A Troopers’ Christmas
By Tom Brosman
Bryan sat between the doors of his patrol car on Christmas Day, 2005. He was parked on a wide turnout on Highway 395 where he could watch the cars coming north, out of Spokane. He was looking for DUIs and speeders and would aim his Falcon at cars that looked “over”. It was almost noon and there was a lull in the traffic. He put the hand held radar in the seat beside him and turned up the FM radio. Christmas music was playing and Bryan tried to count the number of Christmases he had worked as trooper. He thought it was nineteen, counting the one he was working. When he was a young troop, he worked the first Christmases because he needed the money. The last ones, he worked to cover for the younger troopers so they could be with their families. Ten service stripes on his shirt sleeve and the lines on his face marked the thirty years he had spent working the road. He had written the citations, put away bad guys and responded to a thousand wrecks where he was expected to do what no one else wanted to, or was capable of doing.
The morning had started out with 2 DUIs and 3 speeding violators. Very few cars were on the highway. He figured there were somewhere carving a turkey with family at the moment. For some reason, Bryan remembered back to the “big argument,” that went on in his family for years. It had started when Bryan was four or five years old. His mother was a devout Baptist and she figured that since Bryan was her only son, he most certainly “was” going to be a Baptist Minister and her mind was made up.
His dad was a logger who logged in the mountains between Colville and the Canadian Border. He owned five log trucks, two skidders, a big yarder and had seven full time employees. His dad made enough money to buy his family a nice house in Colville and added some money every month to Bryans’ college fund. The big logger was a determined man and more than anything, he wanted his son to become a doctor, not a pastor and for sure not a logger. Dinner time was when the battles took place. Young Bryan would take a bite of meatloaf or pot roast and scrunch down in his chair as the shelling began. “My son will become a Baptist Pastor and we will send him off to Bible College! When he graduates, he can come right back here to the Colville Valley and pastor a nice church, close to his mother!” The big logger’s face would get red and he would struggle to keep from yelling or saying something he might regret while he slept on the couch. “Woman, it will be a cold day in a hot place before that happens! That boy has the makings of a surgeon and I have not roasted and frozen in the logging woods most of my life to see my son live like a pauper. Doctors make good money and they get respect, not like a gyppo logger. When he is practicing medicine he can give lots of money to a church, but this boy is going to be a doctor!” The shellings took place at least once a week. When the war wasn’t on, the household was fairly happy and calm.
When Bryan was 11, his dad gave him a ring that was one of a kind. A jeweler in Colville had crafted it for the big logger and told Bryans’ dad as he paid the jeweler that there was not another ring like it in the state. It had a wide gold band and in a strong setting in the center of the ring was a big tiger eye stone. The jeweler placed the ring in a small box and as he wrapped it, he gave a few last words of advice to the logger.
“I made the band man sized so he can grow into it. I will size if free if it’s too big by the time Bryan is 18. The tiger eye stone is supposed to bring courage, energy and luck and was even worn by Roman soldiers for protection in battle.” Bryans’ dad waited until his wife was at the grocery store before handed the gift to his son. “This is what a doctor wears, son. Keep it hidden until your ring finger is big enough to wear it.
Don’t tell your mother about this ring, even if she buys you a wooden pulpit to practice preaching on.”
The summer of 74 was hot, with lots of forest fires. In the early fall, the fire danger on the Colville National Forest was so bad, that all logging was shut down for a couple of weeks. So, Bryans’ dad declared a busman’s’ holiday and the family left for Spokane on a warm Saturday morning. The valley had a haze from the forest fires, but the fall colors were coming on and they were enjoying the trip. They planned on shopping at Northtown and then drive downtown to the Crescent Department Store and on the way back home, Bryan’s dad wanted to stopped at the White Elephant for some .30 .30 shells for deer season.
His parents were “playing nice” with each other and they were visiting and chuckling as they passed by Deer Park and sailed on towards Spokane. The trooper who pulled in behind them paced his dad at twenty over and turned on his light bar and rolled the big logger on to the side. The trooper walked up to the driver’s side of the car and wrote his dad a ticket for less than he could have. Bryan watched every move the state trooper made and noted every detail of his uniform and hat and badge and gun. He listened to the words the lawman said and how he conducted himself without arrogance, but with dignity. It was as if a hidden door opened for Bryan. He knew beyond any doubt that he had found his calling.
The next seven years flew for Bryan. He let the arguments of his folks blow right on by and enjoyed his meals at the dinner table. By his senior year, the ring his dad had given him fit perfectly and he wore it with pride, picturing a Roman soldier, strong and brave, or a Washington State Trooper. He graduated from Colville High and worked that summer for his dad in the woods. He borrowed the car for a couple of trips to Seattle and Olympia to see the sites that summer. Mostly, he worked hard for his dad. The battles for his direction in life, became wars and though his mom and dad were both stubborn, he was their son and he a double dose of resolve and only grinned when they badgered him about his future.
In late August, the letter Bryan had hoped for came in the mail. His mother hadn’t opened it, though she was tempted, but she met him at the door that night. As usual, he smelled of chain saw smoke and the woods. The only thing clean on him was his ring.
His mother, with the look of a general who had lost a war, handed her son the letter from the Washington State Patrol in Olympia. His dad’s scowl was beginning to grow as Bryan opened the letter and a grin from ear to ear showed white teeth in the center of a dirty face. Bryan had been accepted as a cadet and his class would start in January of 1974. There were several months of wailing and gnashing of teeth by his parents but Bryan became a trooper.
For thirty years he had lived the life and worn the badge. Along the way he had lost his dad and lost a marriage. He had a daughter in Spokane whose husband was in Iraq.
His daughter had a daughter named Amy, who was eight years old and was the light of Bryan’s life. He adored the child she and she loved him back. She named Bryan Paw Paw before she could walk. Bryan broke out of his reverie and checked a car with his Falcon, then thought again about his folks and the turns in the road that Life took. Sometimes, lately, he wondered, if becoming a pastor or doctor hadn’t been a better way.
A trooper’s life wasn’t for everyone, but he had found himself, found his reason in it.
He had stopped speeders and drunks and rolled to a thousand wrecks, where without his help, some people would have died. Many times he got blood on his uniform, trying to keep a wreck victim from bleeding out or giving up. He still remembered the one he called the “Christmas Wreck”. Bryan had been twenty one, a new troop. A family was headed north on Highway 2, towards Newport, when the father lost control of the car on black ice and slid into an oncoming Darigold Milk truck that had just entered the highway after making a stop at a dairy farm to pick up the milk.
The RP was the dairy farmer who witnessed the wreck. Bryan had been the first on the scene. The trucker’s injuries were minor since he sat above the car. The father was unconscious with a concussion and several fractures. Bryan saw that the only passenger, was a woman, who was in bad shape. At least one arm was broken and she was covered in blood. She had been cut by a shard of glass across her upper arm and her brachial artery was spurting blood. The young trooper got around to her side and with hands as strong as the logger who sired him, put direct pressure on the spurting wound. Far away, he heard the ambulance siren. He felt helpless, when he saw the large amount of blood the woman had lost, helpless and all alone. What happened next made the hair on the back of his neck stand up. A small boy, maybe six, had been behind the passenger seat, afraid to come out after the wreck. He was bruised up but had his seat belt on and was in one piece. The boy leaned over the seat and studied the trooper and his mother and father. Then, with words the young trooper would never forget, the boy prayed. “I call to you in heaven and I know that you can hear me. I do not ask for myself, because I know that you will take care of me. I ask for my dad and my mother, that you help her to live. They need each other. Thank you.” The little boy watched the big trooper who was covered with his mothers’ blood as his strong hand kept pressure on the wound. When the ambulance came, the boy surely wished he had said something to the tall trooper who saved his mothers’ life on that Christmas day.
Bryan saw a car coming and shot it with his Falcon. It was close, but not fast enough.
“That one is just under. I need one more good one for the day”. The dispatcher called his 805, and asked him to call radio with his cell phone. The first C.O. transferred him to a CO4, whom he had been friends with for twenty years. He always laughed and joked with Kim, even in the most stressful of times, as a way to maintain sanity.
Kim wasn’t laughing or joking when she talked to Bryan. She was quiet, reserved and there was a long pause before she spoke. “Ummm, Bryan, I have some bad news.
Your daughter and granddaughter were involved in an accident about a half hour ago.
A drunk T-boned their car on the passenger side. Your daughter is in stable condition, but, uummmm, your granddaughter has a punctured lung, several fractures and internal bleeding. They don’t expect her to make it.” He was shaking as he ended the cell call.
He told dispatch he was en route to Deaconess Hospital. He noticed, as he drove down Division Street, that there were Christmas lights that he had never seen before.
He couldn’t remember Gonzaga University looking so radiant with its spires toward heaven. He was in a slow motion grieving stage. The best thing in the troopers’ life would soon be gone. Amy was the sun that rose and set in his life. He parked his patrol car in the hospital parking lot and walked up to ER. He found a nurse he had known for years and asked her to tell him the truth about Amy. “Bryan, she is in bad shape. The prognosis is not good. She will be operated on in the next hour. The doctor on duty is young, but he is good. I’ll come find you when there is a change.”
Bryan walked numbly, putting one foot in front of the other to the empty waiting room.
The grieving trooper stood six foot two of muscle and bone. He was a master marksman, and had never lost a fight, but he sat in the deep cushioned chair with a helpless feeling and covered his face in his hands as the worst nightmare of his life played on.
The place was empty as tears made the big hands glisten. After a few minutes, two voices came into the room, just two men, passing through on their way to a family gathering. They lowered their voices when they saw the grieving trooper and were almost out the other door when one of the men stopped in mid-sentence. “It’s him!
It’s the trooper with the ring!
Five minutes later, one of the strangers sat with Bryan while his brother, Dr. Jason Ashley scrubbed for surgery to operate on Amy. He was known by his peers as one of the finest surgeons in the state of Washington. For the second time in his life, Bryan heard the voice, much older now, as a prayer was sent for help from above. “I call to you in heaven, because I know that you hear me. It is probably not fair that I call on you to pay my debt, but this is not the first time. This is the trooper who saved my mother from bleeding to death. My brother the surgeon would not have been born a year later if it were not for this man. I am asking not for myself, but for this man, that you keep his granddaughter in this world. He needs her. So, I ask you to pay my Christmas debt.
Thank you”.
Pastor John Ashley, who pastored the largest Baptist Church in Spokane sat beside the trooper as 3 doors down, his brother operated into the night on the small girl. The surgeon labored but so did his brother the pastor……as did the angels, strong and kind, who came not to take her with them, but to bring her back.
Bryan took the following Christmas off and it turned out he needed most of the day. It took six solid hours to put the play house together that he bought for Amy and two more hours for her to make them tea and cookies.
