"Lessig, Hugh - Tough Love" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lessig Hugh)

= TOUGH LOVE
By Hugh Lessig


The morning began with another black helicopter dream. They caught me between houses this time. I don't know which houses. I didn't recognize the terrain. But I knew the helicopters would land on me, and I knew I would die when they did.

Then the phone woke me up.

The clock said 6:23 a.m. Early morning sun slanted through a crack in the blinds and hit me right in the face. I picked up the phone and heard the soothing growl of my editor. I heard "shooting" and "five blocks away" and " Kodak moment."

I still heard the black helicopters.

I put down the phone and rolled out of bed. I have a third floor apartment with a balcony that opens onto Jackson Street. From there, I saw the chopper from Channel 40, the local NBC affiliate in River City. It circled lazily over my apartment and settled half a block away where two police cruisers had blocked traffic, blue lights pulsing.

I stared at the helicopter for a minute or so. It was rainbow-colored, not black, and it had a respectable name: Skywatch 40. I returned to the phone, where my editor had been talking into the pillow. I waited a few more seconds before picking up the receiver.

"So what do think, Smith? What about the political angle, the social thing -- getting the activists in on it? Should I get another reporter out of bed?"

What the hell had happened? I told my boss I had seen the police cruisers and I'd let him know when I got there. Then I got dressed, grabbed my notebook and tape recorder and headed out the door.

The cops were at the corner of Drummer and Jackson. They had cordoned off a corner lot with yellow tape. The house belonged to a doctor, an OB-GYN to be exact. A body was on the sidewalk, and the cops had covered most of it with a sheet. But you could see a man's hand sticking out, and the hand clutched a sign that read "Protect the Sanctity of Human Life." My heart pounded for a few seconds as I gauged the size of the dead man.

It had to be Bob.

I didn't know his last name. He was Bob the Lonely Abortion Protester. Every few days he marched in front of the doctor's house, which had an office and clinic in the back. I believe the doctor did late-term abortions, or what the pro-lifers call "partial birth" abortions. Bob claimed the place was unsafe. The doctor may have had a couple of malpractice suits pending, but I had never checked on it.

I had to walk past Bob to catch the bus in the morning, and we had talked several times. He would stand at the corner, holding a sign or a placard as if it was the most natural thing in the world. Once I stood next to him as a man in a Volvo drove by and flipped him off. Bob just smiled and waved.

"Doesn't that bother you?" I asked.

He looked at me with bright blue eyes. He was bald, maybe 50. He looked like a schoolteacher. He had big, strong hands. "Not really," he said. "Didn't you ever feel strongly enough about something to hold a sign? Oh, I forget. You're a newspaper reporter."

"Don't hate me because of our editorial policy, Bob. I just write the stories. I don't take stands."

"Your paper is pro-death," he said matter-of-factly.

"Pro-choice."

"Same thing, bubba."

We talked at least once a week. Sometimes it was a "good morning," or I would joke that he'd better keep out of trouble. We last spoke two weeks ago. He wore a Redskins cap, and I liked the Giants, and they had a game coming up on Sunday. It was Friday, and we were both in good moods. We talked decently for two minutes -- he admitted LaVar Arrington was overrated; I wasn't sure about Ron Dayne. Something passed between us, a whiff of friendship. He went to his car and came back with a videocassette. It had a piece of masking tape with the date written on it: Sept. 25, 2000. That was two weeks ago.

"Dirty movies, Bob?"

He actually blushed. "You asked how I put up with stuff -- obscene gestures, that sort of thing. I make these tapes of my protests. I've got a record of where I stand, what I do - just in case something happens. This was a particularly rough day. Maybe you should write a story about what abortion protesters have to put up with."

I asked why people hated him.

"You know what I think? This might sound silly, but I think they're crying out for love."