The Cherry Pages

by Gary Ruffin

  “Well, first of all, I wasn’t good enough to even play college football, so the pros would never get a chance to see me play. So, that was out. I got into the law—you sure you wanna hear this? It’s kind of a long story.”

  “We have nothing but time. And yes, I really want to hear the story of why you became a policeman.”

  “Well, okay. It all started with vodka and orange juice.”

  She stopped the swing with her feet, and looked at me. “Vodka and orange juice?”

  “Yep. A screwdriver led me to the law. Let’s start at the beginning.”

  “Yes, let’s,” she said, and started the swing again.

  “I had a friend who I grew up with who moved to Pensacola when we were both fifteen, name of Barry Payson. I used to go over and spend the night at his house on Friday nights during the summer as often as I could, and he’d do the same at mine. We would always sneak out until almost dawn, and then we’d go home to whichever house we were stayin’ at. One Friday when we were at his house, he said he had somethin’ to show me, so we went up to his room, and he locked the door. He had stolen a fifth of vodka from a neighbor’s house while they were havin’ a big party, and had managed to stash it in his room.”

  “This sounds like trouble to me,” Cherry said with a grin.

  “That’s putting it mildly. So I knew this was going to be a Friday night to remember. I asked what did he have planned, and he told me.”

  “A wicked plan, no doubt.”

  “No doubt. Barry’s house was in a new subdivision called Nottaway that wasn’t quite completed at that time, so there was a lot of construction goin’ on, and a lot of empty lots. Down the street from his house was a cul-de-sac, and there were no houses down there, just empty wooded lots. One of the lots was up on a fairly high hill, and his plan was to tell his parents that we were going to camp out up on that hill and spend the night in his tent. His mom and dad were fine with it, and said we could do it, just be careful and all that. Of course, we said we would, and in the late afternoon, his dad drove us down to the woods—it wasn’t even a quarter of a mile—and we took the tent and our food up the hill, and waved good-bye to Mr. Payson. Then Barry showed me how he had stashed the booze in the cooler under the ice, and we had a big laugh about it. We set up the tent, but didn’t build a fire, because we had other plans for the evening. Big plans.”

  Cherry said, “Do tell.”

  “Well, after we set up the tent, we ate the sandwiches Barry’s mom had made, and sat around waiting for it to get dark. At that time of year, the sun didn’t go down until almost nine o’clock, so we had a pretty good wait ahead of us. And we weren’t going to go out until late, maybe midnight or so, to make sure that there were no people out and about. Well, finally, at a few minutes before midnight, Barry pulled out a quart of orange juice and two big plastic cups. He poured—now, get this—he poured enough vodka into each cup to fill it about a quarter of the way. Then he poured in an equal amount of OJ, which came to about four ounces of vodka and four ounces of juice in each cup. Now this was the first time either of us had ever tasted liquor. We’d never even had a beer.”

  Cherry said, “Babes in the woods.”

  “Definitely. Anyway, we now have two big glasses of vodka and orange juice, and it’s time to drink ’em down. So, being completely inexperienced, we decided to just hold our noses, and guzzle the entire cup down as fast as possible.”

  “No,” Cherry said.

  “Unfortunately, yes. We swilled them down in maybe five seconds or so, and looked at each other. I guess we expected something different to happen, but we didn’t really feel the full effect at first. So he made two more quickly, even bigger than the first two, maybe six or more ounces each, and we drank them down the same as the first, and then—WHAM. Within seconds, we were both knee-walkin’, completely bombed out of our gourds.”

  “Oh, no, Cooper, this sounds a bit dodgy. Then what?”

  “Well, behind our hilltop campsite there was a creek, maybe fifty feet away once you got to the bottom of the hill. Beyond the creek was the objective that Barry had in mind: the Nottaway Community Swimming Pool. So we were now completely gassed, and naturally, we started to walk down the hill towards the creek. Or, stumble and fall down the hill is more like it.”

  “Here we go.”

  “Yep. There we went. Okay, so we headed in the general direction of the pool, but we got off course, and ended up next door in the church parking lot. There was a standing metal figure of a cop with his hand up, maybe five feet tall, with ‘stop’ on his chest. It looked sorta like those flat pictures of famous people at tourist spots you can stand next to and be photographed, only it was metal, and more of a caricature. The church used it to control traffic, and it was just standin’ in the middle of the parking lot mindin’ its own business. So, for some idiotic reason, I went over and punched it in the face. The punch didn’t knock it over, so I took another swing, harder than the first, and I fell down on my butt on the asphalt. The next day, my hand and my butt were both pretty sore, naturally. Anyway, that’s the last thing I remember until the next morning. I only know what happened that night because Barry told me. I have to take his word for it, ’cause it’s all a blank to me until the next morning.”

  Cherry said, “So punching the metal cop made you feel guilty, and that’s why you became a policeman, is that it?”

  “No. There’s much more to the story. According to Barry, we went next door and broke into the swimming pool. All it took was me boosting Barry up, and him climbing over a wall, and letting me in.”

  “According to Barry.”

  “Right. According to Barry. So, now we’re inside and we start throwin’ trash all around, then tossin’ the trash cans in the pool, stupid stuff like that. Next, all of our clothes come off, and we start diving off the lifeguard stand, which was probably a good three feet from the pool.”

  “Cooper! You didn’t!”

  “We did. We could have easily broken our necks, but Barry swears that’s what we did. It’s a wonder we both lived through the night. Anyway, after several hours, Barry wanted to leave and get back to our campsite before somebody caught us.”

  “Smart Barry,” Cherry said.

  “Right again. But I didn’t wanna leave, so Barry said he tried to force me to go, and I told him that if he didn’t leave me alone, we were going to fight. So, still totally bombed, he managed to get dressed and leave, but instead of walkin’ back to the tent, he headed for his house. The problem was he only made it about halfway home. He fell asleep in a ditch,” I said.

  Cherry chuckled and asked, “Where did you sleep?”

  “On a bench in the men’s locker room. Buck naked, of course.”

  “Woo hoo!”

  “Indeed. Anyway, I slept for a while, then the sun started to come up, and I heard someone coming. It was one of the lifeguards, and luckily for me, he was one of the smaller ones, little skinny guy. It was real lucky for me, in fact.”

  “Why was it so lucky for you?”

  “Because before I even saw him, I yelled that I would beat anybody’s ass that came in the locker room. Anyway, he goes outside to the pay phone to call the cops, and I get up and start lookin’ for my clothes. So, I’m walkin’ around naked with a massive hangover.”

  “Your first,” Cherry said.

  “Right. So, I walked out to the front entrance of the pool, and there stood about twenty or more eight- and nine-year-old kids of both sexes, who were there at the pool for their Saturday-morning swimming lesson.”

  Cherry stifled a laugh with her hand, and said, “No …”

  “Again, yes. Anyway, I’m naked, hungover and pissed off, ’cause I can’t find my clothes, so I go back to the men’s locker room and lay back down on the bench. About five minutes later, a cop walks in with my muddy clothes in his hands, and says, ‘Are these yours?’”

  “Oh, Cooper. And you said?”

  “‘Yes, sir, they’re mine,’ and I took them an
d put ’em on. He saw that someone had been—well, had gotten sick all over the place, and asked, ‘You been drinking, son?’ ‘No, sir,’ I said. He asked, ‘What’s your name?’ With the purest adrenaline flowing to my now wide-awake brain, I said smartly, ‘Curtis Anderson.’”

  “Curtis Anderson?”

  “It was a combination of two of my friends’ names, Curt Kiefer, and Steve Anderson. See, I had quickly devised another plan,” I said.

  “And the plan was?”

  “Well, the plan was to tell him I lived in a nearby subdivision. A friend of Barry’s lived there, and I knew the directions. So my plan was, when the police officer takes me to the friend’s house, and goes to the door to ask if they know a Curtis Anderson, I was gonna jump outta the police car and run off. They would say they didn’t know anybody by that name, and by the time the cop figured out that something wasn’t right, I’d be long gone. Then I would make my way back to the campsite, and no one would be the wiser. Cool plan, hunh?”

  Cherry said, “Sounds cool to me. Did it work?”

  “In a word, no. There was something that I wasn’t aware of that made my plan null and void.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “What I didn’t realize at the time was, police patrol cars don’t always have door handles on the inside in the backseat. That one didn’t. Once you were in, the only way out was if they opened it from the outside.”

  “Poor Cooper.”

  “‘Poor Cooper’ is right. Anyway, back to the pool. The cop asks me why I’m in the neighborhood of Nottaway, swimming illegally, so I told him I was spending the night at Barry’s house and we had camped out in the woods nearby. At that moment, I still thought my plan would work. But, he puts me in the backseat of the patrol car, and drives me over to Barry’s house, and that’s when I found out the car’s back door won’t open, and that I’m in big trouble,” I said, laughing again. “We get to Barry’s house, and the officer goes and knocks on the front door. Mr. Payson opens the door, so I slid down outta sight in the backseat, and the cop comes back and says that Barry is down at the end of the street.”

  Cherry asked, “So Barry made it back to the campsite safely, after waking up in the ditch?”

  “No. I found out later he woke up in the ditch, ran home as fast as he could, snuck upstairs to his room, and made it into his bed about ten minutes before his mother knocked on his door. We were supposed to be back in the morning, so she knocks and says that after breakfast, she needs Barry to help her get some rocks.”

  “Help her get some rocks?” Cherry asked. “For what purpose?”

  “She wanted some for her garden. And naturally, she wanted to go to the empty lot where we’d camped to get them.”

  “Wait. What did Barry say about your not being there?”

  “He told her we got into a fight during the night and I stormed off. There was a convenience store near the entrance to the subdivision, and he said I called my mom to come pick me up.”

  Anyway, the cop drives me down to the end of the street, and sure enough, thirty yards or so from where the cop parks, there’s Barry and his mom lookin’ for rocks. The cop gets out, walks over to ’em, and begins to question Barry. That’s when I knew I was dead, ’cause Barry’s shaking his head no to all the questions, and denying any knowledge of the pool break-in, or any acts of vandalism that may have occurred in Nottaway the night before. In fact, he was probably denying everything he’d ever done in his life up to that moment.”

  “It doesn’t look good for young Cooper,” Cherry said.

  “No, it doesn’t. So the cop comes back and asks in a real mean cop voice, ‘What’s your name, boy?’ I said meekly, ‘Samuel Cooper, sir.’ He said, ‘You’re goin’ to jail, son.’ ‘Thank you, sir,’ I said.”

  Cherry laughed and said, “Uh-oh.”

  “Yep.” I continued, “So, it’s straight to juvenile detention for young Coop, no way out of that backseat, no chance to put my genius plan into action, no nothin’. And to top it all off, I had a monster hangover.”

  “My poor little teenaged Cooper,” Cherry said, and gave me a peck on the cheek.

  “It was not a very good mornin’ for me, as you can imagine. Anyway, I won’t bother you with the details of my six hours of incarceration. I’ll save that story for another time.”

  “I can’t wait.”

  I looked at her and said, “I guess you’re wonderin’ how all this made me wanna become a cop?”

  Cherry said, “Yeah, I am.”

  “Okay, here’s what happened. Mom came and got me out, and they told us to show up in court the following week. The first thing the judge said to me was ‘They let you go to school with your hair like that, boy?’ My hair was a little shaggy, as always, and he didn’t like it. He was a well-known hardass, Judge Oscar Mitchell by name. He was famous for givin’ out really harsh sentences, and everybody hated him, from what I heard. I said, ‘Yes, sir, Your Honor, I’m on the football team.’ He looked at me like I was pond scum, and after bad-mouthing me for a while, gave me a year’s probation and thirty days washing police cars in Pensacola. That was a drag, since it was June, and Mom had to make arrangements to get me over there Mondays through Saturdays for five weeks. But it coulda been a lot worse, so I said ‘Yes, sir’ a few hundred times, and took my punishment. Then the judge said, ‘I don’t ever wanna see you in my courtroom again, boy, you hear me?’ I said another ‘Yes sir’, and Mom asked, ‘He’s free to go? He doesn’t have to come back to court?’ And Judge Mitchell said, ‘That’s correct. He’s free to go.’ So we both thanked the old so-and-so, and drove home to Gulf.”

  “And that was it?”

  “No, it wasn’t. The next night, Mom made me go and apologize to the Paysons, and Barry sat there looking innocent as an angel. We were both trying not to laugh the whole time I was apologizing. Then Mom made me go and apologize to the president of the Nottaway Neighborhood Association.”

  Cherry said, “Well, all in all, that wasn’t so bad, yeah?”

  “No, none of that was too bad, but it gets worse. Six weeks later, a county sheriff showed up at my house, and arrested me on a bench warrant.”

  “Whatever for?”

  “Well, a bench warrant means that you were supposed to show up in court on a certain date, and didn’t show.”

  “I don’t understand,” Cherry said. “The judge said—”

  “Right. The judge said not to come back, but he put in the record that I was supposed to come back.”

  “Unreal,” Cherry said.

  “Unfortunately, it was real. So, Mom called an attorney, and he called the judge and told him that there was some kind of mistake, and Judge Mitchell said, ‘There’s no mistake. You tell that boy to cut off that damn hair, or I’m sending him to the Okaloosa Juvenile Detention Center for six months.’ He did all that just to make me cut my hair. And my hair wasn’t even that long.”

  “You’re joking.”

  “Nope. That was his whole purpose. Imagine the money spent: the sheriff; Mom payin’ a lawyer; getting me to Pensacola to wash police cars. It was ridiculous. And you know, he didn’t force me to get a haircut. I mean, he gave me a choice. I could go to a juvenile home for six months, or cut my hair.”

  Cherry said, “I hope you got a haircut.”

  “Oh, hell yes. I liked my hair, and so did my girlfriend, but go to jail for it? No way.”

  “What a bastard, your judge,” Cherry said.

  “Well, you’ll be happy to know that he was beaten in the next election, and never had a seat on the bench again.”

  “Hooray!” Cherry said, throwing her hands up.

  I laughed, and said, “That experience made me see the power that a judge has. I saw that they can do outrageous things if they want to. I mean, he could’ve made me wear a red dress for six months, or made me quit the football team, or quack like a duck on a street corner if he’d wanted to. Wait, he couldn’t make me do any of that stuff. But he could’ve said, ‘Yo
u either wear a red dress to school for six months, or go to juvenile detention for six months. It’s your choice.’ I saw the abuse of power, and that’s when—”

  “You decided to become a police officer!” Cherry said triumphantly.

  “You got it. I know it may sound corny. Does that translate? Corny?”

  “Yes, it does. I’m simply mad about corny,” she said.

  “Anyway—corny as it is—that’s why I became a policeman. I wanted to balance out at least one bad guy like Judge Mitchell.”

  Cherry said, “That’s quite a story.”

  “You know what? I’ve never told that story to Penny. Neal knows, but not her. She’d never let me live it down. I guess I felt free to tell you because I won’t be seeing you every day.”

  Cherry stopped the swing, and said softly, “I don’t want to think about that. You’ll be gone soon enough.”

  I was quiet for a moment, and then I said, “I guess I will. Be gone soon enough. I mean, I know I will.”

  “Thank you for sharing that story, Cooper.”

  I said, “My pleasure, boss lady.”

  Cherry started the swing again, and said, “Remember when I said that I’d tell you about Alfred Hitchcock someday when we had the time?”

  “Sure do.”

  “It’s seems that you two have something in common, after all.”

  “You mean besides both being heavily involved in filmmaking?”

  Cherry smiled, and said, “Yeah, something like that. Your story reminded me of something he said years ago. Hitchcock was being interviewed, and the reporter asked him a question I’m sure he had to answer a thousand times or more in his lifetime. I thought it interesting when I heard his answer, and even more so in light of your experience. The interviewer asked him something like, ‘Since your films are so famous for scaring the daylights out of everyone, tell our readers: What scares you?’ Hitchcock answered, ‘The police.’ I guess he knew what you know.”

  I said, “He was right. Abuse of power is a really frightening thing, especially when it involves the law. It happens in every country on the planet, every single day of the year. It can be the scariest thing in the world, being at the mercy of a bad character in a uniform. And they have the whole power of the law behind them. It’s your word against theirs. And guess who gets believed most of the time. I’m serious about what I said—I really want to balance out one or more police officers that abuse their power. I guess when all is said and done, I’m a corny copper.”