O HOLY NIGHT, Part 17

“No, I can’t go back,” said Jim. “I have nothing to go back to. My wife is such a—”

“Did she run off?” asked Preacher Bob.

“No, she didn’t. She threw me out. She—”

“She physically threw you out?”

“No, of course not. But she was being such a bitch I had no choice but to—”

“But to run off and leave her?”

Jim said nothing. Preacher Bob looked at Jim a long time, then said, “So you left her in the middle of the night, and here it is the next day and you still haven’t gone home. Don’t you think she might be worried?”

“Maybe she is, and maybe she isn’t.”

“She must be out of her mind with worry!”

“Good. She should worry. After the way she treated me, she should—”

Preacher Bob said, “Jim, you are not the first man that was ever spoken harshly to by a woman. Yes, maybe you didn’t deserve it. But you also spoke harshly to her, and maybe she didn’t deserve it either. That’s the way it goes between men and women. They fight sometimes and say bitter things. Maybe they shouldn’t, but they do, especially if they’ve been going through a hard time, like you and her have. But just because they fight doesn’t mean they don’t love each other. In fact, sometimes the worse the fight the more they love each other. Which is all the more reason to kiss and make up. You didn’t hit her, did you?”

“No.”

“Well if you didn’t hit her, and if it was only words that passed between the two of you, there’s hope. There was no call for you to run off like that and try to throw yourself under a train. That was stupid. You should have stayed home. If you had, the two of you would have already made up by now and be happy.”

Jim’s eyes began to fill with tears.

Preacher Bob went on: “You need to go back to her, son. Yeah, maybe she was mean to you. We’re all mean once in a while, and that includes you. But you’re lucky. You’ve got someone to go back to. I haven’t had no one to go back to in … oh, more than thirty years. I threw it all away and what an idiot I was. I thought I’d do better on my own. Thought I’d live the high life, fancy free. Thought I was justified. Well, look what being justified has got me—a cold hard ground to sleep on every night instead of a nice warm bed, a diet of beans and beer, and a loneliness like you wouldn’t believe. I wish I could go back and make it all better, but I can’t. You can.”

“I want to go back,” sobbed Jim. “I need Heather—”

“And she needs you,” said Preacher Bob. “In fact, I got a feeling she needs you real bad. I don’t get feelings like this very often, so when I do I pay attention. I got a feeling she needs you real bad and might even be in trouble.”

(To be continued)

OH HOLY NIGHT, Part 16

It should have been a good day, but was not.

Officer Sam Reynolds wondered why. It had all the necessary ingredients for not only a good day, but a perfect day. Why then did he now feel so dissatisfied and desolate?

At the beginning of his shift, he had stopped a middle-aged woman for going six miles over the speed limit. When he called in her driver’s license number, he discovered she had a criminal record for writing hot checks 20 years earlier. This gave him the opportunity to sternly remind the woman of her record and watch with pleasure as her eyes filled with tears.

He demanded to search her vehicle. She might have refused, and was within her legal rights to do so. But she was afraid of him, because he knew she had a record. So she meekly got out of the car and waited while he performed his search—taking all her shopping bags out of the backseat and throwing the contents alongside the road, and doing the same with the contents of her trunk, while passing motorists turned their heads, wondering what was going on, and the woman bent her head in shame and wept.

He found nothing illegal, and unfortunately had nothing illegal to plant on her. But that was okay; he had made her cry and that was sufficient. He wrote her a ticket and delivered another stern lecture, telling her to “be good,” then drove away, leaving her to gather up her things.

Putting this woman in her place gave Officer Sam a nice warm glow inside and a feeling of power, but the feeling soon faded and he found himself dissatisfied.

He hassled a few other motorists, but didn’t get much play from them. They didn’t have criminal records so he couldn’t intimidate them, and one turned out to be a prominent businessman and a close friend of the mayor, therefore had to be let go and even apologized to—which left Sam feeling low and humbled, as if he had just been forced to eat a big steaming plate of shit.

But a couple of hours later he got a call on the radio about a child wielding a pistol outside a beauty salon. He floor-boarded it and was the first officer to respond.

The pistol was obviously a toy cap gun, but Sam was taking no chances. He aimed his real gun at the little boy and shouted for him to drop the weapon, which the boy did, then he threw the boy onto the sidewalk and handcuffed him, while the mother came running out of the beauty salon in a hysterical fit.

About that time, another cop showed up, saw the woman running towards Sam and Tasered the woman and handcuffed her. More cops showed up, and a couple of TV reporters, and one of the reporters (a young brunette who was obviously hot for cops) interviewed Sam and gave him her business card and he drove away feeling very good indeed and with an erection.

Then later he pulled over a young man for not coming to a full stop at a stop sign and when the young man rolled down his window, he smelled marijuana. Probable cause. He ordered the man out of the car and when the man did not move immediately he opened the door himself and pulled him out by the hair and slammed him to the pavement and kicked him repeatedly in the groin. He did this without the least worry that it might get him in trouble because the dash-cam had not been turned on. Sam never turned on the dash-cam, just in case opportunities such as this should arise.

He called for back-up, then watched with satisfaction as the young man was carried away to the hospital, charged with possession of a gram of marijuana and resisting arrest. It made Officer Sam feel so good inside, and yet …

And yet, at the end of the day, he was dissatisfied. It had been the best kind of day, and at any other time would have given him a feeling of great peace and contentment and power. But today it did not, and he knew why.

It was because there was a certain dancer at the Pink Pussy Kat who had disrespected him and who had not yet paid for it. This injustice grated on him and made him grind his teeth and sapped all the joy out of life.

It’s time for a reckoning, thought Officer Sam. And it will be tonight.

(To be continued)