Flying Glass

Suddenly, I became homeless. The reason -- or the sequence of events getting me here -- is rather straightforward, but behind it all is a long ridiculous story. I'll relate all that to y'all in bits along the way.

But let me begin with the beginning of homeless- carless- ness, when, in the distance, I could hear sirens and I strongly suspected that the shrill, piercing noice was all about me.

I was leaning against the 97 Buick Skylark that blocked the driveway, my fingers were dripping blood. I couldn't remember where I had left the crowbar.

My sister, Carol, and the woman who was, until recently, her significant other -- but was still significant to her and to this story -- were at the porch of a house two doors down.

Slowly, quietly [their sirens off] two cop cars, three policemen on motorcycles and an ambulance rolled into view from the north. Soon, in dramatic fashion, I was ordered to face away, put my hands on my head and drop to my knees.

While a few of the police talked to Carol and Becky, I was handcuffed and told to sit on the back bumper of the Buick.

"So, what happened here?" an older policeman asked me. "Aren't I supposed not to say anything? Isn't that what they do it in the movies?" I said. It was all very surreal. "This isn't the movies; this is reality." said the philosophic policeman, flatly and kindly. "Well, I knocked out some windows," I said. "What with?" I was asked. "A crowbar," I said. The trunk of the car was still open and stuff that had been in the truck was on the street alongside the car. I had pulled the crowbar from the well in the trunk which held the temporary tire.

I was asked to stand. "How did you get the blood on your hands?" asked a young cop. "I don't know," I said. "Flying glass," said the older policeman. "Shallow cuts."

Carol and Becky were all this time in discussion with their own set of Elk Grove cops. "You're a psycho," yelled Becky at me at one point. "Now, don't taunt him," responded one of the police guys surrounding me.

A young medic from the ambulance, who identified himself as Adam, began a close examination of my hands: "Are they sore? Feel any hard bits of glass?" "No," I said, "They feel OK." He looked over the cuts; believed there were some that could use a stitch or two; cleaned my hands as he could and wrapped gauze around four or five digits."

The older cop said, instructively, "You shouldn't do this." He meant everything -- the mayhem. "OK," I said. The cop added, "If you come back here, we'll arrest you." I was surprized to know I wasn't to be arrested, now.

"5150?" asked Adam of the cops as he led me to the ambulance. "No," someone said.

Adam had me sit in the gurney-like seat for the injured person. I was driven away to what would be a long wait in a hospital ER to receive care -- including a single stitch -- for the minor, shallow cuts on my hands. The Buick, my laptop, my coat were all left behind in the Buick in front of Carol's house. And so now I'm homeless, carless and with only the clothes on my back and a hundred dollars in my wallet and no idea of what to do next.