Fire and Fury

Ronis Wakizashi chewed his breakfast steak and savored every juicy bite before the heavenly meal slid down his throat. It had been a while since he’d eaten at The Buffalo Brunch. Catching his latest criminal called for a celebration: tender sirloin steak, fluffy scrambled eggs, butter-drenched English muffins, and crispy hash browns. Ronis ate his meal without regard for the contents tangling into his scraggly beard or splattering on his bulletproof vest and blue jeans. He even managed to get a bite of scrambled egg on his cowboy hat, which took some serious talent.

His beautiful breakfast was interrupted at the sounds of heavy breathing from across the restaurant. Among all the patrons, the female navy sailor with the jittery hands and splashing coffee cup got his attention. Her breathing patterns included some slight squeaks. Ronis stared at her for a while then shook his head in annoyance before digging right back into his breakfast.

The sailor’s breathing deepened as tears flowed from her eyes ever so lightly. Ronis slammed his fork down on his plate and gave her another annoyed look, but she was too pumped on nervous adrenaline to notice. Even the waitress had to ask the sailor five or six times whether she wanted a refill on her coffee before she snapped out of her trance and said yes.

Ronis watched as the waitress poured coffee into the sailor’s mug. The navy soldier finally snapped when a splash of coffee burned her fingers. She shot up and let out a lengthy blood-curdling scream while shaking the burn out of her hand. The waitress apologized relentlessly and scanned the restaurant for other patrons staring at her, to which she gave them an awkward smile.

The sailor pulled a knife from her belt and wrapped one arm around the waitress’s throat. When the hostess screamed, the navy soldier snapped, “Shut up! Shut the fuck up, you stupid bitch! If I hear so much as a pin drop in this fucking place, I’ll carve your ass up from ear to ear!”

The waitress’s wailing was reduced to childish whimpering and a stream of heavy tears. Everybody stared at the knife-wielder, including Ronis, who kept a steady grip on his shotgun underneath the table. The Sheriff even had the nerve to keep eating his breakfast, gnashing a piece of English muffin with those smelly teeth of his.

“Hey! What the hell do you think you’re doing, old man?!” screamed the sailor. “Breakfast is over! Now you all are going to listen to me before I slash this bitch’s throat!”

“I don’t think so, you stupid whore,” said Ronis with a scarily calm demeanor. He stood right up and pointed his shotgun at the sailor, who proceeded to press her blade tightly against the sobbing waitress’s throat. “Put the knife down, navy chick. You’re not going to win this fight. I’m the one with the shotgun and all you have is a little tinker toy. Are you ready to give up or do I have to splatter your brains all over the table?”

“You want to shoot me?” the sailor stammered. “You want to kill my ass? Go ahead! Anything’s better than living with this shit inside my brain! You’d be doing me a favor!”

“Alright, I get it,” said Ronis halfheartedly. “You’re a soldier who saw a whole bunch of nasty stuff overseas and now you can’t get it out of your mind. Hell, if I went through half of what you guys go through every day, I’d be messed up in the head too. Put you’ve got to put the knife down. Carving up that sweet thing isn’t going to give you relief.”

“No, it won’t,” admitted the sailor in a somewhat calmer voice. “But it’ll make people listen. You know why people like to show up at political rallies with cardboard signs? Because they want to be heard. And now I want to be heard too. If I didn’t have this knife in my hands, you’d be sitting there finishing your goddamn breakfast.”

“You got my attention, princess,” said Ronis. “Now tell me what you want. I ain’t got all day. You’re right: I do want to eat my breakfast, so make it quick.”

“Please!” begged the waitress through horrified tears. “Don’t make her angry! Just give her what she wants so that we can all go home!”

“Shut the fuck up, you skinny bitch, this ain’t any of your goddamn business!” Ronis shouted. He returned his attention to the traumatized sailor and said, “Now, you have the floor. Say something and say it fast. Otherwise, my trigger finger’s going to get really itchy. Are we clear?” No response. “Do you want a microphone and a stage or what? Talk, damn it!”

“You want me to talk?” asked the sailor. “Fine, let’s talk. After all, if I don’t say anything, I’ll just be another statistic on a government chart. I’ll just be another homeless bum on the streets who can’t find a goddamn job. Yeah, you think you know what I’m going through? Of course you don’t. You can sleep easy at night without having to worry if you’re going to die in your dreams. You don’t have to think about exploding land mines or gunfire blowing out your eardrums or your supervisor not giving a shit either way! I don’t want to fight this war any longer. I want to know what true comfort really is.”

“And you think you’re going to get true comfort by slashing a waitress’s throat?” asked Ronis. “There are only two kinds of comfort that will get you: sleeping easy in a six-by-nine cell or sleeping easy in a coffin. In the end, it doesn’t matter if your message is right or wrong. What matters is that you’re putting people in danger with your reckless behavior.”

The sailor’s facial features softened to a contemplative expression, generating silence between her, the captive, and Sheriff Wakizashi. It was a calming silence for all parties involved, but it was really just complacency when the sailor shouted, “Reckless behavior my ass! You haven’t seen shit yet!”

The soldier raised her dagger and forced a shriek out of the waitress as it came down with a quickness. The waitress bowed down on the floor with her ears covered after Ronis pulled the trigger, knocking the sailor to the ground and freeing the server from captivity. The waitress still screamed bloody murder while the other patrons watched in wide-eyed shock and horror.

Ronis, without a hint of remorse, trudged over to the waitress and the sailor’s body with his cowboy boots clicking against the brick floor. He fished several five dollar bills out of his jeans pocket and dropped them on the waitress, who looked up at him with puppy dog eyes and more hysterical sobbing. The Sheriff said, “There’s your tip for putting up with all of this bullshit. I’m proud of you.” No response. “What are you waiting for?”

The waitress scooped up her “gratuity” and ran out of the restaurant in a big blubbering hurry, which was amazing since she wore high heeled shoes the entire time. Ronis looked coldly at the sailor’s prone body and said, “You can stop acting now. That was just a beanbag shot.” The sailor slowly regained consciousness after acquiring a huge purple bump on her forehead. She tenderly touched the bruise and winced in pain after the slightest poke.

“What’s your name, sweetheart?” asked Ronis.

“Julie Clay. Seaman Julie Clay,” she said in a dizzied hush.

“Nice to meet you. I’m Sheriff Ronis Wakizashi. I should be taking you to jail right now to serve a long ass sentence. But I’m not going to.” He knelt beside her and placed a gentle hand on her shoulder. “That tough guy talk was just to see how far you’d really go. Intimidation has always worked for me in the past. It didn’t work with you, so I had to shoot you with that beanbag. Sorry about that. You really did have something to say and you weren’t going down without getting your voice out there. I admire that. You really are the dictionary definition of a soldier, Miss Clay.”

“What happens now?” asked Julie. “Do I need to turn around and put my hands behind my back?”

“I’m afraid so, Miss Clay. The handcuffs are a precautionary measure and I never leave home without them. The beanbag gun was optional. I don’t like shooting people when I don’t have to. My father was shot during a traffic stop, not by a crook, but by another cop. I’ve had to live with that shit for a long, long time. I wouldn’t know what comfort was if it came up and bit me on the ass. So I joined the force hoping I could make a difference with just this beanbag gun. But you, it’s not too late for you to make a difference. Hell, you’ve done a lot already with your military career. But before we can turn the clock back, you have to come with me.”

Julie’s breathing got progressively heavier as she held her hands up together and whispered, “Get me out of here. I don’t care where we go from here, just get me the hell out of this place.”

“It’s a good thing you don’t care where we’re going, because I’m not taking you to jail. Jail is for people who have nothing but evil and negativity in their hearts. You’ve got something more than that. I’m taking you to the hospital to be treated. You can’t walk around town with this kind of violent force. I know you don’t mean to do it. I know you don’t want to do it. So come on, let’s get you out of here,” said Ronis before hooking the handcuffs around Julie’s wrists and gently pulling her up.

As the two of them walked slowly toward the exit with Ronis’s arms draped over Julie’s shoulders, she asked, “Why are you doing all of this for me? I almost killed someone and you’re giving me an easy way out.”

“There’s nothing easy about any of this, Miss Clay,” said Ronis in a gentle voice. “But just because your road to recovery is a long one, doesn’t mean that the US Department of Justice has to be an oxymoron.”