In which a righteous house party ends in spiderwebs
Cobwebs in my face. THAT’S what I remember most about my run through a cedar tree forest in the greater Shallowford Road area in the dead of a moonless night.
Now, of course, I was looking at it in broad daylight. It was not the densely-packed, undeveloped area that it had been—it was now a large assisted-living community. The smell of tapioca pudding and asphalt had replaced the mix of pine and cedar, and of course, the body odor of the man I found hiding there, having fled what was otherwise a righteous house party.
It was the odor that caught him, by the way. It was stupid to go in after him in the first place, I suppose, but young cops are sight-hounds by nature and that rabbit isn’t going to chase itself.
I have no idea how far in I was other than the fact that my appreciation for streetlights and the moon could not have been greater at that moment (there being neither present), but I had the advantage of being too pissed off at the number of twigs finding their way down my back from my shirt collar and the cobwebs I could never truly finish wiping off of my face to be afraid.
Nope, it was just anger I was feeling when the wind blew in the right direction (for me, not him) and I narrowed my search to an area to my right, a search completed by my boot making distinct contact with something that was “human-ey”.
Hard and crackly became tough with a hint of squishiness. (His simultaneous gasp upon said contact was similar to mine, but for two very different reasons.)
I reached down and found he was lying face down, which allowed me to both hold him in place by his neck (gently, mind you) and to do a quick pat down of his waistline and ankles for weapons with my knee firmly (but lovingly) placed in the small of his back, before finally dragging backwards at an angle by the back of his shirt collar.
I did this intentionally for two reasons: One: I was still alone and in a place where backup could not find me without a helicopter and searchlight so I needed to keep him off balance, and two: it allowed me to continue wiping the cobwebs off my face. They were really starting to freak me out. A lot.
“Hey man you can’t—”
“Shut up.”
“But you can’t—”
“SHUT UP.”
It actually went on like this for some time until we finally made it out of the field of arachnophobic horrors and dispatch and a few co-workers could stop being mildly concerned.
O’Hare got to me first. “You ok man? What the hell?”
“Can’t talk,” I said. “Freaking out. Spiderwebs.” I said this, but for some reason I didn’t want to let go of the gentleman at the end of my left arm, who was still kept facing the woods. Subdued shock maybe? I didn’t care.
“Hey will somebody—” he got out before we both replied in unison, “SHUT UP.”
“Need a towel. Need to take off uniform. NEED TO NOW.” I began walking towards his car to stuff this guy inside of it and then make my dream of disrobing and shaking the tinderbox out of my shirt a reality when my partner said the one thing that could snap me out of my burgeoning horror: “Hey, isn’t that Sarge’s kid?”
I stopped, and replied with the one thing I could say in response: “Umm...WHICH Sarge?”
“Sorenson’s, I think,” he said. I paused, rolling the thought in my head around a moment, and reached a quick decision as was the theme of the night. “Hell with him. Uniform coming off.”
We called his ol’ man as a courtesy and I was never sure if he was cited for underage drinking or not (as I said, it was a righteous house party), but I knew one thing: That uniform came OFF.
Nothing to look forward to now but lunch. Hold the cobwebs though.
When officer Alexander D. Teach is not patrolling our fair city on the heels of the criminal element, he spends his spare time volunteering for the Boehm Birth Defects Center.
Photo: Michael Podger