MY "REGULARS" or, as they were also commonly known, "FREQUENT FLYERS"- Major Ronald Wright (USAF retired), PART 1 of 2

Major Ronald Wright once told me that he wanted to be drunk for the rest of his life, and as long as I knew him, which was just a little over a year, I never once knew him to be sober. I pointed out to him once that being drunk all the time would probably kill him and I remember he just shrugged and said, “That’s half the point I guess.”

I first met Wright on a sweltering summer day in the summer of 2002. He lived with his long-suffering daughter-in-law in a tidy little house on Lake Street. His son had died several years prior, of what I don’t know. On that day, Ronald’s daughter-in-law, who supported her family by running a daycare out of her home, called the police department where I worked to ask us to remove her Father-in-law from her house.

When I asked her why, she outlined the situation with a beautiful economy of words. It occurs to me now that she had undoubtedly been forced to explain her problem many times before, and in such rehearsals before friends, family and neighbors she had prepared well for our conversation. She was direct, matter-of-fact, and unemotional as she talked, which impressed me more than the hysterical sobbing and exaggeration that I routinely encountered during such phone calls.

Her problem was that her father-in-law was drunk more or less all of the time, and when he became drunk he became “a real problem.” Because she ran a daycare out of her home this was not only intolerable, but it also posed a threat to her very livelihood. Furthermore, she advised that Wright had a serious heart problem which was treated with medication that conflicted dangerously with alcohol. Although he had not yet technically committed a crime the laws of Vermont allowed me to take him into protective custody under such circumstances and transport him to a detox center where he would be held until such time as he could regain sobriety.

Over the daughter-in-law’s objections that I would stain the reputation of her daycare I brought my cruiser to a stop directly in front of the address on Lake Street. Citing concerns that “it would not look good” to have police showing up at her day care she had asked me to park on a side street and enter the residence through a rear door. I wasn’t interested in escorting a violent, belligerent drunk with a serious heart problem any further than was necessary, however, so I simply ignored her. Plus, I reasoned it would keep her from calling the police department frivolously in the future if she knew that the whole thing would play out in front of her nosy neighbors.

In through the front door, across the living room and up the stairs to the Major’s room- it was a route that would become all too familiar to me in the coming months. The room itself was the very picture of military order. The bed was always made up as tight as a drum with perfect forty-five degree hospital corners, and a pad of paper and a single pencil was all that sat atop the uncluttered surface of a table against the opposite wall. Besides the bed, table, and a dresser the only other piece of furniture in the room was a leather chair which had been pushed beneath the room’s only window. Every time I came for the Major I found him sitting in that chair.

The first time I ever entered the Major’s room he pulled himself up out of his chair, bellowed “What the f---! Like hell!” and took a swing at me. Obviously his daughter-in-law had not informed him that I would be stopping by. Luckily for me, he was three sheets to the wind and about forty years out of his prime so I had no difficulty getting him in handcuffs.

To be continued…

I SEE DEAD PEOPLE

As time passes, my memories from my brief tenure as a police officer have grown dim and kind of fuzzy around the edges. Names and streets elude me now. I'm glad that I committed some of these memories to the BFZ rock pile while they were still fresh in my mind. Some remain as yet undocumented outside of affidavits and incident reports. This I intend to remedy at some point. Unfortunately some memories are still horribly vivid though. Like the time I kicked in the door to an old woman's apartment and found her decaying remains in the back bedroom, or the half dozen suicides I responded to. There was also the S.I.D.S. death and "Pie-Dog's" car crash down on the lake road. That's to say nothing of the dozen or so "untimelies" that I was called upon to document for the state. With latex hands and a screaming heart I turned them over, undressed them and ran fingers through their hair, looking for wounds. I noted lividity, counted medications, and diagramed the scene. Every corpse is filed away mentally, catalogued in vivid, macabre detail. I can remember feeling a sort of tingly, light-headed sensation each time as I walked into the presence of a deceased human being.

I want to be macho and say they didn't bother me, but that's not true. They did. They still do. Worse than the corpses though were the walking dead- men and women who were trapped hopelessly in their self-destructive lifestyles. The walking dead haunt me. They were slaves of compulsion, caught up and born along in a current which would lead inexorably to their own destruction. Every time I dealt with them I would come away with just one question- How's it going to end? I wondered if they saw the trajectory of their lives as I did.

I'm not sure I could help them, but sometimes I want to try. I know Christ is the only answer to their problem.