Different Circles

It actually took only eight minutes. The couple continued to launch whatever they were launching. The man was now turning the slingshot left and right between shots, scattering the objects on both sides of the access road now. There was quite the collection of them lying about by the time Jake and everyone else saw the flaring of headlights coming up the road from the direction of the highway. The two hippies saw it too. They stopped what they were doing and looked in the direction of the lights. They held a frantic, unheard conversation as the lights grew brighter and two marked patrol units suddenly appeared, catching them and their vehicle in a cone of light. As soon as they were lit up, Jake flipped some switches on the control panel and activated the gate lights and the lights along the access road to the driveway. The hippies looked at this for a moment and then went back to looking at the two sheriff’s vehicles, which had now stopped, side by side, and were blocking the road completely.

“I hope these two don’t do anything stupid,” Jake said, watching as the doors to the patrol cars opened. “The last fuckin’ thing we need is to have the cops blow somebody away on our road.”

“Yeah, that would kind of suck,” Meghan opined.

The uniformed deputies stood behind their car doors, their hands resting on their butts of their pistols, their flashlights in their non-gun hands. There was no audio, but it did not take a psychic to figure out what they were saying to the hippies. “Walk your asses over here real slow and keep those hands where we can see them.”

The hippies walked their asses over real slow. They kept their hands where the deputies could see them. When they got just in front of the patrol vehicles, they stopped. They then turned around and faced back toward their microbus. One of the deputies stepped out from behind the car door and approached. Jake recognized him. It was Steve Cartwright, a young deputy in his late twenties and one of the regular attendees of Jake’s informal guitar performances (and drinking sessions) at the Pine Cove, the San Luis Obispo cop bar. Steve walked up to the male hippie first. The male put his hands behind his head and Steve grasped his fingers with his right hand and pulled him backward a bit, so he was off-balance. He then used his left hand to pat the male hippie down. Once he was done with this, he did the same for the female hippie. Once satisfied that they weren’t packing, he walked up to the microbus and shined his flashlight inside.

Once the microbus and the hippies were cleared, the other deputy stepped out from behind the car door. Jake recognized this one as well—again, from her frequent visits to the Pine Cove on the nights he performed. It was Sarah Brooke, a tall, athletic cop in her thirties. She was divorced, ran marathons for fun, played in a local basketball club, and had hinted to Laura (who often accompanied her husband to the bar when he went) that she had always wanted to try the girl-on-girl thing just to see what it was like. Laura had never acknowledged that she was picking up on the innuendo Sarah was throwing down.

The two cops stood and talked to the duo for a few minutes, no doubt asking them just what they thought they were doing. The couple handed over identification cards and Sarah went back to her patrol car to run them. A few minutes later, the hippies were stuffed into the back of the patrol cars, the female in Sarah’s car, the male in Steve’s. About this time, another patrol car arrived on the scene and parked behind Sarah and Steve. This deputy got out and Jake recognized him as well. It was Sergeant Stivick, who had been the supervisor on the night the deputies had showed up to make sure Jake and Laura were not harboring a teenage transexual from Venezuela. Stivick was also a regular attendee of the Jake Kingsley show at the Pine Cove.

After holding a brief discussion with Steve and Sarah, Stivick went to the slingshot and examined it with his flashlight for a few minutes. He then looked in the bag that the objects the duo had been launching were stored in. The bag was now almost empty. Jake saw the sergeant shaking his head as he looked in there. He made no move to put his hand in or touch any of the objects. He then began to walk to the gate. A minute later, he was standing next to the intercom box. He pushed the button.

Jake opened the link. “Hey, sarge,” he said. “Thanks for showing up so fast.”

“No problem, Jake,” Stivick said. “Can I come up to the house?”

“Yeah,” Jake said, pushing a button on the panel. “Gate’s opening now.”