You hose wino-barf off your boots in a closed gas station, shaking your head at the odor rising from the back seat. Oh, yeah, you know that smell, all right — the stench of booze-laced human feces — know it with the same familiarity you know the smell of fresh fear, stale sweat, bodies in various stages of returning-to-dust; burning rubber, burning dope, burning flesh. Sometimes when people say, “I’m sure you’ve seen it all,” you’re thinking, “And even worse, I’ve smelled it all.”
You’ve stood on the porch side of a screen door so grimy-opaque with dirt and fly-specks you couldn’t see a thing, moved closer to hear whether that was a cry for help — then jumped back when an 11" butcher knife stabbed viciously through, slicing off the shirt button just above your belt buckle, reminding you why you wear body armor in 110-degree heat.
You’ve reached in pockets on searches and found chewed gum, snot-filled rags, broken glass vials, unexplained rolls of crisp new fifties, two mummified fingers though your suspect still had all ten of his own, an equally mummified turd the Babbling Man claimed was his “pet,” and uncovered hypodermic needles — the hard way.
You thought you were through cleaning up at that multi-fatal accident scene when you saw the lump on the pavement and it took you a long ten-count to realize it was a man’s testicle. You thought you were through too at that child-murder scene when you found the kid’s doll where it fell behind the dumpster, and your guts went cold with the knowledge it would never be played with again, not by that little girl, oh, no. Never.
You’ve fought ex-cons, ex-priests, ex-linebackers, an ex-cop gone over to the dark side, and, you’d swear before God, ex-humans. You’ve been shot at and missed, shit at and hit, spit on by scumbags and cursed by cowards, pissed on by politicians and pissed off by people who call themselves “your superior officers.” You’ve fought for your life, fought for your buddies, fought to keep your sanity intact and your family whole, and fought the almost overwhelming urge to reach out and squeeze a neck ten years overdue for a throttling or bust a nose that’s been stuck much too high in the air for far too long and too arrogantly.
You’ve come home from life-sucking long shifts, nights that put the “grave” in graveyard shift, scraped your nails until they bled and scrubbed your skin ’til it shone, and found sometimes there’s something — something — that just won’t wash away.
So why the hell would you carry on?
Lessons Learned
You’ve learned justice doesn’t come from courts — not often enough to make it more than an occasional fairy tale come true, anyway — and the only two kinds of real justice left are street and poetic. You’ve learned virtually everyone above and below you in the social spiral violates the law regularly, then perjures themselves about it with impunity. You’ve learned truth can’t be bought, but lies can be paid for.
You’ve learned losing a fight doesn’t mean losing your fighting spirit, and in this life — our life — every time you see the sun rise it means you’re a winner. You know the difference between a hard guy and a tough guy; that “hard” is all on the surface, brittle and thin, but “tough” goes all the way through. Hard guys break and shatter, while tough guys suck up the punishment and soldier on. You’ve learned the kind of people who tell you “I’ll have your badge” couldn’t lift your badge, much less bear it with honor.
You’ve learned citizens spend decades screwing up their lives, then expect you to solve their self-created problems in 15 minutes; that they’ll let their children run wild and become monsters, then call you to control them. You’ve learned you can only expect humans to be human; that is, scared, scarred, confused and irrational, and you can never, ever expect those humans to be humane.
You’ve learned new definitions of “friends;” that some may stand behind you when times are hard, but the ones who really count will stand beside you when things go deadly-dark and terminally serious — and sometimes, those truest of true friends are those you hardly know, and share only one thing with: you both wear the badge, and you both carry on.
You’ve learned no matter how high you stack the deck or how heavy you load the dice; no matter how well-trained, weapons-skilled, fit and prepared you are, there are some bullets with your name on ’em, and others addressed “To Whom It May Concern;” that you can lose and die, dropped like a box of rocks in a gravel parking lot; and it has nothing to do with good and evil, right or wrong, just winning and losing. If you roll the dice often enough, they’ll run against you. Dice are cruel that way. And when they turned against your partners, you learned to say goodbye.
Oh, God, yes, we’re good at saying goodbye. This life offers the cheapest, ugliest deaths and the most opulent, gaudy funerals. Dress uniforms are pulled from the closet, brushed and pressed; black bands circle arms and lay diagonally across shields and stars, all done as though on autopilot, too many times, and all too often for brothers and sisters who were much too young, too fresh and full of life, and you think, This is a job for old men, men with burnt-cinder eyes and leather hearts, stiff with scars and steeped in pain. Men like me; not these kids.
The motorcade rolls, hissing on the same pavement that soaked up that young cop’s blood. White gloves are raised in a slow, final salute. Pipers blow a mournful, haunting dirge, and someone, weeping, is gently handed a folded flag. Backing away — in more ways than one — we stand in the wind and smoke in silence. Goodbye …
Why? Why carry on?
It’s How We’re Wired
You can’t be a cop just because you need a job. You can’t be a peace officer because it’s a steady paycheck and benefits. Not a real cop; not a true peace officer. You can’t do it “to help people,” or “for the nobility of public service.” That’s a load of crap. Those are just excuses, and they wear thin, turn pale.
You don’t enforce the law because “it is necessary to the security of a democratic society,” or because you burn with fervent belief in The Rule of Law. Screw the law. You don’t cleave to the truth on the witness stand while all others lie their asses off because you fear punishment for perjury. Screw fear; piss on punishment. No cop ever sprinted across a bullet-swept parking lot to scoop-and-drag the crossfire victim of a gang turf battle “for love of his fellow citizens.” To hell with that.
You do it for love and law, all right, but it is love of courage, duty and honor; for a law, but that law is your code, and that code is one of courage, duty and honor. Your code demands you enforce and obey the law; to protect and serve without fear or favor; to run into danger when others flee; to stand and deliver where others falter and fail.
And you do it because you can’t help it. It’s stamped in your genes, burned into your DNA like a bar code. In another time, another place, you would have been samurai, knight-errant, warrior-monk, Minuteman. You may not be happy as a modern American cop, but you’d be miserable doing anything else.
If any of this doesn’t ring true for you, then get the hell out now and go sell insurance or install cabinets or something. They can be honorable trades, and you can be a good citizen, but not a real cop, not a true peace officer.
If wailing sirens are playing your song; if you nodded and muttered, “Damn right …” when you read these words, then you’re one of us, and American COP will stand and deliver with you. Because we’ve been there, and done that — because it’s who we are and how we’re wired too. |
