When
the chaos and commotion of the initial phase of the covert invasion of the farm
by the local and state authorities had concluded, my face, head, and upper
torso were still being forcefully held down onto the round table by what felt
like the cold, steel barrel of a large shotgun being wielded by a very
over-zealous cop in modest body armor. I
was breathing in panicked, deep breaths and choking on the dusty ashes from the
ashtray which felt like it was being fused to my face. My body was numb with adrenaline and a
growing sense of rage. I felt a cagey
desire to self-combust or scream in terror.
I felt Bull’s arm touching mine, and knew that he was very likely in the
same, unfortunate position.
I
wasn’t the least bit shocked or surprised in any way to learn very quickly that
Bull’s fearless personality hadn’t been too badly wounded by this surprise
attack on us this night. He began
speaking very deliberately and quietly to me from under what I could only
imagine was a very similar gun wielded by another similarly amped-up cop. “Calm down, brother. Calm down and relax your body… don’t move, or
give them any reason to make a mess on my fucking table with that big brain of
yours.” I knew he was smiling at this
snarky, poorly-timed, jab at my ego. “I
know you’re freaking out right now, but this will be over soon. Just chill out and don’t say anything.”
He
was interrupted by the cop who was presently securing my uncomfortable position
on the table. “SHUT THE FUCK UP,
GUNVILLE!” Unbelievably to me, the gun
barrel at the base of my skull pressed even harder into my already sore neck
and head, and the faceless voice that had silenced Bull directed his next
comment to me. “Don’t you fuckin’ talk
meth-head, or he’s exactly right. I’ll
paint the table top with your ate-up fucking brains. Just keep your methy little mouth shut or
I’ll fucking do it.” I could tell he was
gritting his teeth as he spoke. The
cop’s words were hissing at me with a sense of triumph that I can only imagine
comes from an excessively overdeveloped sense of job satisfaction. I extended the fingers on both of my hands in
an attempt to express my surrender and desire for self-preservation. The pipe I had been gripping tightly, clinked
onto the table.
“Take
it down a notch, hard-on,” Bull continued, much to my dismay. “This guy hasn’t done a fucking thing TO you,
and he’s a guest in my fucking home.
We’re not gonna fight or resist you guys. You fucking got me dead to rights at the
moment… everybody here knows that and I’m assuming that’s primarily what you
came here to do, so let’s try and achieve some level of decency.”
The
cop holding the gun to my head said, “Goddammit, will you please shut Gunville
THE FUCK UP!” Apparently he was trying
to communicate with Bull’s momentary handler and had succeeded.
“Please
Gunville,” his cop sounded surprisingly calm and almost compassionate. “Let’s not turn this circus into something it
doesn’t have to be. Put your hands
behind your back for me, okay?” I could
hear Bull moving into a position to be handcuffed, and the cold zip-clicking of
the bracelets being tightened.
“You
too douche-bag,” my cop hissed, as he took the opportunity to push the barrel
momentarily harder into my skull, letting me know that he was talking to
me. “Put your hands behind your back.”
I
repositioned my arms so my shoulders were resting on the table, and reached
behind my back. The gun barrel at the
base of my skull seemed to ease up slightly, as another officer appeared behind
me to accessorize my wrists with the cold metal handcuffs. They were tightened over the bones in my
wrists, which I had apparently never taken notice of. I was now painfully aware of just how
uncomfortably skinny my wrists and arms had become. The cop holding the steel barrel to my skull eased
the pressure of the gun he was jamming into my head, and I finally began to breathe
in shallow, shaky breaths.
“Go
ahead, methy… sit up.” I found myself
becoming surprisingly agitated at this cop’s fondness for the slew of unoriginal
nicknames he was giving me and the gleeful way with which he was coloring his
orders to me. As he relinquished the
pressure of the massive gun barrel he was happily trying to skewer my head with
I began to concentrate very hard on not making my distaste for his uncreative
vocabulary, being fueled by his brief moment of authority over me visibly
noticeable. He insisted on making this
as difficult for me as possible, as it took a moment for my brain to remind the
rest of my body that it was still in control of my functions, regardless of
what my bladder had thought minutes earlier.
“C’mon
methster,” he used the butt of his giant gun to guide my forehead off of the
table as I was trying to shake loose a cigarette butt that had adhered to my
cheek while I was sharing intimate face-time with an overflowing ashtray that he and his gun had introduced me
to upon his unfortunate arrival to the farmhouse. I gave up trying to coax the butt from my
face, and sat up to survey our uninvited guests for the first time.
The
house was swarming with law enforcement.
Dayna was being handcuffed, face down on the couch. She didn’t appear to be coherent or
resisting, but when the two cops manipulating her had finished immobilizing her
wrists, she was dragged into a sitting position on the couch, eyes closed and
mumbling groggily. A female officer
appeared in front of her, and snapped her fingers several times, yielding no
noticeable response from the bleary, closed, and sunken-eyed focus of her
attention.
“What
did she take tonight, guys?” The she-cop barked in the direction of where Bull,
Rhonda, and I were now silently, yet ravenously trying to make sense of the
situation.
“Can
I talk NOW, hard-on?” Bull swung his
head in the direction of the cop that had been handling me. The cop locked eyes with Bull silently, in
what appeared to be an attempt to intimidate the three-time felon, ex-convict,
and seasoned expert in cop/criminal relationships. It was no surprise to me when the cop nodded
his head, and dropped his defeated, vacant stare to just over Bull’s shoulder. Bull took the briefest of moments to flash a
grin in my direction. I found surprising
comfort in my friend’s confidence and fearlessness in the face of what was
looking like it could very well be the last time we sat together as free men
for a very long time. To add to my
feeling of comfort and acceptance of our current dilemma, I was surprised to
see that Bull’s eyes had recaptured the fierce glow and infectious, glaring
clarity of a man who had absolutely nothing to fear, but more importantly, a
man who felt that everything was completely within his control. In spite of my overwhelming fear I felt a
grin beginning at the corners of my mouth when Bull began to speak again.
“Ma’am,
she has been terribly depressed since DCFS took her boy away from her, and when
I returned home tonight, she was passed out drunk on that couch with this
bottle of tequila wrapped in her arms.”
Bull nodded towards the bottle of tequila on the table, now lying on its
side like a wounded soldier. The
expensive looking cork-cap, which I had replaced loosely after I had helped myself
to some earlier, had become dislodged in the chaos, and it had spilled a
majority of its contents onto the table and floor near my feet. Bull continued, “It looked to me like maybe
it had been relieved of about one-third of its contents, before my friend here
wrestled it out of her arms just before y’all let yourselves in. She’s not much of a drinker normally, but
I’ve never seen her this incoherent.
Frankly, I’m a little worried about her… it seems like she would be
awake for something like this under normal circumstances, don’tcha think?”
What
I was witnessing was Bull’s sarcasm dripping from his mouth like invisible gobs
of honey. Apparently the cops were so
absorbed with everything else, or were so blinded by the fury with which they
attended to their jobs during the minutes beforehand, that they didn’t see
Bull’s loosely motivated explanation of Dayna’s unresponsiveness for what it was; an attempt to remove Dayna
from the situation before she could come to her senses.
“Mr.
Gunville, do you think she might have taken something else before or maybe
during the time she was drinking?” The
she-cop resumed snapping her fingers in front of Dayna’s face while she was
trying to talk over the growing chatter in the farmhouse.
“Ma’am,
believe it or not, that is the exact conversation I was having with my friends
here… before… you know,” Bull hesitated purposefully, rolling his eyes around
in their sockets and continued, “I mean, before you guys interrupted us. These two folks showed up at my request, to
take her somewhere and see if she needed her stomach pumped or something. I’m afraid she might have been trying to hurt
herself, honestly. She’s been talking
about that a lot lately.”
The
she-cop bent her head down to the communications radio positioned on the
shoulder strap of her uniform, pressed a button on the spiraling cord leading
to it, and quietly spoke into the device.
She moved out of my line of sight and left Dayna sitting on the couch,
handcuffed and mumbling incoherently. Dayna
began to slump to one side as two hefty looking paramedics appeared, carrying a
gurney-board. They waved the nearest cop
over to where they stood, and motioned to her handcuffed wrists while talking
to him. The new cop quickly removed
Dayna’s restraints and disappeared. The
paramedics made quick work of transferring Dayna’s limp body to the board,
where she was strapped down, and carried from the house.
It
suddenly dawned on me that Bull intended to absorb as much of this trouble as
he could. He was improvising at the
moment, but he had already managed to have Dayna removed from the house, and at
least temporarily keep her out of police custody. He had flagrantly lied to the she-cop and
anybody listening about what I was actually doing in his house and on his
property tonight. Rhonda fell under this
umbrella of protection that he was attempting to provide for us with his
interpretation of the truth in this matter as well. As the dawning of my realization began to
grow, I immediately became uneasy with how comfortable I felt with allowing him
to do this.
Bull was
watching me intently as my eyes returned to the table from watching Dayna being
removed from the house. He was now
sitting back in his chair, although with his hands in restraints behind him, it
looked as though he was sitting on his hands like a child being punished. It was almost comical. I looked directly at him, and did my best to
communicate with him silently, using only my eyes, facial expression, and my
overwhelming emotional state at the moment.
Are you sure about this? I
don’t think I can let you take this by yourself, boss.
The fire in
Bull’s eyes was as fierce as ever, and in an instant I knew he had at least
kind of understood my concerns. He
cocked his head to one side, nodding first, and then he lowered his head and
eyes like a predatory animal about to pounce.
Don’t be a fucking idiot.
It doesn’t make sense for both of us to go down for this. Don’t forget, we have a deal. I will need your help now. You can’t help me or yourself if you’re
locked up in some hole. When this is
over… go home. You need to go home and
wait.
“Okay,
gentlemen…” we both looked towards the sound of the voice coming from the first
cop that I had seen so far without a Kevlar vest or some kind of protective
gear over his uniform. “Mr. Gunville, I
do believe you know who I am, and clearly, I know who you are. I am familiar with the lady sitting here at
your table as well. Rhonda Downing, I do
believe…” The shiny, slick-haired,
mustached cop then turned his eyes towards me.
“But I’m sorry, fella… I am just at a complete loss in your case. At any rate, I’m Sheriff Don Doyle. I preside over things in this county. You probably would be tempted to try and deceive
me if I asked you outright who the hell you are, so I won’t bother with that,
as the currently overburdened states attorney in this county doesn’t really
have time to pursue the obstruction of justice charges that you would face if
and when I do EVER give you the opportunity to lie to me. My extensive experiences in these matters
have taught me not to give a person in your current predicament, and under the
influence of the drugs that I suspect you are on, a chance to lie to me or I
will inevitably receive an strongly worded, ear-chewing phone call, or worse
yet a personal visit from a very angry, fellow public servant, when she finds
out that I am wasting the counties precious tax dollars, provided for us to do
our jobs by the honest, hardworking citizens of this county who are already
struggling in these difficult economic times.
She will then explain what a waste of HER time it is when my officers
are obligated to file charges against some jerk who tried to lie to me about
who he was, when I just as easily could have asked to see his identification. So, tell me pal, do you have some
identification I can look at?”
“Sure, it’s
in my wallet. In my back pocket.” I
began to retrieve it with one of my cuffed hands, but this was met with a knock
on the head with the butt of a large gun I had become very familiar with, which
was being held by the one cop in the room who had no problem using either end
to exacerbate my current agitation.
“Let the
officer get it for you… go ahead and stand up, sir.” The sheriff waited patiently while I stood
up. After the cop behind me fumbled
through my wallet and pulled my license out, he handed it to Sheriff Don Doyle for
his examination. He read the front of
the plastic identification card, turned it over, examined the back side, and
handed it to another neatly groomed, unvested, uniformed cop who had appeared
at his side.
“Nope...
this doesn’t help me at all. You are a
total stranger to me, and see that disappoints me, because as the duty-bound
sheriff in this county, elected and respected by the fine people who reside
around here, I like to think that I know just about everybody who intends to
bring harm to the people who hold me responsible for their safety and
well-being. I was not familiar with you
before this moment sir, and that bruises my ego. I am familiar with you now though, and I hope
that you take that bit of information very seriously. You are now on my list of very bad people
that I have had the displeasure to become acquainted with due to the nature of
my chosen field of employment, and consequently your poor choices so far in
life. But my bruised ego, and your lousy
life decisions are irrelevant to the simple fact that at this moment,
gentlemen… and lady,” he turned and nodded to Rhonda nonchalantly, “you are now
all under arrest for this sneaking suspicion I have that you have all been
engaging in the illegal manufacture of methamphetamine, and the dangerous and equally
illegal procurement of the precursors with which to do so in my beloved county. You will be transported to my lovely and hospitable
jail tonight, where you will be well taken care of until you can each be questioned
regarding my suspicion of your involvement in these activities. Is that understood?”
I
sat back down, heavily, in the chair behind me.
I
was surprised to find myself awe-struck and amused with Sheriff Don Doyle.
Well,
at least this cop had a more interesting and creative way of telling me that he thought I was a piece of shit.
This work is the intellectual property of Jerome J. Panozzo
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