Seed of a Story

I've moved back to Michigan. For good this time.

For the last thirteen years I've gone back and forth, spending my summers in Michigan where I run the farm, and writing the winters away in sunny California. But as Woody Guthrie said, "California is a Garden of Eden; A paradise to live in or see. But believe it or not, you won't find it so hot, if you ain't got the do-re-mi."

And folks, I ain't got the do-re-mi.

So I set off with a U-Haul trailer hitched up to a laughably small Kia Soul, five long days across America with my buddy Daniel along for the ride. Now a lot of folks ask me how I get ideas for stories. The fact is, they come from just about everywhere. Something happened on that trip across America that you could call the seed of a story. I'd like to take that seed and transpose it into a short story and set it in the Wild West. There are plenty of things that will have to be changed, obvious things, things like cars vs horses, a trailer vs a wagon, but those things are easy enough. I won't change how it ends though. It's a raw bum of a story, and it might make your blood boil, but that's the way some stories go.

I'll tell it to you now.

Day five on that trip, just after crossing the Mississippi River into Illinois, a state trooper pulls in behind me. Gets right up close. Veers to the left lane to look at my plates. Pulls up further to look at me. Then he drops back. He hangs out in my blind spot for a mile, another mile, still another. Dragging that trailer behind me, I'm going slow; cruise control is set to 60 mph. And there's that cop, hanging out the whole time. He tails me for a full twelve miles before turning off into the freeway median.

A few miles up the road I exit for gas, glad to be rid of him. There was a good measure of harassment in the way he'd tailed me, but he's gone now, and I'm starting to breathe a little easier.

So there I am, pumping gas, when a voice booms behind me. I turn around. It's the state trooper. Tall, barrel chested, portly. It's the same guy who was trailing me; he tells me how he thought it was odd how slow I was going. I tell him I'm just being safe.

Then he starts in with his questions. Who's the guy riding with me? Where am I going? What do I do in Michigan? What did I do in California? How many miles are on the odometer? ...yes, he even asked me that. He asked me a whole lot more, all of which I answered, then he circled back around to my speed. I point to the wheel hub on the trailer, where a sticker has been placed in reverse so that in the rearview mirror it reads 'Speed Limit 55.'

The cop doesn't care. "What have you got in the trailer?" he asks.

"My things," I tell him.

"Mind opening it up so I can take a peek?"

Now I'm not the first to go ranting and raving about personal freedoms, but right there I'd about had enough of him.

"I'd rather not," I said.

He nodded. He stuck his hand out and told me it was my right to refuse, and we shook hands and he walked away.

You can take a guess at what Daniel and I did. We got the hell out of there. The only thing I had in mind was to put distance between me and that psycho cop, and that's what I did. I drove over one hundred and twenty miles clear to Bloomington, Illinois, where we stopped at the Fort Jesse Cafe for lunch. It seemed like we'd gotten clear of trouble, and damned if I wasn’t glad. Water under the bridge.

But you know the story doesn't end there.

Not a half a second after I pull back onto the road, there's a cop behind me. I stop at a left turn arrow, and when it turns green I ease out. Lights flash behind me. I pull over to the side of the road, and Daniel, looking in the rearview mirror says, "There’s two squad cars back there."

The officer that comes to the passenger-side window is young and amiable. He tells us it’s just a routine stop; my tires were over the white line there at the turn arrow. He asks a few questions, then he tells us to get out of the car. Both of us.

Standing in the grass beside the road, a third squad car pulls up. A cop gets out. He has a dog with him. He takes the dog around my car and around the trailer while the other two cops ask me a series of questions that sound eerily familiar to the line of questioning that the fat state trooper three hours up the road had asked me.

Then the cop with the dog comes over.

"I'm going to give it to you straight," he tells me. "My dog has given me the sign that he smelled narcotics in your trailer, so that gives me the right to search it. Now it's best to be honest in these situations, so tell me; what have you got in the trailer?"

"Narcotics?" I ask. "What narcotics?"

"My dog can't talk, so that's why I'm asking you. What have you got in the trailer?"

And there we go. Good bye law and order. Adios to any semblance of jurisprudence, of due process. Hello crooked cops.

They shove me and Daniel against the squad car and frisk us down and cram us into the back seat. Sitting there like a pair of criminals we watch the cops open my trailer and haul out what amounts to my life's possessions. They throw everything into the grass. Just toss it. They jerk out bins of books and throw them, they throw out bookshelves, lamps, potted plants, cookware, all of it tumbling into the grass and spilling open.

This goes on for nearly half an hour.

After they've kicked through the last of my things like crazed jackals searching for scraps of bone, they shrug. No narcotics. They pull us out of the squad car and tell us to load up.

If you're asking yourself if they helped load up what they'd just ripped out and strewn in the grass, you've never met a dirty cop.

Most of the bins were broken. The handles busted. My printer busted. The lamp busted.

Several friends of mine, whenever a curious situation arises, have taken to saying "What would Balum do?" It's a line that always gets a laugh. I know what Balum would have done, and you do to. But this isn't a fictional story. It's not Balum, and it's not the Wild West. It's just a shitty little corner of Illinois, and there ain’t no beating a crooked cop. So I loaded up my broken things and I got in my car, and I headed on up the road. On to Michigan. Because sometimes, friends... sometimes a man just wants to get home.