I was playing my guitar, loud and fast.
It was a little after midnight. Suddenly I had one of those moments where you think you hear something and hope you’re wrong, like a thump at the locked front door. I stopped and listened. Someone was out there, all right, calling for help, and now he was knocking. Only clumsily, not pounding , as if he were frightened or incapacitated. What do you do when a stranger is clawing at your door after midnight in a pitch-black rural neighborhood?
Well, I turned on the light and opened it.
Standing there in the yellow glare was a short, wiry Indo-Hispanic man wearing black bike shorts and a ragged sleeveless T-shirt, holding a can of beer. He was about 40, with a thin mustache and long black hair tied in Native fashion. A crude tattoo on his right arm read “Seeds.” He was obviously drunk, so I left the screen door latched and sized him up. There was a dirty elastic wrap around his right calf and he appeared to be in pain. His words spilled out in breathless spasms:
“Aww, man, you gotta take me to the hospital. OWW! My leg… Call 911! Please, they hurted me. They kicked me. Can you call? I need an ambulance. OWWWW!!”
The can of beer had disappeared. He staggered and weaved, then moaned some more. No matter what, he wasn’t going anywhere.
“AAGHH!” Aw, my leg. Call 911!” he wailed, then crumpled to the ground beside my doormat. If this was a scam, it was a good one. “You gotta CALL please,” he shouted, kicking the bottom of the screen door: BAM! BAM!
I still had the guitar in my hand. All I wanted was for the guy to hobble on down the road, but I didn’t think he could find it. Processing my other options was easy: okay, he’s lying on the ground and kicking my door at 12:20 a.m. Call 911? You betcha!
“Okay, okay, I’ll call you an ambulance, all right?”
“OOOWWWW!” BAM!
I shut and locked the front door, then made the call. Five minutes later there were three units and four cops in the driveway, two state troopers and a couple of sheriff’s deputies. I was impressed. I opened the door and watched from behind the screen.
The deputies were cool. The one in charge held a flashlight on my visitor and questioned him in Spanish and in English. The man’s name was Manuel, and now he wanted to get up, but the deputy kept him on the ground with the force of his voice alone. Manuel was now on hands and knees and crying:
“They called me a fucking Indian. I AIN’T NO fucking Indian! OOWww, they beat the shit outa me…”
The deputy had called in an ambulance. Manuel was writhing again and clutching his leg. Moaning, he lay flat out on the ground. Just then the medics arrived. Two women, I noted. I was still standing three feet away behind my screen door, talking it all in.
“Are you hurt? They hit you? Who hit you, where did they hit you?”
He pointed to his side, and one of the medics pulled up his shirt while the other one unwrapped his leg. “There’s nothing there,” she said. “You’re all right!” It was true: there wasn’t a mark on him, not even a bruise on his calf.
“Had a little too much to drink, did you? Anything besides alcohol on board?”
Manuel muttered something I couldn’t hear, but the medics and the deputy exchanged knowing glances. Slowly, they coaxed him to his feet and up the driveway into the ambulance. At no time had anyone been anything but quiet and gentle with my guest. The deputy thanked me for making the call, and the posse walked calmly back to their units. No one even took a statement.
Watching three cop cars and an ambulance get untangled from my driveway was a hoot, since the deputies insisted on turning around first, but eventually they all got out. There was a time when that much heat in the middle of the night would have scared me silly, I thought.
Funny how that is, isn’t it?
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