“Some guy just went flying by on a motorcycle!”

Twas a Friday night, well past 11 o’clock, and we were lounging about watching a movie. THE WIFE had stepped onto the front porch for a bit of fresh air a few minutes before barging back in with the oh so titilating news. As the man of the house, I dutifully went out to investigate (i.e. figure out what she was talking about).

“A guy went by on a motorcycle really fast, then another guy came by, went to the end of the street and turned; then I saw him go by again. I don’t think he made the turn.

We live on a corner lot. The street that runs next to the house dead ends into another street one block south of us. People speed through here all the time, which never quite made sense to me because you can never go more than two blocks in any direction without hitting a stop sign.

I took a moment to process The Wife’s account of the events before summarily dismissing her concerns. Lately I’ve adopted this policy: If the story ends with horribly tragedy, it’s likely a exageration, misunderstanding or a bad dream. I’ve found the same policy works pretty well with libs and tree-huggers; if the point of their lecture is that the end of the world is coming, society will collapse, the polar bears are going to die… my eyes just kind of glaze over and I go to my happy place. Earlier in the evening, I had noticed a gaggle of teenagers hanging out next to that one idiot’s house, you know, the guy that keeps his basketball hoop in the middle of the sidewalk. If there was any idiocy going on, it was probably related to them and, if it wasn’t, they’re closer to the end of the street than we are.

Summarily dismissing The Wife’s concerns is one thing, but I’m still obligated to pretend like I care, so I walked, shoeless, mind you, off of the porch to at least verify that the kids were still hanging out by the corner. No such luck.

“Help”

One word. The night was perfectly quiet. Perfectly still. It wasn’t a yell; it wasn’t even a cry per se, but almost just a spoken word. The word seemed to muffled by quietness, like a whisper in an empty gymnasium.

I ran toward the word. I could see nothing, but I heard the word again about half way up the block. I dialed 911. By the time they answered, I had arrived.

He was 20ish, laying across the sidewalk; head toward the street, illuminated in a circle cast by the street light. I could see the knobby tire of his bike poking out of a shadow about 15 feet away. He was holding his leg. Moaning. There’s no way he landed where he lay: he had apparently dragged himself into the light. Ironically, he probably landed quite a bit further from the street, near the entrance to the cemetery.

The dispatcher transferred me to another dispatcher. I panted out the location and the details that I knew - basically that Some Guy had dumped his bike.

“It was a black guy. About 5-9. He’s headed towards McDonalds.”

I dutifully repeated this information to the dipatcher, assuming he was talking about the guy on the other bike. Or possibly this was a hit and run. More random information spilled from The Guy, none of it making any particular sense, but I passed it all along. Then I smelled it.

When I arrived, it was apparent that The Guy was conscious and there did not appear to be any blood. I kept back at least 5 feet because… well… because I didn’t see a need to get any closer. I wasn’t going to hold his hand until the ambulance arrived or help him get up, so I just stayed clear. I could smell the sweet smell of booze spilling out of The Guy from 10 feet away where I standing. Any pity that I might have had for The Guy was immediately replaced ten-fold by the annoyance I felt when I realized that I had been repeating drunken rambling to the police dispatcher.

Four cruisers arrived in about 2 minutes. Seven officers and a college kid out on a ride-along. They encircled The Guy and began interrogating him. I heard talk of video cameras in the cemetery, something about a 357 and a shotgun and, of course, “they made me do it”. He kept repeating a name. He was drunk and probably in shock.

Cries of “My leg hurts!” were answered with “The ambulance will be here in a few minutes, where’s your friend?” Apparently the officers had the foresight to leave their pity at the station, which allows them to get down to business a little more quickly.

Entertaining as I’m sure the rest of the scene was, our civic duty was done. We checked out with one of the officers and made our way back home.

The movie had ended while we were gone. The police came to the house an hour later to take The Wife’s statement, so all of our neighbors got to see a cruiser parked in front of my house at 1 o’clock in the morning. I sprained my foot running down the street with no shoes on.

LESSON LEARNED.