by Mark Johnson
“Where’s the blade?” Porter demands.
“What blade?!” Mr. Bloodyface snaps. “Wha’d that bitch tell you? She fuckin’ conked me with a bottle! I want her arrested!”
The poor bastard clearly got the worst of it. Who’s the real victim here, I’m wondering. Porter approaches him. “Get up and put your hands behind your back,” he orders, unsnapping his cuffs from his duty belt. The bloody man is outraged and bellows, “I’m barely fucking conscious! You put that bitch in cuffs, not me! Why are you idiots taking me? What’s the charge? I have a right to know the charge! I demand you arrest her! Get me a motherfucking ambulance!”
Unfazed, Porter jerks him upright from the bed and quickly cuffs him despite his twisting and shouting.
“You started it, Pops. Got witnesses. You’re the primary aggressor, so shut the fuck up and quit buckin’ on me or I’ll bloody you some more.” Then with equal contempt for me, mute and immobilized at the tableau, “Don’t just stand there with your mouth open, rookie. Search his pockets!”
The man is still attempting to jerk free, despite Porter’s firm grasp of his cuffed wrists. “Careful of the blood, rookie. He might have AIDS. You got the Bug, Numbnuts?”
I pull a small folding knife from a pocket of the blood-sticky shorts. “Hang on to that, Pawpaw. Evidence.” Porter marches our arrested subject out the door to the squad car. He’s dog-cussing us, calling us pigs, calling her a nasty dogfucking whore. His victim returns the barrage, taunting, “Yeah, motherfucker! Who’th the tough guy now?” Dubo has to restrain her from lunging at him as Porter stuffs the bloody man into the cage. He’s demanding our badge numbers, demanding justice. I drop the knife into my breast pocket and follow like a heeling pup.
At the hospital, bloody Lester Puckett shouts and struggles all the way into the ER intake bay, where Porter plops him down in front of a desk occupied by a soft-spoken matronly administrator. (Metro won’t accept anybody in Lester’s condition without a medical release. A doctor has to deem him fit for incarceration, so Metro doesn’t get sued if he croaks in its custody.) Regular people, seated in the room awaiting loved ones, feign averting their eyes from the spectacle. One woman actually covers her kid’s ears and turns his head away.
The intake specialist asks Puckett for his information, calling him Mr. and Sir. After a thoughtful pause, Lester grunts, “I ain’t gotta talk to no nigger bitch.” She seems remarkably unperturbed, but Porter apologizes for him anyway and provides her Lester’s info, gathered by Dubo from the FUCK MEN tat lady, and from his squad car’s mobile display terminal when he’d pulled up Lester’s rap sheet. Dubo had cleared from backing us and returned to his own beat.
Once she enters all Lester’s data into her computer, the lady explains to Lester that she will need him to sign the treatment authorization form. Porter unlocks the cuff on Lester’s right wrist so he can sign the form, warning him not to try anything stupid. He keeps a firm hold of the freed cuff, still attached to Lester’s left wrist. Lester calmly, tenderly rubs his freed right wrist.
Then he explodes, rising up and pounding the desk. Paper clips bounce, knickknacks dancing. “I ain’t signin’ nothin’!” he screams. The startled administrator pushes back away from him in her chair. Porter jerks Lester backward with the loose handcuff, knocking Lester’s chair into me. With his other arm, he hooks Lester around the throat from behind, sweeps him up off his feet, and slams him down hard on the floor. You can hear the thud as the back of Lester’s skull and shoulders hit the tile. The wind’s knocked out of Lester, he’s gasping for air, eyes bugging out. Porter pins Lester to the floor by the throat. Lester’s feet are kicking, arms flailing away like he’s drowning. The normal citizens clear the room.
“Yer gonna sign the fucking form, shitbag!” Porter growls.
Lester’s sucking air, sputtering, and grunts, “No . . . I . . . ain’t!” He keeps kicking.
Porter tightens his choke hold. Lester’s turning purple. Making gurgling noises. Porter puts his full (considerable) weight on Lester with a knee to the chest. Still Lester fights.
Porter shouts over his shoulder to me. “Grab an arm! We’re gonna cuff him to a gurney and sedate the motherfucker!” We each lift him by an armpit as he kicks and wheels his feet like those cartoon characters in midair when they’ve run off a cliff. Lester’s shorts fall to the floor. He writhes and curses, buck-naked, as we carry him down the hall to the trauma bays, nurses and orderlies scattering in our wake. We slam him on the first empty bed and cuff a wrist to each rail. Lester keeps kicking and fighting as Porter orders a nurse to give him a shot. With the sedative pumping into him, he quits resisting. Porter tells the nurse to go fetch the intake lady’s paperwork. Lester’s fading fast. Nurse comes back with a form on a clipboard, and Porter puts a pen in Lester’s limp fist, passes it over the treatment authorization form, inking an illegible scrawl on the appropriate line. Then he barks, “Keep an eye on this piece of shit, Pawpaw. I’m gonna grab a smoke.”
When I see Porter exit the building, I slink down the hall and retrieve Lester’s blood-caked shorts. Delicately (for my own sake) I slip the crusty, stinking drawers up his bruised, bony legs, under his skeletal trunk, and over his shriveled genitalia. He nods at me. Moments later, Lester’s out cold, but at least he possesses a shred of modesty, if utterly lacking in dignity. Later a nurse’s aide wipes the dried blood off his face and head as he snoozes fitfully. Then a doctor examines the gash in his head. A few butterfly bandages close the wound. Lester snores and shivers, covered with goose bumps. I find a blanket on a closet shelf and put it over him. His shivering stops but not his snoring. I sit at his bedside, awaiting Porter’s return. Nearly an hour passes. I figure he’s yammering on his cell to his Arkansas taco belle.
I remember the knife I’d taken from Lester and fish it out of my shirt pocket. I can’t believe what I see. Just then, Lester stirs, snorts, and opens his eyes a slit. His cuffs clank against the bed rails, startling him. He blinks hard and groggily studies his shackled wrists, then the blanket, then me, with no apparent comprehension. “Thanks,” he murmurs, falls silent again, and closes his eyes.
Still no Porter. I study the knife’s familiar fleur-de-lis emblem and work the blades. They’ve got a good edge to them, well honed. The knife is clean, oiled, maintained. I wonder . . .
Finally, I clear my throat loudly. “You awake, Lester?” He rouses and grunts. “Mind if I ask you a question?” Another grunt I take to mean “okay.”
“Your knife, here, the one I took off you? For evidence?” Lester nods, eyes still shut, silent.
“Did you know it’s a Boy Scout knife?”
“’Course I do,” he says hoarsely. “’Smy knife, ain’t it?”
“Just wondered if it was actually yours, or you just found it somewhere.” Silence.
“You ever a Boy Scout, Lester? ’Cause I was, long time ago.”
“Yeah,” Lester croaks. “Long, long time ago an’ a long ways from here.”
“Really! How far’d you get up the ranks?”
“Eagle. I’m a Eagle fuckin’ Scout.”
I’m speechless. After a long silence, I declare, utterly amazed: “Me, too! And my son—he’s grown now—made Eagle, too.”
“Yeah? My daddy was the goddamn scoutmaster.” Lester’s eyelids flutter to a squint, as if he’s straining to pull up a distant memory. Or maybe he’s just wincing in pain. But there seems to be a faint trace of interest stirring him. “He was also a deputy sheriff in Manatee County, Florida, ’fyou can belee’ dat,” he says, punctuating it with a sneer and a faint head shake.
I’m struck mute for another long moment. My jaw drops, brows arch. “What? No,” I snort, shaking my head. “No, a deputy?” I trail off. Lester offers nothing further. Minutes pass in silence.
Finally, in the most amicable tone I can muster, I say, “So tell me, Lester, if ya don’t mind my asking, how the hell did you go from Boy Scout, Eagle Scout, son of a deputy, to—” I turn my palms up, gesturing
toward him: beaten, battered, shackled.
“To this sorry fucked-up mess?” Lester’s eyes are open and he’s looking right into mine. “Zat whatcha wanna know?”
I don’t reply. Just hold his gaze.
“I ask myself that.” Lester pauses, sighs. He takes a long, deep breath. “This is how it went: I graduate from high school, right? Daddy helps me get a small fishin’ boat. Work hard, eventually put something down on a little trawler, makin’ pretty decent coin. ’Nuff ta hire me a couple crew. They even called me Skipper.” A hint of pride.
“Then one day somebody says to me, ‘Lester,’ he says. ‘This is chump change. You could be pullin’ down serious bank if you was to dee-versify,’ he says. All I gotta do is pick up a little cargo fer ’im from time ta time. So I start tran-sportin instead a trawlin’.” He pauses, frowning. “Hell, it was smugglin’ is what it was, straight up. Sometime it’s weed, usually it’s flake, sometime guns and wetbacks. Coupla times, all a that in one load. I’m makin’ more fuckin’ money in a run than my ole Daddy makes in a whole month. But then, a course, I start samplin’ the goods.” He shakes his head. “Stupid as shit, I know. Like a bad fuckin’ movie. But here I am: a lowlife cokehead. A fuckin’ loser, who gets his ass kicked by a dirtyass coke whore and then gets locked up for it.”
Long silence. We both look elsewhere. Then:
“Hey, Lester. Y’ever try to kick? Listen, I know a guy, personal friend, runs a rehab. Twelve-step program, you know? Live-in, set you up in outside day jobs, stay there as long’s it takes.”
Lester’s silent. Shaking his head.
“Seriously, man, the guy’s a buddy of mine. A real professional. Lots of support, just pay what you can, when you can. He’s recovered himself, and I know he’d open up a spot for you if I asked.”
Porter steps in the door. He takes in the scene, his eyes passing from Lester to me and back to Lester. He must have been eavesdropping outside the room. He fixes his accusing gaze on me at Lester’s bedside. Porter’s lip curls into a look of horrified revulsion, eyes narrowed, shaking his head in disbelief. “Wha . . . what are you, some kinda fucking social worker?”
I shrink back in my chair, eyes dropping to the floor. I have no retort. I can’t deny it. But I can’t really own up to it, either. I force my eyes to meet Porter’s and thrust my jaw out in defiance. Still unable to speak, I just hurl mean thoughts at him: Yeah, I was a kind of social worker, Porter, but you didn’t want to hear about any of that, I recall. So fuck you, Portly, you fat ignorant oaf. Fuck you and the horse you rode in on. Porter turns and marches down the hallway. I mobilize and fall quickly in step behind him.
A month later I rotate to the Second Precinct and a new FTO. I never saw Lester Puckett or his FUCK MEN gal again, not even in court. Both failed to appear; the tatted coke-whore “victim” no doubt ignored her subpoena because she had subsequent active warrants for sordid assaults on human dignity and public decency. A fresh bench warrant was issued for Lester for bail skipping.
Skip on, Skipper, like the wind across the Gulf.
*Domestic violence.
2
The Turd in the Punch Bowl
You don’t hafta be drunk to be useless.
—Anonymous (heard at a Twelve Step meeting)
Some two decades earlier, the lights are dimmed and the slide show begins in the crowded hotel banquet hall. The narrator’s voice sets the scene as the pictures and music tell the story.
“It was a day like any other. Manny Gonzalez and his Colorado Power crew were doing routine maintenance on the power lines in a quiet Manitou Springs neighborhood,” the voice-over intones.
The screen shows Manny, a barrel-chested, middle-aged lineman in coveralls, hard hat, and the elbow-length insulated gloves of electrical workers. He’s thirty feet up in a brilliant blue Colorado sky, working at the top of a power pole in his bucket truck on a sunny spring afternoon. The majestic Rocky Mountains tower in the background.
The slides show Manny distracted from his work on the lines. His attention is drawn to something on the ground, in a backyard below, several houses away. The camera zooms in on Manny as he leans out of his high bucket, transfixed by something puzzling, offscreen. We see his gloved hand pushing back the brim of his hard hat, then another, tighter shot of his weathered, lined face, his eyes straining to grasp the scene on the ground, and then a wide-eyed realization, a look of alarm on Manny’s face.
The point of view switches to a couple of shots from Manny’s perspective downward. From on high we see a quiet working-class neighborhood, a series of modest homes with fenced-in backyards. The camera zooms to one backyard, where children are playing on a swing set. A closer shot reveals what Manny has spied: seven-year-old Lupita Rivera has gotten herself tangled in the chains of her swing. She’s struggling to free herself from the tightening loops around her neck as her feet kick in the air, several feet off the ground.
The screen flashes rapid-fire shots of Manny lowering his bucket, jumping from the truck to the ground, and shouting at his crew to call 911, intercut with shots of the struggling Lupita flailing and kicking. The beefy lineman is seen sprinting down the sidewalk, then bounding over the chain-link fence enclosing Lupita’s backyard. The scene cuts to a young Hispanic woman looking in utter panic out her kitchen window. It’s Lupita’s mother, alerted by the shouts of Lupita’s playmates in the backyard. She flings open the backdoor and reaches her struggling child just as big old Manny Gonzalez scoops her up in his arms, putting slack in the chains. Mrs. Rivera untangles the chains from around her daughter’s neck, her face contorted in terror as Lupita’s head flops, her body limp in Manny’s arms.
“Lucky for everyone, Manny knows CPR,” the narrator says, as the screenshots show Manny kneeling, laying the lifeless body of little Lupita in the grass, Mrs. Rivera kneeling beside the large lineman, tears streaming down her stricken face, desperately holding her daughter’s hand.
“He had learned it through a lifesaving class provided free to Power Company workers by an agency of your Pikes Peak United Way,” continues the voice-over as the screen is filled with Manny’s huge hands doing chest compressions on little Lupita, then Manny’s whiskered, leathery face breathing life into her. “The American Red Cross trains thousands of county residents each year in lifesaving and emergency first-aid,” the narrator declares. “It wasn’t just luck that saved Lupita Rivera’s life that day last spring. It was your fair-share gifts to United Way, which fund Red Cross programs like Manny’s CPR training.”
The music swells as we see a revived Lupita being lifted up from the ground by the burly Manuel Gonzalez, his big lineman’s arms tenderly passing the child to her mother, the child hugged tightly by her grateful mom, then several closing shots of the three of them in the Riveras’ backyard, Lupita and Mrs. Rivera kissing a smiling Manny on each cheek, a couple of shots from the Annual Red Cross Heroes Banquet with the three of them onstage, Manny looking a little abashed and uncomfortable in a Sunday suit as he’s presented a medal and a framed proclamation of his heroism.
The audio track of the slide show switches from the familiar narrator’s voice to Mrs. Rivera’s. “I truly feel God was looking down on my little Lupita that day, through the eyes of Manny Gonzalez. He was an angel sent to us by God.”
“I’m so glad I knew what to do,” says Manny. “Without the Red Cross training, it could of been a tragedy.”
Music swells. The final face on the screen is a smiling little Lupita Rivera, as we hear her say, “Thanks to Mr. Gonzalez, thanks to Red Cross, thanks to you, it works for all of us, the United Way.”
Little Lupita’s smiling face fades into the United Way’s multihued rainbow of hope over the support-offering hand of charity, holding in its palm the human figure with its upstretched arms simultaneously signifying supplication and triumph.
I switch off the synchronized projector and sound track and cue the stage lights. Vic Jackson, president of First National Bank of Colorado Springs and chair
man of the 1983 campaign of the Pikes Peak United Way, is center stage.
“With us here today are Lupita Rivera, her mom, and our hero, Manny Gonzalez.”
The thunderous applause is immediate, the crowd comes to its feet, shouting, cheering. I look around in awe from my projection post at the rear of the hall; the room’s reaction makes my eyes well up, gives me goose bumps.
Campaign chairman Vic Jackson shares the mike for some brief, upbeat banter with the slide show’s stars. Mrs. Rivera and Lupita reiterate their gratitude, not just to Manny but to everyone in the room. Manny is modest, self-effacing, nervous, and utterly genuine. “I’m no hero, I just did what anybody in this room woulda done, if you woulda had the training like I did. And I wouldn’ of had the training, if it wasn’t for everyone giving to United Way, so I just wanna say thanks to you.”
Following my script with perfect poise and timing, Vic Jackson then calls to the stage Hugh Woolsey, southern regional vice president of Colorado Power, who presents Jackson with the first Pacesetter corporate gift to the campaign, a giant-size mock-up of a check for $103,223, which, Woolsey explains, is the first-ever dollar-for-dollar corporate match of employee pledges, meaning that Colorado Power’s total gift to the campaign will be $206,446. More thunderous applause. Vic thanks Hugh for the check, and Hugh says they were all inspired by their coworker, Manny Gonzalez, who exemplifies the Colorado Power spirit of caring.
Vic then closes the kickoff luncheon with an exhortation to “give till it helps, to this year’s United Way campaign.”
