Wacky Washington #2

All my life, I’ve had an over-active imagination. When I was a child, I saw a well-dressed man get out of the back of an unmarked van, and wondered if he’d been part of some clandestine spy operation, or a criminal enterprise. My parents thought I was watching too many movies.

When I was in high school, and prone to insomnia, I saw a car pull into my neighbour’s garage at three in the morning. I watched it leave about twenty minutes later, while my neighbour stood ominously in the shadows of the garage. I wondered if it was making some illegal delivery, or carting away a body like in “Rear Window.”

If a car stays behind me too long, I wonder if I’m being followed. I couldn’t believe a man as intelligent as my father worked in a factory, so I used to fantasize that he was really a secret agent. I’m sure you get the picture.

I’ve been lucky enough to come to maturity in a relatively safe culture. All of us in North America are tremendously privileged, relative to the rest of the world. In recent years, as an adult, I’ve begun to wonder whether we take that for granted. I can only imagine what kind of safeguards are really in place, to keep us so tranquil. I haven’t outgrown my childhood penchant for inventing weird explanations, I just tend to keep them to myself.

So, thanks to one man, a stranger, I have a theory why terrorists and biker gangs and drug lords don’t over-run the community I live in. Hear my story, and decide for yourself.




We were headed to visit the my wife’s parents. My daughter was excited, chanting in the back seat.

“Cramma and Crampa, Cramma and Crampa…” She hadn’t quite figured out the letter “G” in their titles yet.

It was sunny, a lovely day for driving. We passed country fields, and heard squeals of joy when our little girl saw cows or horses.

“What do cows say?”

“Mooooooooooooooo!”

“And horseys?”

“Nayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy! Look, some baa-baa sheepies!”

We pulled into town and stopped for gas, enjoying a sedate weekend. Everything was perfectly laidback. I went to the meter, pulled out the nozzle, unscrewed the gas-cap, and started pumping.

I stood casually, leaning against the truck, one hand in my pocket, enjoying the sun and the breeze. It was a totally calm, totally normal day. Like most days.

Then he walked out of the gas station’s store.

His hair was a dark, dishevelled mess. There was a fresh white bandage on his right cheek, but it didn’t’ quite cover all of the raw scratches on his face. They were short and jagged, as if he’d been dragged across a rough surface. There was dried blood on his white shirt.

His left hand and forearm were bound in a white bandage, the kind you unroll. His dark bluejeans had rips. The stranger was solidly built; he looked like he was made out of brick. Despite this impression, he wasn’t a big man. I would say he was no more than five foot eight. He hadn’t shaved in a few days, and had unruly sideburns. However, despite his strength and facial hair, it was evident that he was young, no older than twenty-five.

Our eyes met as he walked down the sidewalk, he gave a stranger’s friendly nod. The one you only see in communities where people are friendly enough to be polite to everyone and not just their friends. His eyes were the most striking thing about him. Despite his rough appearance, there was a calm in his gaze. He looked certain of himself and his place in the world.

He walked away, disappearing around a corner. I finished pumping my gas, my wife returned to the car with juice for our daughter. We drove on, arriving at “Cramma’s house” within minutes.

But I spent the rest of the day imagining why this stranger looked so beat up.




The answer was obvious. He’d been undercover. Perhaps he’d infiltrated a white supremacist group, or a drug-running biker gang. He had probably been recruited for this work right out of high school, and spent the last few years getting in shape, and dirtying up his resume with random acts of thuggery, in case his targets checked his background.

Once he was in, he’d accumulated information. Contact numbers, locations, license plates, ammunition depots, safe houses. He knew where everything was. He had names and addresses.

But someone caught on. They probably sent a group of his biker buddies to “talk” to the kid, see if he could explain why he was asking so many questions. Or maybe why they saw him talking on a cell-phone right before a warehouse was raided. Something had made them suspicious.

So their goons tried to work him over. They kicked in his door, and tossed him through his living room table. They delivered kicks to his chest, and one of them stomped on his left arm, spraining it. They dragged him outside by his dark mane of hair.

They asked questions while grinding his face along a brick wall. But all they managed to do was piss him off.

One of the bikers probably got tired. “He don’t know nothin’ anyway,” he’d grunt, trying to catch his breath. The one holding him against the wall probably looked back, to answer.

He took this lapse in concentration for an opportunity, and snapped his left elbow into the man’s ribs, breaking two. They hadn’t been watching that side, assuming it was broken. Before they could react, he had hold of his opponent and smashed his head into the wall, a lot harder than their interrogation method. He didn’t need them to talk.

One rushed forward with a knife, and he used his unconscious opponent as a shield, bowling the second man over. He delivered a hard kick with his boots, and moved on to the third man. A punch, a knee to the stomach, it was over fast. He borrowed one of their bikes and rode on down the street until he found a phone.

“Peregrine to Nest, I’m going to need extracting,” he’d said, or something like it. “That strike force is going to need to move in before tonight, they know something’s up.”

Then he drove into town, ditching the bike, and walking casually to the store for bandages. Sure of his purpose, the watchdog that kept everyone safe. Today, his job was done. In time, they’d find him more work. But, today, he could rest, secure in the fact that all of us could go about our lives without disruption.



I would have told my wife my theory, but she’d probably just think I’d seen “Die Hard” too many times. So I just keep my thoughts to myself, silently grateful that there are heroes out there, keeping my kids safe at night.
Hey, it could happen.