Alf shook me awake.
It was still dark, so I was bit confused as to why until he whispered
that the cops were on the way. He said someone had told my family I was
sleeping in his car, and that they had called the cops to come collect me.
“If you don’t get out of here right now, you’ll be in deep shit,” Alf
told me.
I scrambled out of the car, gabbing up what few possessions I had, then
headed to the corner. His street was a dead end. So, I didn’t have a choice of
which way I could go until I reached East Main.
I thought maybe I could hide in someone’s yard while the streets were
still empty. But I was scared of dogs, a number of which had already started
barking at the sign of a stranger passing their houses.
At East Main I had to decide whether to go up the hill or down.
I figured my family would think I went down the hill to the business
district and the laundry.
If they knew where I slept, they certainly knew where I worked and
might presume, I might hide out near there.
So, I went up the hill instead towards the train station and the woods
that then still covered the hilltop overlooking the train station and that
whole side of Great Notch.
The hill and the woods were places kids went to in order to smoke pot
and neck, or even to use it as I did then as a place to hide away from their
enraged families.
I made it to the top of the wooded hill just in time to see the first
of the police cars appear, followed by three vehicles I knew belonged to my
uncles.
Although I felt exposed because I had climbed out onto a ledge to get a
better look, darkness protected me from them, and it was unlikely they would
even look up to where I was anyway. Still I eventually slid down and huddled
under the overhang.
Later, I learned of the confrontation that took place at Alf’s house
and how the cop car screeched to halt in front of it, cops leaping out,
immediately followed by my uncles, all carrying flashlights that they shone
into the car.
Alf apparently shouted for them to stay “the fuck” away from his car,
then produced a flashlight more powerful than theirs that he shone into their
faces.
Once they were convinced, I was not sleeping where reports said I would
be, the cops and my uncles left, and I saw their cars reappear, then disappear
down the other side of the hill towards Route 46.
I waited for a long time before the chill and the need to pee drove me
back to the street, then down the hill, passed the laundry to the center of
town and a strip mall where there was a 24-hour laundromat. Someone had already
broken the lock to the toilet, allowing me to relieve myself. I figured I would
find no place warmer or more secure than this so slid under a bench in back and
tried to get some sleep, almost certain that when I reported to work in the
morning my family would be waiting for me.
Surprisingly, they were not.
But faced with another torturous day of hard labor, I dropped a dime in
the public phone and called them to let them know where I was, and to ask them
if I could come home.
They came and got me, thus ending a short but dreadful stint at the
Little Falls Laundry.
No comments:
Post a Comment