There were nine bars on Scala Point Road between Interstate 81 and the Chrysler Plant.
In the summer, Kerwin Douglas could hear the music from one of them, two blocks away.
In the winter, the parks and rec department flooded the park across the street from his subsidized apartment, made it into a skating rink.
When people leaving the bars on Scala Point got pulled over for drunk driving, the flashing police lights reflected off the skating rink, and Kerwin would watch out the window as the cops put the driver through the tests.
The finger to the nose.
The straight line walk.
The ABCs backward.
Every single time Kerwin watched, the person got arrested.
Kerwin stood in his apartment, peering down through the nicotine stained curtains, watching the show that he knew the ending to.
A backup unit.
Handcuffs.
A tow truck.
Before Kerwin got old, which by society’s measure he was, Kerwin wasn’t an angry man.
In eighth grade he yelled at a substitute teacher for getting his name backward, one of dozens who had over the years, and he had lost his patience.
Kerwin would swear to you that was the last time he raised his voice in anger.
Now Kerwin watched the cops and grumbled.
Why make the poor people walk a straight line in the cold when you know you’re going to arrest them?
Why administer a test that no one could ever pass?
Kerwin would see the flashing lights off the skating rink and walk to the window and watch.
Kerwin made a pact with himself that one day he would walk down and talk to the police officers and ask them to give the driver another chance.
Kerwin made that pact with himself on New Year’s Eve, 2004.
The lights were reflecting off the ice rink now, and a man took two steps and stumbled into the side of his own truck.
Kerwin watched, as they handcuffed the man and shoved his head down as he entered the backseat of the cruiser.
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