Page 74 - The Myth and the Moment

Evening

“Looks like you get off easy, mister. Don’t forget what I said: next
time you may not be so lucky.”
Okay. Be cool. Take the driver’s license. Put it away. Don’t say a
thing. Arm is throbbing: bone bruised? Elbow flexes, fingers and
thumb make a fist. And don’t walk away too fast. They’re like wild
beasts: don’t show your fear: they’ll attack immediately. Don’t show
your anger, either: they’re the only ones who are allowed to be angry.
You must be like all citizens in the presence of the law: unaware of
anything but your own totally lawful existence. Can’t even stare at
them, a challenge to the beast. After all, if you’re not doing anything
wrong, why should you even care that they exist, right? Any reaction
to their presence is an admission of guilt. ‘Well, Judge, he ran when
we drove by, so we ordered him to halt and when he didn’t we had to
shoot.’ How many times have I heard that one? How did England
function with unarmed policemen for so many years? People didn’t
have guns there. It’s a microcosm of the arms race: police against a
pistol-packing populace, reaching a level of moral irrelevance.
Weapons destroy human relationships, not resolve their conflicts.
Whoosh!
Here’s Sunset, at last. Turn left and head for the safety of numbers.
Very good, Nate: you didn’t look back, didn’t petrify into a pillar of
salt. Got to sit down, collect my wits. That was too strong a shot of
man-to-man brutality. God, that was scary! You don’t grow out of
that kind of sensation, not ever. Kids experience fear pretty
powerfully, but it’s based on fantasy: nightmarish monstrosities
magnified by the untamed id and parental terror. Ah, but we adults
know better; fear is repressed down to a dull roar, experience having
given a statistical overlay to perception. I know the odds are in my
favor, so I’m not afraid to cross the street, to go to sleep at night, to
eat a beef-and-bean burrito—even though any of those activities
could prove fatal. And that habit of trusting to probability leads right
back to fantasy: this cure will save my life, these officials will solve
those problems, that missile will not accidentally launch or detonate.
Fear is always implicated in the flight to fantasy; Homo sapiens need
the omniscience of religion to soothe his troubled imagination.
Well, since I know it all, I do feel calmer. The only organ still
twitching is my tummy. Was Phil going to feed me my last meal, or
was I just too paranoid? Even if he wasn’t, those frozen TV dinners

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