Chapel Rock View...

Watercolor Sky...

Breathing Mendocino...

As the years of law enforcement collect behind me, so do the images of unspeakable things and events, fears and near misses. I disrobe the horror slowly on my way to a place that won’t allow anything but peace to visit: Mendocino.

The coast road just below Mendocino was wet with mist and nearly completely shrouded with its thickness. The soft breeze brought the fog in constant wavering sheets, making it appear as if the ocean itself were afire. The hiss of the tires and the lazy windshield wipers fell into a perfect rhythm with Earl Klugh and his soft jazz guitar. I’d left it all behind again. I was visiting the promise I had anticipated for weeks. I was sipping the fresh edges of vacation, responsible for nothing but better thoughts and no reflections. There is something about the ocean that reminds me, warns me, and whispers to me about taking deeper breaths. Of coming to rest against its vastness and setting free the narrowing routines I’ve just driven from—the ones that capture my sleep and hold me for ransom, the ones that ricochet in my head like a flashlight attempting to land on a busy mosquito—the ugly images braying loudest and the minor ones in an impatient wait for re-recognition.

The screams were clear and desperate. The apartment was a maze of hallways, dim lights serving nothing in particular, refusing to aid any new visitor, so I followed the screams. My ear now pressed against the door, I could hear her screams, even her gasps before them. In the silence between her cries, I could hear her weeping. My imagination recovered all the scenes I’d met before with these same circumstances: rape? torture? murder? All the missed opportunities to capture the suspect now funneled down to this moment. I had him. I owned him. Second floor, no escape. He would have to come through me. I could hear my pulse in my head as I tried the doorknob. The door began to slip open; the screams within allowed me to open it further without detection. Heat from several candles rushed from the partially open door, voices from further back in the apartment. Another scream. Hard voices now, another scream. The grip around my handgun tightened as I opened the door wider with my right foot. Another scream and I was inside, sliding down the dark hallway to a rear bedroom.

I could hear her voice now. “No!” and yet another scream. I couldn’t wait.

My left shoulder forced the door open, my arms rose and the sights of my Beretta fell on a man standing in the corner of the room, his eyes wide and confused. They left me and returned to the figure I turned to on the bed. My announcement to freeze was ignored, of course, by the midwife and the woman awash in sweat and completely unimpressed and uninterested by my entrance. The midwife’s short glance made me the definition of foolish. My retreating steps and mumbling of a feeble apology were already lost in the drama being played. I had lost the reminder of my first Rabbi: “You will find that many things are not what they seem.”

I wonder if this place is where the ghosts of my days come happily to rest or if I’m guilty of some form of cosmic littering. I needn’t conjure them all up; they leave my eyes, my heart, my breath. The wooden sidewalks of Mendocino and tourists’ faces encourage my better thoughts in a reverse parade, where I walk around the figures, instead of being still for them. I start to find the present again, here in a place that boasts so much yesterday. I understand the lesson of tides and the meaning of sunsets isn’t necessarily meant to answer sunrises.

The first shot found my sights coming off the suspect. His body twisted, only to receive yet another shot, which threw him hard against the fast lane of south-bound 101. I had shot a man who I feared would shoot me. The events leading here suddenly became second to the flood of reality in front of me. In defense of me, someone was dying. I shot him to defend my privilege to walk home after work, to make choices again, to sleep and wake and sip tomorrow. I took away his choices before he could erase mine.

Right and wrong were suddenly absent. Good and bad had no meaning at all. “The” priority could not have arisen more clearly, nor be more obvious. The moments that separated the crime from this reality disappeared in importance. The deputy next to me stared into my face with a pale resolve. I still hadn’t realized that it was his shots, not mine. It was my reaction to his shots that reflected the movements on my hand, my sights. My relief would be in review. Right now, right here, life was being involuntarily recalled.

The tired fences of Highway 128 leading to the coast hold back farmlands scored with oaks, lazy animals, and lately more and more wineries. The twists and turns are a dare my car teases me with. Screaming siren and red lights are a forced pursuit of the next worst thing. But here on these turns the mix of a free engine’s whine and a clear path form a temptation and a dare for me to ignore the rules I enforce. A short burst of speed is quickly followed by a burst of conscience and I’m tamed all too quickly. A pause on the road finds me attaching myself to an agreeable fence; the aromas of drying weeds, wild flowers, and earth talk to my pulse like an old friend.

“They’ve been landing on my house for years, officer.” The ancient face talking through the crack in the door was clearly exasperated and already resolved that I would not be able to provide her with any answers or actions. “You think they’re Martians or Venusians?” I replied. “Ok, thank you very much, officer.” Door closes; I can plainly hear the word “asshole” behind the door.

I knock again.

The face just stares back at me for a moment and then it says, “I suspect these must be Martians because we all know that men are from Mars—as are most assholes.”

I took the hit pretty well. I’d come across the “Alien Invasion” before and snuck my way out not so cleverly with suggestions like aluminum foil on the window and playing AM radio. I was a product, after all, of the fifties—a time when alien invasions were all the craze; no part of the 20th century since ever promised more we’d be broiled, boiled, barbequed, or melted into a liquid and gulped by something large and green, tusked, and multi-eyed.

I bit the bullet and apologized, asked if I could come in and get more information. Her pause wasn’t hesitation—she was obviously trying to recall something and then suddenly recalled it.

“Do you know Officer Bruttig?”

“Yes, I do … he’s …”

“Another asshole,” she replied.

“I’m in complete agreement, ma’am,” was my reply.

The door opened wide.

The house was perfect. Hardwood floors polished and covered in tasteful rugs. The photos and paintings were hers, taken and painted over decades. I was offered a cushioned seat and my host sat on the flower-patterned couch with her hands neatly folded on her rose-colored apron.

I listened to a woman I can only hope to be half as sharp as when I’m her age, IF I live to be her age. I leave looking up at the night sky, wondering if I am going to be making shapes out of my mashed potatoes.

The whales are completely silent from here. Their “noise” is a visual celebration of sorts. Plumes of liquid smoke, a tail diving down. Long, slow twists in the water. I watch for them the same way I watch and react to falling stars. I’m not looking behind me here. I’m not visiting the exception—the thing that will never happen to you, but always happens to somebody. I’m assessing peace. I’m suspicious of nothing in the bath of this ocean’s breeze.

I ran toward the woman screaming, but my own screams were being drowned out by the urgent and frequent blasts coming from the train’s horn. My feet made their way along the tracks poorly; as they crunched, they fell away from traction in the loose granite stones. The figure ahead was now standing perfectly in the middle of the track, her arms spread out, palms up, on either side of her as if she were about to make a graceful dive into a pool. Within feet of her she heard my screams and began to hunch down as if to tackle me. The train’s blare made words useless and my first grasp of her filled me with horror. A large-framed woman, her resolve clearly had moved to every muscle in her body. My struggle initially was to remove her from the tracks; in moments it became a struggle for my own life. Not unlike a drowning and panicking figure grasping for life, unaware that those actions are taking both lives, she held onto me until the vibration of the train and the blasting of the horn began to rise on us like a giant angry shadow. With one last thrust I was able to clear us from the track, the train’s brakes still squealing and horn still blaring. She tried to get up to throw herself under the moving cars. I held onto her until passers-by came and held her with me. The cursing became the false list of rights she thought she had to kill herself. The ambulance came and took her away—to a 72-hour hold at a county facility so overworked she’d be lucky to have direct eye contact with a nurse, let alone a doctor.

Sitting on the curb my beat partner pointed out that my pager had been going off. I never felt it, heard it. I called my answering voicemail, my hand still shaking. I didn’t recognize the voice. It was a date I had had a few days earlier—one I had wanted to follow up on but hadn’t had the chance yet. “Officer Raggio, remember me? Mary Hurst? I’d like to report a Fuck-and-Run …”

The candlelight at Café Beaujolais in Mendocino is designed to illuminate nothing more than your imagination and your curiosity with regard to the menu. Going on my tenth year of Dean Edells, the dim light is a queer reminder that I might have to bring a microscope here one day, or forever rely on “the specials” to make up my mind. I have to relax; this is about a trade, after all, about romance and small important talk. It’s not all about forgetting the “before” yesterday. It’s about recovering some of the emails and calls I didn’t answer that might have been much more meaningful to her than to me. If I listen better here and now, my penance in this environment will surely be less, kinder. This is a place of forgiveness— proof that there are things best recalled and remarked on.

The driver had called upset, concerned. Dispatch assured them an officer was en route and would take care of the situation. The large white SUV hadn’t sustained too much damage; I’d seen vehicles nearly totaled from hitting a deer. In fact, injuries have occurred on some occasions. Sand Hill Road was no stranger to deer.

I was the responding officer.

I knew what I was possibly facing and dreaded the idea thoroughly. When I arrived, I reported there appeared to be two cars involved. I read the face of the young woman walking toward me and listened as she told me she didn’t even have time to swerve before her car struck the deer. While she was talking, an old woman with a cane that appeared to be a half dozen inches too long began walking toward us. I looked over the younger woman’s shoulder and said hello to the woman, who was now in a slight pant. She leaned against the SUV and said, “There’s plenty of time to talk about what happened; there’s no time to waste taking care of what’s happening now.” She threw the cane over her shoulder, pointing it at the injured deer still attempting to get up, still in the traffic lane, blood seeping from its nose and mouth, its leg mangled and in a position hard to look at. The driver began to tell me how this wonderful old lady had stopped to help.

“Enough jawing—this deer needs to be shot, and now!” She turned and began to walk deliberately back toward the deer. I stepped around the driver and began to explain that policy… “Policy?! What … what the hell are you talking about? Take out your gun and put this poor animal out of its misery, officer. Do it now!”

“Yeah, but you see…”

“Oh Christ, give me that damn thing!”

She had reached and I am ashamed to say successfully laid her hand on the grip of my gun. My hand now covered hers.

“Lady, take your hand off my gun!” I said.

“I heard what you said. I want to hear want you’re going to do, or this hand isn’t moving!” Meanwhile the driver had come over and was voicing her opinion that perhaps the old lady knew a tad more about these things than I and if I didn’t have the courage…”

My first impulse was to spin around and fling her from my waist. The image of two broken-hipped suffering images lying in the lane played loudly in my head.

“Okay, okay… let go and I’ll dispatch the deer, lady.”

I drew my gun, making sure there was no background risk, beaded the deer exactly between the eyes, and fired.

There was no reaction. The deer acted as if I had fired a blank.

I looked over at the old lady, who now clearly loathed me. I was sure I hadn’t missed.

“Well now, Daniel Boone…” the caned lady began. She walked over to the deer, took her cane and jabbed the point into a section right above the shoulder of the deer and said, “That deer’s head is about as hard as the asphalt you’re standing on, Dan’l” (Dan’l said with such disdain I nearly gave her my gun to finish us both off). I reached over with my handgun and, with one shot, directed in the area I was assigned to, the deer was immediately and gratefully put out of its misery.

“Well, halleluiah!” The 5-foot-nothing figure was making her way to her car, the flowered dress seeming so innocent compared to the words that were having no trouble escaping her mouth.

The driver yelling thanks after her, the old woman waved her cane in acknowledgment. She never once turned around.

I admit it, I’d met my match.

I have stood, sat, and walked on the long beach near Point Arena. The beach itself is about six or seven miles long and winds out to a working lighthouse. The house I rent when I go to Mendocino is close by and the walk to the beach is no trouble at all. You have to climb over decades of washed-up driftwood to get to beach; the dues are well worth the effort. The opportunity to retreat into the rhythm of the ocean and forget all things is best here. Labored steps walk around the washed-up kelp and shells, large shells like abalone and sand dollars. The mounds that change with the tide are offers to sit and watch how simple it all can be, perhaps should be. This is where my mind and my pulse make the best music, where the roar of my close ally cleanses and clears, whispers and sings.

“Can’t you just give me a warning? I mean, I slowed for the damn stop sign!”

“Yes, you did. And if the sign had read S-L-O-W we wouldn’t even be having a conversation right now, would we? Based on your premise that you slowed, and that was good enough, let’s take this a bit more literally: One: you didn’t “slow” enough. Two: imagine an angry bee just flew up your short-sleeved shirt and began stinging you violently—do want it to STOP or SLOW DOWN?”

***

“You don’t know how I feel about this— can’t you give me a warning?”

I stood looking at the face behind the wheel. He had the long-day-already look and it was only 8:00 in the morning.

“Tell you what. I’m going back to my car. You’re going to exit yours. You’re going to walk back to my car and pretend you’re the cop. You’re going ask for my license and I’m going to try to talk YOU out of the ticket. If I can talk you out of the ticket and into a warning, you will walk back to your car and drive off. Deal?”

The face looked like it was doing a hard math problem. Like it didn’t know the final Jeopardy answer and everything was on the line.

“Okay.”

I was walking back to my car now.

“Wait! I don’t know what to ask!”

“Just ask for my license. I suspect it’ll become pretty clear what you should do after that. I’d prefer when you walk back at me you have that cocky cop-swagger...”

The man is looking at my badge and name tag. He doesn’t know it, but he’s lipping them both silently.

I sit in my car and wait. He doesn’t exit. He’s looking in the rear-view mirror. I wave to him through the windshield and again signal him to come back. He finally, reluctantly exits the car. He looks around and begins to walk timidly back toward me. I yell to him about his walk. He smiles, looks around again, and does a wonderful John Wayne the rest of the way.

I look up at him with a perfectly straight face and say, “What seems to be the problem, Officer?” (I have to coax him a bit here—I tell him to tell me I was speeding. He does.)

“Oh no… that can’t be possible, Officer. How fast was I going?”

(He looks confused. I tell him to make something up. He smiles fully for the first time. Puts his hand atop my cruiser and says,“You were going 45 in a 30; may I see your driver’s license?”

I hand him his. He examines it and then the furrows on his forehead deepen as he examines his own license. He begins to giggle a bit and finally says, “Do you realize your driver’s license is expired?”

It’s all I can do not to laugh; I finally nod my head vigorously and tell him, “Yes! Yes! I knew that, that’s why I was speeding, sir, I was rushing to the DMV!”

“Now wait a min …”

“NO! Honest! I was in the shower this morning when I realized it had expired. Oh please, Officer, give me a break, a warning! I’ll never ever speed again!”

“Well …”

“Oh, come on, whaddaya say?”

“Well, I’m afraid I don’t believe you sir. I’m going to have to write you a ticket…”

(At this point, I’m wondering if he understood me at all in the beginning. Then he appears to suddenly “get it.”)

“However…I let you off this time.”

Conversation complete, he saunters back to his car. When he’s half way, I tell him to knock it off. He looks back and smiles. As I drive by him he’s working his cell phone frantically.

God, I love this job…

***

The small pickup sped by my parked unmarked police car at about 20 miles over the speed limit. I started my car and accelerated, catching them a few blocks away. It was nearly dark as I walked up to the driver’s door. The smell of pizza drifted back at me the last few feet. The couple in the cab was completely frozen in fear. They flanked a large pizza and both looked as though they had been caught stealing their neighbor’s newspaper.

“You know, the speed limit on this street is only 25 miles an hour. You passed me at nearly twice that. What’s the hurry?”

They looked at each other, obviously trying to get the other to explain. Finally the woman leaned forward to talk around her husband. A small smile started on her face and then dropped from sight. The husband finally blurted out, “Tonight’s the last Seinfeld episode…and we're late for it.” The wife chimed in, “We’re serious fans, Officer.”

“Where do you live?”

“327 Waverley” (about five blocks away).

I looked at them both and said in my most officious voice, “Follow me…”

I got in front of the small pickup and turned on my red lights, I drove 5 miles over the speed limit all the way to 327 Waverley.

I could hear them laughing in the truck as I waved them off and drove away, killing my lights—and feeling pretty good about myself.

All might have gone perfectly, except they wanted to congratulate me on my efforts on their behalf. The letter to the Chief was terribly complimentary; however, he was not amused….

“Raggio! What the hell were you thinking!?”

Okay. I’m okay. My breaths are larger, my thoughts are wide, bright visits to the possibilities. I’m ready. Well, not really—but I’m fed.

The baby, according to dispatch, was not breathing and was blue. The baby was three days old. The address was familiar and by some coincidence I was only blocks away. I knew the apartment well; I had taken a ribbing for three days about it. The screaming lady and the bandit baby… Okay, we all have to take our hits. But now, right here, there was an emergency. I knew exactly where to go in the maze of halls and cuts in the apartment, the door, the room … I ran back to the crying and the man was in the same position he had been when I arrived, only now his hands covered his mouth. A pale woman frozen in fear stared down at the bed, her son still, blue, and tiny.

I lifted the infant and felt his cold skin. No brachial pulse, no pulse, no breathing. I put my mouth over the tiny mouth of the infant and realized his mouth was filled with liquid. I sucked the liquid out and spit it on the bed.

The woman said apologetically, “It’s okay, it’s mother’s milk.” Small puffs and finger presses on a chest no bigger than my hand. More puffs, more pushes… “Talk to him! Talk to your baby, lady!”

An involuntary jerk and baby’s color is coming back, baby is moving, baby is crying. Mother is crying, cop is crying. Dad’s hands haven’t moved from his face.

If I don’t make a fool out myself days earlier, then I don’t get here in time. The maze that was this complex would have taken precious minutes from the infant. Fire would never have made it on time. When they finally arrive they tell me I have to go the hospital and get checked out for contact with bodily fluids of another. I tell them its just mother’s milk … I didn’t tell them I was completely grossed out—that I had planned on doing some serious rinsing.

The job’s a slot machine that does what slot machines do: pay out rarely, pay out differently sometimes, and, on occasion, pay you a jackpot. It’s why you play; it’s why I stay.