The Lady Policeman

The Lady Policeman

fiction
edward w pritchard

I didn't know my grandfather too well. He and my grandmother had divorced when I was young so we mostly saw him at family gatherings, although such visits were brief because his ex-wife, my grandmother, seemed to feel that she had first rights of possession to the family and he more or less complied. Once in a while my grandfather would come to one of my football games, or he and my Dad and I would go fishing , and the two of them had taught me to box, but other than that I didn't see him too much.

I was surprised how much smaller he looked when I saw him recently. He had lost muscle and weight and was a lot smaller than my Dad, and was probably forty pounds smaller than I am now and a couple of inches shorter than I remember him, probably due to shrinkage from aging, from being over 70. I work out a lot and know a lot of big guys from playing college football but I was still surprised to see how much smaller grandpa seemed that day.

We were going to carry boxes into the church for the annual charity auction when I noticed his size. It was usual for him to be at Church, he didn't go much, not even at Christmas, but my Mom, his daughter-in-law had asked him to come, and I was elected to drive and help him carry boxes.

I saw a side of my grandpa I didn't know that day at the charity auction. My grandmother was there with her friend, boyfriend I guess, and when Grandpa saw them together he got real mad in a hurry, and became aggressive and belligerent. He walked up to them both and started an argument right there in Church, which was really out of character for him because he he was usually laid back, and had always told me when I was little to be a 'good sport' and 'not cause a scene' and that type of thing. I had always heard he didn't want a divorce, but had just always sloughed it off, you know those kind of things happen to other people and they learn to deal with it, but I guess he never did learn to deal with it. I guess he was still jealous and possessive and things quickly escalated and he turned kinda sideways in front of this guy who was about 10 years younger than him, I guess, and hit him in the stomach with his elbow, and then using the same forearm and elbow for leverage hit the guy in the throat in one spontaneous move. The guy fell hard, grandma started screaming, and before I knew it grandpa was trying to viciously stomp the guy laying on the ground.

I quickly grabbed grandpa and flung him about five feet and started to help the guy up. Grandpa glared at me and tried to rush the guy again so I instinctively tackled grandpa and held him up in the air. For that minute that I held him off the ground he seemed old to me, and not as heavy as he should have been. In a minute or so a large black lady policeman who was working at the auction came over to arrest Grandpa and things settled down.

I rode with him in the police car and he apologized about ten times to me and the lady policeman for causing a commotion. The policewoman must not have been too concerned about him because when she walked him to her car she had cuffed his hands in front of his body. I remember that because as I looked at the handcuffs I remember the blemishes and scars on the backs of his hands. I also remember feeling kind of sick and empty from having to tackle him that way and especially for how easy it was to fling him and then hold him in the air.

The policewoman didn't arrest him after all, and was very respectful to him and said something nice about his apartment which was on the Lake when we dropped him off. Later when she was driving me back to my car, she said its hard for old people to live alone like that, and said to me specifically, that that's why she hadn't arrested him for what he had done, and then she trailed off in her speech and then she said again, that she was glad at least he lived on the Lake. I looked from the backseat at her eyes in the rear view mirror when she said that about being glad he lived on the Lake and I could tell that she knew that someday she would live alone also.