Born on First Base

I stand in the booking room as the sheriff’s deputy completes the paperwork for the young Latina we just arrested on a routine traffic stop. She’d been driving on a suspended license, and is likely an illegal from Chihuahua given her wallet full of fake IDs and the ease at which her hands slip behind her back for the cuffs. She glances up and I watch two melancholy eyes brim with tears until she averts her gaze. It’s her first night in jail, yet somewhere along the link between Mexico and Colorado, a coyote or a cousin prepared her for this. If she was able to post bail she’d be out of jail tonight until the court hears her case. You break the law, you go to jail. But all I can see at the sobering hour of 1am is a woman who wants a better life. Her cell phone rings again and again from the bottom of her orderly pink purse.

A young man sits on a metal bench in the corner using his hands to prop up his blonde head. A thousand angry thoughts race through his mind and he’s probably 17. As he waits to be processed the deputies wave and smile at me behind the thick plate glass. I am human to them. I am stripped of nothing but easy access to a bottle of hand sanitizer and a few hours’ sleep.

I join three deputies to check the local clubs for bar fights, drugs, and those proprietors who’ve failed to keep current on their liquor licenses. The cowboy saloon is tame; revelers perform an inebriated version of the electric slide as the deputies scope the room for crime. We then enter the smoke-choked patio of the county’s Alternative Lifestyle bar. A good-humored man sends swirls of smoke in my direction and inquires if I want to be a cop. I tell him I already have a job and he seems disappointed. Topless men wearing only g-strings dance on the floor and I wonder if the uniformed deputies will be mistaken as strippers.

We stake out a Motel 6 for meth lab activity and then cruise the local trailer park where two weeks ago a young boy mutilated a street cat and showed zero remorse for this act. The kid is now in the psych ward. The deputy tells me she loves her job despite the spit in her food and the colorful insults that kids as young as seven launch her way.

Ten hours later, I’m home. Kiwi greets me at the door at 3am and together we climb the stairs to catch a glimpse of Casey in the soft glow of the light he’s left on for my safety. I whisper my cop stories to him and stare at the ceiling thinking of the young boy and the cat and the unanswered cell phone.