Chattanooga Pulse

Written by Alex Teach
Wednesday, 11 March 2009 18:58

I was standing in the beverage cooler of what used to be called a “Favorite Market”, still as a statue, my eyes closed and chin tilted up. My right hand pulled my body armor away from my neck to facilitate a direct path for the sweet arctic air blowing from the fans above my head, and I rejoiced as sweat nearly turned to ice. I could have stayed there forever, or at least until the spots I saw before my eyes faded away.

Certainly I’d toyed with it in my youth, but I never knew what heat exhaustion truly was until I became a cop and discovered ninety-nine out of a hundred ways to experience it in just the first month of the summer I was released from training. Fifty feet of pushing a one-ton vehicle might not seem like it should be so physically devastating, but Lee Highway didn’t suffer this or any fool and the day and its glaring sunlight had been as brutal as divorce court.

My wits back about me, I finally left the cooler to find another officer had come inside to talk to the clerk. The store was in the heart of my district, and from there I watched most men come in to ask her about her tongue piercing, but not this guy. He was here to ask her about the kitchen having just shut down and wanted to discuss the fate of the contents on display. His avoidance of hitting on her paid off in spades: He was handed a one-pound box of deep-fried chicken livers, and by his look you would have thought it was pure but salty gold. Without a word, I joined him.

We gorged ourselves to the point of almost certainly offending a group of children that had come in to raid the candy aisle, only to have their sugar rush halted by the sight of two polyester-clad gunslingers shoving fried chicken guts into their mouths like it was the cure for cancer. Minutes passed, and I’m not even sure our radios were on. The salty yet bland goodness was a joyous respite from what passes for meals on the job. This went on interrupted only by intermissions at a soda fountain until my co-worker suddenly froze, and without looking at me asked, “Is there such a thing as iron poisoning?”