I have a history with cops.
It started out innocently. The summer between my Sophomore and Junior years of high school, I spent every day and evening with Tammy, and we never wore regular clothes, just swimming suits, tank tops, and pajama pants around the tiny town of Manhattan, Montana. This is a town where kids still ride their bikes to a bubble fountain and where semi-retired farmers order their usual at The Garden Cafe. Tammy and I walked around all over in our pajama pants that summer, stopped at various town-people's homes, let ourselves in, let them offer us a glass of water or sit to roast marshmallows. We'd do whatever until we saw the cop's red and blue lights flashing through town.
"Let's check it out," Tammy would say, and so began a long-lasting relationship with the town cops.
Dave Rewitz was the first one I knew. Dad used to talk about him all the time. "Ho, I remember when ol' Rewitz busted so-and-so for..." and he'd chuckle to himself. Rewitz also did our school's DARE program, and I studied his moustache over and over, wondering why it is that almost all cops have that same moustache. That day I was wearing a T-shirt with a gun pointing at whoever read it that said "Give me all your chocolate and nobody gets hurt." Rewitz also caught my older brother stealing gum from the grocery store, banning the kid from ever entering there again. Incidentally, the same thing happened to my little brother 10 or so years later. I've never stolen anything from that store. I once stole a stuffed panda mock Beanie Baby in Yellowstone, but immediately gave it away to a friend for a birthday present, as if that would make it better. I probably should have been caught when my middle school friends and I realized during an all nighter that Renee's family's accounting firm shared an unlocked door with The Garden Cafe. We crawled in, each grabbed a glass, drank fountain pop until our bellies were full (never mind the cases of soda stored in the back of the accounting office...this was waaaaay cooler) and we ate Andes mints until the jar looked like it had been completely robbed, which it had. I figure I owe them about $7.50 and some dignity back.
Rewitz was the main cop in Manhattan for my growing up years and was close to retirement by the time I was in high school.
I did talk to him once. It was seventh grade and Renee and I thought it would be fun to egg something and to spray paint something. So we did, and I'm not going into details, but the night led us to a moment where I still had four eggs in my pocket, Renee had stuffed the spray paint cans in hers, and Rewitz saw us rounding a corner. "Quick!" Renee called out. "Destroy all evidence!" So I one-by-one threw the eggs in various directions, accidentally hitting a mailbox, a truck, and two lay on a gravel street. Renee shoved the spray cans in a creek tunnel that ran through town.
"Hey there ladies." Rewitz had rolled down his window. It was 1am and we had broken the Dellinger's front screen window when we broke out. "Hey Rewitz," we said in nervous unison. My legs shook under my pajama pants.
"Do you girls realize it's one A.M?"
"Wow, is it really that late? Man! Time flies fast. We'd better get home. Elna kept us talking so long. We only wanted to weed her garden for a little extra cash, she invited us in, so we sat and talked and talked and talked, and you think elderly women would want to be in bed by, I don't know, 7, but not her. She's a talker."
"Elna who?"
Our lie caught us off guard, but I stepped in, "We're only on a first name basis, sir."
"Ok, well I'll wait for you two to get a move on. Get back to bed."
"Yes sir."
"Anyway," Tammy said as we neared flashing lights one night. "His name is Jeff. I've heard people say a lot of different stuff about him, but I think he's an ok guy." We were talking about the new cop in town. His hair was blond and so he had a blond mustache, perfectly trimmed. The car in front of him had just pulled off, and he was writing something up.
"Hey Jeff."
"Well hey there, Tammy! Who's your friend?"
"This is Lou. Lou this is Jeff."
He scratched his mustache. "Your name is Lou?"
I dug my foot in the dirt. "It's a nickname. Middle name's Luanne."
"Oh yeah, I see." He scribbled a couple more notes, closed his folder, and said, "So what's the deal with the pajama pants?" Tammy and I both looked down. Mine were cuffed.
"They're comfortable," I said "and it's summer."
"So who was that?" Tammy was referring to the car that just left. She always had to know, always asked questions.
"Some out-of-towner who wasn't slowing down. I was just sitting here in the clear for the whole time." Ol' Rewitz used to hide his car behind large plywood stacks along a gravel area by the old highway and wait to bust someone. Jeff stopped his car clearly where people could see it, which I found dignified. We sat there with this new cop watching the radar as cars drove past.
"Oh man! that guy's going 32! Why don't you get him?"
"Meh."
Small town justice system.
Anyway, it was like that all summer with Jeff. Same talk. Who'd you pullover, how fast were they going, any drug busts, can we ride in back and could you cuff us and could you call our parents and say we were in deep trouble, etc. He'd say no most of the time and then throw in some comment about Tammy's nosiness or about my name or cuffed pajama pants.
We knew exactly where he lived, when he was on duty, the fact that he was for goodness sake living with a woman, and as far as we knew not going to church.
And then one day the tables were turned.
It was a Wednesday night, about 9 or so, and youth group had just finished. I was ready to go home, so I left. In order to get to home, I had to go through two stop signs. One of those was a four-way. There was no one else on the road. After the four-way stop I'd be home half a second later. But suddenly I saw red and blue lights behind me. I had learned not to unbuckle my seatbelt from the previous time I'd been pulled over after school by Ol' Rewitz. That was the first time. Apparently my stickers were on my front license plates, not the back. "I had to use the sirens, too, Miss," Ol' Rewitz said. "How loud are you listening to your music?" I had also shut off my radio, adjusted my mirrors, picked up trash, and moved my seat back a little. After looking me down with the help of his dark, dark mustache, he said, "Just have your dad change those plates around. And next time, don't undo your seatbelt. That looks bad. Have your driver's license ready. Have your registration ready. Have your insurance ready. And crimeniddly, you don't have to shake so much."
So this time, with a quizzical look, because I had done nothing wrong, I rolled down my window, got out the essentials and said, "Officer." It was Jeff. He pretended he didn't know me.
"Can you tell me what you did back there?"
"No idea, Jeff." He gave me a look. "Sir," I corrected myself.
"You were going a little fast through that intersection."
"I stopped, Sir."
"Did you?"
"Yes, Sir."
"Alright, take things slowly. Drive carefully, ma'am." Ma'am?
I had never been pulled over by Jeff after that. The next time Tammy and I were out for a walk, he pretended it never happened, like he was trained by the FBI or CIA, whatever, to make people re-think their own sanity. "Nice pants," he continued to say. "My mom wants to know when you're getting married," I'd say. "You've got all the churches in a 15 mile radius wondering."
Not too long after that summer, we got another cop in town. And she was a she. A female. Ready to bust down our raging male criminals. And all the farmers at The Garden Cafe shook their heads, "I mean, it's the same as combat. Can a woman carry a wounded soldier out of the battle zone?" They, and others, listed all the men she definitely couldn't handle. "She has a gun," I told Tammy one day, "and a whacking stick. Somebody's little sister could handle all those beer-drinking men with a gun and a whacking stick."
Jeff was out on duty one Christmas break. Tammy and I had heavy coats and pajama pants on. "What's her name?"
He lit a cigarette. "Angie," and he puffed lightly so it flickered orange a few times before he exhaled.
"Sounds tough," Tammy laughed.
And right then and there, Jeff started cussing, yelling about how this whole effin town is sexist, how she could take down all the crazies with a three dollar pistol, and he didn't ever, ever, want to hear it from us.
"Yes, Sir."
Tammy and I met Angie one night Senior year when our other friend Jessie and us decided we wanted to go star gazing at Taylor Park, because really, what else is there to do in a small town? Nothing. Except stargazing and when you're old enough, go drinking and karaoking at all the same places your parents go (which is so so so so likely to happen in Manhattan. I once went to the Sports Depot with some really cool kids and friends after a basketball game. It was karaoke night and Tammy leaned over and said, "Hey Lou isn't that your Dad?" It did faintly sound like him. I turned and there he was slapping his thigh along to the beat of some old country song, Mom singing right next to him, tenor. Everyone else caught on, and Mom smiled and waved and said, "Hi, Honey!") Anyway, we had pillows and sheets and we spread them out, laughing about who knows what and making some astrobrilliant comments. "I think that's the Big Dipper," and other comments of the like because our Science classes were boring and rather left us ignorantly believing there really were Greek gods in the sky.
"Do you guys hear something?" Tammy flipped onto her belly. I did, too. My contacts were getting blurry, but what I saw was a bright flashlight (but waaaay bigger) and a bat swinging back and forth in the light, two figures coming straight for us. "What the heck?" Tammy stood up, and Jessie covered her eyes--the shy one of the group. I lay waiting for what would become our first street verbal fight.
"You the little hoodlums that vandalized the park bathrooms?"
"What?!" Tammy said indignantly.
"YOU THE SEVENTH GRADE HOODLUMS WHO TORE UP THE BATHROOMS?"
"Who the heck are you?" Tammy looked ready to fight, one fist clenching. It was an older couple, very obviously distraught and ready to attack.
"We clean these damn parks every week, and these damn kids in this effin town got no respect, doin' whatever the hell they feel they can do. Why the hell would you to that?" The lady had her bat up, the man was shining the light into all our eyes, except Jessie had hers covered and her head down in her pillow. Tammy looked angrier and angrier, and I wanted to sit them down, take away their bat and flashlight, and figure out exactly what was the matter.
Tammy kept saying, "We're seniors! Do we look like seventh graders? Who would come to a park, vandalize the bathrooms, then hang out there to get caught?"
I kept saying, "I think we should just stop a minute. Let's figure out why you have a bat. Jessie looks scared."
Jessie only stayed quiet.
"Furthermore, you girls are young, this is I-90! You live right along I-90! Why would you lay here when hobos of all sizes could get you at any moment. Damn strait that woman cop's not going to do anything!"
I was beginning to get it. Our small town had begun creating a vigilante system Montana had banned 80 years earlier all because we now had a woman cop.
"You're right," I said, believing rhetoric was best on my side. I'd been educated, somewhat, and it seemed they had never even heard of Plato.
"No it's not alright!" Tammy, a five-foot-nothing senior high school girl, was ready to fight these people. Her inverted knuckles against their bat.
"No, Tam, it's alright! Thank you, ma'am. Thank you, sir. For looking out for us. As you can see we are not seventh grade hoodlums (but I may have been one at one time, what with the spray paint and eggs, but I didn't say that) and we are seniors in high school, and we go to youth group and we like doing good stuff, and we enjoy being innocent, and you should put your bat down. Yes, thank you!"
Then I said we'd go home now, and they said they'd watch us leave, and so Jessie quietly gathered our sheets and pillows, and Tammy was still ready to fight and I was ready for all to be right in the world.
"Thank you," I said one last time.
The next day Tammy filed a complaint against this couple. She said she met Angie later that evening. "You're coming down to the police station with me. I couldn't get Jessie to do it, but you're doing this."
"Sure," I said. I'd definitely had a very long night mare about a couple slowly creeping toward me with a bat and a flashlight, so I felt justice could be served.
There we met Angie, the woman cop.
"Alright," she motioned to Tammy. "Thank you for talking to me last night. What I'd like to do is take you individually in back where I'll record our conversation which will detail exactly what when on last night. You said there was one other girl with you?"
"Yeah. Jessie."
"She's unwilling to interview?"
"She just burried her face in her sweatshirt the whole time, ma'am. She's very shy," I said.
She motioned for Tammy to go first, and I waited there in the loby area waiting for Tammy to finish. I'd read stories about stuff like this, and it was making me nervous. What if Rewitz knew that I'd sabatoged some man's mailbox, or some person's truck, or the dugouts, or The Garden Cafe? I saw Rewitz's picture hanging up on the wall, the perfectly trimmed dark mustache. Next to his was Jeff's portrait. I say portrait because they were large pictures. He too had a perfectly trimmed blond mustache. Next to his was Angie. She was pretty. But I scolded myself for thinking such a thing about a female cop, remembering what Jeff would have done if he'd heard anyone say anything about her being a woman. Next to her portrait hung one more. "Dennis" it said underneath. That's a good name for a cop, I thought. Dennis. A couple years later Tammy said, "I can't stand Dennis." His mustache was a milky brown.
I heard the clicking of the recorder. I imagined it was one of those really old ones from the seventies. Then I continued to hear every question Angie asked and every answer Tammy said. "Did you feel frightened?"
"Yes. They had a bat and were blinding us with the flashlight."
I took a mental note to say almost everything Tammy said so that our answers would be consistent. Was this like cheating on the ITBS tests? Maybe. My point is that the walls were so paper thin that I could hear all her answers, and she could hear mine, and Angie said, "Well you two definitely know your story."
"Yes, ma'am."
"I'll see what I can do, girls. Thank you for coming in."
Then we went to the penny candy store and loaded a couple bags full and watched The Sandlot. Make that four things to do in Manhattan, Montana.
"Criminals could cheat all the time in our good-for-nothing police station," I told Tammy half-way through the movie. Wendy Peffercorn was escorting the nerdy boy with glasses out of the pool for full on mouth kissing her.
"So?"
"So! So it means that one person could testify and then another and bam, you have a consistent story and so you have a case!"
"I don't think that's how it goes, Lou."
"Well whatever. It bothers me."
A few days later Tammy said that Angie told the park people it wasn't their park to keep up. They were to stay away and were not allowed to carry the bat around anymore. There's nothing illegal about flashlights, so we think they got to keep that.
A year later I worked night shifts at a retirement home. Dad had recently hit a deer with the Taurus, so I only had one headlight. On my way to work one night, Angie pulled me over. "Ma'am, you have one headlight out. You're gonna need to get that fixed."
"Yeah. Dad hit a deer. I'll get it fixed." I never did, but for the next 8 weeks about two or three nights a week, she pulled me over, as was necessary, to tell me my headlight was out. "Get it fixed." "Ok, Angie." We were on a first name basis. And I liked that. That winter a gravel road corner was so iced over I lost control of that car and drove it in the ditch. So the headlight thing no longer became a problem.
Cops were always sort of mine and Tammy's thing. There's a consistency in small towns that you don't get anywhere else. The "hey, how's it going" nature of small towns and of the people in them exists for the community of that town. This week I drove back to Indiana from South Dakota and for the second time in a year I got pulled over in Iowa, but this time it was in a construction zone. I kept my seatbelt on, got out the essentials, tried to pull an i'm-going-to-cry-but-still-be-very-respectful face.
"Ma'am, do you know how fast you were going back there?"
"Not exactly, sir. I was just slowing down."
"This is a construction zone. You realize that?"
"Yes. I was slowing down."
He didn't even smile or have a name tag. His mustache was crooked. He must enjoy pulling over college-age looking girls who look like they don't have money, I thought. "Oh yeah, you've made it so big," I was saying out loud while he was back in his car doing paperwork or whatever it is they do in there. I got fined. A lot. For a minute I teared up, but stopped. Where's Jeff when I need him? Or Angie? Or even that old crank Rewitz?
This man's face is lost in the memory of a straight-billed hat, sunglasses, and a quick smile.
"Alright, ma'am. Drive carefully. Watch out for the construction zones."
"Yes, sir."
