Praying for Sleep

about you and the soldiers. Please, please, please, take that off!
    It was an extremely agitated Michael Hrubek who, upon this damp night in November, bicycled doggedly down Route 236 at twenty miles an hour, lost in these hard memories—which was why he didn’t hear the police car, dark and silent, until it was within ten feet of the bike’s rear wheel. The lights and siren burst to life.
    “Oh God oh God oh God!” Hrubek screamed. Panic exploded throughout his body.
    A voice came over the loudspeaker, jarring as a firecracker. “You there! Stop that bicycle and get off.” A spotlight was trained on the back of Hrubek’s head.
    John Cops! he thought. Agents! FBI! Hrubek coasted to a stop and the deputies stepped from their squad car.
    “Just climb off that, young man.”
    Hrubek swung awkwardly off the bike. The men cautiously approached. One whispered, “He’s a mountain. He’s huge.”
    “All right there. Could we see some identification?”
    Fucking fucker conspirators, Hrubek thought. Politely he asked, “Are you federal agents?”
    “Agents?” One of them chuckled. “No, we’re just police officers. From Gunderson.”
    “Step over here, sir. You have a driver’s license?”
    Hrubek sat down, his back to the officers, and bowed his head.
    The policemen looked at each other, wondering how they might deal with this. Hrubek upped the ante by crying out, “I’m soooo upset! He took everything. He hit me on the head with a rock. Look at my hand.” He held up his scraped palm. “I’ve been look -ing for help.”
    They continued forward but stopped a safe distance away. “Somebody attacked you, you say? Are you hurt? If you could just let us see some ID.”
    “Is it him?” one asked.
    “We just want to see some identification, sir. A driver’s license. Anything.”
    “He took my wallet. He took everything.”
    “You’ve been robbed?”
    “There were several of them. Took my wallet and my watch. That watch,” Hrubek reported solemnly, “was a present from my mother. If you’d watched the roads better, you might’ve prevented a serious crime.”
    “I’m sorry if you’ve had some misfortune, sir. Could you give us your name and address. . . .”
    “John W. Booth is my name.”
    “Didn’t think it was that,” one cop said to the other, as if speaking in front of an infant.
    “Don’t recall. The notice said he’s harmless.”
    “May be, but he’s big.”
    One cop walked closer to Hrubek, who rocked and moaned in mournful tears. “We’d appreciate you standing up, Johnnie, just coming over to the car. People at the hospital’re worried about you. We want to take you back there.” In a singsong voice he added, “Wouldn’t you like to go home? Get some pie and milk maybe? Some nice apple pie?” He stood behind Hrubek, training his flashlight on the man’s empty hands then shining it again on the back of the glossy and somewhat blue head.
    “Thank you, sir. You know, I would like to be getting back, now that you mention it. I miss the place.” Hrubek turned and grinned amiably as he reached up very slowly to shake the officer’s hand. The policeman too smiled—in curiosity at the young man’s sincere gesture—and gripped Hrubek’s meaty fist, realizing too late that the madman was intending to break his wrist. The bone snapped and, shrieking, the officer dropped to his knees, the flashlight falling onto the ground beside him. His partner reached for his gun but Hrubek had already trained the stolen Colt on him.
    “Nice try,” he announced with damp lips that pulled into a wry smile. “Drop that, drop that!”
    The cop did. “Oh, Jesus.”
    Hrubek took the injured cop’s gun from his holster and tossed it away. The man huddled on the ground, cradling his wrist.
    “Look, fellow,” his partner pled, “you’re going to get in nothing but trouble over this.”
    Hrubek chewed on a fingernail then he looked down at the cops. “You can’t stop me. I can do it. I’m going to do it, and I’m going to do it quickly!” These words rose like a mad battle cry. He shook a fist above his head.
    “Please, young man, put that gun down.” The injured policeman’s voice broke and his eyes and nose dripped pitifully. “Nothing serious’s happened. Nobody’s been really hurt yet.”
    Hrubek turned a triumphant eye on him. He spat out, “Oh, nice try, John Cop. But that’s where you’re wrong. Everybody’s been hurt. Everybody, everybody, everybody! And it’s