This ain't no party

Fear of Music / Talking Heads










It was a crisp autumn day. The best kind really, the leaves just starting to turn reds and the air cool while the sun still warm. It was late in the day though, three-ish. Clark and I just out of work, we’d met at the car and as I was ranting and raving as usual, he drove.



Traffic was just starting to pick up. It would be parking lot later, even on the city streets we traveled. If we crossed town quickly, though, the bit of highway we needed to travel to our place in the suburbs would be do-able. It was all a matter of timing.


Since I was upset, voice raised, hands flying about over the days events, it was better to let Clark drive. It meant he wouldn’t necessarily hear all I was saying, but that didn’t really matter. But it would mean we’d get home quicker and THAT was worth almost anything.


“So, she actually says to me, ‘oh yeah, the security guys tackled him, held him down and he died.’ Like it was nothing! She wasn’t even upset. I mean, yeah I know it was over a year ago, and you acclimate, but …. It was one of her students! She KNEW him. And then, when I said, ‘You had him in class? Were people scared oh him?’ Ya know what she says? She says, “oh no, he was huge, but really a quiet guy.” A quiet guy! But because he was big and couldn’t hear the security guard call to him, they tackled him. C’mon on! And you know what else? They didn’t even fire the security people…”


I was livid. I think that Clark was probably a little scared to speak, as he grimaced and looked at me sidelong as we pulled out of campus an onto the street. He might have said that he didn’t know what to say, but I was on a tear again by the time we were in motion.


A mile down the road was the major intersection. This would be the one that hung us up if we hadn’t timed the traffic.


“Oh my…” said Clark as we both noticed first that the car in front of us was empty. He shifted to the left lane as both lanes turned. The middle lane was better to turn left from, but it appeared no one was doing that.


As we pulled around the car, we both noted a person that had to have been the driver standing in between traffic. He was a round faced Black man in jean, grey sweat shirt holding steady a handgun at the driver of the other car, another beater that was stopped before his. Inside that car sat a Hispanic man, his hands raised in surrender, seeming laughing. The man with the gun was shouting for the other to get out of the car, the other was not moving, but was saying everything was cool.


The light caused us to stop parallel to this scene. I glanced at the two outside my passenger seat window and sighed.


“You think that's a real gun?” Clark asked. What was he thinking?


“Yeah.” I answered with what sounded to me as resignm but might have been a little snippy. It seemed a rather silly question.


“You think he’s a cop? He’s a cop right?”


I looked back at the empty car. It was an old, American model. Silver or grey in color and had clearly seen better days. Still, it was the kind of car that even new, didn’t inspire. I looked at the man. There was nothing about his clothes that suggested law enforcement. He was not holding a badge. He was not screaming, ‘police get out of the car.’ He was screaming ‘get the f**** out of the car.’


“No.” I glanced back at Clark. “I don’t think he’s a cop.” I shrugged as if this were merely matter of fact and went on, “So I asked if he was a good student and she said…”


The light turned green and we made the corner leaving the scene behind. Clark glanced to his left at the car wash we passed daily, each day we read the large sign posted in the window: “Thou Shalt Not Kill.”


“You need a new job.” He answered. He, of course, was right.