A simple Christmas morning with Officer Alex
The sun crept up over a barren ridge line, an emotionless landscape dotted with leafless trees and the occasional abandoned house. Derelict cars obscured by the foliage of summer now lay exposed and a fine mist gave it the appearance of the graveyard that it probably really was until the sun was high enough to burn it off.
It was a ritual I'd seen a hundred times before. This one only being different because of a notation on the calendar.
It was Christmas morning in East Chattanooga.
I was posted up outside my Crown Vic, leaning back against my favorite spot in front of the drivers side-view mirror where the height of the fender reached that perfect apex where my ass could rest against it while at the same time not allow the gun belt accouterments to scratch up the paint any further.
The center of the industrial park I was in the had been long-since abandoned and was a favorite spot of mine because the fence allowed only one way in and out for me to keep track of, and it was far enough off the beaten path that even pimps and thieves found it too inconvenient to conduct business.
The sound of my feet gently shifting in the gravel was my only company and I lifted the edge of a cheap coffee mug to mirthless lips. It was quiet and it was not raining, so it was a good morning.
I reached down with my free hand to switch my radio on and off, then went down a channel and back up one on the knob next to it to both hear the familiar chirp of it powering up and the follow up tactile response of knowing I'm on the right channel.
Like anyone on the job more than a few years I didn't even realize I was doing this. An autonomic response to making sure you were spared the embarrassment of being on the wrong channel or having your radio off (attributing it otherwise to being "really, REALLY quiet, isn't it?"), not that I really wanted the radio to come to life at the moment.
I liked mornings like these for the same reason I liked the job itself; they allowed me to do what I wanted, or rather as much or as little as I wanted, and being here in silence without a cell phone in my hand or a computer at my fingertips was just that. A celebration of silence on this most marketable holiday.
I was trying to smile but I glanced downward and to my left and my thoughts inevitably led to those who couldn't be here to share it with, as was the custom. The man (and mentor) who showed me this spot was dead four years now, by his own hand. The space he left was as yet unfilled with anything other than the fear of inevitability which we have to stave off at times of mortal reflection like these very moments.
Others that had shared this lot on holiday mornings had left by more practical means (transfers, terminations and wise career changes) and there were numerous replacements for them also on shift, yet now it felt best to be here alone to soak in the peace of the sunrise before the inevitable breakdowns of family dynamics that would require my attention.
And if there's one thing I love more than spending Christmas morning away from my kids, it's having to respond to those who take these mornings, and these moments, for granted.
I toyed with the idea of breaking out a Black & Mild and nearly had the chance to do so when the voice of an equally landlocked dispatcher came over the air with a call for service. I took in one last deep breath before keying up the shoulder mic.
I wasn't ungrateful, mind you. I just didn't like being there. But like all other aspects of this job, if not me, another would have to be doing it in my place. So once again, I found a reason to make it all worthwhile.
It was, after all, Christmas morning. For a cop.
When officer Alexander D. Teach is not patrolling our fair city on the heels of the criminal element, he spends his spare time volunteering for the Boehm Birth Defects Center.