The united personality will never quite lose the painful sense of innate discord. Complete redemption from the sufferings of this world is and must remain an illusion.
—C. G. Jung, The Psychology of the Transference
Be yourself. No one else will.
—Will Rogers, famous Okie oracle
It’s Mardi Gras, 2013. It started early this year, kicked off by the Conde Cavaliers on Friday, the 25th of January, the eve of my sixty-first birthday, and the beginning of my eleventh year as a policeman. We’re nearing the end of another season of mirth and mayhem. It’s Saturday, February 9, and the Mystics of Time are rolling through the streets now. They’ve got the coolest floats: fully articulated, fire-breathing dragons. They’ve already made their first pass by my quiet post at Church and Washington, a block off Government Street, the main drag that they’ll loop back around to for their last blazing belch of fire on the way to the float barns. The final pass of the MOT’s fiery dragons means there are only three more long days of madness and fatigue until Folly chases Death once again, on the emblem float of the Order of Myths parade, on Fat Tuesday.
It’s been a long day, with daytime parades starting at noon, running till three or so, with a three-hour lull till the MOTs roll, just after dark—the better to see the flames shoot forth from their dragons’ maws. And tomorrow, Joe Cain Day, starts at the crack of 8 a.m. with the 5K Moon Pie Dash, followed at noon by the thousand-Harley procession from west Mobile to Jackson Street, the Joe Cain parade at 2:30, and the Krewe de Bienville at five. I’m slap wore out, as they say here in Alabama.
But I’m grateful for my post. It’s on a quiet residential street—befitting a cop of my advanced years—with friendly folks who live here and take good care of me, letting me use their bathrooms, feeding me, bringing me iced-down “Co-Colas” or steaming cups of strong, black coffee. They’ve been with me all Mardi Gras season, entertaining guests in their yards or front porches between parades. They stroll over to my barricade just before each parade rolls by, with grandchildren on their shoulders or at their feet, tall cocktails in hand, and sympathize with me over the long hours, the repeated idiotic questions from tourists, the drunk-and-disorderlies. Some of them even remember that I got wounded during last Mardi Gras and ask after my recovery.
But mostly I’m ready for this season to be over. And I’ve begun to wonder if it’s time for this line of work to be over for me as well. The words of my father—shocking at the time—keep coming back to me lately.
Mom had arranged a small family reunion. Nancy noticed that my father didn’t look well. “His face looks kinda ashen,” she’d said. I didn’t pay it much attention until Dad insisted (as always) that I play a few sets of tennis with him.
The game was his passion; he’d played it all his life. Though I was in my forties and Dad was in his seventies, he’d always kept me virtually scoreless with his blistering serves. But that day in the winter of ’94, for the first time ever, I beat Dad on the court.
As the two of us sat on a courtside bench cooling down, Dad became uncharacteristically philosophical.
“Y’know, Mark, I wish I had retired earlier. I kept working, always thinking I had to make more money. Now I realize, I’ve got more than I could ever spend, over and above what I plan to leave you and your sister. Time matters more than money; you can’t earn any more of it, or make up for any that you wasted.”
This from a man who insisted, from my college days on, that at least once a year I spend an hour with him, just the two of us, going over his master ledger, his entire investment portfolio, reviewing with me the growth of his wealth, his increasing salary and net worth year by year and how much he had saved, how much he had spent, and how much and where he had invested it and why; the red-letter day when he had crossed the million mark and the inexorable march to the next; the importance of caution, prudence, patience, and diversification; the varying risks and rewards of blue chips, small caps, and emerging markets, commodities versus utilities, the dangers of some kinds of REITs and limited partnerships, the safety of Treasuries compared to municipal bonds, varieties of mutual funds and how to look for their hidden costs and fees, distinctions between the Dow Jones and the Nasdaq, the importance of saving and investing early and often, how to pick a broker you can trust, how to read a prospectus and a financial statement and the Wall Street Journal and Morningstar . . . until my eyes would glaze over, and he’d snap at me, “Now pay attention! You’re gonna hafta to know all this after I’m gone. Even if you don’t care about it now, you will someday, and it will be your responsibility for Mom’s and Lynn’s sake, do you understand?” and I’d say yes sir and force myself to focus.
I used to dread those sessions, in some ways like I dreaded his insistence that I play tennis with him. My attitude toward both sprang from my utter lack of aptitude for either. And of the two, the dullness and opacity of the investment game had the effect of anesthesia on me.
But there was more to it even than that. For me, those sessions with Dad and his ledgers were exercises in unworthiness. I had done little if anything to make my father proud, did not bear his looks nor share his temperament, talents, industry, or strength, and lacked even the most basic birthright, as a castaway bastard, rescued only by his whim or benevolence (or more likely Mom’s saintly insistence). Not only did I not deserve what he would entrust to me, I was destined to be a poor steward of it. Upon reflection, I suppose a case could be made that Dad’s insistent tutelage in matters financial or insistent play with me on the court were the only ways he could express paternal love. It’s a nice theory, anyway.
Six months later, Dad was gone. He dropped dead on the court, at the tennis hall of fame in Newport, Rhode Island, where he had made a pilgrimage to fulfill a lifelong dream.
So lately I find myself wondering, do I really need to keep chasing thugs at my age? Why? To test myself, or my half-baked sociopolitical solipsisms? To make some kind of point? After a decade on the job, have I made my point, whatever it is? Have I made some kind of difference?
I had originally set out to be “a good cop,” as I had declared to the TV reporter when I quit United Way and entered the academy. “The world needs more good cops,” I had solemnly intoned, “and I aim to be one of ’em.” Sometime during my first year on the streets, I had privately amended that aim to just being a competent cop.
Way back at the beginning, I had even entertained the notion of someday returning to United Way with my hard-won knowledge of the streets, to introduce a taste of Realville to the world of local philanthropy. But that grandiose notion is long gone, too; I haven’t a clue what to do about the suffering I’ve witnessed almost daily.
To be sure, there remain plenty of thugs and countless victims, both in need of justice and mercy. But that’s always been and always will be. As a well-known national figure recently complained, “What difference at this point does it make?”
When I catch myself agreeing with that sentiment, I know something’s wrong.
“To whom much is given, of him much is required.” One of Mom’s favorite scriptures. She said it often, not to scold, but to remind me to be grateful, and not to squander my blessings.
But I wonder, is there ever any clarity, any satisfaction?
No. “Never. Never any.” So snapped a friend of AA founder Bill Wilson, when Wilson asked the same question. As the story goes, Bill was well into sobriety when he became bedridden for weeks, so deep was his funk of grandiose self-pity. A Jesuit priest from St. Louis, Father Ed Dowling, had recently heard of this new fellowship bringing hope and recovery to hopeless drunken wastrels and traveled all the way to New York to meet the founder of this miraculous fellowship, whose principles he recognized from his own study of things spiritual. And he discovers Bill Wilson, whining and wallowing in depression, demanding the elusive “satisfaction.” Father Dowling is best known in AA circles for the memorable quip, “If I ever find myself in Heaven, it will be the result of backing away from Hell.” He knew that for certain kinds of people, satisfaction is code for complacency, for self-satisfaction, for sloth, and a slippery slope to intemperance and dissipation. I could use a good dose of Father Ed’s brand of soul saving.
Eighteen months after Dad died, Mom left us. We had moved to Mobile by then and had brought Mom down to live with us because her health had been failing since Dad died.
“I wish your Dad had lived to see how well you’ve done, how well situated you and your family are here,” she said not long before she died. I wish he had, too.
But by 2001, despite being “well situated” I was feeling restless, irritable, and discontent. I drove over to Pensacola to talk to Tom Whitaker about my idea of a career change to law enforcement. Not that I necessarily trusted his judgment, but what the hell. I met him at the FloraBama Lounge. He ordered a beer I was wishing I could drink, and I smoked a Camel he was wishing he could smoke. (By then, he was wearing a respirator about half the time, owing to his emphysema.)
“I think you’d make a great cop!” he wheezed. “And you oughtta get it out of your system before it’s too late.”
A year later, Tom died. His family invited Nancy and me to his funeral and insisted we sit with them as members of the family. When the Marines failed to synchronize the rifle salute, sounding more like three successive strings of firecrackers, Marilyn leaned over to me and said, “Tom would say, ‘That’s the Corps for ya: they can’t even get a funeral right.’”
Shortly after that I joined the force.
After I’d been on a few years, I was invited to a small gathering of Dad’s old buddies who were getting together in New Orleans to reminisce. Decades earlier, as young men, they had named their little group of chemical engineers the Onagers (wild asses; you can look it up). The old men were like uncles to me. Lonnie, and Fred, and Harry, and Frank: they were all from Texas or Oklahoma or Louisiana, had all served in the navy in the last good war, and had spent most of their careers working for Lion Oil, and then Monsanto. They had all come to both of my parents’ funerals. Some of them had lost their wives by then; they all agreed each Onagers reunion could be their last. I drove over straight from work, still in uniform, and got there in time for their last round.
They all stood to toast “Stan’s boy” when I joined them. They all remarked on how sharp I looked in uniform. And they all said, “We’re proud of you, and we know your dad would be, too.” I so wanted to believe them.
Still, I had my doubts.
So I went to visit the last survivor of my parents’ generation, Mom’s sister Billye. Her husband, my uncle Bill, had died several years before, and Aunt Billye had been taken in by her daughters, my cousins, who had moved to Albuquerque. They cautioned me that their mom is often “confused” and she might not know for sure who I am, even though they had been showing her pictures of me in preparation for my visit.
She knew my name when I walked in, knew that I was Margaret and Stan’s boy. We talked for a while, catching each other up on family news, and she asked how things were with the United Fund. I reminded her that I had switched to law enforcement several years ago.
My cousin Susan prompted, “Remember Mama? We went to Mark’s graduation from the academy. He was president of the class and gave the speech, and now he keeps the peace, just like Sheriff Andy in Mayberry.”
“Oh, yes,” Aunt Billye said, “how exciting it must be for you, Mark.”
“Well, it has its moments,” I agreed. “But tell me, Aunt Billye. What do you think Dad would’ve thought about my career change?”
Aunt Billye paused a moment, cocking her head. “That’s a good question. Your father was a very opinionated man, and never shy about sharing them, either, but I think he’d be happy for you if it makes you happy, Mark. I know for certain that Mayberry was his very favorite TV show!”
It was all pretty inconclusive, at best.
The Mystics have just made their final pass at Washington and Government, and the crowd of mostly teenagers and a few grandmas with clusters of little kids is walking south on Washington, away from the parade route, toward home.
I’m facing southward, leaning on a portable barricade in the middle of Washington at Church. A sign on my barricade reads “Road Closed.” You would think that the barricade, the sign, and the southbound flood of pedestrians filling the street would be sufficient to discourage northbound traffic on Washington, but it’s not. That’s why I’m there. I’ve just waved off my third driver, but this one is either clueless or an asshole. He just sits there, shrugging his shoulders and raising his palms as if helpless, despite my clear gestures indicating he should turn around or just put it in reverse. I guess I’m gonna hafta make it real clear to him.
“What should I do, Officer? I hafta get to a party on the north side of Government.”
Through gritted teeth, in a polite and measured voice, I explain that he can back it up and take a big westward loop around the parade route and try to get to his destination from the north side, which will take about forty-five minutes, or he can park it here as long as he gets it off the street, and he can wait about forty-five minutes, until the crowds, barricade crews, the blower brigade, and the street-sweeper flotilla pass.
Neither alternative pleases him. I then explain that a third choice is for him to get out and walk, because I’m going to radio for a tow truck to impound his vehicle. He finally gets the idea and backs away from me.
I lean back on the barricade to watch the doofus recede into the sea of pedestrians when behind me I hear a chorus of screams in the crowd, followed by gunfire. And it sounds real close. I turn around and the crowd is parting like the wake behind twin Evinrudes and a kid about 5 foot 3, ninety-eight pounds, sprints past me like a wild-eyed jackrabbit, and seconds later another kid, a little taller, streaks by me close enough for me to trip, if I had realized what was happening quick enough to do it.
The second kid is firing repeatedly at the first kid from a distance of two or three strides. He’s got his right arm extended with a full-size semiautomatic pistol aimed at the kid in front of him, and he’s popping off rounds but not hitting his target, apparently, because the first kid rounds the corner from southbound Washington on to eastbound Church without breaking stride. My heart’s in my throat with the horrifying thought that any number of innocents in the dense crowd may have already been struck. I draw my weapon and join the chase, yelling at the kid with the gun to “Stop! Police!” I think if I have to shoot on the fly, it would sure be easy to hit an innocent bystander myself in a running gun battle, and hell, even if I hit the shooter and don’t injure anybody else, it will be just as sickening to kill some dumb-ass teenager.
Thank God the kid with the gun hears me after I’ve taken just a few running steps, and he stops. He turns, faces me, and freezes, his gun still in his hand but pointing up in the air. We stare at each other from a distance of maybe eight feet, my Glock in the two-fisted grip aimed directly at his center mass, and I order him to put the gun down.
It seems like the world goes silent: no more screaming crowd, no more marching-band-Mardi-Gras music. I can’t even hear my own commands to the kid. And he stares at me, motionless, neither complying nor resisting, as if he’s trying to comprehend the scene himself. He doesn’t have Travis Colt’s look of wheels turning in his head, that mental calculation that preceded Colt’s leisurely backstroke across the bayou. This one is confused, and scared, and immobilized by it. I have since wondered, was there something different this time, in my face or voice? I was not smitten with my own delusions of a Dirty Harry moment of triumph, nor was I realizing (as Travis had calculated) that I couldn’t really shoot in these circumstances. I doubt this kid gave any thought to the fact that I had grounds for a “righteous kill,” that I could pull the trigger and blow a hole in his chest, pierce his teenage heart and lungs with a tumbling, fragmenting, slicing round of hollow-point .40-caliber law enforcement lead, and it would all be found justifiable in these circumstances.
I remember thinking, at this range I can’t miss, but even if I hit him there’s a good chance it’ll go clean through him and hit some ol’ granny or toddler behind him, and I really don’t want to kill him, he’s just a scared kid, what a helluva note to retire on, but I sure as hell am not gonna let him shoot me, or anybody else, and I start to squeeze the trigger.
Then I guess he has an epiphany or divine intervention or loses his nerve, because he drops to his knees and places the gun on the asphalt next to him. I charge, screaming, “Get on the ground!” and scoop up his weapon, stuff it in my belt, and put a boot between his shoulder blades. Holding my gun at the back of his head, about knee high, I radio for backup.
I know there’s all kinds of backup within a block’s radius of my location, but now the crowd starts to converge in around me, and they’re on his side. They’re mostly kids yelling at me, just boys and girls his own age, but I have no doubt some of them are armed just like the one on the ground had been, and I rip his gun back out of my belt and with both hands filled I sweep the crowd around me, keeping my foot on the kid’s back, screaming, “Get back or I’ll shoot!” They stop advancing, to my relief, but they don’t retreat.
Then the cavalry arrives. Literally. Mounted cops on horseback gallop through the crowd and herd them away from me. Others on foot and in cars arrive and form a perimeter. They cuff my prisoner, and Sammy from my precinct takes the kid’s gun from me, saying, “Mark fucking Eastwood! These punks picked the wrong corner today!” and a sergeant gingerly puts his hand on my gun hand, and says, “You can holster up and step off him now, Mark.” They hustle my prisoner off to a paddy wagon.
I take a deep breath and a Sammy offers me a smoke, which I take without a thought. The others are getting witness statements, gathering up spent .45 casings in the street from the shooter’s weapon, and doing reports for two people whose parked cars have shattered windows and bullet holes. Paramedics are called for an elderly female who thinks she may have been shot, but it turns out she only has abrasions from being knocked to the ground by the fleeing crowd. The shooter’s target never stopped running, never looked back. I’m told to go sit in my car, chill out, and write a narrative of the event, then turn it in to the mobile Command Unit, a couple blocks away.
A half hour later, I go to turn in my paperwork and inquire about the shooter. The commander informs me that the on-call detective has already interrogated the fifteen-year-old shooter and he’s been taken to Strickland juvie for discharging a firearm in the city limits, and no pistol permit. Both misdemeanors. I’m enraged. I tell the captain that I’ve just witnessed probably the most horrifying fifteen seconds in my decade of policing, and it wasn’t any fucking misdemeanor.
“You don’t have a victim,” he shrugs. “Your victim never stopped running. Without a victim its nu’n but misdemeanor Discharging and No Permit.”
I storm out of the Command trailer and drive with lights and siren to Strickland where I demand to interview the shooter. I read him his rights and he refuses to talk. He’s full of cool attitude and nonchalance.
“Fine, you don’t hafta talk, that’s your right,” I say. “But you’re in custody, and you do gotta listen.” I move in close, get right up in his face. “Do you realize how close I came to putting a bullet in you?” He betrays no emotion and looks away from me. “You came within a second of meeting Jesus, kid. I started to squeeze the trigger!” His eyes widen, and he faces me. “I’m old enough to be your granddaddy, and I’m fixin’ to retire, and the thought of having killed you coulda really fucked up my retirement. That pisses me off!
“And you mighta not been the only dead person at the parade today. You coulda killed any number of grandmas and babies in that crowd, not to mention the kid you were shooting at. There’s nothing any kid coulda done to you that’s worth all that bloodshed.”
My face is so close to him and I’m so furious I see little flecks of my saliva on his cheeks. He’s more wide eyed now than he was when I had him at gunpoint. I back off and take a breath.
He starts to tell me about how he just did it in “self-defense,” that the kid he was shooting at had shot and wounded his homeboy a few weeks ago at the movies, in an argument over a girl, and had been threatening them all on the Internet since then. I tell him that changes things, but he’s gotta tell me who the kid is, and he says he only knows him by “Money,” and he hangs in the “Bricks” (1010 Baltimore).
I head back to the precinct, get on Facebook, and find a little punk who calls himself Fat Money Goldmouth, whose page says he’s from the B’mo Bricks and sports numerous selfies posing with stacks of Benjamins and guns. Cross-checking with his Facebook friends leads me to the real name of the sixteen-year-old jackrabbit who dodged a .45 round in his back. His rap sheet’s three pages long, and I recall him as a suspect in several unsolved burglaries a year or so ago. By contrast, my shooter’s never been in trouble with the law, although you wouldn’t guess it from his Facebook page, where he calls himself D’thuggin Brown and strikes a menacing pose with a sneer and an AR-15 assault rifle. Both boys’ Facebook poses include lurid snapshots with their little teenage girlfriends who are dressed like hookers, sticking out their barely covered booties and boobies, licking their gangsta boys’ tattooed pectorals. They don’t even have driver’s licenses yet, these kids. They all still live at home with their mamas and attend high school. Where the hell are their parents, I wonder. To say nothing of their pastors, coaches, scoutmasters, aunts, uncles, grandparents, anybody with an ounce of moral fiber and sense of responsibility for these young savages, these feral kids.
Knowing the victim’s name, I track him down. He doesn’t wanna talk to the police, but I tell his mama and she makes him. They both thank me for saving his life. I secure his promise to testify and his written statement. As a result, the DA adds attempted murder to the shooter’s charges. D’thuggin eventually pleads guilty and, as a juvenile offender with no previous record, gets sent off to state school, but he’ll be back in time for the fall semester at his old high school if he behaves himself at Mount Meigs.