Labored Day, A Short Story

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Christopher at a train museum

*Two mild swear words

November 30th, 2012

“Get out of the way! You're in the way!” I heard being shouted just beyond the thick brush that covered my view...

I was surprised I heard the screams over the helicopter that was hovering up above me. The rotary engine making so much noise I could barely hear my inner voice remind me "to make sure you get out of the dogs track."

A burglary had just occurred.  And as I was arriving to the house where it was happening the bad guy was running from the scene at the same time. I jumped out of my police car, after placing it in park, and began to chase him on foot along the canal bank adjacent to the house.

But I lost track of the would be Grinch just beyond the tree line. We decided to call in the dogs and police helicopter, so that the eye in the sky can sniff out what the nose on the ground can not. However, It's that same tree line I suddenly found myself to be standing in when the police dogs was coming my way. 

At about the point I lost sight of him is where I should have stopped in my pursuit so that the police dog could work his magic and sniff out my suspect without his senses competing with my body odor. I just wanted to sniff him out on my own that's why I moved a little more forward then I probably should have.

But I couldn’t help it. Although I am no hunter of animals in my personal life, I love to hunt the bad guy. It took all my strength to pull back, but without him in my sight or a general area where he ran, It simply makes no sense to continue on.

No matter how exhausted I feel after that initial run without a capture your good intentions are ever present because I at least made the attempt to apprehend him. The blood still courses through my body while my beating heart cranks up a notch and pushes it through and out to my outer extremities. 

The adrenaline drips from my finger tips and like a horse being placed in the gate for his run at the Breeders Cup, you can't help but run the moment you hear that bell. No matter what the odds in Vegas read, that set the odds against your success, It is your will as a public servant to put a bad person in jail that compels you to win.

As I ran down the canal bank I knew I wasn’t going to catch him. He had a good head start and there was too much ground to make up. But I wouldn’t give in. I pushed through the heavy dirt, that lines the canals path, by pumping my legs and stretching my calves as I moved my fists up and down vigorously towards the ground. 

While I continued my run, my labored breathing sucked in the dust filled air filling my inner mouth with dirt and grit. The sand clogging my mucus membranes and drying my mouth. The particles of dirt found its way into my tear ducts and caused them to stream tears from my eyes. 

“I’m running....” I shout into my police radio, “ I’m running north, I mean south,” the lack of oxygen to my brain causing confusion. 

“He’s a white male, wearing all green and black, black shorts,” I paused because even in this situation I know I didn’t make much sense.

Wearing all green but yet black shorts- I thought after I announced it.

I continue to breathe deep. Remembering what my physical education teacher told me once about running: breathe in and breathe out. breathe in and breathe out. But shit, that was when I was 12 what do I do now at 37! 

Maybe I should just take up shop here on the edge of the canal. Wear my Bahama shirt and tiki drink as I sit under the shade of an umbrella. That's the shit you do at 37. 

“Okay Chris, concentrate,” I say out loud.

I finally stop at the position I'm at now. My police radio is an active chatter box as the sergeant commands everyone where to go to set up a perimeter. My inner ears are clogged due to the lack of blood flow. I wipe my eyes, accidentally rubbing in more dirt. I can taste the grit in my mouth and hear it crunching as I clench my teeth. 

Breathe...breathe....breathe

"All units the canine (K9) is tracking south," the officer announces on the radio.

Finally, I hear the voice, "Get out of the way! You're in the way!"

Man my inner voice is loud-  I think to myself.

"Fusaro! Move over here," I hear an entirely new voice shouting out to me. I look to the sky wondering if it was God or the pilot in the helicopter.

My ears catch the voice again, "Fusaro, over here," but this time it was announced differently. It was announced on the police radio.

I look over and see my Lieutenant sitting safely by his car and not at his usual place behind the safety of his desk. 

"Hey L.T." I say. LT as an abbreviated but affectionate name you call your superior of the lieutenant rank. 

"I can tell it's you now but from all your screaming on the radio before I got here, I had to assume you were the one chasing him," he said.

I place my hands on my knees as I suck in the air around me to get past my labored breathing, "Yes. It was me and I almost had him," I said with a smile on my face while looking up at him from the comfort of my bent over posture.

"Yeah?" he said with a little bit of sarcasm.

"You do realize that you could have driven your patrol car down the canal after him," he said.

"Well, yea," I erect my body and look around,"but then," my breathing is more labored and I place my hands on top of my head, "where's the fun in that?"



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The Adventures of Captain Imperfecto/Born Again by Christopher P. Fusaro is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Based on a work at christopherfusaro.blogspot.com.

Lived and Still Learning

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Left to right: Nico mimicking Christopher who fell asleep. 

November 28th, 2012

Many of us have stood in the middle of a broken reality and racked our brains by searching our memory, trying to figure out how we got to this point. Our future ends as we are forced towards the cliff's ledge by our distress. The fall is deep, and we won't emotionally make it once we are sent over the ledge.

The past has closed its gap to our reality because our grief makes us so stagnate that we are unable to run forward in an attempt to extend the playing field into the future and start to push back at our past. You live, and you learn to move forward.

I've been told we shouldn't look back, anyhow. We always move forward in the face of adversity. Still, as the squeeze of hopelessness edges us closer and closer to the edge of defeat, we are forced off our perch of safety and have no choice but to wing it and find our way to survive or simply give in and fail. 

What if I no longer have the strength or the will to move past this point? I can look back and try to learn from my life, but like looking in a mirror, I may not like what I see. The lessons I have learned in my lifetime should have prepared me for the tests that I have yet to face, and yet it is those unlearned lessons that I am the most unprepared for despite what I have gone through in the past. The actual test of time will make or break me in the future. I can not be afraid to learn from it and move on.

Life must know humans won't go willingly over the point of no return to meet an end that does not make sense to us. We humans will grab hold of its energy and use the momentum it has inflicted on our body, heart, and mind to force it back and use its own adversity against itself. That life's attempt to hand down its judgment will not go unnoticed, and we as humans will fight before it can send us spiraling toward disaster.

When we find ourselves standing on the remains of a travesty and while the chaos is still swirling about us, we have to think fast and have the power to press on by moving our feet away from the standing water instead of giving up to defeat and drowning in our sorrows. 

We should not attempt to salvage the past but continue learning from it. In this test of living and learning, we should have the guts to grab some lighter fluid and light our misery on fire. Let the past burn and the ashes rise towards the heavens. Allow the white heat to sear through our slow-moving blaze of destruction. A smoldering trail that we can follow away and redirect us from the ledge and into a different present to start a new history. Like walking on hot coals to show ourselves that we can overcome fear, we should walk tall toward greener pastures to quench our thirst and replenish our needs to have the courage to start anew.

If you keep telling yourself that the fields of green will heal us, will it work? Does trying to convince ourselves that the grass is greener on the other side reassure you that moving on isn't so bad because we left the past for greener pastures? Would it be okay to start a new life away from the one we lived in without forgetting where we came from? What if the past was better where I stood so stagnate for so long, paralyzed in fear from the thought of a new beginning? What if the damn grass isn't greener?

Sorrow and loss is a motherfucker. Sometimes, I am so tired and feel so emotionally done while trying to figure out how to rebuild myself from the smoldering ruins around me. The charred remnants that once were a glorious place of our majestic livelihoods look too far gone to salvage. How do you take those first few steps toward redemption? Where do you begin? How do you motivate yourself to make it right? Where did it go so wrong? I was living, but it didn't seem like I was learning because it didn't seem like I could answer those questions. So, I am failing this test.

I was never one for school. I hated almost everything about it. I learned from hard knocks and life lessons, or so I thought I knew. I got through my academics, but I failed somewhere in life. But isn't that alright? Humans aren't made to be perfect. We fail before we can succeed. Humans are supposed to share hopes, dreams, and emotions with others so others can learn from their mistakes, thus pushing us further away from our past.

But now I reflect on who I have loved in the past and what those relationships have taught me. I learned the love I shared made everything alright. You know you are passing the test because your heart is supposed to palpitate, and the vibes transcend through your touch as you gently caress the face of a loved one. Your fingertips' vibrations cause the person you love to tremble from your touch. I passed because I felt that my love was being distributed to another.

I know now that love moves us forward and away from the cliff. Love lets us show compassion and helps us heal our wounds. As I look back at my life, I have lived and learned because I have loved, and that love is enough to pass all the tests that come from here on out.

My past is where I was. My future is something that I can still see, and my life is still filled with love because love helps me blaze a better path. Now, I am wiser because I have lived and am learning.

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1,000 words

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The Adventures of Captain Imperfecto/Born Again by Christopher P. Fusaro is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Based on a work at christopherfusaro.blogspot.com.