Chattanooga Pulse

It was the dead of night and the air was hot with equal parts humidity and anticipation.  The only light was cast from a filthy and distant street lamp. I could only just make out the once-familiar faces of my fellow officers by the soft glow of sweat that was slowly dripping from the tips of their noses and chins, their pistols held at a low-ready as we stood outside a house in which a barricaded and suicidal suspect was separated from us by mere inches of sheet rock and cheap vinyl siding.

It was then, with an elbow propped up on the window sill next to the front door, that I drew upon my years of experience and put my skills to the test with a line that was the culmination of a thousand calls for service and a thousand different conversations with a thousand different sad stories:  “Hey, what’s up, man?” I said.   (I had to suppress a visible shudder, such was my satisfaction.)

“Brian” had just been released from jail.  He had been taken in three nights before during my days off, and now his sister had called 911, saying he had called her with thoughts of suicide and that he had a gun and wasn’t going back to jail. She was on the way and would be there in 20 minutes, and it was with this information I entered into the situation.  It wasn’t a unique scenario by any means, but the fact that he lived in the southernmost tip of East Lake in an area known as “Black Bottom” wasn’t lost on me and made it a little more complicated than normal, as the proximity to Georgia tends to do to most things in my experience.

“Aw, you know,” he replied quietly; any conversation, good or bad, was a plus.

I followed up with a clever, “Why don’t you come out here and talk with us, brother?  You kind of have everybody freaked out here.”

“Naw, man.  Ya’ll beat my ass the last time I came out.”

He had a valid point, I thought.  “You’ve got a valid point.”  (“Zing!” I thought to myself.)  “Seriously though, that was another shift, this is a whole different group of people.  I can promise ain’t nothing’s gonna happen to you.”  (I spoke fluent Black Bottom, and put it to good use.)  “My name’s Alex, I’m actually off duty in a few minutes.  Why don’t you just tell me what’s going on?  You don’t have a gun there by the way, do you?” I said, cleanly slipping that last bit in like jelly between two slices of sweet white bread.  (“Mmmmm,” I thought to myself.  “Jelly.”)

“Gun?  Nah.  Ya’ll cleaned me out when ya’ll took me to jail.”  That made sense.  “That makes sense,” I said, but of course I didn’t trust him.  “What’s got you upset?  You’re a free man now, you’re not going back to the Pokey.  We just want to make sure you’re OK and we’ll be on the way.”

“Well…it’s kind of embarrassing,” Brian said.  “You wanna see embarrassing?” I replied, “I cut my own hair, look at this!” and it elicited a laugh.  “Just talk to me, man, and we’ll get out of your yard in a second here.  Your sister’s worried about you and we just want to make sure you’re OK.”  I heard a sigh, and he finally began to talk.

“Well…what day is this?” he asked.  Not always a good sign.  “Thursday, Daddy-O.”

“Well, I guess it was Monday I come home from work, and found my ol’lady in bed with somebody.”  “Hey,” I said.  “It happens, you know?”  Brian sighed and said “Well, turned out it was my brother.”  I cringed a little.  “I freaked out and they both left, and I called a buddy.”  (He paused.)  “We got kids, man, I love her.  So anyways my buddy comes over, and I decide to relax with a few old hydros and some beers.  Well, he pulls out this crack pipe, and I think ‘What the hell’ and hit it, and damn if I didn’t just flip my wig.  Flipped my wig, man.”  I was about to interject, and he continued.

“Well, the neighbors called ya’ll out, and well…I flipped my wig, man, I didn’t mean to fight ya’ll, but you know how it is.”  I nodded, sure.  It really wasn’t personal.  “So ya’ll all beat my ass and took me on in, and there I was in jail,” he said matter-of-factly, then paused as he toyed with an empty pack of smokes.  “I just missed dinner time there, and hadn’t eaten that day already.  Well, by the next day I was real hungry, so I took two food trays to eat.  Well, those jailers just went off and they took my food away and I was pissed, you know?  So then they beat my ass, too.  Had my ass gang-kicked twice now, ol’lady’s screwing my brother, I was still starving, and now I’m in confinement.  Sister bonded me out next day.”

Another pause, and I let him continue after he collected his thoughts.  “So I come home, and my ol’lady has took the kids, took my 32-inch plasma and my Wii I got with my tax check, and you know what?  She even took all the food out the kitchen, so I still ain’t eat yet.  So I’m depressed and I call my sister, and I’ll be damned if she don’t send ya’ll out here all over again.  Please don’t beat my ass again,” he implored.  “I just flipped my wig.  That’s all.”

What else could I say?  “Your brother AND your TV?  Holy hell, man.  I’d hit a crack pipe too!  Don’t sweat it!”  He shook his head…but smiled a little this time.  “Tell you what,” I said, “open the door, and let’s go get some food.”  By now his sister had been escorted in and said, “Come on, Brian.”  He began to cry, and walked to the door.  We had kept him in sight through the window and confirmed he had no gun shortly after the door opened, then we ensured his impending trip to the KFC with a five-dollar bill.  “Good luck, man,” we said as they left, and we meant it.  NOBODY should mess with a man’s TV, after all.  Even in Black Bottom.

“Say, KFC sound good to anyone else?”

When officer Alexander D. Teach is not patrolling our fair city on the heels of the criminal element, he is an occasional student at UTC, an up and coming carpenter, auto mechanic, prominent boating enthusiast, and spends his spare time volunteering for the Boehm Birth Defects Center.