Daddy Don't Hit Me - June 26, 2007
Ogre on Patrol
By BC Woods
Like myself, my uncle Doug was occupied with filling out his own notes: only it was in ticket form. Having never received a ticket in my life, I could scarcely believe how long it took to fill one out. If I were a cop, no one would ever be arrested. There was just too much paperwork.
At 10:34 that night my uncle Doug had pulled up in front of my house with the promise of taking me on patrol with him to help me to procure a few good stories. Armed with a notepad and a pencil, I drove with him to the police station. At 11:11, after receiving a brief instruction on what to do if he was shot or incapacitated (one of which involved an awesome half-joking scenario of me getting to use the passenger side door as a shield and fire an M-16), we finally hit the streets.
While we had pulled over several other vehicles, the Ginger Bread Man was our first actual arrest of the night. He had started to weep almost as soon as my uncle Doug had handcuffed him and thrown him in the back of the car. Blubbering loudly, as both I and my uncle Doug attempted to fill out our mutual types of paperwork, the Ginger Bread Man asked, "Am I gonna go to jail, Officer?"
Rolling his eyes, my uncle Doug answered with his own question, "Would you like to?" At that, the Ginger Bread Man shut his mouth and chose a wiser course of action by sobbing silently with his head against the window. Although the ticket was just for driving with a suspended license, it took my uncle Doug a good twenty minutes to do all the field paperwork necessary to process the Ginger Bread Man and release him. There being no real reason to take him to jail, my uncle assured me it was less of an inconvenience to just let him go. After allowing the Ginger Bread Man to wander off alone into the night, my uncle Doug sighed regretfully. "Good, now he's despondent, and he'll go home and kill himself. Then I'll have to take care of that goddamn mess."
"How long does it take to do all the paperwork, when you go back to the station?" Due to budget cuts, my uncle Doug's police station is actually a trailer that employs five officers and only has one patrol car with 147,000 miles on it. After he told me that when he got back to the station it would likely take him a half an hour to fill out the incident report just on the Ginger Bread Man alone, I wondered how much of the department's budget went toward purchasing paper.
Despite the massive amounts of paperwork now associated with law enforcement, my uncle Doug loves his job. From childhood onward, he let nothing stop his pursuit of wearing a badge and a gun. Even when Super Troopers was released February of 2002, and he discovered he bore an uncomfortable resemblance to Officer Farva, my uncle Doug trudged diligently onward through the hundreds of jokes and posters hung in his office, to perform his duty to uphold the law. As I myself bear an uncomfortable resemblance to Shrek, I can sympathize fully.
"So you're going to write a story about this, huh?"
"If something interesting enough happens, I will. In either case, it beats staying at home without a computer."
"They're fucking hilarious, you know."
I laughed at the compliment, glad that someone in my family enjoyed my work. "Yeah, my mom doesn't really think so. Did you hear about her disowning me for five weeks?"
"Yeah, that was pretty funny too." It had been pretty funny. Especially when she thought I was going to care.
"You know people are afraid to talk in front of me now?" Earlier that week, I had walked up on a group of my relatives chatting in a circle at my brother's graduation. They had all gone stone silent upon realizing I was near. Imagine, all it took for them to be quiet was someone telling their secrets to tens of thousands of people.
Despite the general social awkwardness that made me a good writer, I have never had a problem telling a story as well as writing one. For a solid two hours we made no arrests as I recounted various experiences to my uncle Doug from my summer in the oil fields. Eventually, parked under the harsh yellow sodium glare of street lights, I recalled the time an obese woman had fisted herself in an unsuccessful attempt to get me to put my penis in her octopus textured vagina. Ending the story the same way I do every time I tell it, I said, "And I'd tell you what it smelled like too... except you'd never be able to eat tuna fish again."
Grimacing and fighting a gag as though someone had shit on his upper lip, my uncle Doug muttered, "Fuck BC... that was just awful."
I nodded, satisfied at the strength of the emotional reaction. The strength of that story when I tell it almost made it worth living.
Just then, a lipstick red car peeled out from a nearby gas station, and made a fast u-turn in the middle of the street. The flashers were on before she even had a chance to complete the turn. In the same instant, my uncle Doug recited her license plate number to the dispatcher to get an officer safety check. Upon hearing the "all clear," my uncle Doug leapt out of the car with the speed of a pouncing cat.
Sitting in the car, as I had been told to do at the start of the trip, I took copious notes. Our latest suspect was a giant Native American woman. Weighing easily as much as myself, and with the same frame, she looked as though she had been shoved into the car with a titanium pry bar. Although she had my build, she lacked the giant friendly features of an animated ogre. Instead, her small button-like black eyes were surrounded by an immense halo of tear-scattered mascara, and her mouth hung open on the loose hinge of her jaw like a door in a busted frame. Drunkenly, she pleaded, "I was jusht two blocks away offsher! Jusht two blocksh!" Although not tiny, my uncle looked absurdly small next to the troll he was forced to handcuff. I was surprised when he managed to make the metal loops latch around her wrists.
When she was placed in the seat behind me, the patrol car noticeably slumped to the right, and the liquid in a nearby Big Gulp cup slanted at its surface to show the sudden inequality in height to either side of the car. My uncle Doug crooked a finger to signal that it was okay for me to come out of the car. Although I am by no means a slim man, the car barely jumped at my departure. I guess she weighed more than me after all. A lot more.
"Christ... that's a big woman," I said, rubbing my eyes partly because it was so late, but mostly because it was so hard to look directly at something so ugly. She had pressed her face against the backseat window and was staring at us with her two large raccoon eyes, pleading with us for freedom. I looked at my uncle Doug. He was counting beer cans in her car. There were seven, and all looked to be freshly empty. "How drunk was she?"
"She blew a 0.17."
"Isn't that death?" My uncle rolled his eyes at me. "Well, excuse me. You know I don't drink."
"Still, you should know more than to think twice the legal limit causes death. Well, for your information 0.15 is still very drunk. Did you see me give her the field sobriety tests? She almost fell down twice."
I hung my head. "Uh... I guess I was taking notes?"
A search of Tina Troll's vehicle revealed three fully packed garbage sacks, a backseat full of sweatpants, and one marijuana pipe. "What do we do now?" I asked.
"First we call a tow truck, then we take her to county lockup."
"What? No holding cell in the trailer?" Adjusting his utility belt to more easily place his flashlight back in his belt, my uncle Doug jerked his head back toward the car.
"Just get in the car, prick."
When my uncle Doug joined me, I was astounded at the number of forms which had to be filled out. First, he had to complete a page and a half inventory on the contents of her car, until he became so exhausted he eventually just wrote "Garbage" under the section for contents. Secondly, he had to write an actual ticket which took half an hour. Finally, after reading Tina Troll her Miranda rights, and getting her to sign a sheet that affirmed she had been apprised of her rights, we were finally done with all the paperwork that had to be filled out at the scene of the arrest.
Leaving her car to be towed later, we made our way to the county jailhouse. Performing a quick mental calculation, I asked, "So hold on... in field work alone, does it take four hours every time you take someone into custody?" My uncle Doug nodded. "And it's another two hours back at the station to fill out the incident report?" Tina Troll was only semi-conscious in the backseat. I looked back at her, appraised her worth as a member of society vs. six hours of someone's time, and asked, "Why don't you just shoot them and hide the bodies?"
"Democrats." I made sure to scribble the response into my notepad.
"Was that one just for me?"
"Yeah, pretty much."
The trip to county lockup was bizarre for a number of reasons. My uncle Doug pulled up to a speaker not unlike those used in fast food restaurants and announced that he had a prisoner for lockup.
"What's the matter? Wasn't enough money left over from the trailer rent for you to make a phone call?" the scratchy voice responded.
"Just open the garage, guys," my uncle Doug responded.
"Procedure says we need to wait thirty minutes for unannounced prisoners."
"Just open the garage, guys." Down a small incline in front of us, a wall that strongly resembled an armored garage door retracted into the ceiling. Driving through the door landed us in a twenty foot long, single parking spot. The door closed behind us on silent a silent electric motor. Even though I was in the front of the car, rather than the back, I had the distinct feeling of confinement.
The doors into the prison itself were constructed like hatches in a submarine. The first door was about six inches of solid steel, which led into a small compartment. When my uncle Doug man-handled Tina Troll into the small compartment he closed the thick steel door behind him. Only then did the set of bars in front of us slide open. It was a perfect seal getting in and out of the prison. The exit was never completely unobstructed.
Unable to stand unaided, Tina Troll asked if she could sit down. When told she could, she kept asking at increasingly louder volumes, until my uncle Doug finally grabbed her by the arm, led her to the bench, and literally told her to bend her knees. She seemed surprised when her ass touched the bench.
Per regulation, she was read her Miranda rights one more time. "Okay, are you willing to talk to me about drinking tonight?"
"I guess so, offsher." Tina's head bobbled on her neck, unable to remain erect.
"Sign this please." Tina Troll signed.
Twenty minutes of questions followed. "What time do you think it is, Tina?"
Tina slammed her head against the stone walls in thought, trying to rattle her brain into action. "I guess like 3:30... I guess."
"How much did you have to drink tonight?"
At this, Tina could only answer in uncontrolled sobs. "I was jusht two block away, offsher. Two fucking blocks, oh God!" Her beady black eyes crumpled in tears. Her mascara patches had spread to the corners of her lips.
"Fucking God? Fucking Democrats, more like it," I muttered. I had not slept for nearly twenty-four hours, and I figured we had another hour of paper work to do on Tina.
Nearly two and a half hours after we had arrested her, Tina was finally allowed to take the official breathalyzer test that would be used at her trial. Putting a small white tube into her mouth, Tina blew as hard as she could... and then stopped, citing a shortness of breath. Failing the test twice, Tina finally was able to give a reasonable result, and measured in at a .107. In all the time it had taken to process her arrest, Tina's body had managed to eliminate nearly a third of the alcohol in her system.
"Okay Tina, right now I'm going to go ahead and put you in a holding cell." Tina followed his lead like a mule following a carrot. Opening a thick door on a nearby cell, my uncle Doug put Tina in a closet-sized room, and swiftly closed the door.
"Did you have to do that?" I asked.
"Not really. I was just tired of looking at her."
"So, in other words, you got rid of her for the same reason that dogs lick their balls."
"Why's that?"
"Because they can."
"Come on, Shrek. Let's go upstairs. We've got to get the guys to sign the transfer of custody." My uncle Doug put enough papers under his arm to cause me to sigh.
"It's not too late to gas her, you know."
"Let's go, BC."
"Seriously, if we just put a bucket of Windex and bleach in there with her, we can just leave. Problem solved."
"Come on."
"Okay, but I get to fly-kick the next person we handcuff in the back."
The hallway was constructed much like the entrance. No two adjacent doors could be opened at the same time. A perfect pocket of what I thought of as "imprisonment" followed us wherever we went. Ascending three flights of stairs brought us to the control center of the jail. Upon entering, we were greeted with cries of "Farva!" After that, two of the guards expressed concerns about any tornadoes that might hit the town, as the police station my uncle Doug worked at was a trailer. Another guard offered to purchase him a flamingo, if he would like.
As my uncle Doug silently began the paperwork necessary to transfer the custody of his prisoner, the three guards exchanged stories with him. "Jesus fucking Christ, Dougie. You should've seen the tits on this girl that came in yesterday. She was visiting her boyfriend. What was her name, Chris?"
"Harmony," another guard supplied. "Harmony Gebb." I bolted upright, for the first time completely forgetting to jot notes in my notepad.
"God yes, I would love to fuck the shit out of that piece of ass." I looked at my uncle Doug in shock. He shrugged in reply.
"That's my stepsister," I announced. Or at least she had been. An add-on from my father's fourth marriage. Finally, the three guards acknowledged my existence.
"Well Jesus, kid. Don't be so offended. She's your stepsister. Step. See?"
"Yeah, there ain't no blood. Did you hit that shit?" another guard asked.
Flustered, I looked back and forth from each of the guards. "What? No! She's my fucking stepsister."
"Chill out, dude."
"Yeah, calm down."
"Your sister has got nice tits. It could be worse."
"Yeah, we could be talking about my stepsister's tits."
Finally, I gave over to sighing a lot every time Harmony was brought up in conversation, and the guard switched to teasing my uncle Doug for looking like Farva and working out of a trailer. Suddenly incentivized to finish his work, the guards begrudgingly filled out his form and walked us out of the prison.
Descending three flights of stairs, and carrying our pocket of imprisonment down the hallway with us, we stopped by the holding cell we had left Tina in. There was a rumbling sound, like wind driven through a hollow cave by the tides. It shook the door. It shook the stone of the room itself.
"Jesus Christ," I whispered, placing my head against a nearby wall, feeling the vibrations. They were like the bellows blows in a medieval smithy. "That fucking troll is snoring."