The Humper Game Pt. 07 Ch. 02

"One more move like that, and I'll run you in for resisting a police officer, son. You just sit there for the moment, hear?

"Now, will someone please tell us what's going on?"

I got in first. "He has a grudge against me, from something that happened in high school. He apparently spotted me and my wife as we were walking along here, and he accosted me, from behind, and threw a punch at me. I managed to dodge and get him into a hold where I could talk to him. I was starting to try to get him to calm down enough that I could let him go without just being attacked again, when you drove up."

He looked kind of skeptical. A woman jumped in. "I'm the one who called 9‑1‑1, and I saw it all. I don't know anything about the background, but what he said is pretty much exactly what happened. The other one came hurrying across the street and up behind them, almost running but real quiet. He didn't say anything. Then he grabbed him by the shoulder and pulled him around. He trash talked him for just a teeny bit, then hauled off and swung at him. The other one dodged and grabbed his arm and pulled it behind him. He told him he could break his arm or something, but he wanted to let him go if the other one would let him be and just talk. And then you drove up. I never heard of such fast action from the cops before!"

A man near her said, "I didn't notice him until he grabbed the guy, but from there on it was just what she said. And I never saw someone move so fast as that one did, defending himself. His nose would have been flattened—the guy swung real hard."

The other policeman took a step back, backing up to a window on a store front, nightstick in his left hand, right hand next to the butt of his gun. The one who had asked questions said, "You, ma'am, and you, sir, please stay here in case we need to get statements from you. Thank you for your descriptions.

"You two, please carefully remove your wallets and let me have your driver's licenses."

You can bet I moved slowly and carefully! I took out my wallet, and removed my license and handed it to him. He collected Sharkey's as well.

As he went over to his car, I saw that another police car had quietly rolled up and stopped, and the one of the officers in it was getting out. Well, I had heard the car but not paid attention. He moved to the front corner of the squad car and stood, his hand also hovering next to his gun. The officer who had our licenses got in his car and apparently was calling in. After maybe two or three minutes, he emerged.

He handed me my license and said, "Mr. Morris, by what we've been told, this is technically assault and attempted battery. No weapons were involved, and you defended yourself without injury to anyone. If you were to want to press charges, it probably wouldn't result in anything. I'd suggest you continue on your way, if that's all right with you."

I said, "Sir, I wasn't looking for trouble, and I'm just visiting here for the afternoon, seeing some people we know. I really would like to just let it go. And thank you."

I stepped over to Ellen, who enfolded me in a hug and held me. She spoke very quietly. "Phil, I was so worried for a moment! I'm so glad he didn't hurt you, but I'm glad you managed it without hurting him, either."

I held her, but my attention was over her shoulder. The officers who were standing by had visibly tensed up, and I noticed the officer I had been talking to didn't offer Sharkey his license.

He spoke first to the two witnesses. "Sir and ma'am, I think you can go, but I'd like to get your names and addresses, if I may." He did this, writing the information in a notebook he pulled from a pocket. But by this time, I had spotted that he had a camera on his uniform, and I thought that the notebook was either camouflage or a backup. After that, he turned to Sharkey.

"Mr. Sharkey, this isn't the first time you've attacked someone without provocation, and you also have several months' worth of unpaid parking tickets. I'm afraid you will have come go to the station with us to discuss these things."

I let Ellen go, and we walked off. I thought Sharkey wasn't stupid enough to try to fight or even run, but if there was any kind of trouble I didn't want to be there.

I was very glad Ellen had been holding our purchases. I surely would have dropped them, probably breaking them, most likely slowing me down, too. When we got to the car, she said, "Phil, give me the keys and let me drive, please." I was a bit puzzled, but I did what she asked. She handed me the bags, and we got in.

As we drove away, she said, "You probably would be fine, driving. You look like you're under control. But after the first moment, I was worried more about your collapsing under the stress than about his hurting you. I'm so proud of you! You handled that perfectly, and you're not in shock now. You didn't throw him onto his head on the sidewalk, and I've watched you practicing enough to know that a flip and throw was the next step. You caught yourself and handled it much better.

"I wish I could say that this was the attack I saw, but it wasn't. It was kind of a good warmup, maybe. I feel a lot less worried than I did before. You keep at the taekwondo, hard. And I love you more than I can tell you.

"By the way, it took me a moment, but I have a video of almost everything up until the officer told you you could go. Lousy quality, but we should look at it. I think I got his attack and your defense. If so, I want you to show it to your instructor and ask for critique."

"I'll do that." I knew my form had been lousy. I hoped that my reasons for doing things the way I did would be understood. But also, there were times when it didn't pay to argue with Ellen, and the critique I would get might be valuable.

To jump ahead, my instructor had the head of the school watch it, too, after he'd seen it. I did get useful critique on form. But to my surprise and great pleasure, both commended me on showing judgment and control. They both said that being able to react automatically was crucial, but that being able to think and adapt was as well. They had me describe what had gone before Ellen had started the video, and told me that I had done very well. Since neither of them was given to excessive praise, this buoyed me up a lot.

Despite all that interruption, we were almost on time to Jenny's—not late enough that I thought I needed to call and say we were delayed. We knocked on the door, and in a minute Jenny opened it. She hugged us both firmly. Of course, it had only been three days since we had seen her.

She took us into the kitchen to meet her mother. You see things from time to time about mothers and daughters being taken for sisters. No chance of that here! Mrs. O'Malley was a plump, cheerful, motherly woman. Mid-forties at a guess, but I wasn't good at that. I needed to sit down with Ellen and work out a way to practice—just as I needed to learn to notice things like people's clothes and grooming.

Then we went into the living room and met her father. He was a little more than average in height, slender, and fit-looking. I thought that Jenny probably inherited her body type from him—but of course, she might look rather different in twenty years and more.

Mr. O'Malley said, "I'm very glad to meet both of you. Jenny's told us a lot about you, and it's all been good. I've been happy that she has such good friends. Congratulations on your marriage! I hope your life together will be as good as ours has been."

I said, "That reminds me. Ellen, you do have that disk, don't you?" We'd brought a copy for Jenny, of course, besides the one we'd given Scott and Martha. Jenny stepped out to put it somewhere, and returned. I said, "There are still shots Ellen's brother took on there, besides the video. Sometimes they're more interesting." Steve had been able to zoom in on particular things, of course. I was amazed that he'd had attention to do that much with the video camera, but in many ways the stills were more striking and also more revealing. Not surprisingly, he had an artist's eye for photography. I just hadn't made the connection.

By the way, I didn't know how the glass on the sound booth was treated so that pictures—video, and the ones Steve took, both—didn't show any reflections at all, but they didn't. When we got to see the pictures, we'd found they were perfect in that regard. A lot of them were from the receiving line and the reception, too.

We continued talking with Mr. O'Malley, while Jenny went to help her mother. It wasn't very long before dinner.

As we ate, I said, "I apologize for being a little late, but it was kind of beyond our control. It wasn't late enough to call you and warn you, once we were able to get going. But for a few minutes, I thought we were going to have to call and ask Jenny to come bail me out of jail."

The three of them stopped eating and stared at me. I said, "Well, only for two or three minutes, maybe, but I mean that. Jenny, you remember Sharkey, right? I'm pretty sure you know all of this part. He finally figured out that I had reported to Mr. Miles what he had done to Moira." To her parents, I said, "I don't think I should go into detail, but this girl, this young woman, was very shy. Very nice, but she hated being the center of attention. Believe it or not, I'm a little the same way, but for her it was really painful having everyone looking at her, especially if anything was wrong with her in any way. And this boy, or young man, arranged to make her an utter mess, in circumstances where everyone would see a little later on, and she couldn't even clean up without everyone seeing—most of four hundred plus people. She was in tears and in anguish."

Jenny broke in. "That's exactly right. If it had been me, I would have been so spitting mad that I would have just gone and cleaned up, letting everyone get an eyeful, but something really drastic would have happened to him. But as it happened, Phil and I and another couple of friends went to talk to her, and found her, and Barbara ran and got things to clean up the mess. Later on, I went to her room to invite her to do some things with us, and I found her in tears, and had to argue and argue with her to get her to open her door to me. She was ashamed, and she had no reason to be. None at all! And that's exactly why Sharkey had chosen her as his victim.

"Anyway, what he'd done was a serious violation of rules. We were always supposed to treat each other with courtesy and respect, and this was almost as far from that as you could get. This happened in gym—that's why everyone was there—and Phil passed the information to those in charge. They set it up to give him the same opportunity again, but with someone watching and in a position to do something about it. This was one of the grounds crew, and he is big, um, just huge, and strong, and he came charging over and picked Sharkey up by the scruff of his neck—literally!—and told him off while he dangled there. And then he was in serious trouble for the rest of the year over it, and it was no worse than he deserved.

"I'm sorry, Phil. The rest is yours. Except—you mean he's here in town?"

"That's right. But wait for it. Anyway, Jenny and Ellen know this. My role in his getting punished came out in connection with something else, something much more serious, and Sharkey came up to me in the lavatory and started threatening me. 'You'll live to regret getting me in trouble.' like that. And a couple of really big guys, guys I barely knew and who weren't at all friends of mine, stopped and told him that they thought Moira was really nice, and in their book Sharkey had gotten himself in trouble, not me. They said that if anything bad happened to me and it wasn't really obvious that Sharkey wasn't to blame, they'd have a little talk with him. And they told me they'd seen that I didn't go running to anyone to protect me—there had been a guy who harassed me a lot, from the very beginning, and my approach was to avoid him when I could and be as civil as possible when I couldn't—but that if I had trouble with Sharkey they wanted to hear about it."

I was getting choked up, a little, so I paused a moment.

"Well, he's a sneak and a classic bully—really brave when he's tougher than someone, and a complete coward with anyone who's tougher than he is. So I never had any trouble, then.

"But today, we were downtown looking in a store for something, and as we were leaving, suddenly he grabbed me from behind and turned me around. He said that there wasn't anyone to run to now, so let's see if I was really a man, and he hauled off and threw a punch at my face. I managed to dodge him and grab his arm. I twisted it around behind his back and started trying to talk him down, so that I could afford to let him go without hurting him. And right then the police drove up.

"They asked what was going on, and I told them. Oh, they made me let him go, and he turned around and tried to jump me, and got a billy club in the belly for it. And a couple of bystanders confirmed what I had said. They checked for, I guess, outstanding warrants or something, and told me I could leave. Ellen took a minute to pull me together, so I heard them saying to Sharkey that this wasn't his first unprovoked assault recently, and that he had a lot of unpaid parking fines too, and they were taking him to the station to discuss these things.

"So now he's got another grudge against me. That's the way his mind works. He attacks me, I defend myself, he gets in trouble, so I got him in trouble and it's all my fault."

Ellen said, "When he grabbed Phil, I grabbed my phone and started recording. We didn't take time to look at it. I don't know how much I got at the beginning, which is what really matters, but I think Jenny probably will be as interested as I am to see it. So maybe after we finish eating, the three of us can look at it."

I said, "I really didn't mean to take over the dinner conversation with that. But honestly, I was worried for a couple of minutes. My good luck that the police showed up so fast, and that the bystanders paid attention, and that Sharkey's been his usual charming self to other people and gotten noticed."

We talked of other things, mostly the wedding. Jenny said, "I can watch that video after you're gone. I was there, after all! But I think Mom and Dad will enjoy it, too. Or at least Mom.

"So what kind of presents did you get?"

Ellen said, "We didn't open any. We had a plane to catch. Kelly was going to open any that looked like they might have perishables in them, and organize things a little. She did so much on the wedding, too. I wish I had the faintest idea of something to get her, because she's been such a good friend, and now all this."

Jenny hesitated a moment, and then said, "Whatever you have that finds nice friends, especially women, it's still going, Phil. Though most of Ellen's friends are just as nice, too! But yes, meeting Kelly was a treat. And Pete and Tammy, too. But Kelly could see my, um, conflicted feelings, and she offered me sympathy without putting me down at all."

Ellen said, "Jenny, Kelly is as nice as anyone I know, and you know that's a high bar. But one reason she could sympathize so well is that she's kind of in the same situation. She met us, really, as a couple. Well, it was the first morning we went running, after Phil got there, and here's this young woman who is running exactly the same speed he is. So when Elise and I passed her, we slowed down, and I asked her to consider him as a partner, and she was interested. But she knew we already went together.

"But she made clear from pretty early on that she was interested in Phil. She's not the least interested in taking him away from me—I mean, though, if I weren't there, she would really go after him. He would have to turn her down, as things stand, for conscience's sake—not his, hers. She's a Christian, and knows the scriptural teaching on that. That doesn't mean she can't wish, though."

"It's my conscience, too," I said. "Leading someone into what she believes is sinful is wrong, barring something overriding. I might be tempted into it, but I sure would try not to be. But Kelly is happy that Ellen has me, she sees why it's right. And for all that she's an old lady of maybe twenty-three, there are some guys who are appropriate and interested in her. She's just kind of not letting herself see. That's partly leftovers from a previous relationship, which left her pretty hurt. But one of these days, one will make it plain enough, and I for one will tell her to see whether he's the right one."

I tried to help with cleaning up, and was told firmly—by three determined women—to take Ellen and go talk to Jenny's dad. He was a civil engineer, and hearing about his work was fascinating.

Jenny and her mother came in, and Jenny said, "Let's see that video you took today. Mom's interested too." She had us transfer it to her, and she showed it on their big TV.

I had no clue how Ellen started recording so fast. At the beginning, I was shaking Sharkey's hand off my shoulder, as he, well, ranted at me briefly. He threw the punch, and everything from there on was right there.

Jenny kind of stared at me. "You told me you'd been learning some martial arts, but I had no idea, Phil! That was awesome! If I ever need a defender, I know where to go now."

"I'm just lucky I caught myself before I threw him. I'm afraid I would have really hurt him, maybe permanently, if I'd thrown him down on his back on the sidewalk. It's bad enough on a mat with a wood floor under it, with a helmet, when you're ready to be thrown. And I'm really a beginner, so I'm limited in what I can do. But that move, I've gone through it endlessly. I'm amazed I converted it to a wrestling hold.

"And it's like I said. Now he's got another grudge. I doubt he'll give me an opening like that, ever again."

"He may go after the wrong person and get himself killed. Hopefully in a way that's clearly self-defense. Like Wagner with Mr. Miles."

Jenny's parents knew the policemen in the video—I didn't know how well, but plainly more than just knowing their names. I said that I was impressed at how they arranged themselves to offer backup, clearly being ready for trouble, without making it too obvious, trying to defuse things.

I was really glad to have met the elder O'Malleys. I doubted I would ever have the kind of feelings for them that I did for Sam's aunt and uncle, or what I hoped to develop for Ellen's parents, but they were nice. But we needed to head back, returning Mia's car to her. Ellen brought out the gift we'd gotten for Jenny. It was a little plaque, with a bit of verse about how precious a friend someone—the person addressed—was. It wasn't cutesy the way most such things were, to my mind at least. Heartfelt is the word that comes to mind.

Ellen told Mrs. O'Malley, "We didn't know you, so we had to guess. I hope you'll remember this evening with pleasure, and that this will remind you. Nobody really needs more knickknacks, but I'm afraid that's what it is." If you want to know what it looks like, you'll have to go ask to see it. I wouldn't have chosen it, but I relied on Ellen's taste, and it was plain that Mrs. O'Malley was pleased.

We drove back without incident. We weren't really tempted to take the scenic route. We were eager to get home to bed.

Saturday rolled around all too quickly. We said most of our goodbyes the night before, giving the gifts too. Mia drove us to the airport. We had breakfast with her, before we left.

We both hugged Mia when we parted. "This has been a wonderful, blessed time for us," I said. "We had a lot of time to ourselves, but we also really enjoyed getting to know you. I mean you, Mia, first of all, but all four of you certainly. And seeing Pete and Tammy every evening was nice for us, too.