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Chapter One: Stormtroopers
People ask me sometimes how it started. They don’t teach it in schools, of course. Not many of us who actually lived through the Partition are still around. Not in this neck of the woods, anyway. If you spoke out against it, you were silenced one way or another. The migration took more residents than it brought. Lots of people I know, like Bill and Verna Spikes, got into trouble by social media posts. When people started losing their jobs or were denied credit just because they liked a post, they caught on. I bet a lot of you don’t even know what a post is. Or was.
There was really no one single event that signaled the beginning, but for me, one day in particular stands out.
Sami and I were drinking coffee and watching the news on TV one Saturday morning when the flashing lights out the front window caught our attention.
We looked out the livingroom window. A local police car was parked in front of the Spikes’ house next door. Parked in the street with the lights flashing but no siren.
“I wonder what is going on there?” Sami asked.
“Not sure,” I said, walking out onto the front stoop to see what all the commotion was about. Back then, you didn’t even think twice about watching or videoing some police action. People used to do it all the time. In fact, I remember people on the street stopping to film police brutality, or what they thought might be police brutality. And posting it on social media.
Police brutality? As Americans, we didn’t really know police brutality back then. We didn’t know how dark a person’s soul could be. How that darkness could manifest itself once unleashed by authority. I had witnessed raw cruelty in Iraq, Somalia, and Central America. But we’d never seen it on American soil. And we had no friggin’ idea what was in store for us.
Where was I? Oh, videoing cops. People used to have cameras on their phones. I know, I know, sounds weird. But there used to be phones you could carry around in your pocket. Nope, no wire. Nothing. They used to send signals to towers. You’ve seen those tall monstrosities, rusting in the sky, that nowadays serve nothing better than birds’ nests or target practice. Your cellphone would send radio frequency waves to the closest towers, and tower would relay these signals to a network of other towers in real time, allowing you to talk to someone across the country or even in other countries.
On that particular Saturday morning, a policeman got out of the car and looked at his phone, looked at us looking at him, and looked at the Friedmans across the street who had also become spectators on their front porch. Our neighborhood was pretty safe back then. So the arrival of a squad car with flashing lights was really unusual for us.
It was a little chilly and rainy. November or early December. We didn’t have our Christmas tree up though, I know.
At first, I thought, the Spikes had been robbed. But then I heard the slashing of tires on the wet pavement as a second patrol car arrived and parked in front of the driveway, lights flashing. A police woman got out, she was relatively tall for a woman. Well fed. Wide hips. She walked over to her male colleague, and he began filling her in.
This wasn’t some routine response to a break-in. Morning was too early for a domestic dispute. Those things could of course happen in any neighborhood but typically took place closer toward evening after the consumption of alcohol.
Paula Friedman from across the street waved her hand to get my attention and pointed to her cellphone. I had forgotten mine in the house.
“Honey, can you get my cellphone?” I asked Sami.
While she was gone, I studied the two officers talking, but couldn’t make out any of their words.
My attention was drawn to the Sami’s graduating class sign in our yard.
Laurel High School
Lady Lions Volleyball
Sami Lives Here
I was so proud of her. Not just for the volleyball, and certainly not for her grades, but because she’d become such a good girl. Her mom would have been so proud.
Sami came back a few seconds later, wrapped in the tan woven throw from the sofa and handed me my phone. I read my message from Paula.
Hey! Do you know what’s going on?
I texted back that I had no idea.
Burglary?
I texted, “I don’t know.”
They are not fighting, are they?
Didn’t hear anything, I wrote.
By the time the third and fourth cars arrived, Sami was shivering again. Even with the throw. I was too but didn’t dare go in to get a jacket on for fear I would miss something important.
Those last squad cars blocked traffic. After a very brief discussion, three officers, including the woman, marched through the neatly sculpted lawn to the front door. Bill always kept his yard in perfect condition, although at this time of the year, the grass stops growing in the Panhandle.
I can’t recall what Bill did for a living—that was a long time ago—but he was damn good at landscaping.
The first cop on the scene rang the door bell, stepped back, and rested his right hand on his sidearm.
Verna opened the door. She was about 35 or 40 years old. Slightly overweight. Wearing jeans and a T-shirt. She was a history teacher, Sami’s teacher, at Laurel High School. I didn’t know them well. After Caroline passed away, I don’t think we talked much. Caroline had known Verna the best. They belonged to the same book club.
Sami had her own friends nowadays, and I didn’t have any friends. Oh sure, I had work colleagues that I liked, but I never invited them over to the house. Nor did we meet up after work for a beer, hang out, or watch football on Sundays. I have always been a bit of a loner.
Both Verna and Bill were home. His car was in the garage and hers was in the driveway. She exchanged a few words with the cops, and then turned around and called out to Bill. The officers said something, and then she backed into the home to allow the three cops inside.
“Dad!” Sami grabbed my right arm. “What the fuck!”
My phone buzzed.
Did you hear anything?.
Something was off. I could feel it.
I looked across the street at Paula and shrugged. Mike was looking at his phone. I wondered if he was trying to investigate the event unfolding in front of us or if he was reading the sports news on his phone.
I looked at Sami’s volleyball sign again. Caroline used to go to every game. I would pick her up after work, and we would rush to the high school. For away games, we both took off work early to get there. This last year had been hard for all of us. I had driven to the games all alone. Sat there alone. Cheered alone. Both sad and happy. Then two of us would drive home, enveloped in an atmosphere of jubilance over the wins and Sami’s spikes and saves, but nowadays her games were always clouded in a haze of emptiness. Only two seats filled, where there used to be three. That pretty much summed up our post-Caroline lives.
About five minutes later, the policewoman escorted Verna out the door. Her hands were cuffed behind her. This time they followed the walkway to the driveway and down toward the cars. Bill followed, handcuffed, and escorted by the first cop on the scene.
“Dad, don’t,” Sami warned, as I stepped off our stoop and crossed to the Spikes’ property.
I heard my phone buzz.
“Bill, what’s going on?” I was standing several yards away from my neighbor, just as last cop pulled the Spikes’ front door closed. The officer was in his mid-30s. And was carrying a laptop.
“Hell if I know,” Bill turned to me and said. “They didn’t even read me my rights.”
“Enemies of the state ain’t got no rights,” his escort said, “shitbird.”
Enemies of the state?
“Sir, I am going to have to ask you to step back onto your property,” the woman cop said with practiced authority, as she ushered Verna toward the street.
“Yeah, OK,” I said. “But what’s going on?”
The fourth cop, the one who’d been waiting on the street, jogged up to me while yelling, “Go back into your house, sir. This doesn’t concern you.” He was much older. Maybe in his 50s. You could tell by his thick arms that at one time, he’d been fit. Maybe in the military. Lifted weights. But now he was descending into this a state of disrepair, overeating, drinking his fair share of beer, and struggling to fit into his tight uniform.
“Hey,” the trailing cop yelled. “Go back inside your house, sir!”
Now there were two of them approaching me.
My phone buzzed with another text.
Sami pulled on my sleeve. “Dad, come on!”
“Bill, can I call someone for you?” I shouted around the cop in his 50s.
“I said go back into your house.” The cop carrying the laptop said more forcefully this time.
“Unless you want to join him,” the 50s-something cop said, “I suggest you do what he says.” Then to the cop with the Spikes’ laptop, he said, “Go on, Earl. I got this.”
“Dad, come on,” Sami said, tugging on my right arm with considerable strength.
“Since when is it illegal to stand on my own front lawn?” I asked defiantly.
“Since, I said so.” The older officer stepped onto my property and pulled his taser.
I had a half dozen immature responses I was prepared to unleash on him, until I saw him square his legs and aim his taser on me. Then I swallowed all of my resistance humbly.
“Dad!” Sami yelled. “Now!”
I stepped back slowly, trying to stare down the older cop. To intimidate him as he closed the gap.
I took a couple steps back again. Then one step up onto the stoop, never taking my eyes off the cop, who was keeping pace with me, his taser trained on my chest all the way.
A blender of emotions whirled through my chest. I wanted to be defiant, courageous in the face of adversity. Stand up to the bully. But I also didn’t want to see myself spread eagle on my back halfway in the house, jerking, shivering, and pissing myself, and maybe crack my head on the concrete, only to be handcuffed and shoved into the back of his patrol car.
“That’s right,” he said. “Go back into your house, little pussycat.”
Without taking my eyes off him, I retreated into the doorway.
Sami was tugging and calling on me to come inside. Then she let go.
“That’s a good little libturd.” He lowered his weapon. “Today is not your day. But yours is coming. Trust me. For you and all your commie friends.”
I realized I was shaking uncontrollably.
He laughed and stood up straight. I could see the ruins of teenage acne on his cheeks, mouth traced with smoking wrinkles, teeth as yellow as piss in the snow.
“Wanna redistribute wealth?” He whispered. “We’ll start with your wealth.”
I couldn’t even swallow I was so shaken.
He stepped closer and looked over my shoulder. “Looks like you got a lotta nice things in there to redistribute.”
At this point, I sort of hoped his colleagues would come to my rescue, but they were occupied depositing my neighbors into squad cars.
He leaned in so close, I could have slapped him. God knows I wanted to. But I was too frightened. I just froze.
Then his face assumed a wicked smile while he whispered so softly and maliciously that only I could hear, “Nice little daughter there, too. Don’t you worry. I will take personal charge of distributing her wealth.”
My mind was sprinting haphazardly, irrationally. If it came down to it, what could I do to prevent him from entering? He had a taser. He had authority. I had nothing. He would shoot me down before I could get two steps into the kitchen.
Sami returned. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw her step up on my left, filming him on her phone.
Then, he stood up straight and stowed his taser.
“But not today. No, not today. But your day is coming.” He turned and arrogantly walked across my grass and kicked the Lady Lions sign, knocking it over, before joining his colleagues in the street.
Stormtroopers, I thought. I have just seen my first stormtroopers on US soil.