a Bruce story for the holidays: Merry F'n Christmas
Here's a brand new Bruce story for the holiday. Typical warnings apply, Copyright 2011.
Merry Fucking Christmas -- a Bruce Anders story
Yes, I sometimes shop at Wal-Mart. It's a combination of poverty and desperation.
The Salvation Army bell-ringer recognized me, as I recognized him, and shook his bell at me with a big grin on his face. I had to restrain my first three impulses.
The first was simple: Deck him. Although this is what I'd done the last time we had interacted socially (followed shortly thereafter by his arrest and my receipt of grudging thanks from Our Boys In Blue), he had done nothing in my presence today that deserved either assault or arrest. While this hadn't held true on past occasions, today he was 1) doing volunteer work, 2) in a socially approved manner and 3) not intoxicated.
The second involved the sudden non-consensual placement of the bell in a place where it could not ring and would require assistance from a jaded ER physician or a proctologist to remove. This was only a fleeting thought, interrupted by all of the above considerations plus what I use for a moral sense; my quaint reluctance to commit felony sex crimes at any time, let alone on camera; and the likelihood of shocking little children after yanking his pants down. "What is that Mommy? That's a human penis, dear, only smaller."
How did I know that? From one of his ex-girlfriends, whom I had interviewed while tracking him after his last bail skip.
The third was to spit with accuracy into the kettle. I had already hawked to spit when I realized that no one with a vestige of common sense was going to allow Johnny the drunk, however reformed he might be pretending to be with summer coming in a mere five months and a lot of drinking he wanted to do then, to actually open the locked kettle and count money. No need to ruin some volunteer's day cleaning up my spittle.
So I did two things that were totally out of character. I swallowed my spit, then took out a hard earned dollar and placed it in the kettle. The huge smile I awarded right in Johnny's face was not out of character; I am a big believer in kicking people when they are down. Why? Because if you are willing to kick them when they're up, why are you stopping halfway through? If you're not willing to kick them when they're up, what kind of coward are you, anyway, and why are you reading this?
Johnny was sufficiently shocked that he allowed me to pass without further incident. This may have saved him from carnal knowledge of a bell -- I was in an awful mood and knew it would take Just One More Remark for me to do something stupid.
I despise Christmas music. The rape song was playing, you probably know it as "Baby It's Cold Outside," and the Wolf was crooning something about "Baby don't hold out" as I moved past last-minute shoppers, carts full of groceries and Christmas gifts and cheap toys.
The sporting goods clerk saw me coming, unlocked the ammo case, and stacked three boxes of the cheapest 9mm on the counter. He had the case relocked by the time I picked the boxes up. You know you shop at WalMart too much when they know your caliber and preferences. This was target ammo, nothing I intended to bet my life on.
On an impulse I picked up a cheap pellet gun, and put it back down again.
Someone loudly coughed behind me, and without turning my head, I said, "Hi, Walter."
Loss prevention has rules; I'd learned them several years ago at the other big box discount store. You know, the one with the red bullseye logo. There is only Walmart and Target, there are no other discount chain stores. (There's another chain store, K-Mart, but the concept of a 'discount' has never entered their lexicon or invaded their price labels.)
Walter had made a career out of pretending to be Loss Prevention. Two drugstores, three department stores, and a brief but disastrous mystery shop for a fast food chain later, he was building a career out of doing nothing at WalMart. I knew who he was; he had no idea who I am. But his false-to-fact belief that all shoplifters were arrogant little punks in their late teens or early twenties matched my profile. I'd watched as a teenage mother lifted both baby formula and diapers into her baby carriage, in Walter's line of sight, while he followed me and watched my hands. I'd chosen not to rat her out; while I don't like a thief, it's not like WalMart is paying me, and Walter had pissed me off something fierce that day.
"How do you know my name?" he muttered, looking at his feet.
"The big name tag on your vest, the glazed look on your face, the last three times you hassled me, your name on the police report Mike made when you hassled him during a cash drop . . . pick one. And go away."
He shuffled along. I almost felt sorry for him. Almost.
Next stop, housewares. I was expecting a second for dinner tomorrow night and needed a setting.
As I reached the register I saw something that nearly made me drop my jaw.
Walter. With an arrest.
She was missing most of her teeth, looked to be in her mid-fifties, had track marks and sores and boils and other stigmata of the meth addict, and apparently had picked exactly the wrong moment to pocket something from the medications section of the Health & Beauty aisle. Oh, yes, Nyquil. Probably in her mid-thirties.
He looked at me and grinned in triumph as he walked her into the room with the one way mirrored window in the door. I hoped he could remember how to spell long enough to write her name down on his report.
I smiled bitterly at being in line behind an elderly Indian couple who had done all their monthly shopping and clearly had no idea why WalMart was so crowded this day; a woman and her eight screaming kids, all of whom wanted something that was not in her cart; a bitter old fart with three gun magazines and a container of chewing tobacco; and last but certainly not least, a WalMart employee who would need manager approval to purchase her two snack items at a 30% discount.
I settled in for a long wait and people-watched. People's cursory and mean treatment of their children did not quite rise to the level of child abuse; the argument between girlfriend and soon to be ex-boyfriend did not escalate beyond muttered hostility and cutting remarks; and the only theft I observed involved register-based employee skulduggery well beyond my interest or ability to prosecute, or for that matter even care about.
A grand total of $43.18 later, most of which was in ammo, I had cleared the registers and was headed outside when I saw something that did in fact cause me to drop my jaw.
A man in camouflage fatigues had just slammed the door of his truck and was walking towards the front entrance of WalMart with his hands tucked into his pockets. I've dealt with some evil motherfuckers in my time. This guy was the kind of stone-cold thug that gangbangers gave a wide birth to, other inmates called "sir," and triggered a cop's reflexes towards both radio and handgun. He had the aura, the stink of evil, and as he approached, the wind carried that stink to me. Literally. Not just unwashed, but psychosis.
I barely even noticed the squad car that was idling out front to pick up Walter's arrest; or for that matter Walter behind me walking his handcuffed detainee out to the front. But I found myself neither noticing nor thinking.
Camo Man's eyes flickered as he looked past me into the store and his pace quickened.
When things turn to shit, I act. Sometimes I'm planning, or thinking, or praying. Other times I'm a bemused observer. What am I doing? Why am I doing this?
So when I turned my head over my shoulder to Walter and shouted, "RUN! He's GOT A GUN!" then ran in front of the patrol car banging on the hood with my hands while shouting "THREAT! THREAT!" I was surprised as everyone else.
The deputy -- sheriff's office, not the city police I had an uneasy relationship with -- came out of his cruiser and drew her handgun in the same motion. I froze my body and legs, put my right hand up high in the air and pointed with my left hand.
"Camo fatigues! He's got a gun!"
The deputy turned to the suspect like a turret tracking on gymbals, totally smooth, with a corner of his eye fixed on my ten-ring and a clear intention of dropping me with several rounds if I so much as twitched. Good for her. We might live through this.
The deputy saw the threat.
"Sir, you! Stop!"
The suspect kept coming and the deputy took a bead with her handgun while pressing the EMER button on her hand mike with her off hand. A triple chirp recognized the button press.
"STOP OR I SHOOT!"
He slowed and took his hands out of his pockets, but kept moving forward, no longer at a fast walk but trying to mosey. He'd be ambling next. Still moving forward.
"Hands high in the air! STOP! NOW!" she shouted as she started to make a horrible mistake.
Her attention was off me so I did something really stupid, almost as stupid as her.
I moved fast, borrowed a shopping cart and half-pushed, half flung it in his direction as hard as I possibly could.
Her horrible mistake was starting to holster her handgun and take out her Taser. Right for dealing with a civilian, but totally wrong for dealing with this guy.
The shopping cart startled both of them as it passed in between. She reacquired a good sight picture on him and his right hand ducked swiftly into his pocket.
I pissed my pants a bit and threw my hands high into the air, both of them.
The latter is the thing to do when a cop empties a 17 round Glock magazine into someone while standing about twenty feet from you. The former just comes naturally.
His outflung hand had a small revolver in it. He was quite thoroughly dead.
She smoothly reloaded, scanned for additional threats, saw me.
"Get back! Keep your hands up! Back! Further! Hands up!"
I complied as screaming Valkyries took up a chorus in all directions, getting louder.
This was really going to suck, I thought, as I always do once the worst is over.
Fourteen police units later, three detectives, two crime scene technicians, a loss prevention supervisor who thanked Walter for his great work, and what I have come to accept as a stereotypical pat-down, preliminary questioning and criminal records check, I was face to face with Detective Donaldson of the city police, who knew the score and was willing to fill me in.
"I was at home with my kids when I get paged out for an OIS for the SO. But I knew, I just KNEW it had to have something to do with Bruce. Why couldn't you have been the one slabbed, and made my holiday complete?"
Yes, we know each other.
"I am what we call in technical language an Innocent Bystander. I just saw the guy coming over here switched on like someone was kidnapping his girlfriend, and I guess the back of my brain put two and two together."
"Never saw him before in your life."
"Nope. I know Walter and I know John the drunk." I gestured with a cuffed hand. He had snaked a bottle of vodka from somewhere, put it in a paper bag, and was sneaking sips while still shaking the bell. He didn't have to actually move his hand to shake the bell; the shakes from what he had just had a ringside seat for was more than enough to keep doing his job with.
"How did you know he had a gun?"
"I just knew. He walked like Death and his eyes were like Chuck Norris. He was out killing, not hunting."
"Sure enough he was. Separated soldier, SF washout, kicked out of the 82nd, then a Bad Conduct Discharge for striking an NCO. Only one deployment cycle with the 82nd and it wasn't even combat, so it's not PTSD."
I had my doubts. People do horrible things to each other, and it doesn't take battlefields. A kitchen table or a bed can be worse than a gunfight and little kids can't shoot back.
Yes, a bad guy was dead, but some people think I'm a bad guy. It was still a waste and a mess and a deputy needing stress counseling on Christmas Eve in between chain-smoking cigarettes, and terrified shoppers walking around crime tape and chalk marks, and even Walter, who had apparently just now quit on the grounds that "Walmart is too dangerous."
I could have told him that.
"Based on preliminary statements, you've done nothing illegal and you're free to leave. You will need to come down to the station to do a deposition -- but not tomorrow. Probably also get a call from the Grand Jury and the D.A.'s office."
"Let me ask you this, though. If we actually granted that CCW you keep asking for, and keep getting denied, what would you have done if you were carrying today?"
He turned me around and undid the handcuffs as he asked.
A serious question, a serious answer.
"Drew down instead of pushing a shopping cart at him. Dropped him when the gun came up."
Donaldson nodded.
"Apply again. Pick up the packet at the station on Tuesday. You will find a letter of endorsement from me in it. Merry Christmas."
He turned and walked away quickly, leaving me no chance to reply.
"Hey, baby?" someone I knew asked me from behind, in a lilting unnatural tone.
I recognized both voice and offer. An independent, a working girl. Sheila.
Sex work is a tough gig, made tougher because being illegal means the continual risk of being robbed, beaten, raped and/or killed by customers or the rest of the public.
Sheila was tougher than most. In a rough town she had no pimp.
I turned.
"Want a ride?"
I thought about it. Understand that her offer of a freebie was casual, more than a glance but less than a heartfelt hug. Those you don't find so much in whoredom.
I nodded and we walked to her car.
I don't drink, don't smoke and had a lot of stress to burn off.
Merry. Fucking. Christmas.
You can comment here or at Dreamwidth. Makes no difference to me.
Merry Fucking Christmas -- a Bruce Anders story
Yes, I sometimes shop at Wal-Mart. It's a combination of poverty and desperation.
The Salvation Army bell-ringer recognized me, as I recognized him, and shook his bell at me with a big grin on his face. I had to restrain my first three impulses.
The first was simple: Deck him. Although this is what I'd done the last time we had interacted socially (followed shortly thereafter by his arrest and my receipt of grudging thanks from Our Boys In Blue), he had done nothing in my presence today that deserved either assault or arrest. While this hadn't held true on past occasions, today he was 1) doing volunteer work, 2) in a socially approved manner and 3) not intoxicated.
The second involved the sudden non-consensual placement of the bell in a place where it could not ring and would require assistance from a jaded ER physician or a proctologist to remove. This was only a fleeting thought, interrupted by all of the above considerations plus what I use for a moral sense; my quaint reluctance to commit felony sex crimes at any time, let alone on camera; and the likelihood of shocking little children after yanking his pants down. "What is that Mommy? That's a human penis, dear, only smaller."
How did I know that? From one of his ex-girlfriends, whom I had interviewed while tracking him after his last bail skip.
The third was to spit with accuracy into the kettle. I had already hawked to spit when I realized that no one with a vestige of common sense was going to allow Johnny the drunk, however reformed he might be pretending to be with summer coming in a mere five months and a lot of drinking he wanted to do then, to actually open the locked kettle and count money. No need to ruin some volunteer's day cleaning up my spittle.
So I did two things that were totally out of character. I swallowed my spit, then took out a hard earned dollar and placed it in the kettle. The huge smile I awarded right in Johnny's face was not out of character; I am a big believer in kicking people when they are down. Why? Because if you are willing to kick them when they're up, why are you stopping halfway through? If you're not willing to kick them when they're up, what kind of coward are you, anyway, and why are you reading this?
Johnny was sufficiently shocked that he allowed me to pass without further incident. This may have saved him from carnal knowledge of a bell -- I was in an awful mood and knew it would take Just One More Remark for me to do something stupid.
I despise Christmas music. The rape song was playing, you probably know it as "Baby It's Cold Outside," and the Wolf was crooning something about "Baby don't hold out" as I moved past last-minute shoppers, carts full of groceries and Christmas gifts and cheap toys.
The sporting goods clerk saw me coming, unlocked the ammo case, and stacked three boxes of the cheapest 9mm on the counter. He had the case relocked by the time I picked the boxes up. You know you shop at WalMart too much when they know your caliber and preferences. This was target ammo, nothing I intended to bet my life on.
On an impulse I picked up a cheap pellet gun, and put it back down again.
Someone loudly coughed behind me, and without turning my head, I said, "Hi, Walter."
Loss prevention has rules; I'd learned them several years ago at the other big box discount store. You know, the one with the red bullseye logo. There is only Walmart and Target, there are no other discount chain stores. (There's another chain store, K-Mart, but the concept of a 'discount' has never entered their lexicon or invaded their price labels.)
Walter had made a career out of pretending to be Loss Prevention. Two drugstores, three department stores, and a brief but disastrous mystery shop for a fast food chain later, he was building a career out of doing nothing at WalMart. I knew who he was; he had no idea who I am. But his false-to-fact belief that all shoplifters were arrogant little punks in their late teens or early twenties matched my profile. I'd watched as a teenage mother lifted both baby formula and diapers into her baby carriage, in Walter's line of sight, while he followed me and watched my hands. I'd chosen not to rat her out; while I don't like a thief, it's not like WalMart is paying me, and Walter had pissed me off something fierce that day.
"How do you know my name?" he muttered, looking at his feet.
"The big name tag on your vest, the glazed look on your face, the last three times you hassled me, your name on the police report Mike made when you hassled him during a cash drop . . . pick one. And go away."
He shuffled along. I almost felt sorry for him. Almost.
Next stop, housewares. I was expecting a second for dinner tomorrow night and needed a setting.
As I reached the register I saw something that nearly made me drop my jaw.
Walter. With an arrest.
She was missing most of her teeth, looked to be in her mid-fifties, had track marks and sores and boils and other stigmata of the meth addict, and apparently had picked exactly the wrong moment to pocket something from the medications section of the Health & Beauty aisle. Oh, yes, Nyquil. Probably in her mid-thirties.
He looked at me and grinned in triumph as he walked her into the room with the one way mirrored window in the door. I hoped he could remember how to spell long enough to write her name down on his report.
I smiled bitterly at being in line behind an elderly Indian couple who had done all their monthly shopping and clearly had no idea why WalMart was so crowded this day; a woman and her eight screaming kids, all of whom wanted something that was not in her cart; a bitter old fart with three gun magazines and a container of chewing tobacco; and last but certainly not least, a WalMart employee who would need manager approval to purchase her two snack items at a 30% discount.
I settled in for a long wait and people-watched. People's cursory and mean treatment of their children did not quite rise to the level of child abuse; the argument between girlfriend and soon to be ex-boyfriend did not escalate beyond muttered hostility and cutting remarks; and the only theft I observed involved register-based employee skulduggery well beyond my interest or ability to prosecute, or for that matter even care about.
A grand total of $43.18 later, most of which was in ammo, I had cleared the registers and was headed outside when I saw something that did in fact cause me to drop my jaw.
A man in camouflage fatigues had just slammed the door of his truck and was walking towards the front entrance of WalMart with his hands tucked into his pockets. I've dealt with some evil motherfuckers in my time. This guy was the kind of stone-cold thug that gangbangers gave a wide birth to, other inmates called "sir," and triggered a cop's reflexes towards both radio and handgun. He had the aura, the stink of evil, and as he approached, the wind carried that stink to me. Literally. Not just unwashed, but psychosis.
I barely even noticed the squad car that was idling out front to pick up Walter's arrest; or for that matter Walter behind me walking his handcuffed detainee out to the front. But I found myself neither noticing nor thinking.
Camo Man's eyes flickered as he looked past me into the store and his pace quickened.
When things turn to shit, I act. Sometimes I'm planning, or thinking, or praying. Other times I'm a bemused observer. What am I doing? Why am I doing this?
So when I turned my head over my shoulder to Walter and shouted, "RUN! He's GOT A GUN!" then ran in front of the patrol car banging on the hood with my hands while shouting "THREAT! THREAT!" I was surprised as everyone else.
The deputy -- sheriff's office, not the city police I had an uneasy relationship with -- came out of his cruiser and drew her handgun in the same motion. I froze my body and legs, put my right hand up high in the air and pointed with my left hand.
"Camo fatigues! He's got a gun!"
The deputy turned to the suspect like a turret tracking on gymbals, totally smooth, with a corner of his eye fixed on my ten-ring and a clear intention of dropping me with several rounds if I so much as twitched. Good for her. We might live through this.
The deputy saw the threat.
"Sir, you! Stop!"
The suspect kept coming and the deputy took a bead with her handgun while pressing the EMER button on her hand mike with her off hand. A triple chirp recognized the button press.
"STOP OR I SHOOT!"
He slowed and took his hands out of his pockets, but kept moving forward, no longer at a fast walk but trying to mosey. He'd be ambling next. Still moving forward.
"Hands high in the air! STOP! NOW!" she shouted as she started to make a horrible mistake.
Her attention was off me so I did something really stupid, almost as stupid as her.
I moved fast, borrowed a shopping cart and half-pushed, half flung it in his direction as hard as I possibly could.
Her horrible mistake was starting to holster her handgun and take out her Taser. Right for dealing with a civilian, but totally wrong for dealing with this guy.
The shopping cart startled both of them as it passed in between. She reacquired a good sight picture on him and his right hand ducked swiftly into his pocket.
I pissed my pants a bit and threw my hands high into the air, both of them.
The latter is the thing to do when a cop empties a 17 round Glock magazine into someone while standing about twenty feet from you. The former just comes naturally.
His outflung hand had a small revolver in it. He was quite thoroughly dead.
She smoothly reloaded, scanned for additional threats, saw me.
"Get back! Keep your hands up! Back! Further! Hands up!"
I complied as screaming Valkyries took up a chorus in all directions, getting louder.
This was really going to suck, I thought, as I always do once the worst is over.
Fourteen police units later, three detectives, two crime scene technicians, a loss prevention supervisor who thanked Walter for his great work, and what I have come to accept as a stereotypical pat-down, preliminary questioning and criminal records check, I was face to face with Detective Donaldson of the city police, who knew the score and was willing to fill me in.
"I was at home with my kids when I get paged out for an OIS for the SO. But I knew, I just KNEW it had to have something to do with Bruce. Why couldn't you have been the one slabbed, and made my holiday complete?"
Yes, we know each other.
"I am what we call in technical language an Innocent Bystander. I just saw the guy coming over here switched on like someone was kidnapping his girlfriend, and I guess the back of my brain put two and two together."
"Never saw him before in your life."
"Nope. I know Walter and I know John the drunk." I gestured with a cuffed hand. He had snaked a bottle of vodka from somewhere, put it in a paper bag, and was sneaking sips while still shaking the bell. He didn't have to actually move his hand to shake the bell; the shakes from what he had just had a ringside seat for was more than enough to keep doing his job with.
"How did you know he had a gun?"
"I just knew. He walked like Death and his eyes were like Chuck Norris. He was out killing, not hunting."
"Sure enough he was. Separated soldier, SF washout, kicked out of the 82nd, then a Bad Conduct Discharge for striking an NCO. Only one deployment cycle with the 82nd and it wasn't even combat, so it's not PTSD."
I had my doubts. People do horrible things to each other, and it doesn't take battlefields. A kitchen table or a bed can be worse than a gunfight and little kids can't shoot back.
Yes, a bad guy was dead, but some people think I'm a bad guy. It was still a waste and a mess and a deputy needing stress counseling on Christmas Eve in between chain-smoking cigarettes, and terrified shoppers walking around crime tape and chalk marks, and even Walter, who had apparently just now quit on the grounds that "Walmart is too dangerous."
I could have told him that.
"Based on preliminary statements, you've done nothing illegal and you're free to leave. You will need to come down to the station to do a deposition -- but not tomorrow. Probably also get a call from the Grand Jury and the D.A.'s office."
"Let me ask you this, though. If we actually granted that CCW you keep asking for, and keep getting denied, what would you have done if you were carrying today?"
He turned me around and undid the handcuffs as he asked.
A serious question, a serious answer.
"Drew down instead of pushing a shopping cart at him. Dropped him when the gun came up."
Donaldson nodded.
"Apply again. Pick up the packet at the station on Tuesday. You will find a letter of endorsement from me in it. Merry Christmas."
He turned and walked away quickly, leaving me no chance to reply.
"Hey, baby?" someone I knew asked me from behind, in a lilting unnatural tone.
I recognized both voice and offer. An independent, a working girl. Sheila.
Sex work is a tough gig, made tougher because being illegal means the continual risk of being robbed, beaten, raped and/or killed by customers or the rest of the public.
Sheila was tougher than most. In a rough town she had no pimp.
I turned.
"Want a ride?"
I thought about it. Understand that her offer of a freebie was casual, more than a glance but less than a heartfelt hug. Those you don't find so much in whoredom.
I nodded and we walked to her car.
I don't drink, don't smoke and had a lot of stress to burn off.
Merry. Fucking. Christmas.
You can comment here or at Dreamwidth. Makes no difference to me.