He wondered that he could remember it all so clearly while his home address now seemed somehow to evade his mind. The only thing he was sure about was that there was a nine in the number-- one-oh-nine or one-nineteen-- or was it a seven?
The sun was by now starting to set, and the shadows of the trees he passed lay preternaturally long across his path. He felt a stab of pain, realizing he was very late, his dinner was getting cold, and his wife was probably peering through the front window of their house, wondering whether something had happened to him.
Again panic surged inside him, and to make matters worse a police car cruised by slowly. He felt a stab of guilt. Why should he feel that way? He had never in his life done anything illegal, but there it was-- the dull knife-edge of guilt grinding away in his gut. He cast a dirty look after the police car, watching its driver craning his neck as he looked in the rearview mirror.
“Ought just leave people to their own business,” he mumbled to himself. “Have to go looking for trouble where there is no trouble at all.”
The police car turned on the cross street ahead and vanished. But John knew it would return-- it was just going around the block.
“Well, what's it all about,” he wondered. “Do I look like a purse-snatcher? If I do, I'm making the worse get-away in the history of crime.”
He tried to walk faster, hoping against all reasoning to elude the police car, which he knew would return.
The squad reappeared before he could even reach the cross street. It crept slowly next to the curb, keeping pace with John.
“John Townes,” the cop called out.
John glanced at him, only briefly but long enough to see that he was young, too young to be a cop, too young to be taken seriously. He kept walking, trying to quicken his pace.
“Oh, come on, John,” the cop whined.
“I don't know you,” John said, refusing to look toward the squad car. His eyes remained focused on so distant point, and his jaw muscle bulged as though he was trying to crush his dentures together.
“I'm not going anywhere,” the cop assured him.
But John did a convincing job pretending the cop didn't exist.
“I'm right here with you,” the cop added, the squad car crawling along at a painfully slow pace. “You're not gonna get away.”
“I didn't do nothing,” John complained.
“Who said you did anything? Did I say you did anything?”
“Just leave me alone!” John cried, now losing his patience.
When he finally reached the cross street, he had to pause at the corner. It felt as though he had run a mile. A pain flared in his side.
The squad car stopped, too, the cop regarding John with a bored expression.
When John looked toward the squad car, he seemed startled that it was still there.
“Remember me?” the cop asked.
“Oh, go away,” John said.
“John, just get in the car.”
“Why? I didn't do anything. I'm a law-abiding citizen--”
“Yeah, I know--” the cop tried to calm him.
“--Why, I pay your salary!”
“Oh, you're the cheap guy,” the cop murmured.
“What?” John demanded. “What did you say?”
“I said, "Get in the car,"” the cop said, trying to make it sound reasonable.
“But I didn't do anything,” John protested.
“I didn't say you did anything. I'm not arresting you. I'm just taking you home.”
“I can walk. That's what I was doing-- walking. No law against that.”
“So you know the way? You know where you are, then?”
“Yeah,” John said, but his voice sounded weak, hollow. He stared at the cop, and saw the cockiness on the guy's face. It wasn't the kind of cockiness you could take off and put on like a mask, but the kind that was always there, as though the guy had known from birth that he would always be right. John felt like punching the guy in the face.
“So where are you?” he insisted, and seemed to delight that John couldn't answer. “Just get in the car, John. It's going to be dark soon-- then you would really be lost.”
Kathy