To The Cop Who Did Not Kill Me

I fixed my eyes on you, knowing you might be the last face I saw before I died. You were the only black man among the five police officers who boarded the King Drive 3 bus at 74th Place that morning in 1975. I was on my way to class, I think History of Germany, and I sat in the back of the bus thinking about how I would spend my lunch hour in the Student Union. I was carrying my book bag, my camera and a coat.

The squad cars sped past us first, lights flashing and sirens screaming. Then they skidded in front of the bus to stop us. The bus driver cursed, and the rest of the passengers, middle-aged women and men taking a midday ride to shop on 79th Street, or go to the DMV at 99th Street, wondered out loud what the hell was going on. “Who they after,” I remember one woman saying. The uniforms got on first, hands on their weapons. One of them, a chubby-faced white boy no older than me, called out “there he is.” I looked behind me at the empty bench seat at the rear of the bus, then he yelled for me to stand, “Let me see your hands.” When I rose, I saw the pistol. I knew it was a .357 Colt Python and I knew it was cocked, ready to fire. I couldn’t tell if the cop’s finger was on the trigger. My heart stopped.  I felt it seize up in my chest.

You came up walking through the other cops, eyes fixed on me. You had light brown skin, a thin face, your hair was wavy, your nose long and narrow. You were easily 40 years old, wearing street clothes. A detective? I held your stare and breathed as easily as I could. The uniforms shouted questions, commands, and I stood still looking at you; I was unable to speak. Yours was the only voice that seemed to reach me with coherent words. “Where you coming from? Where did you get on the bus?” I answered. A woman’s voice called out, “He got on at 69th Street. He didn’t do nothing. Leave him alone.” You went through my pockets and took out my wallet. Then you dumped the books and papers from my bag onto the black rubber mats of the bus floor.  “School books, magazines, papers,” you called it all out.

While you searched me, I turned to the white man with the gun. “I didn’t do anything. You don’t have to shoot me.” I repeated it over and over again, a mantra that I had learned along with nursery rhymes as a child. The boy looked nervous, and I knew that he just had to flinch, and I would never see my parents again. Somebody would lie and say I tried to run or had a gun. And my story would be over right there. I would not hear the bullet that killed me; the cop was too close.

You were closer, right next to my ear, calling out what you found in my pockets. Opening my wallet and taking out my draft card and my University ID. When you did, the joint slipped out of the wallet. I saw it. You saw it. Everything between us shifted. My true story was too stupid to tell, not my joint, I was holding it for someone. It was the 1970’s and a single joint could have sent me to jail for five years.  At that moment, I stopped being innocent and became a criminal. All you had to do was call it out, say the words out loud that would have ended my story as certainly as a bullet would have. Instead, you said, “He’s just a kid on his way to university. He’s not our guy.”

You handed me back my wallet. “A guy robbed a gas station at 47th Street and shot a man dead. He jumped on the bus to get away.” You never said you were sorry to scare the shit out of me. You never said more than that. The boy with the gun lifted it and put it back in his holster, turned and walked off the bus, not allowing me to hear his voice. When they were gone, you were still there looking at me. “Clean out your wallet,” you said, then turned and went back with your people, the police.

I knelt to pick up my books, something I would never have done in front of the police. My legs shivered as I stood, and I sat down so my heart could start again. “Are you okay?” The driver shouted. “I hope you ain’t got no tests today,” a woman said. I got to the campus, walked to a waste basket and threw the joint away.

I graduated, joined the army, saved a man’s life, went to war twice, taught, loved my family, took care of those I could and raised a good kid. I wanted you to know that, not because I need to justify my life; I’ve done bad and good like everybody. I know that as we grow older, we ask ourselves if we ever really made a difference. If you hadn’t been there, I would have died on that bus, one way or another.

George Frederick is a Chicagoan, veteran, retired Foreign Service Officer and a writer. He has attended writing programs at Stanford University, University of Chicago and the Denver Lighthouse For Writers. He currently lives between Chicago and the rest of the world.