At peace with myself
I’m half way between Albany and New York City when my car conks out.
I’m in one of those tiny hamlets that have on garage, a motel, a tavern and not much else.
The garage is closed so I go to the tavern.
Every guy in the place looks at me as if I just landed there from outer space.
Even the bartender is a creep and I have to ask him three time about the repair place before he bothers to answer, telling me I’ve got to wait till morning.
By this time I’m really angry since being a beat cop in Manhattan, I’m not accustomed to people treating me like shit.
One guy – the local yokel sheriff – even laughs from the end of the bar, mocking my being a helpless city boy.
He’s begging for a beating.
Any place else, I might have given him one.
But being on someone else’s turf I need to keep my cool.
Too many people against me.
So I bite my tongue and go back outside where I don’t have to look at that sheriff’s ugly mug.
So I go over to the motel to book a room for the night, figuring I can scrap this shit place off my boots when the car’s fixed in the morning.
The motel clerk has the same attitude as the bartender and charges me three times when the room is worth.
But my temper is up now and I let loose on him, a verbal barrage that would make a street punk blush.
The clerk calls the sheriff, who comes in telling me to shut my mouth or I’ll be spending the night in his jail free.
I tell the fool that I’m a cop, too, and that he ought not treat strangers like he is.
I see the clerk get nervous, and he tells the sheriff it was all a misunderstanding. He tells me he’ll let me stay at the local rate.
This makes me feel a little easier.
The clerk, at least, has sense not to test my patience.
But I’m not sooner out the door when that son of a bitch sheriff belts me in face with a two by four.
I’m dazed with blood streaming from my forehead.
Still, I can make out him and some others from the tavern laughing at me.
Now I’m scared and I hate feeling scared.
But I’m out in the middle of some nightmare world and I can’t even call for backup.
Yet the red I see isn’t from blood, but from rage.
I grab the board before the asshole can swing it again and I throw it aside, then lay into him with both fits.
These jerks out here might think they're mean having to worry about bears and wolves, but I learned to survive on the streets of New York, and I’m so out of control none of the others make a move as I beat the living shit out of the sheriff.
It takes me a long time to get the rage out of me.
By that time, the sheriff looks more like processed meat than a human being, moving slow, I think he might be dying.
Everybody is staring at me, and I imagine seeing them all on some court house witness stand telling a jury how I did all this without provocation.
I’m thinking of how trapped I am, and how out of my element, and how any local judge is going to take their word against mine, simply because he’s from here and I’m not.
But when I look down at the sheriff I see fear in his blood-caked eyes and I know he won’t tangle with me again.
Then I look around and see fear in their faces, too.
So I slowly walk back towards the door of my motel room, enter, and close the door on those faces.
Maybe they’ll arrest me in the morning.
But tonight, I’m strangely at peace for the first time in many years.