking out of my apartment without basic precautions would be a quick form of suicide.
Hell, while sitting here watching the kids, I'd seen two contacts and an enemy cruise on past.
Fact is, I could not dare be sitting here in a public place for hours _unless_ I were wearing a handgun.
I remembered something I'd been told by one of many probation officers I knew. (No, I'd never been on probation. Community service, fines, and so on, but not probation.) They had to break the news hard to probationers, that if they made another mistake, that the rules and restrictions of probation could be rapidly replaced with a long stay at the Graybar Hotel, where the bars never close but alcohol is never served. This phrase was one of their favorites.
“The world is your jail cell.”
Sure enough. Not because I'm on probation. But because of my own reputation, my friends, my enemies, my life.
Fuck.
And here comes one of the jailors.
A park ranger. He looked me over, the kids over, smiled, waved, said “Hey, Bruce” and wandered off.
I had no idea who he was.
Frankly, I had no idea who I was.
The kids kept playing. I sat there wearing my jacket in the shade until Sheila returned.
Nothing of any interest happened.
Sheila took the kids home.
I hung out, still wearing the jacket. Alone with my thoughts.
Ultimately the sun started to set and the park ranger – a different one – did his first polite spin around the parking lot.
I got up, stretched muscles that had stiffened, took a long drink from the water fountain then addressed the urinal in the restroom . . . and walked home.
Still thinking.
Only after I got home did I realize that I'd interrupted a mugging by walking through it.
The muggee hadn't noticed. Ipod oblivious.
The muggers had dropped their shit in the bushes and ran.
Bad, bad Bruce. Bad situational awareness. They could have stabbed or shot me and I wouldn't have noticed until I began to bleed out.
I took off the jacket, then my belt. I took off the holster and left it – handgun inside – on my bed stand. I didn't need to worry about child safety. No child would ever come into this apartment.
I laid on my bed and stared at the ceiling for a while.
This thinking thing is really bad for you, I thought.
Then I fell asleep.
* * *
The Christmas tree was on fire. Burning merrily as “Baby It's Cold Outside” played in the background. Or maybe it was the Christmas tree lights, blurred by tears.
My hand was bloody from where I'd held the back of my head.
I was curled up in a ball trying to protect my head and gut from the kicks.
I was determined not to cry. I needed not to cry.
Too young to talk but I knew that one already.
If I cried, I would reveal that I was being hurt. That would lead only to more hurt. Begging for mercy meant the worst of all worlds, that you would get some. Lots. The kind you get with your body fluid stained underclothes ripped off.
But I was too small to fight back.
The next kick found my solar plexus and I involuntarily “wuffed” from losing my breath.
He laughed and laughed and laughed.
While he was laughing, his feet were not moving.
My teeth found his ankle and I bit as hard as I possibly could.
I tasted salty wetness.
Bite harder.
“FUCK! AUGH! LITTLE SHIT! STOP THAT! STOP!”
Cling hard, bite harder.
Never mind the blows raining down on my head and back. Take the hits, see nothing but the shock of white across your brain from being punched in the head by an adult over and over again. Pass out, wake up, bite harder. Cling to that leg, bite that ankle.
* * *
I woke up on my hands and knees with a pillow between my teeth.
I spit out polyester and batting, swept the room for threats and picked the pistol up from my nightstand, still holstered, holding it in a loose grip as I crouched on the bedroom floor.
Then and only then did I catch my breath, slow deep breaths.
You learn a few tricks when you live with nightmares.
I put the gun back on the nightstand and spat out more batting.
Poured myself a few glasses of water, drank them. That helped.
Needed to take a piss, ignored that for the moment.
Oddest part of that nightmare: that one wasn't me. Oh, seeing the Christmas tree through tears from my own beating, that was me. But that was after the beating, after stepmom had persuaded me that we were all made up now and that pretending everything was OK in front of Dad was the way to make sure he had as good a Christmas as we could manage.
But the six year old biting the child abuser in the ankle so hard he lost most of the use of that leg and nearly bled to death … that was up the street. The kid had died that night.
Brain injury. The abuser had died in County. Jail, not hospital, of a lacerated rectum from masturbating with several broken bottles. One after another until he bled out.
Not very plausible? Not even an ACLU lawyer would agree with that.
I'd vaguely known of the family – but if you want to find an abused child in the town you live in, you'll find one within fifty households, a hundred at most. Hadn't seen the scene. Heard the radio call – the shit had called the medics for his leg and tried to hide the kid before they got there -- stuck my head out the window to see the units pour in from all over town, realized I couldn't get over there fast enough to make any difference, poured another cup of tea and gone back to my TV show. Read about it in the paper two days later.
So why would I wake up with crystal clear memories of a dead kid's final moments?
Not like justice wasn't done or anything.
Well, it hadn't been. Justice would have been a grown man never, ever thinking for an instant of his life that it's OK to hit or kick a child, once he's no longer a child himself.
Justice would have been the medics rewarded for their bravery – you try talking down an enraged, bleeding all over the place drunk while you are armed with a pair of scissors and polyester cargo pants – instead of getting that call the next day, “Sorry, Jane, he didn't make it.”
Justice would have been the surgeon doing a secret high-five with the anesthesiologist before somberly going out to the Child Services representative to say cautiously, “Yes, it was looking iffy there but we're seeing strong signs of brain activity on the PET scan, he's got a good chance” instead of reading the test results three times, having the test run again, reading those results five times, and calling in Hospital Legal Services to witness the explanation that “We have exhausted all of our resources and based on the repeated flatline results and gross physical lesions to the neural matter, there is zero chance for any recovery or improvement at all.”
Justice had to settle for some trusty kitchen staff to move some items, a civilian kitchen employee to leave that cabinet unlocked by accident, an understanding guard who took a long walk and a less understanding guard who allowed himself to be talked into taking a long walk, a control room staff who took their break at the right time, and some stone cold evil bastards who understood that even when you are a hardened thug and a righteous killer, There Are Limits.
And several socks twisted together to use as a gag.
Yes, I'd heard the story. True story? I don't know. Probably not.
Too kind.
