The Birthday

Which birthday do you remember the most vividly?

Normally, I try to forget birthdays. Once you hit forty, birthdays are just harbingers of mortality. But I will never forget my forty third birthday. The day started out the way my birthdays often do. My wife, Maggie, woke up an hour before me, and the aroma of the biscuits and bacon pulled me from slumber five minutes before my alarm got the chance. After scratching all of the appropriate areas, I performed my daily maintenance rituals and stumbled, still groggy, to the kitchen.

 

“Good morning birthday boy,” Maggie said with much more cheer than I was prepared to deal with at that hour of the morning.

 

She laughed out loud when I mumbled something less than coherent in response. I sat down to a cup of hot coffee that she’d sat on the table moments earlier. I opened the daily newspaper.

 

“What’s news?” she asked, relentless with her damned sunny disposition.

 

I mumbled unintelligibly again like the curmudgeon that I was and still am, rolled my eyes, smirked and took a sip of coffee.

 

Despite my rancor, Maggie persisted and finally got me talking about plans for my birthday. It was decided that we would go to the hardware department at Sears where I would select a couple of power tools that I’d been wanting and she would buy them for me as a birthday gift. Then we would go to the restaurant of my choice, enjoy a nice dinner and come home, where we would proceed with the only part of the birthday celebration that I really looked forward to. I kissed her and left for work. At the precinct, pretty much all of my fellow officers offered birthday wishes and a few gave me gifts. I offered appropriate thanks to each well-wisher and gift giver. Each that is, except for one.

 

        It seems that I had one unknown benefactor. Someone left a neatly wrapped gift on the seat of my squad car. The box was about the size of a videocassette tape and it was wrapped in beautiful red paper with the words happy birthday all across it in royal blue. There was no card, no indication of where it had come from. I was going to put it in the glove compartment and open it later, but my curiosity got the best of me and I opened it. I have to admit I was taken aback by what I saw. There inside was a beautiful, chrome plated .45-caliber automatic pistol … or at least it appeared to be. What it actually was, was a cigarette lighter that had been designed to look like a gun. It looked almost exactly like a .45 except for one little detail. There was a small hole on the side of the barrel where you put in the butane when you needed to refill the lighter. Much like a nine year old who must play with every toy he sees, I lit it a few times before putting it back in the box. It was actually a beautiful piece and I would have loved it except for one minor detail " I don’t smoke. I pondered a bit on who might have given me such a beautiful, but useless gift, and then I started my patrol.

The day was boring except for my birthday excitement and mercifully the work part of the day was almost over. I was headed back to the station when it happened. My radio crackled with the dispatcher's report of a man with a gun as I turned a corner five blocks from the station and pulled up to a nightmare. Half a dozen cars were stopped in either direction, and there was a young looking guy standing in the middle of the road. He had his left arm tucked beneath the chin of a pretty young girl holding her neck tightly. Her black eye make up was running in streams down her cheeks and she was trembling. There were two cars off on the shoulder with damage that told a story. One of the cars had run the other off the road; it wasn’t difficult to tell that the young man had run the girl off the road. This appeared to be a classic lovers hostage situation. They rarely end well. Three officers besides me were already there on the scene and the approaching wail of sirens told me that more would arrive shortly.  Hanson and Doherty were taking cover behind their open cruiser doors and Walker was creeping closer to him from behind.

Walker would have been the last guy I’d have chosen to be in that position. He wasn't a bad guy, but he was new, and you could never know what a new guy would do in his first hostage situation. I patted my chest, subconsciously checking to be sure that my Kevlar vest was on, and I started crab walking between cars as fast as I could. I wanted to defuse the situation before Walker got close enough to do something that might haunt him for the rest of his life. I was about 20 feet away when I heard Doherty's voice to my left.

"Police Department! Put the gun down and put your hands up now!"

I hadn't seen Doherty creeping up and I was shocked that he had gotten so close. Apparently so was the boy. He whirled around to face Doherty jerking the girl with him by her neck. When the boy turned to face Doherty, Walker took the opportunity to move five steps closer. Things were spiraling out of control now. The boy spun back 180° towards the sound of Walker's footsteps jerking the girl again. That was when I saw it. When the boy turned to face Doherty, I was 10 feet away. It was as big as day, the tiny hole about the size of the tip of a ballpoint pen. It was a hole to refill the butane. The damn kid was waving a freakin' cigarette lighter around four cops with their guns pointed at him.

"Don't shoot," I yelled, holstering my weapon on the dead run, "it's a God damn cigarette lighter!"

The boy was shocked to see me. I'm sure by the look on his face, that he never knew I was there. With four more feet between the two kids and I, I silently pleaded. Please don't point that damned toy at me. Doherty had lowered his gun when I first started running. But I could see out of the corner of my eye that Walker still had his gun pointed at the kid. If the kid pointed that cigarette lighter at me there was going to be a tragedy. Thank God he didn't. He froze and I was able to close the last few feet. I hit the two of them hard enough to knock them onto the grass beside the curb. They were both startled and the girl was crying, but they were both alive. The boy, David Cress, was seventeen, shaking like a startled kitten. He was also crying and he'd lost his bladder... but he was alive.

That was about four years ago. Why, you ask, am I telling you this story? I received an invitation in the mail today. It was an invitation to the commencement ceremonies for David Cress' college graduation. In one month, a boy who would've been four years dead, will graduate college because somebody gave me what I thought was a useless gift. To this day, I have no idea who left me that cigarette lighter.

Author's Note

The muse had been away for a while. I hope she was kind to me upon her return. I contend that angels visit us in all sorts of subtle ways.

Reviews

[LA Lorena]

Oh, great story Swiney! I really liked it. Nice amount of suspense and drama. The mysterious origin of the gun/lighter was great, and I'm glad that it remained a mystery at the end. Sometimes the best endings are those that leave you forever curious and wondering! Well done!

[Ronn Michael Salinas]

"cigarette lighter" genious

[Emily B]

awesome story!!!

[Ed Hart]

they ought to use this story as an add for selling those cigarette gun things