The cop in my yard elicits a forgotten memory: Sarah and I, strolling through Bonnaroo festival grounds at night in the spring of '08.
I veered to avoid a tall thicket of dead grass in our path while she opted to face it head on and walk through. She'd screamed then, having found her ankle in the grip of an old man.
He laid there naked in the grass with this cheeky look on his face, riding sky-high on whatever type trip of which he'd signed up. It took a moment for me to get Sarah free and walk on, yet he remained fixed on us with that stupid gaze while we moved past, not offering a word. Sarah got over it, yet for me this run-in was the root of a series of nasty nightmares for weeks to come.
Craning my head to meet the face of the officer standing over me this morning, a yard pebble dropping lazily out of my mouth, I can't doubt he knows he's setting himself up for a few of his own.
He just stands there taking me in, lying out here in the stones, clothes still forgotten. "Do you want some identification?" is the only thing I think to say. The officer's name is Ferguson, and this jogs my memory as he maneuvers me to my feet. Ferguson? Ferguson.
He is walking me to the house now. "Have we met somewhere?" I try again. "Your name, I think I know it."
"Get dressed," Ferguson says. "We're going for a drive."
******
From the looks of him I have a decade on who will likely be my processing officer Ferguson. I'll get indecent exposure, to be sure. Maybe have to register as a sex offender. But I'm not cuffed and my new friend isn't making conversation with me; he hasn't read me my rights, or asked a question of any kind.
Instead we pull up to Mantua Commons Cemetery. We walk plot after plot, his hand leading me at the back. He stops before a headstone shrouded in bouquets and wreaths in varying stages of growth and discolor. Pictures are fastened to some of them. Sarah's twentyish face smiles smugly up at me in the one I took, probably the same year she got her ankle grabbed at Bonnaroo.
I turn and Ferguson stands a few paces back observing, eyes on me like he's patiently waiting for a battery-powered tool to reacquire its juice.
