winds us through the lot back out onto the street. “Another hate crime, right? Sons-of-a-bitches. Three now, if it turns out the lynching is one.”
“Three?”
“I forgot, you been gone. ‘Bout a week ago some fool threw a firebomb at the Muslim Community Center up in Northwest Portland—the one on Twenty-Fifth. Nobody hurt and the fire went out before it could damage anything on the building. Oh, hold the boat. There was a cross burning too. Southwest, near Council Crest. Make it four.”
“Has anyone been arrested?”
He shrugs. “Haven’t heard anything except a few TV news stories about Muslims being afraid and sayin’ how they are people of peace.” He looks over at me. “What do you think, Sam? What does it all mean?”
I shrug. “Hate crimes for sure. Several white guys attacked my two friends. Could they have lynched a black man? Sure. Could they have attacked the Muslim center? Sure. But usually haters focus on one or two groups. But who knows? What do you think?”
“I think there’s too much hate in the world. People get intimidated, scared so they turn to hate. Maybe hate gives them some kind of power over what scares them. Don’t know if it fits, but my mama used to say church gives some people just enough religion to hate but not enough to love.”
“Your mother was a wise woman.”
“Yes, sir,” Rudy chuckles as he turns right onto Martin Luther King Boulevard. “She was a wonderful … Uh-oh. I forgot my dispatcher warned us to avoid this part of MLK today and here I drove us right into this mess. Folks demonstratin’ again in front of the clinic.”
At least two hundred people are blocking the street in front of the Northeast Women’s Center, a well-known family planning clinic that performs abortions. Looks like about every other person is waving a sign:
CHILDREN KILLED HERE
STOP ABORTION NOW
BABY GOOD, BABY KILLER BAD
PRO-LIFE AND PROUD
Several are holding long poles with naked, red paint-splattered dolls dangling from them.
There have been demonstrations here by pro-life groups as long as I can remember. The first year I worked by myself, I worked uniform in this part of town for about two months. Got called here twice for crowd control. The first call was no big deal but on the second one a few weeks later, there were pro-choice and pro-life groups clashing hard. I caught the call and like the dumb rookie I was, I waded right into the middle of it before my backup arrived. When a guy pushed me from behind, I spun around and leg swept him to the sidewalk. Who knew he was the national president of “A Woman’s Right to Choose,” one of the largest pro-choice groups out of New York City? The man had flown into Portland to give a speech only to be launched face first onto the sidewalk by little ol’ me. He wasn’t hurt badly, but face injuries tend to bleed a lot, which fired up his people into breaking out windows and attacking the police. Since I had waded into the crowd without backup, and it was me who dumped the guy, and since I had less than a year on the job, I decided it best not to mention it was my action that fueled the riot.
Right now, a dozen cops wearing black helmets and black, heavily padded chest and leg protection are guarding the front door, standing stoically unresponsive to the demonstrators surging toward them, backing away, and surging toward them again. The cops aren’t about to get suckered into their antics.
Rudy twists in his seat to back us up, but we move only a foot or two before he has to anchor it. “There’s a truck on our butt and crazy folks squeezing between the bumpers.”
“This demo is bigger than usual,” I say, looking at a middle-aged man standing in front of our car and thrusting a sign at us: JESUS FORGIVES YOU. Brother, I hope so.
“A girl died here last week,” Rudy says. “I only read part of the story but I think she was about sixteen. Guessin’ it’s what this is all about.”
New arrivals stream around the cab heading toward the clinic. Someone pounds on our trunk lid.
“Hey!” Rudy shouts, unsnapping his seatbelt.
“Stay in the car,” I say. The guy with the JESUS FORGIVES YOU sign is thumping the butt of his stick on the hood now. Rudy leans on the horn.
“Don’t honk, Rudy. It draws more attention to us. It doesn’t take much for an ugly crowd like this to turn real ugly. Okay, the truck’s starting to back up. Let’s follow it.”
But there are people pressed up against both sides of the cab now, so many all we can see are crotches, bellies, and belt buckles. Someone starts pounding the roof and then another and another. It sounds like it’s raining baseball-sized hail.
My door opens but only a few inches before the weight of all the bodies shuts it again.
“Lock your door!” I shout, but Rudy’s is already open. Mine opens again while I look for the lock button on the armrest.
A hand grabs at my face. I snap my head back and grab the man’s pinkie and ring fingers with my left hand and his middle and index fingers with my right. The Japanese call it yubi tori, a finger hold, but my students call it “make a wish.” I yank the two sets of fingers in opposite directions. Even over the roof pounding, I can hear the hand’s owner scream. I push his arm away and pull my door shut, lock it, and turn to Rudy. What the hell?
If my new friend’s stomach wasn’t so big, the protestor’s head would probably be pressed against the big man’s lap. But since there’s no room, Rudy has braced the side of the bearded fellow’s face against the steering wheel with one hand and is pinching a wad of the man’s eyelid with his other.
“Which do you like the most?” the big cabbie asks calmly. “When I do this?” He pulls the flap of skin at least an inch away from the terrified man’s weeping eye. “Or this?” He twists the skin right and left as if trying to get a key to open a lock. I can’t tell if the man is screaming because of the pain or from the utter horror of the technique. It’s probably about fifty-fifty.
The weight of the crowd has been pressing the driver’s door against the man’s lower body holding him in place, but the easily bored mob abruptly abandons their peer for greener pastures, this time to something happening at the front of the clinic.
“Better catch up to your homeboys,” Rudy says, releasing the man’s eyelid. He palms the bearded face as if it were a hairy basketball and pushes him out of the cab. The guy sprawls onto his back and covers his face with his hands. Other protestors step over him. The roof pounding has stopped now that everyone has rushed off. Over by the building I can see riot police spraying the crowd with pepper spray.
“Back up this unit now!” a cop dressed a little like Darth Vader shouts, slapping his palm on the hood of the cab. His shiny black helmet, tinted visor, and heavily padded uniform are definitely intimidating. “Follow the truck out of here,” he barks. “Do it now, driver!” From behind the riot control officer, a female protestor, dressed in a black peacoat, army fatigue pants, and wearing a bandana over her face, smashes the officer across his back with a white cross. Two other black uniformed officers grab her and take her to the pavement.
“The truck is backing, Rudy,” I say, looking out the back window. “Let’s do it.”
“Oh my,”
