04/01/2016
This is what happened to our crippled friend last week.
Chapter 11
Stella was not his real name and he was not a young man, but he liked his closest friends to call him Stella. He mostly ran distances in a motorized wheelchair, but at home he hobbled around on a cane or on a sturdier walker outside. He used a stepstool on a rope to heft himself up onto the driver’s seat of his van, which was hooked to his small Terry trailer, parked in a tree shaded vacant lot about two blocks west of Old Main Street, just shy of Sonny’s district, where those slightly out of the noticeable scheme of society would’ve been much safer.
Nevertheless, for appearance sake, he had removed all of his jewelry and rings except a simple gold band on his pinky finger and dressed down to a plain Hillary Clinton t-shirt, (that he hoped wasn’t throwing up a red flag) blue jeans and designer, high top sneakers in order to brace his weak ankles.
On Friday, the next morning, he had a six o’clock appointment at the hospital to have gallbladder surgery. Meanwhile, he was waiting for an acceptance at a nearby trailer park, while he was having takeout breakfast with a couple of sympathetic lady friends and a blue collar handyman acquaintance of theirs. Grady charged reasonable rates to set up trailer houses with plywood sealed around the outside and he had plenty of references for how nice he left a painted surface.
Gerry and Darla were not transvestites, but they were a happily married gay couple; and, fully understood what it meant to be born different—somewhat lower class than what is considered respectable. They were excited about adopting a baby girl all their own— but at the reputable rescue center, the little pick o’ the liter schnauzer had be spayed and kept under nurses care for three days before she could be taken to her fur-ever home.
That particular sleepy looking area had had more than its share of police brutality and the armed brutes were not prejudiced. Nationality had nothing to do those explosive outrages. And behold! Speak of the devil, when all of a sudden, right outta the blue, a berserk cop skidded to a stop in front of Stella’s van. Trembling with madness, he flipped on his flashing red light and jumped out. Then, he zigzagged as though dodging bullets and banged with his fist on the open screen door. He shouted, “I caught you smokin’!
Stella laughed, saying, “ No you didn’t— I don’t smoke.”
He grabbed his gun, shouting, “I’m the best that ever was!” (Whoever heard of a cop talking like that?) “Don’t lie to me! Get out! Get on the ground! I found a bag of drugs by your van!”
As crippled as Stella was (and don’t forget he was scheduled for surgery in the morning) somehow he scrambled along with all three of his breakfast guests down the flimsy steps and crawled flat on the ground. That angered nut case threatened them with every wild accusation, he could imagine, even death, while he bellowed for backup that brought down a whole mob of trigger-crazy wasps swarming in, all but crashing into each other.
After the accused perpetrators were dragged off the ground and hand-cuffed, the men were arrested for dealing drugs to the ladies and the ladies were arrested for procession of drug paraphernalia; and, the false charges were assigned to Civil Court??? It dawned queerly on Stella (shouldn’t something that criminal be assigned to Superior Court?) in addition to nearly $20,000 over-charge for bail bond. As if that wasn’t enough, he and the handyman were threatened with a10 year prison sentence; and, loaded up and hauled off to another town two hours away.
Their cell phones had been confiscated as evidence, so they couldn’t make a single call for help and both of the ladies were alarmed to tears over what might happen to their little dog, suffering only God knows what at the Animal Welfare Veterinary Clinic.
One of the concerned neighbors had eye witnessed the entire scene from behind a Juniper tree in the wooded lot where Stella and his friends were parked. (Two years and seven months ago, her chubby daughter, who played the piano at the Nazarene Church since she was a child, had been ordered by a killer cop to get out of her car and when she couldn’t get out fast enough to suit him, he shot her in the head, and got away with it. But what could you expect in this politically divided state? ) As soon as the coast was clear, she snatched her grandson, a sixth grade, home schooled kid, who was performing at a seventh grade level, in everything except math, out of his private classroom. Jacob had a frisky boxer on a leash. Dudley regularly pulled him up and down the sidewalk on a skate board. Those two were the fastest things on two wheels.
At the sharp tap on his shed door, Sonny woke up. The kid passed him a note. He put on his pants, tied his shoes, grabbed his hat and shoved his arms into the sleeves of his jacket as he rushed out the door. Of course, he knew the woman called the bird watcher— and he knew her rather well— and he knew she wasn’t watching birds. This was certainly not their first effort to collaborate in defense of victims of police brutality.
The contact in the know— had vast experience in the inner workings of the legal system. As a 16 year old street kid he had turned himself in after escaping the swat team raid of a crack co***ne cook shack, to save the mother of a four year old child. He had spent the following eight years, transferred from one minimum security prison after another clear across the state, because the authorities didn’t know what else to do with him. To be above suspicion, he scored a shade too high in the smarts to turn him loose and he could mimic every official from the lowest guard to the warden.
During the few years since his release he had worked his ass off at a promising job and lived in a quaint log cabin community, drove a ‘must see to appreciate’ 2012 Nissan, and in his domestic time, he spoiled his over the fence neighbor’s pot belly pig, Fudd.
Needless to say he didn’t need another computer whiz to pull up the paper work on any jailed inmate. So far no charges had been filed against Stella or any of his breakfast guests. On Sunday, fairly early, the local expert invited Sonny to ride with him to pay the victim a visit, where the prisoner was warned not to talk. If a court appointed lawyer showed up, Stella should tell him up front that it’s your job to defend me. It’s against the law for you to force me to sign a false confession. After absorbing such sage advice, they worked on some lighter subjects. Stella shrugged his shoulders with a resigned smile of gratitude, he said, “It don’t get any better’n this.”
Later that evening as soon as the inmates were ushered into the dining room, one of the guys asked about his visitor, “Was that Mike McGee?”
“Yeah, you know him?” All of a sudden Stella found himself among friends.
“Man, around here, Mike McGee is a Legion! He’s so funny he could walk into any hungover drunk tank and ignite a frolicking party.”
A week later, totally unexpected, all charges were dropped and Stella, who had vanished without a trace, was released out on the street, short of a ride home. A kindly woman at Circle K got him a $150 taxi ride. At the end of the long drive the driver hugged him, saying, “Take good care of yourself, buddy.” The victim had to reschedule his surgery.
The day he was wheeled out of the hospital, Gerry and Darla, with their adorable little girl pup, in Darla’s arms, wrapped snuggly in a pink baby blanket, were waiting just outside the door for him. Those wrongful charges against the ladies had been dropped almost instantly. And except for dirt smudges on their clothes and messing up their hair, they got off easy.
Grady was loosed after 48 hours confinement, to think of how stupid that cop had acted when he was searching the toolbox in Grady’s little, white pickup for drugs. He picked up a small gadget, with a pointed end on it, asking, “What this for?”
“That’s a tool to check sparkplugs.”
“I like that. I need one of these,” without so much as an apology, he stuck it in his shirt pocket.
Grady’s elderly father, trembling with Parkinson’s disease and barely able to talk, hounded the local Civil Court Judge, until he was able to make the long distance drive to pick him up.
