Free The Anomalies by Joey Goebel

can kiss my ass, figure of speech style.”
    “Watch it, mother fucker. I’ve put away plenty of your brothers, and I could just as easily do the same to you. As far as I’m concerned, you’re guilty just for being related to ’em.”
    The boy shakes his head and just starts laughing like a crazy man. The whole time he’s staring at me. He’s fixin to say something when the old lady interrupts.
    “You remember the way out, don’t you?”
    “Yes, ma’am. I’ll be on my way. Just keep the noise down.”
    My work is done here, so I check out the slut again and look at the black boy one more time to show him who’s boss, and then I head on out. Just as I’m fixin to leave, the black boy yells at me on his microphone.
    “Oh, sweet lord, Officer! It just dawned on me like a black hole sun that there is something I have been meaning to ask a man in uniform!”
    I turn around and re-enter.
    “Okay, but you don’t need no microphone to ask it.”
    He steps away from the mike and says:
    “I have always wondered about a situation. I am sure that it is one that happens every day somewhere in the world, even in a small town like this one.”
    “I’m listenin.”
    “Let us say there is an individual driving his car down a lonely road at night, doing his own thing, minding his own business, obeying traffic laws, and keeping his speed at the posted limit.”
    “No problems there,” I say.
    “I guess not,” says the gangster. “But then let us say that a second car comes up behind him and keeps getting closer and closer yet shows no interest in passing. Remember, it is night, so our individual can only see headlights creeping up behind his ass. When he sees that he is being tailgated, he speeds up.”
    “Right. What’s your question?”
    “So the second car keeps right on the tail of our individual, forcing him to keep increasing his speed, until finally he is driving well past the speed limit. At that point, the second car, the one that is doing the tailgating, turns on its sirens andpatriotically displays its red, white, and blue lights. We know the rest. Pull over, please, license and registration, please, step out of the vehicle, please, here’s your ticket, and so forth and so on. So my question to you is, who should be blamed here?
    I ain’t stupid. He expects me to say the police officer wasn’t doing anything wrong, since after all, I am a cop. I know how to handle this.
    “First of all, that wouldn’t happen. Second of all, both of them are at fault. The cop should’ve had something better to do than follow around that driver. But the driver didn’t have to speed up, though. Nobody was forcing him to. He didn’t have a gun to his head.”
    “Would you say that the cop actually created this crime?” he asks. “It would have never occurred if he had not appeared.”
    “Now you’re getting into chicken or the egg stuff, there. I gotta get going.”
    “Fry the chicken and scramble the egg. That is what I always say. But I am surprised at you. You said both drivers were at fault. How could the police officer be at fault, for as soon as the first driver exceeded the speed limit, the police officer was merely doing his job in pulling him over?”
    That’s true. Now he’s making sense.
    “That’s true. Now you’re making sense.”
    “Yes, sir,” says the boy. “The police officer was just doing his job, being a fucking asshole. You push us into things like that and then wonder why we are the way we are. You push us out just so you can get things the way they are in your head, and then you do not even give us a chance, and none of you have guns to your heads, either.”
    Listen to all that bullshit. Sounds just like his brothers, like he’s on crack.
    “Shut the fuck up, Johnson. I’ll be keeping an eye on you.”
    I hurry out so I can have the last word.
    “And keep that noise down!”
Luster
    The only thing I have in common with my brothers is a hard-core Jedi hatred for cops. My