Two Snippets Of A Police Stop
Who Understands This Hell?
Alfred Hitchcock
not laughing. our hands on the car in the position. “assume the position.” you know how it goes. you have to try to live. survive. make it to the other side of the morning. we kept looking at each other with a look of doom on our faces. Fats was shaking like he was an alcoholic who needed a drink. they are going to kill us. Shoot us. Cool always cracked jokes when we were in a tough spot. I liked that about him. It was Cool’s way of trying to remain calm and in control. I wasn’t laughing. I was looking at Fats. Stupid ass Fats. All I could think of at that moment for some reason was the first time I watched Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho. That movie shook me badly. For weeks afterward, when I would take a shower, I would leave the shower curtain open. I could not forget that guy coming in the shower and killing the woman with a knife. Stabbing her up, then disposing of her body like she was a piece of trash. Crazy ass Anthony Perkins wasn’t going to stab me with a fucking knife.
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
I was in a reggae band back in those days. Cognitive Distortion was the name of my band. Playing music was why I woke in the morning. My father, on the other hand, never liked my band or my pursuit of a life on stages playing music. That is also why I never told him about my own crazy experience with the Hyattsville Police Department. He would have blamed it all on hanging out playing reggae music all hours of the morning. But that was nonsense. Everyone I knew had a fucked up story about encountering a police officer in Hyattsville. All of them were senseless.
Like a fool, my bandmates and I passed near Hyattsville one evening after a late gig up the road in Baltimore. Got pulled over. Said we ran a stop sign. A fucking lie. We weren’t even officially in Hyattsville but we were close to the border. Too close. Who was to argue? And what could we do anyway? Four black boys, blasting Bob Marley and the Wailers, singing along loudly. They hauled us out of the car like trash on the streets. Swarmed us. Batons, pistols. Holy shit.
“Where the drugs, niggers?”
“Where is the dope?”
“Who y’all trying to rob?”
I wanted to laugh. Wanted to say, officer; are you fucking crazy? But I said nothing. I knew and we all knew: you go mute with these fucking pumped up racist maniacs. Act like you can’t talk. Pretend like you are the Hunchback of Notre Dame and just be dumb.
They yanked our band equipment out of the car and scattered it on the road. “We know you got some drugs. All niggers got drugs.”
Thirty minutes they kept us out of the road. And over and over — “nigger,” or “boy.” Then “nigger” again.
“If we find any drugs, we are going to shoot one of you,” one of them said over and over.
They smoked cigarettes and plucked ashes on our instruments just for the hell of it. It was like it was sex to them. I imagined their heads exploding as I lay on the ground, rifle pointed at me. We rode back to the city quietly that night. Didn’t say anything.
(this is a work of microfiction based on actual events)
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