Chapter 60: Wedded Bliss

Saturday, June 21, 2008

I continued riding with Hank Jenkins for two weeks, and he signed off on turning me loose on the public on my own. During our time he taught me about the night and graveyard shifts, much like Jerry had taught me about the day shift and general police work. We also brought in a number of bad guys on various warrants, taking criminals off the street and otherwise making Matucket safer for all. It seemed like every shift would start with Hank handing me a stack of warrants and photos of individuals who it was deemed would be better suited in the custody of the MPD, and we would try to collect them, all the while continuing with our regular patrol duties. It sure kept us busy!

That first Friday after I went back on duty, I took Kelly over to the Cherokee Grill for a burger and a beer before we went to a movie. It was my first time in the place since the shooting. My ‘Dream Team’ put me on lockdown until the mess was resolved. As Cavenaugh had said, “The last thing we need is for some photographer to take pictures of you coming out of a rowdy drunken cop bar following a celebration of your murdering a group of poor immigrants who were just traveling through. That will be on the Internet before you even get home!” I had grimaced at the description but couldn’t deny her logic.

Several people turned towards me when Kelly and I entered, but most simply smiled or nodded. Mack Waterhouse was standing behind the bar, and he welcomed us. “Grim, get over here.”

“Hey, Mack, you remember Kelly. I’ve brought her in before.”

“Sure, she’s the brains and you’re the brawn,” he said, smiling.

Kelly laughed. “His mother and I have been saying that for years!”

“What am I, the walking punch line for my family? How’s it going, Mack?”

“It’s good. Listen, I just wanted to tell you, you did good that day. You’ve been away for a bit.”

I nodded. “My lawyer told me to keep a low profile. I couldn’t go out or anything. Part of the time I went over to Athens and stayed with Kelly. No restaurants, no parties, no bars, no nothing.”

“Figures. You doing okay, with the shooting, I mean?”

“I’m okay, Mack.”

He reached down and pulled out a couple of shot glasses and poured some Jim Beam in them. He pushed them across the bar. “What about you?” I asked.

He shook his head. “I’m on the wagon. I have been since Margie cleaned me up. Doesn’t mean I can’t congratulate you on getting through that and back on the force.”

I sipped my shot, smiled, and then finished it. Kelly, however, just sort of wrinkled up her nose and passed it over to me. Mack looked at her funny, and I said, “Just get her something with a funny color and one of those silly umbrellas, she’ll be good to go.”

“You got it!”

“Thanks.” I picked up her shot glass and carried it to a table in the corner. A couple of minutes later Tim Hungerford and Denise Kevorkian came in. We waved them over and they sat down with us.

“Welcome back!” said Tim. “We were wondering when you’d be back.”

I explained the lockdown routine again. “Now that I’m back, I can get out again.”

“Wolinski said pretty much the same thing. He was in that first evening, Monday. He came in with his wife.”

“How’s Jerry doing?” asked Kelly.

“Seemed okay to me. He said he had been a bit rocky after the shooting, but he’s been talking to a few people, and he’ll be good.” He looked at me curiously. “You saw him afterwards. How did he seem to you?”

“Jerry will be all right. He was a little shook up, but that’s normal. Listen, when that sort of thing happens, you need to talk to people about it. If you just swallow it and keep it inside, it will eat you from the inside out.” I smiled. “I ought to know, right? I’ve probably got more bullet holes than the rest of you guys combined! He’ll be fine. I’ll ride with him any time he asks. I ought to give him a call, get him over here some night.”

“I saw him in the hospital, and then again about a week later, after he got out. He seemed to be getting better.”

Denise giggled at that, and we all looked at her. “I think I know the reason for that.”

“What?” asked Tim.

“I saw Sarah in the Pig a few days ago. After Jerry was released, she dumped the twins with her mother and packed Jerry off to Chattanooga for the rest of the week. She told me she spent a lot of time nursing him back to health. At least that’s what she called it.” She giggled some more.

I snorted. “As far as I recall, that wasn’t what was shot!”

“Still, I bet that would improve my morale! I’m feeling kind of poorly, darling!” Tim told Denise.

“Fine. Go get shot!” she responded.

Kelly looked at me and said, “Forget it! You’re already too healthy!” After that we ordered another round of drinks and dinner, and then Kelly and I went to the movies.

Eventually it was time to turn me loose and let me solo. I already knew that I would be on either the night shift or graveyard shift. Your choice of shift was mostly controlled by seniority. The day shift, 0800 to 1800, was the most desirable shift, and you needed the most seniority to work days. The least desirable shift was the graveyard shift, which ran from 0000 to 1000. Surprisingly, though, I would probably only be on that shift to fill in for guys on vacation. Graveyard was also the shift with the least amount of action and almost no command staff around, and it had the fewest patrol officers. Some surprisingly senior guys were on the graveyard shift, simply because they didn’t have to put up with a lot of horseshit at that time.

That left me starting on the night shift, 1600 to 0200, like I had just spent training with Hank Jenkins. I had done my week on nights with Hank Monday to Thursday, and the second week Tuesday to Friday. That made my first solo four-day week Wednesday, June 11, to Saturday June 14. The following week was going to be a short week since I was going on vacation to get married. The plan was that I would work several days the following week, ignoring the four-on/ four-off rule, taking Friday off to rest and do whatever I needed to do before getting married on Saturday, June 21. Kelly and I then would spend the night and Sunday at the apartment and fly to the Bahamas on Monday morning. We had a week booked at Sandals Resort in Nassau, Bahamas. We would fly there Monday morning and fly home the following Sunday afternoon, June 29. Afterwards my ass belonged to the MPD.

Since I didn’t have any vacation time built with the MPD, I wasn’t getting paid for that week. Likewise, Kelly’s paycheck and stipend wouldn’t begin until the beginning of the semester in August. That meant our honeymoon was going to cost us a fortune out of pocket. On the plus side, it was our last major out-of-pocket cost for the near future. I still had a big, big chunk of my savings from when I had been in the Army, and our apartment was free (aside from slave labor for Grandma and no tickets when Grandpa was speeding.) Our preliminary estimates going into the fall had us saving a fair bit from our combined paychecks. Kelly was doing some back-of-the-envelope calculations that had us thinking we could probably buy a house by the springtime. I would use a big chunk of the savings and that would provide a nice down payment.

The only other major project we had in the works was that once the fall rolled around, I wanted to start part-time in college again. I had no good reason not to get a degree. I didn’t want to waste the credits from Jefferson, and they would transfer to either M-Triple-C or Matucket State. I still wasn’t completely sure what to get a degree in, but if I wanted to make it higher than Patrolman in the MPD, I was going to need a degree of some sort. Kelly and I would review the curriculums when we got back. The crazy part? College wouldn’t cost me anything! I could use my VA benefits, but the MPD had a nice benefits package that would cover my college costs, and if I went to Matucket State, Kelly’s benefits would cover my costs!

I got about seven days of shifts during that time, all on nights, between when I started solo and the Thursday I finished prior to the honeymoon. Once I got back from the honeymoon, God only knew what I’d be doing. One of the downsides to the schedule was that I didn’t get a bachelor party. Prior to my being cleared from the shooting, I had been under orders to keep a very low profile, and Jack’s suggestion of an Atlanta strip club was not low profile. Afterwards, I just didn’t have the time, and the Friday and Saturday nights before the wedding, I was working. In a way I was relieved. Who would be at a theoretical stag party? My buddies on the MPD and my buddies in the IAVA and West Georgia Vets, along with a few guys from back in my high school days. The one thing they all had in common was a complete lack of any semblance of taste and morality! I could just imagine being handcuffed to a chair while skanks gave me lap dances, all while my buddies took pictures with their cell phones! No, I did not need a stag party!

My seven nights’ solo were relatively average. I didn’t have to shoot anybody. I didn’t even have to draw my weapon. I did get called to a couple of bars on Friday and Saturday to break up fights, because an overload of beer and opinionated assholes doesn’t mix well. Why does anybody care who the greatest hockey player is? We don’t play hockey in Georgia anyway! ’Knock it off, go home, and sleep it off, or come with me and sleep it off in the tank.’ Friday, they went home; Saturday, they went to the tank. What a bunch of idiots! Bar owners should be required to run a computer with Google and Wikipedia just to settle bar bets! I also had a couple of fender-benders in the parking lot of the Piggly Wiggly, and a couple of high-speed accidents on the south side of I-20 on the Matucket Expressway, the high-speed extension of Matucket Drive. One of the accidents was minor, even though it happened at sixty-five miles an hour. The other was major, in that the emergency squad needed to cut the second car apart with the Jaws of Life, and a LifeFlight helo had to come in to carry the victim to Grady Memorial Hospital. I wasn’t the only officer to respond to that one, and we simply had to control traffic and supervise the tow trucks afterwards. One quiet night I had a call from one of the guys in TRT to act as a backup while he served up a few warrants. Hank Jenkins must have given me a favorable review.

One of the things I did every night was make an arrest for drunk driving. The year before, over forty-thousand people had died in auto accidents in the United States, and forty percent of those deaths were alcohol-related. That didn’t mean that sixteen thousand people were killed driving around drunk. Probably only a quarter of them were drunk, but they each managed to kill three other people when they killed themselves. It was easy, too. Even though traffic fatalities had been dropping every year, it was mostly because cars were getting safer. People were as drunk as ever. I could nab one every night, and not by staking out bars, but just by driving around and looking for suspicious drivers.

There were a lot of signs that somebody was driving around drunk. Maybe he was straddling lanes, or was weaving, or screwing up his signaling or turning. One surprising sign was that somebody might be driving perfectly - but too slow! Perfect driving at thirty miles an hour in a fifty-five zone was a pretty good indication somebody was loaded. You had to be careful with these idiots, too. While they usually would pull over when I hit the lights, one guy floored it and drove into a row of parked cars. That one ended up a real clusterfuck of car owners needing police reports.

Whatever you do, don’t bitch to me when I pull you over for drinking and driving and throw you in jail. I’m the bastard who must tell Mister and Mrs. Smith that Little Suzie won’t be going to Harvard in the fall, because she got killed after her high school graduation party by some asshole lit up like a Christmas tree. I get to tell Little Billy that his father won’t be coming home that night because his father had a couple too many down at Clancy’s and then plowed into a bus. I get to tell Mrs. Jones that the father of her unborn baby is in the hospital and is paralyzed from the neck down while the asshole who was drinking and driving got away without a scratch. Worst of all, I’m the guy that has to explain to his wife why he feels like shit and is sorry he is treating her the same way. There’s a reason cops have a lot of divorces, and it’s not because of the danger. It’s because we shut down emotionally. I was going to have to be careful about that.

I think the best one that I pulled over, though, wasn’t a drunk driver. A car was weaving a bit erratically and slowly, heading north on Cherokee, as I pulled up behind it. I could see only the driver, right until I hit the lights, at which point a second head popped into view! After calling it in to Dispatch and stepping out, I walked up to the car. The driver was sober, the lady with him not so much. She was giggling and trying to do up her blouse and had nothing on below the waist. The driver looked like he wanted to just die. I let them go with a warning and a suggestion they wait until they got home.

While I didn’t get a bachelor party, the weekend before the wedding, Kelly had a bachelorette party. She packed a couple of bags and left the apartment to go visit Megan at her new place in Atlanta. The word I got was that they were planning to go to a male strip club for the party. I asked Kelly if Megs was trying to learn some new moves, which got me a punch in the arm, followed by a giggle. Kelly was still teasing me about the wedding. She refused to tell me whether Megs was going to wear a traditional bridesmaid’s dress, or a traditional best man’s tuxedo! I wouldn’t put that past either of them. Her bachelorette party was two Fridays before the wedding, Friday the 13^th. I teased her about the significance.

Oddly enough, that was the last I saw of her for a few days. The bachelorette party was in Atlanta, so Kelly was staying in Atlanta with Megan. Not too surprisingly, Kelly called the next morning, sounding truly sick and hung over, and said she was staying there until she felt better. I laughed and wished her luck, but otherwise wasn’t too worried. I only had a couple of days off and then was filling in for a couple of guys for a few days. Monday I was back on the night shift.

That tended to screw with my sense of night and day. There was a reason everybody wanted to work day shift. You went to work in the morning and came home in time for a late dinner. You could still kiss the kids good-night, and then watch some television with your wife before heading to bed for some late-night fun and games. Nights and graveyards were different. Night shift you might not get home until half-past two or maybe three, and the wife and kiddies were long gone to bed. They’d also probably be gone to school and work by the time you woke up. Graveyard was just as bad; by the time you got home, your wife was at work and your kids were at school. Then, when they get home, the odds were that they would wake you up early and leave you grumpy. The only good thing was that the four-days-on/four-days-off schedule gave you several days home in a row. The bad thing was that several of the days were during the week, when you were the only one home.

I managed to stay busy with work and the wedding that week. What was odd was that I didn’t see Kelly all week. She called me Monday saying that she was staying in Atlanta for another day. Tuesday, she told me she was going to see another friend in Savannah for a couple of days. Thursday there was another excuse. I wouldn’t see her again until the rehearsal Friday afternoon. I wanted to get her over to the apartment to do some more honeymoon practice, but she told me that it was bad luck for the groom to see the bride before the wedding. She was staying at her parents’ house for the night, and I would see her in the morning when she was walking down the aisle to become my wife.

“You are up to something!” I told her.

“Grim, I have no idea what you are talking about. I’ve just been seeing a few friends and getting a few things behind me. I’ll explain it later.”

“Uh, huh.”

“Grim!”

“Whatever. I’ll see you at fifteen-hundred hours Friday,” I told her.

She laughed. “No, Grim, I’ll see you at three o’clock in the afternoon!” She hung up still laughing.

The rehearsal went well, but as soon as it was over, Kelly and her bridesmaids headed out. I didn’t get a lot of sleep Friday night. It was almost impossible for me to believe that it was happening. I was going to marry Kelly O’Connor. I had known her since I was nine and been dating her since I was fifteen. Now I was twenty-three and I was finally going to make her mine officially. At that I smiled, since I was sure that Kelly would simply claim that she was finally making me hers. She had been the one to chase me around way back when, after all.

Jack showed up at the apartment at the crack of dawn that Saturday morning. He pounded on the door until I got up and let him in. “What the fuck are you doing?” I asked. I was feeling kind of tired and bleary.

The bastard smiled and said, “Making sure you’re awake.” He was in a disgustingly cheery mood.

I looked into the kitchenette and saw the clock on the microwave. “It’s 0610!” I complained.

“We’re in America now, not the Army, Grim. Besides, I promised Mom I would make sure you got to the church on time. Now, where’s the coffee maker? You need to get cleaned up and dressed.”

“You can go screw yourself!” I replied. “I’m going back to bed.”

“No, no, no! Go grab a shower. I’ll have coffee ready by the time you are out.”

It took me several minutes to clear the cobwebs from my head. Okay, so I had drunk a couple of beers more than I should have last night. I was missing my fiancée and hadn’t been laid in a week! Sue me! When I got out of the shower, Jack had coffee and a bottle of Advils waiting for me. I inhaled both. I still muttered something nasty to my brother.

“Now get dressed,” he told me. I went to grab my tux, but he said, “Not that, you idiot. You can dress later. First things first. You need some breakfast. Pack the car. We’ll get ready over at the house.”

“You’re a real pain in the ass, you know?”

“Teresa says the same thing.”

I left the door to the bedroom open while I went in and got dressed. “So, what’s going on with you two? Just how serious is that? Are we doing this with you sometime soon?”

Jack came to the door and leaned against the jamb. “Maybe. I don’t know, Grim. I’ve never felt like this before. You, you’ve been in love with Kelly since you two were born, or maybe before! Me, it was never like that.”

I snorted in laughter at him. “So?”

“So, it was just different with me. Once I figured out what girls liked and what I liked, it was just ... I don’t know. Teresa is the first girl who won’t put up with my shit, you know?”

“And?”

“And, I don’t know. It’s different with her.”

I laughed at my younger brother. “Jack, you’re a real fucking idiot. Do what I do, and just let Teresa run your life like Kelly runs mine. She’s going to do it anyway, and that will make it so much simpler.”

He flipped me the bird and directed me in packing a bag; my tuxedo was in its own bag and I had tried it on a few days ago to make sure it fit. I would be going with Jack to breakfast over at Shoney’s and then we would head over to the house to change. The nice thing about our schedule was that Kelly and I didn’t have to rush anywhere after the wedding. We didn’t have to be at the airport that night or early the next day. We could take our time and relax, go back to the apartment and pack without going crazy. If one of us had a little, or a lot, more to drink than we should at the reception, we would have a chance to sleep it off.

The wedding was to be at eleven at St. Steven’s Episcopal Church in East Matucket. After breakfast we headed over to the house, to find Dad relatively calm and Mom a complete disaster. Jack and I just shook our heads, changed, and took off again. It was better to hang around the church than to hang around Mom! I thought Bobbie Joe would be stuck with her, but he got lucky, too. He had the keys to Mom’s minivan, so he bugged out early to go pick up Jamie Hughes. He was already in his tux and would meet us at the church.

Once we got to St. Steven’s, Jack and I found our way to a room behind the choir where we could hide. From there on it was entirely up to Kelly and everybody else to get there. It was out of my hands. I quizzed Jack whether he had the rings, and he showed them to me; he was keeping them in a pocket of his vest. After much discussion, Kelly and I had foregone both the ring bearer and the flower girl in the ceremony, for the simple reason that nobody in the family was young enough to play either role. All our cousins were in their teens or beyond.

By some standards we were having a simple wedding. We each had four people on the side. Megs was the Maid of Honor, and the three bridesmaids were Sara Thompson and Samantha Powderman from Matucket High, and a girl named Lee Olivier from UGA. Their opposites were my brother Jack as Best Man, and my brother Bobbie Joe and my cousins Dave and Jerry as groomsmen. Once they all got there, they filtered in to see me, and then headed back to the entrance to walk guests in. Other than Bobbie Joe, the other three were all in college. Dave and Jerry were in some sort of engineering program at Georgia State, and Jack’s program was sports management, a cover for the fact that in Division I football he was essentially an unpaid employee of the college. It was a bullshit degree, but if he made it through another year in good shape, he would have a very good chance at a sweet paycheck in the NFL.

Dad came in around 10:30 or so to let me know that he and Mom were there, and that Kelly and her family were right behind them. Unless my fiancée got cold feet coming down the aisle, I wasn’t facing a runaway-bride situation.

“How’s Mom?” I asked.

“Nervous. She’s fidgeting over everything! I’ve stashed her in the room near the entrance with the bridesmaids and the other women. They’re spending half the time crying and half the time fixing their makeup!”

“It could have been worse, Dad. You could have had girls,” commented Jack.

“Spare me!”

I laughed. “Hey, he had two!”

Jack turned on me. “You want your ass-kicking now or later?”

“Later. Then I’ll be married, and you’ll have to fight your way through Kelly first. Don’t ever mess with a redhead!”

My brother laughed. “No kidding. There was this one girl from Georgia State...”

“I don’t want to know,” interrupted our father. “I’m going back to make sure your mother hasn’t had a nervous breakdown yet.”

After Dad left, Jack finished his story about an athletic and adventurous redhead with a fiery temper and a preference for bedroom sports that should have never been discussed in a church. Sounded fascinating, though. A few minutes later Pastor Hufnagle came through and checked to see if I had run screaming out the back door. He found me still there and said we might as well get into place.

Jack looked at me. “Last chance. You doing this, bro?”

“Too late to back out now.”

“Remember the magic words I and do. They will be the last two words Kelly will ever hear from you.”

“Like you would know! Come on, let’s go.” I led the way out and around the choir loft, and we got into position.

We had joked a lot during the rehearsal. Mister O’Connor had brought Kelly down the aisle and said, ‘She’s your problem now!’, and then when we got to the vows, Kelly said, ‘Let me get back to you on the sickness, poorer, and worse parts of the contract.’ Today we didn’t fool around. It was for real, and neither of us wanted to jinx it.

Kelly was simply breathtaking. I figured out that part of what she had been doing for the last week was getting a spray-on tan. She had that classic Irish pale complexion with freckles that complemented her red hair and green eyes, but that also meant she barely tanned, but burned bright red if she wasn’t careful. Not that day. Her wedding dress was off-the-shoulder, and dipped pleasantly low in the front and back, exposing light golden skin and no hint of tan lines. She must have gone to a tanning salon, and probably not the average one down the block, either. My heart stopped as she approached, and only Jack’s quietly muttered, “Holy shit!” got it started again.

Seamus O’Connor shook my hand and gave me Kelly’s, then lifted her veil and kissed her cheek. Then we turned towards the altar. I only had two words to say, and I got those right. When we got to kiss, she melted as we embraced. “All my life I have waited to hear you say I do!” she whispered to me. “All my life!” I just hugged her tightly, not daring to say anything myself.

The reception was at 1300, one in the afternoon as my new wife would say. It was in the banquet hall behind the Rochester, and we had tried for a later time, but the evening had been booked by the time we made our reservation. We had settled on a morning wedding and an early reception. As long as we were out of there by five, everything would be fine. They could clean up and reset things for the eight o’clock evening reception. The bridal party stayed at St. Steven’s while pictures were taken, and then we went outside to climb into the limo for the ten-minute ride over to the Rochester. Even the Matucket Police Department got into the action. The wedding procession was led by the Cougar, with lights flashing and the occasional yelp on the siren; Barry Franklin, one of the TRT guys on duty, drove it over and led the way. He had offered to use it as the limo, but we had declined, and were simply in a big Cadillac, with the rest of the bridal party in a stretch limo behind us. I was going to owe Barry a drink or two when it was all over.

As for the reception, it was simply a very nice and large party. Kelly and I didn’t go crazy. We didn’t have ice sculptures or champagne fountains or flights of doves or anything ridiculous. It was a very nice buffet, with lots of canapés and appetizers ahead of time, and an open bar. We skipped the ten-piece orchestra and had a local DJ handle the music. A very highly recommended local photographer did the wedding pictures; we didn’t import anybody from London or Paris. We simply had a very good time!

Kelly had several friends from UGA and Athens there. Two of her guests were Hollis Winfield and his wife, and I managed to introduce Hollis to a few of the guys I had invited, like Bart Simmons and Wojo Wojohowitz. We probably had about a half-dozen vets there. We also had about the same number of cops. Creighton and Tim were there with their significant others, along with Jerry Wolinski and Hank Jenkins and their wives; I couldn’t invite one of my FTOs without inviting the other. Captain Crowley managed to come, and another couple of guys promised to come over after they got off a partial shift, even if they couldn’t change out of their uniforms.

Brax Hughes and Bo Effner came. Brax came stag and tried to hit on Hannah, who laughed and put her arm around Megs’ waist. Brax simply remarked that he was game if they were but got laughed away. It was good to see him, though, and he, Bo, and I talked over the old days. Bo had gone to Princeton as a political science major and was now at Harvard Law. He had dated Samantha off and on all through high school, and after graduation neither had been happy with their dating scene. They had hooked up again their college senior year and were trying to make a long-distance relationship work. Samantha was a nurse at Matucket WellCare. Considering the dress she was wearing and her build, she should have been working in Maternity!

Megs and Hannah were amusing. Hannah had worn a gorgeous low-cut dress which really highlighted her figure, and Brax wasn’t the only guy to hit on her. Grandma wanted to know who she had come with, and when Mom explained, her face turning red as she did so, Grandma’s eyes popped open wide. “Oh my!” she said several times. Kelly and I both had to bite our lips to keep from laughing. We really had to bite our lips when Megs and Hannah danced later, and Grandma and Grandpa brushed against them, which spooked Grandma. West Georgia was not quite as liberal as some parts of the country.

Most of my family was there, but not all. Nana was out of it these days, even though she was still living at home. Papa had arranged for a nurse to take care of her for the day, and he had driven down for the wedding and reception. From what Mom was telling us, Nana only recognized people maybe half the time, and that included her daughter. Mom always came home crying after that.

By four-thirty people were starting to drift out and the hall was beginning to thin out. By five it was just the immediate family and the bridal party, and we all took off. Most of the guys offered to help me with my marital duties just in case I had had too much to drink. I thanked them and sent them packing. The limo took Kelly and me back to the apartment to begin our life of married bliss, or at least as close an approximation as we could come to.