Lynn Hesse's Blog: Book Signing, page 7

Journal Writing of A Retired Officer # 4:

 

It’s another day on the south side. Busy. Lost of calls pending, most 911-high priority calls. A third of my officers are Army Reserve and in the Middle East serving in the Gulf War. We carry their names on the roster as if they are still present for roll call, ready to work their shift, hoping they will make it home safely.

I’m a veteran police officer in DeKalb County, Georgia. Shit. I’m a veteran road sergeant in bass-thumping, hell-raising, church-going south side. I know my community. I respect them, and they trust my white face.

Every beat officer has handled six to eight calls two hours into their evening watch shift.

I’m good at my job. I’m skilled at protecting my officers, and the people I serve. I am the officers’ backup when everyone else is tied up on a call. Sometimes, I am working a call, and supervising the other calls by emails and through radio traffic while keeping my third ear alert, sensing if an officer hasn’t called in the code 1025, all is well. By now, I know each officer well enough I can tell from their voices, not their words, if something is off. Trouble.

There are at least ten calls pending. Piece of cake. I triage the non-emergency calls from the accident with injury call and the domestic. I send my last available officer to the accident with injury, 41I, and I assign myself to the domestic. My bailiwick. There isn’t any backup possible. Everybody is slammed. Radio advises a domestic occurred at the same location yesterday. It’s a return call. Nothing unusual—family disputes run deep and fester.

When I arrive, the shotgun house is quiet. A woman’s shaky voice yells for me to come inside. As I open the door, I see a tall pre-teen holding a butcher knife in one hand and a woman, his mother, by her elbow. Several times, I order him to drop the knife and the woman to stand behind me. The woman is frozen in fear. She doesn’t move. The boy doesn’t move. I tell the blond-headed kid to put down the knife again and again as I angle my strong side away from him and slowly take out my duty weapon pointing it toward the linoleum floor. I’m less than ten feet away from the boy and his mother. I try the you-don’t–want-to-do-this approach. I am gesturing with my free hand while I talk. I know from training and in-service I can’t physically getaway fast enough or reach him to take the knife away before he can do bodily harm to me or his mother. It’s not like it is on television. Even if we were fifteen feet apart, we’d be in trouble. I repeat the same commands, but the mother stays put, and the boy lifts the knife and looks me straight in the eyes. I see an endless pool of darkness. He is drowning in it.

In that instant I realize he is even younger than I originally thought. He is a boy, not a teenager. If he lunges one of us will die.

I make the decision nobody wants to make, but I have chosen and sworn to uphold the law and be responsible for the safety of others. If the boy moves the knife toward his mother or me, I will shoot him. A shock wave moves through my body as adrenaline surges through me. My body is making my major muscles and organs to respond to danger, the fight or flight syndrome. Mentally, I am prepared for almost any eventuality, but not the “stopping” or killing of a child. Inwardly, I pray “for this cup to pass from me”. Please. I try again to connect with someone wearing the blank stare of a person, who is totally disconnected from reality.

Again, I ask the mother to move behind me. She takes a couple steps toward me, but places herself midway between us giving her son more opportunity to see her. She knows.

The son looks at his target, his mother. Setting his aim.

I stop breathing, place both hands on my 9mm, and start to raise my weapon.

Another officer steps into the room, and the kid drops the knife.

The boy tells me later, his eyes now a deep blue, his mother beat him every day.

Some calls haunt you. Some calls live in your soul and eat at your guts.

 

To know a land, you must dream it.

[image error]William Least Heat-Moon wrote “Blue Highways”and for Christmas I received another one of his books “PrairyErth” (a deep map) for a gift of unusual substance from my husband.

Transposing the details of a topographical map into a visional, a living landscape, is a hard task for me. My brain doesn’t compute the beauty of any landscape I see into lines and symbols on a page to scale. Although I get “it’s easier to comprehend where someplace else is than where you are.” The ending of 2016 spurs a new beginning, but first I must remember. The metaphoric “quoins, ledgers, winds, creek meanders, gravestones, and stone-age circles” make me pause and think of my birth in Southeast plains of Kansas, during the flood of 1951. I have wondered why my parents traveled away from our hometown. My best guess is dad went to find work. Maybe, his cousin convinced my dad to leave Missouri with his pregnant wife, nine months pregnant with me, and drive his old Crosley to Chanute, Kansas.

There are many things I will never know for certain. I will never know why the cave myths and Osage American Indians appeared on paper in my manuscript “Boston Mountains” before my research. Why I named my protagonist, Carly Redmund, in “Well of Rage” and later through genealogy found my maternal line contained a long Irish history of Redmunds, Redmans, and Redmonds on both sides of the political spectrum? What is hidden in our DNA that makes us roam, discover, war, seek the divine, and tell stories?

In “PrairyErth” I learned panthers roamed in Kansas not so long ago. In 1806 Zebulon Pike and his soldiers entered Kansas, the land belonging to the Kansa and Osage tribes for thousands of years, and saw panthers, buffalo, elk, and antelope. I wonder how it would feel to stand alone on a hill and hear nothing but nature. In my imagination I see and feel it, and then I write and world build. Somewhere within me I understand “to know a place in any real and lasting way is sooner or later to dream it.”

**All the quotes are from PrairyErth by William Least Heat-Moon, Houghton Mifflin Co., Boston 1991**

Journal Writing of a Retired Female Police Officer # 2-During the Holiday Season:

 

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ArtLight.com Photo is similar to the ornament my family made.

To show my appreciation, I made gifts for my watch and made sure they had a Thanksgiving and Christmas meal on me. Think about it. Nothing is open on Christmas, but Waffle House and, if I remember correctly, Dunkin’ Donuts. I think everyone had a good time at the holiday precinct parties, but the single officers, many of them divorced, seem to enjoy it the most.

One year my whole family took the old-type light bulbs and painted Santa Claus faces on them, turned them upside down, glued a heart shaped-foot stand, and created a cotton beard and tasseled cap. My daughter, Nikki, was about eighteen and her boyfriend of the moment helped us. We had an assembly line for more than a few days because each stage had to dry before going forward with the project.

I think we made thirty-five or forty Santa ornaments for the watch and another twenty or so for the Tharp Family Christmas, a huge undertaking with a wooden backdrop and a live nativity scene with costumes, lights, and Christmas carols.

No. I didn’t start the tradition. Mom and dad, Mr. & Mrs. Mickey Tharp had bought a very long nativity record back in the fifties that we had to listen and sit through before Santa Claus and presents would arrive.

By the way, for all you dance lovers, my mom’s married name was Twyla Tharp.

I digress. Many caregivers needed a break during the holidays from their loved ones with mental health issues. Our 911 calls always increased. (There are an unusual amount of suicides during the holidays.) Officers would have to explain under The Georgia Mental Health Act that we couldn’t take a person out of the home unless they were a danger to themselves or others. We did have a Mobile Crisis Unit with an officer and a nurse riding together and answering evening watch calls at Center Precinct. Mobile Crisis answered calls involving citizens who called because they were off their meds and requested help, or a family member called because they were exhibiting violent behavior.

Because my husband was a firefighter in DeKalb County, we saw many of the same tragedies, such as loved ones killed in car accidents or in house fires. When I was a detective in the Traffic Specialist Division, a unit that handles fatalities, vehicular homicide, and hit and runs, one of my duties was to make death notification. During the holidays, I remember one notification where I drove to East Point, Georgia around 3 a.m. to deliver the sad message to an African-American woman. Her daughter had been hit head on by a car that jumped the median on I-20 near Candler Road. She was very calm and didn’t react. Most people go into shock or scream. I asked her if she needed for me to call someone to be with her, and she replied that she did not. She had been waiting for me because she had heard about the crash and the driver’s death on the news, and somehow, she knew it was her daughter. I stayed for a few more minutes to make sure she was okay. I believe we had a cup of tea or coffee together. As I left my card, the woman expressed concerned for my welfare, being out in the middle of the night, alone, and she wished me a safe journey home, a blessing from the bereaved. That woman’s strength, her acceptance of the limitations of life, and her kindness touched me, and I have never forgotten.

My sincere wish for a Happy Holidays to all who are lost, forgotten, or alone. Remember you can always call 911.

 

 

 

How Writers Write Fiction 2016: Storied Women

[image error]An online course I took this fall through the University of Iowa International Writing Program  let me  exchange ideas on a global scale with professors and other writers.

The five-week course was How Writers Write Fiction 2016: Storied Women.

A video, reading and writing assignments, and optional readings were provided with each assignment. I worked at my own pace. Here is a peek into what I learned:

Assignment #1:

Voice and Identity: I wrote a new piece based on a childhood about finding out my family would be moving from Vine Street in Webb City, MO. This was the most difficult piece. Until this piece, I hadn’t written from a child’s point of view.

Assignment #2:

Desire and Point of View:  I took an old, unpublished short story and revised it. I concentrated on the main character’s big and little Ds, his desires and how that influenced the conflict.

Assignment #3:

Immersion: I concentrated on world building. I took a half-done historical manuscript, “Boston Mountains” with a twist and honed the sensory elements in a couple of scenes where some characters were above ground in the 1800s, but the main character was below, lost in a cave subculture.

Assignment #4:

Cast and Plot: I took a fairly new scene I wrote for my current in-progress manuscript, “Another Kind of Hero” and revised an interrogation scene by changing the characters to an all female cast.

Assignment #5:

Narrative Experimentation:

I chose “Boston Mountains” again to play around with sequence and fragmentation. I don’t like reading fiction that uses this technique, but it was fun to play with the form, especially because there were already some futuristic components in some of the scenes.

I recommend the course. It is free and will be offered again soon.

Best,

Lynn Hesse

Journal Writings of a Retired Female Police Officer: #1 Entry

I find it hard to write about my police work experience. Writing fiction helps me transform the emotions into a positive and gain perspective. People keep asking for the non-fiction version; this is what I remember:

 

I left a police career because I felt I had fought the good fight and could fight no longer without jeopardizing my humanness. The untenable love-hate relationship where the odds are stacked against you to triumph over tragedy and death can be intoxicating and all consuming. Consuming being the optimum word. Before I write about the lure of police work, let me give you some history.

 

I graduated with scholastic honors in April of 1980 from the 15th DeKalb County Police Academy. After three years of being scared every shift that I would fail, put another person’s life in danger, or humiliate myself in front of my fellow officers, I decided I had seen enough, not every situation, but enough to warrant the respect of being a full-fledged officer, not a rookie. I could’ve taken the sergeant’s test, but I waited. I wanted to be sure “beyond a reasonable doubt” I could lead the men who created rumors about me to discredit my character, downrated my decision-making abilities, gave me unjustified low evaluations, and refused to give me the training necessary to gain the certificates required to qualify to take promotional exams. While they refused to allow me to take any vacation days for over three years, I waited. I trained. I studied. I steeled my heart.

 

Some officers began to speak to me in the hallways. Remember: Paramilitary organizations aren’t friendly to newcomers, and I was thought of as a female taking away a man’s job.

 

When I wouldn’t accept a low evaluation without documentation from my sergeant, they called in the big gun, my major. He advised me to reconsider being an officer. I remember he blessed me out, ordered me to stay put in his office, and then he played the game of leaving a folder with my name on it on his desk before he left in disgust. He had told me I was more suited to be a secretary, should re-evaluate, and emphasized I wasn’t cut out for law enforcement.

 

He accused me of being emotionally unstable because I had teared up while asking for an audience with my sergeant about the low eval. The sergeant refused  to talk to me. (By the way, I later learned this was illegal that an employee must be given time to talk to their evaluator.) I asked for a day of vacation. The sergeant refused.

 

When the major returned, he suggested I resign.

 

I refused. I told him I had a child to raise and wasn’t leaving police work until I was ready to go, and he could tell all the other ranking officers I was there to stay. Also, I demanded a vacation day, and dared him to write me up. I believe this was the first time I ever stood up to an authority figure. I was the good girl, the middle child, always happy to please and work harder than anyone else. In fiction, we would call this a turning point in the plot and a big change in the character.

 

Overnight, I was transferred from North to South Precinct, the high-crime area. They thought they were punishing me. I loved it.

 

The working environment became more hostile. I joined other women officer who deserved to gain rank based on their test scores. We asked for an audience with the Director of Public Safety and Chief of Police. They told us to sue. They knew it would take years and money for a lawyer. In the meantime, they wouldn’t have any female sergeants, and they could crank up the propaganda mill to cause resentment among the officers who were neutral about female officers being on the streets. They knew without female sergeants there couldn’t be female lieutenants, captains, or majors. In 1986, the first female sergeant was given her strips. When I left in 2003, we had one female captain.

 

I joined the International Association for Women Police and helped other women in law enforcement from other agencies charter a chapter in Georgia and hold a conference in Atlanta in 1988. I was determined to obtain training geared for a female officer. I went back to GSU to finish my degree.

 

I learned to document every detail of my daily work, each conversation with my ranking officers. I watched what I said and how I said it. They criticized my voice/radio traffic as being too soft, too fast, or hysterical. After many unwarranted verbal dress downs, stealing stats from my daily activity sheets, consistently sending me on the last call of the shift, and demanding I redo spotless paperwork, I bought a pocket tape recorder. By the way, I was a single parent, and they liked to change my shift without notice, and make me stay late to do paperwork while I was forced to pay someone to watch my child.

 

In those days an officer was not paid overtime if you stayed late finishing paperwork. Overtime pay took another suit that I wasn’t directly involved in.

 

One particular hard-nosed sergeant called me at home, and made me come to the precinct on an off day so he could yell at me about a ticket I wrote. This was totally unprofessional and uncalled for on the sergeant’s part. I wore a white T-shirt, tennis shoes, and blue jeans, the only jeans I owned. The sergeant started a rumor that I came to the precinct braless. This lie haunted me throughout my career: Officer L.D. Holmes (my last name before I remarried in 1984) came to the precinct “no bra, with her tits bouncing.” Over twenty years later, a young rookie asked me if the rumor was true.

My new novel, “Well of Rage,” is now available in paperback on Amazon.

https://www.amazon.com/Well-Rage-Lynn-Hesse/dp/161009249X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1472958036&sr=8-1&keywords=lynn+hesse+well+of+rage [image error]

Evan’s ‘Animation’

My friend Evan Guilford Blake, a playwright and novelist, recently read from his work at Atlanta Vintage Books.

[image error]I had some thoughts about his book “Animation.”

Evan takes the turning points in the life of a fifty-something unemployed divorced man. He weaves mundane events together with the significant moments.

Aggie Agysytn, the main character, journeys from white- to blue-collar digs, and in the process his views shift — and the changes pave the way to transformation. Aggie begins working out and losing weight as he sheds years of complacency.

Disassociation is the takeaway theme. The urban dweller’s isolation in a modern sterile environment of sameness is evident as Aggie struggles to develop interpersonal skills, starts to date, and becomes part of the community. Through the internal dialogue, the reader is privy to small surprises, the music of everyday. Aggie resets his life and begins to understand what it feels like to live in the moment, state his opinion, risk commitment and truly be alive. Animation.