Dubuque Street

Please note the following, in honor Dubuque law enforcement, originating from a night in 2008:
      Inside their locked quarters, Dubuque County Law Enforcement deputies gather, readying themselves for the afternoon shift. Four men and a woman banter to each other’s vanities, lighten each other’s loads.
      “You all know I’m the best looking one here,” Joe Kennedy says, and he laughs. One of them offers a monologue, as if this were SNL.
     “Tim’s now taking over for Stoney...”
      A call comes in about an escapee from Two West, Mercy Hospital, while the charades ebb and flow.
     “What are we gonna do about that?”
      The room lacks a ouija board. The yields of camaraderie are lights during the dark paths ahead..
     The ghost of Friday’s future does not tap Joe Kennedy’s big shoulder. It won’t be till 8:30 P.M. that he’ll have lived through chaos and accident, tickets and chases, a warrant and stealth. Tonight he manages and calms three accident scenes, runs chase routes; brings empathy to youth, middle age and elderly.
      Joe wears 25 to 30 pounds of gear. A flashlight, gloves, radio, door opener to release the dog, baton, pepper spray, cuffs and gun hang like a rapeler’s mountain gear.
     “We’ve got to go!” Joe pushes the door and he heads to his car; black, rising, disciplined Danner boots digging down the hallway.
   “What’s hard is trying to tell when someone is telling the truth.” He speaks about the living moments of law enforcement when truth evaporates. “I can usually tell when someone’s lying.”
    . In the squad Joe rubs his dog’s muzzle.
     “We spent five weeks in training together in Indiana. He’s like one of my kids. He’s part of the family.” Roy responds but looks worried and  tosses his head, moves under the deputy’s caress and whines softly. Joe drops his window in Brittany Woods,  then stops near a corner. A man stands with a cigar, smiles and says “I’m the Neighborhood Watch.”  The man laughs. A light rain starts to fall.
     In Dubuque Joe pulls alongside a truck at a light and makes circles with his hand for the driver to drop his window.
      “Wait,” he says, “I’m going to pull over the car in front you.”
        In the parking lot near Sherman Williams Joe stares at the broken tail lights of the Ford Aspire. He squints then opens his door. The dog whines and moves in the back seat. The driver blows clouds of smoke from his window.
        “He didn’t have registration, “ the deputy says, “He said… ‘I know.’ - I’m going to ticket him.”
    “He’s a sex offender,” Joe says soberly, after he’s delivered the ticket.
   
      A garbled, low voice comes across the radio.
     “Asbury… police station… accident.”
     A three car collision in front of the Asbury police station. A shaking teen shivers in the cold. The hood of her car has been torn back like the lid of a can of tuna. Headlights, bumper parts, plastic and glass litter the street. The misty rain covers faces and each face lifts its worry into the rain. Earthy smells of curb leaves pour onto the scene and the cold grows under the gray skies.
       “It’s not good,” the teen’s mother says into her cell phone then waltzes to the squad and opens the back door. Roy catapults forward, fur rising and head launched toward the curb. Joe jumps.
     “I just wanted to talk to my daughter.”
     Joe glares at the possibilities. Roy scampers in the grass. Once the dog returns Joe pats him along his ribs.
     “Good boy!”
     Afterward, officer  Kennedy says,
      “Roy’s well trained. He could have bit that woman.”
       Five minutes later, another accident. Everyone is okay.
     Next stop, a farm south of Dyersville to check on a group of  Rottweilers.
     “This is a trick.” Joe says, opening then slamming his door. If the dogs are outside they’ll come to investigate.
     “I don’t see any dogs,” Joe tells his dispatch.
      While the sun sets he helps a stranded woman on the highway;  tickets a semi that has pushed another vehicle into the median; weathers the slanting rain, the tall, wet grass and the traffic wind that tears at him in his hunching stance alongside the road.
     “ The semi driver tried to tell me he didn’t hit the other guy.”
     The light has left the fields.
     
     Outside  Dubuque,  Joe asks, “You want to come along?”  It’s pitch dark and cold and misty. Joe and I and two others creep toward a dark house. Joe and I move quietly around the left, the others stake the right.
     “If he runs out the back he’ll come through here.” Joe points to the path. The grass sparkles with drops of rain. After a search along the drive and into the house with a flash light, we leave. The warrant will wait.
     
       The night ends at the Kerper Blvd. municipal gas facility.
     Roy gets out, stalks a small tree then heads to a field.
     “He’s looking for a ground hog over there,” Joe says.
      When the dog returns the other two deputies drive up to the tarmac. Roy rushes toward them with a wagging tail and smiling eyes and he nuzzles each one as they get out of their car. The shift is over, a few piercing stars light up the black sky.