It was almost
Violet opened the door a crack, reluctant to let the feeble warmth of the space heater out. “What you pounding like that for girl?”
“My sister said you gotta come quick, her baby’s sick.”
There was a wild look in the little girl’s eyes which caused Burt and Violet to jump to their feet and sprint after the child who had run up a nearby flight of stairs. By the time they got to the third floor, both officers were panting for breath, but the little girl ran with frenzied energy to door a about half way down the dingy corridor.
The officers followed the child through a shabby living room into a small bedroom in back. A black teenage girl was cradling a tiny blanket wrapped bundle in her arms and crying hysterically.
“She ain’t breathing,” she wailed. “My baby ain’t breathing!”
Burt recognized the chemical stench in the air the moment he entered the room. Flashes of cold bivouacs in the Army came back to him. Sterno! The girl had been trying to warm the small bedroom by burning cans of Sterno.
Snatching the child from the mother’s arms Burt unwrapped it from its soiled pink blanket. He had seen this before in pictures in the training manual. Lips, nose, ears and cheeks, all bright cherry red.
Asphyxiation!
Burt sprinted out into the cold air of the balcony. As he ran he shouted and tapped the child on the shoulder, not out of any conviction that it would do any good, but simply because it was the first step in the procedure he had practiced at the academy, and in a crisis he always fell back on the automatic actions of his training.
He was always proud of himself at times like this. Steady as a rock! The world could be going to Hell-in-a-hand-basket, but at times like this everything seemed to slow down and become very quiet as he sprang into action like a well-oiled machine.
Reaching the balcony he lifted the baby’s chin slightly to clear the airway and blew two gentle breaths into infant’s open mouth. He followed this with 30 rapid, but gentle, chest compressions using two fingers in the center of the child’s chest. Repeat.
Two gentle breaths, thirty chest compressions. Repeat.
Two gentle breaths, thirty chest compressions. Repeat.
Two gentle breaths, thirty chest compressions. Repeat.
The tiny warm bundle in his arms stopped its feeble squirming and grew cold.
Repeat.
Part of Burt’s mind was startled at how quickly the child’s body had turned cold but the thought was firmly suppressed as he doggedly continued to apply C.P.R. to the icy little girl in his hands.
Repeat.
Burt stayed calm.
Repeat.
Completely calm.
Repeat, Repeat! REPEAT!
---------------
When the Paramedics arrived Burt was still vainly trying to apply C.P.R. to the child. They had to pry the corpse from his hands.
The teenager’s mother, summoned from work, arrived, still in her waitress uniform, and Burt could hear Violet in the Apartment, giving what comfort she could to the hysterical women.
Burt stayed calm, he didn’t feel a thing. Taking out his notebook he jotted down the details getting all the necessary names for his report from the neighbors who had congregated on the balcony near the apartment.
He didn’t feel a thing.
Steady as a rock.
No worries.
He didn’t feel a god-damned thing.
-------------------------
When he got home, Susan was still up.
She followed him down the long hallway saying important things to him.
She always had important things to say to him, but at this moment Burt could not tell you what they were. Her lips moved and sound came out, but Burt heard nothing.
As he walked, Burt peeled off bits of his uniform and dropped them in the hall. Presumably, Susan said something important about this as well, but Burt didn’t hear. He also didn’t feel anything, anything at all.
He was naked by the time he reached the bathroom and he walked in, locking the door behind him. He turned on the shower and calmly waited for the water to grow warm.
Completely in control.
He stepped into the big, claw-footed, bathtub pulling the vinyl curtains closed behind him.
Steady as a rock.
He stood there, the hot water drumming on the top of his head and running down his body.
And then he felt something.
He felt all of it.
Every god-damned bit of it.
Every god-damned, stinking, mother-fucking bit of it!
Excruciating sobs racked his body and he crouched down on his hands and knees on the floor of the big old fashioned bathtub like a wounded animal. The hot water pattered on his back.
“So cold! he sobbed. So god-damned cold!”
He must have thrown up because he could see vomit swirling down the drain in front of him.
After a while he found himself sitting cross-legged on the floor of the bath-tub with his arms on his knees and his head down, still sobbing.
Vaguely, in the background, he could hear Susan pounding on the door and yelling.
---------------
He ran out of tears sometime around the time the shower ran out of hot water.
Crawling out of the tub Burt opened the bathroom door and shambled across the hallway to his bedroom dripping water as he went.
Sometime during his shower Susan had apparently grown tired and left because she wasn’t there. He and Susan no longer shared a bed and tonight he was profoundly grateful for the fact.
Stopping at the battered, Salvation-Army-special-sale-chest-of-drawers he picked up the heavy, lead-crystal, Captain’s Decanter and poured a very large dram of Scotch into a matching lead-crystal tumbler.
He poured himself another Scotch and, lumbering over to the bed with it in his hand, flopped down, the last drops of shower-water drying on his naked body.
He lay there for a while nursing his second Scotch.
The sliding door that connected his bedroom with the living room slid open and Susan came in wearing a big terrycloth bathrobe and carrying a huge steaming mug in her hand. Absently he noticed that it was the “Marvin the Martian” mug that Tom had given him for his birthday.
His special private mug.
He didn’t give a fuck.
She talked at him for a while as he lay naked on the bed savoring his Scotch. It tasted like a burnt, tarred rope. The extra money he had spent on buying the finest Scotch he could afford was worth every penny.
Susan continued talking, but warm, fuzzy waves were coursing through Burt’s blood and he felt fine.
He felt great. He took another sip of his Scotch.
He was amazed at how quickly that tiny bundle of life had turned cold in his hands.
Warm tears welled in his eyes and rolled unnoticed down his cheeks.
Susan blew on the contents of her steaming mug to cool it and continued talking.
He couldn’t hear a thing. He couldn’t feel a thing. Things were fine.
Some primal instinct that men had acquired back in the days when they had traded the relative safety of chasing saber-toothed tigers for the far more dangerous habit of sharing a cave with a woman kicked in.
When in doubt always agree.
You don’t have to know what they are saying you simply have to agree with them and apologize for whatever cruel, insensitive, beastly, man-thing that you had done.
Didn’t matter what it was. It was your fault and the sooner you took responsibility for that fact the sooner she would leave you alone.
Susan’s words washed over him.
Burt smiled and nodded in agreement. The good-old Scotch was fully on the job by now and he felt just fine, thank you very much.
“Yes dear.”
“Absolutely dear.”
“You are right dear. I am sorry.”
Scalding hot soup poured over Burt’s naked genitals. He roared in pain and confusion.
“What the fuck!”
Burt blundered to his feet, arms flailing wildly in pain, anger and confusion his mind frantically trying to replay the last few seconds of conversation.
The words came back all blurred and jumbled by pain and Scotch.
“I-don’t-think-you-love-me-yes-dear-you-wish-I-was-gone-absolutely-dear-I don’t-think-you-ever-loved me-you-are-right-dear-I-am-sorry.”
Susan staggered backward in terror avoiding Burt’s flailing arms but managing to trip over a chair and went sprawling to the floor.
She lay there, crying.
“I knew it was only a mater of time before you hit me,” she sobbed. “Does it make you feel like a big tough man to hit a defenseless woman?” She eyed Burt with triumph.
Burt staggered out into the hallway and returned with his service automatic. He jerked back the slide, chambering a round, but didn’t point it at the creature on the floor. Instead he kept the muzzle pointed firmly at the ceiling. Even drunk and in pain he kept it pointed firmly at the ceiling.
“Get out!” he roared. “Get the fuck out!” He was sobbing. “Leave me the fuck alone you blood-sucking bitch!”
Susan scrambled to her feet and fled to her room
When she was gone, with warm tears still running down his cheeks, Burt carefully lowered the pistol’s hammer. Pressing the release he dropped the magazine and then pulled back the slide, ejecting the chambered round.
Hobbling down the long hallway to his studio he opened the heavy steel locker in which he stored his cameras, placed the pistol, magazine and loose round on the top shelf and then closed and padlocked the cabinet.
Taking the key, he went back down the long hall, opened the front door and walked, naked, out into the cold night air on the front porch. The cool air felt soothing on his burns. With all his might he threw the key down
Burt closed the door and hobbled back to his room. Closing the bedroom door behind him he threw himself face down on his bed and cried himself to sleep.
------------------------------------------------
Next morning, soon after dawn, Burt was sitting on the sidewalk at the corner of
He had left his car at home and walked the twelve blocks.
From time to time he took a sip of the beer, purely for medicinal purposes. He had learned in the Army that the sovereign cure for a hangover was one, or at most two, beers and a couple of aspirins, in the morning.
A passing City Police cruiser slowed, eyeing him, but drove off when he pulled out his shield case and flashed his badge.
Professional courtesy. Cops don’t bust cops. Not unless you get caught with a smoking gun in your hand and a dead body on the ground at your feet, and even then they would most likely ask what the deceased had done to deserve it.
The rule even covered shit-ass Housing Police cops.
Cops is cops. Period!
A tall, extremely fat woman with a crew-cut, wearing black Keds high-topped sneakers, black trousers and shirt and a white necktie, stalked down Van Ness eyeing Burt with disgust. Through her septum she wore stainless steel nose ring large enough to tether a bull with.
Stepping over his legs, which sprawled across the sidewalk, the lady fished in a massive carpet bag and produced a big steel ring covered with keys.
Selecting the appropriate key she unlocked the front door to
Opening the door, Burt entered the big, linoleum-tiled, reception room and told the receptionist that he was there to apply for counseling. Dusty light filtered through large, unwashed, plate glass windows, ringing the woman’s massive black clad body with a golden halo.
With an air of smug self-satisfaction the receptionist told him that the councilors didn’t get in until nine. She pointed a sausage-like finger at a mismatched collection of dilapidated overstuffed chairs ringing a faded oriental throw-rug and commanded him to have a seat.
As Burt sat leafing through back issues of Mother Jones Magazine he noticed the hand lettered sign painted onto the wall next to the waiting area. It read: “Congratulations! You have taken the first step on your journey of recovery and self-discovery.”
