| Chapter 1 (excerpt): Night came again, and with it the fear. Evening had once been a peaceful time for me, a few hours to wind down after a healthy day’s work. Now my life was considerably different. The quiet was unsettling, the little noises even worse. The brief glint of a headlight off the window glass quickened my pulse. The rustling of a twig or a tree could be nothing at all, or something for worry. I spent my time listening and waiting these days. But for whom or what? Somebody had told me, “Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you.” I think it was meant as a joke. Who could really say whether this was paranoia? The assaults I had suffered were real enough. So were the verbal threats, the anonymous notes, and those guys with their eyes fixed on me, whispering behind my back. At night my fears intensified, watching a police cruiser shine its spotlight on my home and minutes later answering my telephone only to hear the heavy breathing of an unknown caller. It was all intended to provoke exactly what I was feeling right now; all intended to bully me into backing down. How far was I willing to go? How much of this before I fell into line and behaved myself, or alternatively surrendered and found some other line of work? Something had to give. That was pretty clear, I thought, glancing down at the gun in my hand. Had I really taken to arming myself around my own home? This was no way to live. It seemed to me that I was the last guy who would have been voted “Most Likely to Take On the Establishment”; for that matter, the last guy you’d expect to be put on meds for depression— particularly in my twenties, the prime of life. I had wanted nothing more than to quietly do my job, to protect and to serve the public. I thought about the crowd with whom I grew up, the old friends. They were out there somewhere, taking life the way you’re supposed to do at our age. They had parties, they went boating or skiing or camping, they married and had kids. As for me, I couldn’t even keep a girlfriend. My ongoing tension and mood swings had scared the last of them away. So there it was, me against the world. Not that I didn’t have support in some sense—there were channels and authorities that had my back, at least up to a point. I was working through the system, and my charges were being taken seriously. But at the end of the day, or at the beginning of the night, those channels and authorities went home. They weren’t here to help me listen for footsteps or watch for headlights. I thought about that, clinched my teeth one more time, and recalled the unlikely chain of events that brought me to this crossroad. |
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