Officer Jackson

Tipping the scale at nearly three hundred pounds, Officer Preston Jackson had had far more than his fair share of chocolate sprinkled doughnuts. In high school he had been a solid all-state linebacker. With a forty time clocking in at 4.5 seconds and a vicious tackle, scouts from all over the country had looked at him. However, a devastating injury, which shattered his right knee in the semi-finals of his senior year quenched all hopes of him moving on athletically. He instead decided to opt out of college and take the seemingly more exciting route of a cop.

Thirty years and seventy-five pounds later, Jackson had had just about all he could take of it. His football buds from high school all had better paying jobs, and he had had just about all he could of giving speeding tickets on the monotonous patrol he had to keep every week. Once a month, he got to take the night shift. This was always his favorite week of the month because he could usually make his way to the car and, if lucky, could get a couple hours of sleep sitting in a parking lot. His first action, as always, was to drive the car down the street and grab his box of a half-dozen doughnuts which would easily be consumed within the hour...It soon became apparent that this would be the first night in nearly six years that he would fail to finish a box.

Reaching in for his fifth one, Jackson glanced at his belly and momentarily regretted his poor eating habits. But only for a moment...The delicious scent of the freshly baked pastry filled his nostrils and it was soon down his gullet following the previous four. He was just about to grasp for his last one when he caught a fleeting glimpse of something to the left of the freeway. Dismissing it as an animal he steered his concentration back to his tasty treat. Quickly glancing at the street to make sure there were no cars coming, he proceeded to reach his hand into the box for his last doughnut...He had been saving this one for last because it had more sprinkles then the others. Just as he was about to stuff it into his mouth, a man leapt out from the bushes and into the street.

Jackson slammed on the brakes! His screeching tires came so close to the man that his headlights couldn't have been two inches away from the crazed lunatic. Who in their right mind would jump right into the middle of the street in front of a cop car?? More importantly, Jackson had dropped his doughnut! Searching frantically, he was instinctively hacked off at the idiot who had run in front of his car. After glancing up and noticing that the man had collapsed from sheer exhaustion, his anger quickly turned to concern. He promptly waddled over to the man's side and proceeded to lift him off the ground. Needless to say, his bench press in high school was about three times the weight of this man. He couldn't have weighed 150 pounds and was as limp as a rag doll. Jackson effortlessly toted him to the car and laid him as gently as possible in the back of his squad car, turned on his overhead lights, and sped in the direction of the hospital.

Jesse awoke with a start, confusion overwhelming him. Was he dead? His aching limbs and blistering headache immediately told him that if he was, this was certainly not heaven. Slowly, he opened his eyes and peered into...the floor. He turned his head around and slowly brought his gaze to rest on the head of a police officer. The longing to return to slumber was almost overbearing but he struggled to sit himself upright in the backseat of the squad car. Bewildered, Jesse jumped when the officer's deep, southerly voice interrupted his thoughts, "I see you come to. What in Heaven's name were you doin' in the middle of the road at two-o-clock in the mornin'?" The road, the running, it came back to him in pieces as he tried to recall the frightfully eventful night. He traced back the hours in his mind, to the very beginning of the night, and, without hesitation, plunged into the story of what happened.

Ch 3: The Campout