Yellow Mama E zine

To Protect and Serve

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by S. A. Smith

 

          As my partner, Darrell, and I neared the cruiser, our sergeant handed me the keys. Darrell tossed something into the glove compartment and held out his hand.  I gave him the keys.

         As always, he drove straight to the projects. We watched from around the corner as a car slowed in front of a building. Corey came outside, exchanged something with the passenger, and went back inside until the next car arrived.

         I didn’t know Corey’s exact age, but his voice hadn’t changed yet.

         Darrell got out and approached him with his hand outstretched, palm up, wiggling his fingers.

         “Not again,” the kid whined.

         “You don’t want a repeat of last time, do you?”

         Corey sighed dramatically and handed over a roll of money.

         “Now the rest of it.”

         Reaching into his back pocket, he pulled out a wad of crumpled bills, which Darrell also took.

          In the car I was thinking of how my five-year-old son’s eyes lit up whenever he saw me in uniform. To him, I was a hero who saved people from bad guys. He’d be devastated to know that I never saved anyone from Darrell.

          Then I thought of my wife hugging me when I got home, no matter how late it was. “I don’t know what we’d do without you,” she’d whisper with relief in her voice.

          Darrell slid behind the wheel and started toward another housing project. He didn’t offer me any of the money, and I wouldn’t have taken it, anyway.

          I was remembering the long line of police cars and the bagpipes playing at the funeral for his last partner, who was shot to death in the projects with an untraceable gun, just like the one in the glove box at that moment. 

 

           S.A. Smith lives and writes in the New Orleans area. She is a member of the Company of Women Writing Dangerously. One of her stories has appeared in Rock and A Hard Place.

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KJ Hannah Greenberg is eclectic. She’s played oboe, participated in martial arts, learned basket weaving, and studied Middle Eastern dancing. What’s more, she’s a certified herbalist, and an AP College Board-authorized teacher of calculus. 

       Her creative efforts have been nominated once for The Best of the Net in poetry, once for The Best of the Net in art, three times for the Pushcart Prize in Literature for poetry, once for the Pushcart Prize in Literature for fiction, once for the Million Writers Award for fiction, and once for the PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay. To boot, Hannah’s had more than forty-five books published and has served as an editor for several literary journals.

     Check out her latest short fiction collection, An Orbit of Chairs:

https://www.amazon.com/Orbit-Chairs-KJ-Hannah-Greenberg/dp/B0CWMMM73T

 Within its pages are two tales originally published at Yellow Mama: "Alive Another Day" and "Light Notes."

      Channie's new art book, Life's Colors, https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0FGCTHJ6Z, just launched (hit "read sample" button). It contains images originally published by Yellow Mama.