The One You Fear: A Little Lesson From My Past

NOTE: In the summers of 1998 and 1999 I was assigned, in my capacity as a Parole Officer, to work with a task force made up of the City PD, county sheriff's department, State Police, and State Parole. Most of what I did was walk a beat with various cops on hot summer nights in the worst parts of town. I was 27 years old, in terrific shape, boxing at a local gym, and convinced I could handle anything that came my way. That feeling ended with a single conversation. I recorded it not long after it happened. I relate it to you now.

The sergeant pointed to the shirtless man standing under the lamppost. “Now there, that's the guy you have to be afraid of.”

I felt confused. The guy I had to be afraid of had the caved-in face of a junkie, a flat chest, pipe-stem arms and no ass at all. He did not look frightening. He looked like a skeleton that had just swallowed a medicine ball. I said so.

“Look again.”

I did. A shiny red scar ran down his belly like a seam. Next to the scar was another, the shape of a nickel. There was a third one on his shoulder, a big angry pinkish-red mass that was covering the remains of a tattoo. It was clearly defined on its edges but inside of it were little round holes where the skin was undamaged. While I looked at the guy I was supposed to be afraid of, but wasn’t yet, I thought how odd it was that he did not know we were watching him. Later I realized he just didn't care.

“Most people you can frighten with your gun," the sergeant said, hitching up his own gunbelt as he said it.
"Not this guy. That scar down his belly? You know how he got that?"

"A knife."

"I don't mean what did it, I mean how he got it."

"How could I know that?"

"The type of the scar. You see a scar that hooks like that, it means somebody gutted him. Put the blade in and then sawed upwards until they hit the sternum. You do that to a man, his guts fall out. His guts fell out, but he didn't die. The docs just pushed them back in. And the scar next to it, you saw that, right? Bullet hole. Somebody drilled him. So he's been stabbed and shot and it didn't put him away. You know how it is with getting hurt?"

I shook my head.

"Pain is like..." He paused to grope for the word. "It's like experience. When you were a kid, you fell and skinned your knee, did you cry?"

"When I was little, yeah."

"Why?"

I couldn't tell if he was kidding me. He had the face of someone who doesn't kid, who doesn't even know how to laugh. "Because it hurt," I said finally.

"You cried because to kids, pain is new. Every kind of pain. There's the first time you skin your knee, the first time you get stomach cramps, the first time you break your finger. Pain is new and new is scary. But you don't cry when you skin your knee now, because that kind of pain is old news. You don't cry when you cramp up or bust your pinky, because you got experience with that kind of pain. It hurts, but it don't scare. Well, you stab a man and he lives, you shoot a man and he lives, and he's got experience with that. The fear you'd feel when it happens, when the knife sticks, when the bullet hits, he doesn't feel it. Not the same way, because he's been through it before and he's still on his hind legs. If I stab you or shoot you, you'd be in a ball on the ground. But he can function. Do you understand what I'm layin' out? There's no kind of pain you can dish out he can't take."

I looked at the guy I was supposed to be afraid of. Still leaning against the lamp post. Still staring out at the world from behind dead eyes. I wondered what he'd felt when he'd seen his guts fall out. If it had been panic and terror they had left no traces on that gaunt, cavernous-cheeked, pockmarked wreck of a face. "What was it happened to his shoulder?"

The sergeant clicked his tongue, which was probably what he did in place of smiling. "He had his wife’s name tattooed there. When they split up he burned it off with a steam iron. He’s crazy, and he doesn’t want to go back to jail. But if you stay on this beat, you’ll have to arrest him someday.”

“And when that happens, I’ll have to shoot him?”

“When that happens, you’ll have to kill him. Or he’ll kill you."

We walked on. It was early; the whole shift was ahead of us, and I had to pay attention to my surroundings. But I couldn’t help thinking about the man with the scars. And that I was afraid of him.