- #REMEMBER THAT NIGHT WE WENT FOR A DRIVE REGISTRATION#
- #REMEMBER THAT NIGHT WE WENT FOR A DRIVE LICENSE#
“I mean, not the whole thing,” he corrected himself.
#REMEMBER THAT NIGHT WE WENT FOR A DRIVE REGISTRATION#
He pointed at the frame around the plate and complained that it was blocking the registration decal. I watched him carefully as he walked ahead of me. I braced and told myself, if he pulled his gun, I was going to fight for my life. “O.K., please, just come to the back of the car,” he said. When he told me that it was an offense not to change my license, I explained that my fellowship was for only nine months.
Was he tired, having a bad shift, or just trying to provoke me? Is it a crime to drive a used Saab? Why ask about my cross-country craze yet stop me from sharing? I was unsettled by his unusual behavior. Stephen King’s “Desperation,” a novel about a possessed Nevada deputy abducting people, crossed my mind. What if this strange officer who has refused to say why he stopped me shoots me? What if he says I jumped out and pursued him to the back to attack him? Ee-wi ben akpanikọ isọk irung ajid? Who will tell the truth to my family and friends? With all the ibak-ibak stories of American police and Blacks, everyone was already upset by my love of night driving. My heart raced and my fingers shook, though I held on to the wheel. “Could you come to the back of the car for a sec?” he said when I asked again what the problem was. I wished I were in any one of the cars passing us. When he adjusted his belt, all I could see was his handgun. He excused himself, then yawned and stretched. “But what are you doing in Vegas?” he said, cutting into my attempt to let him know that long road trips were normal for me. On my way back to Michigan, I plan to go north to revisit picturesque Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, before hitting Fargo, North Dakota-” Look, I love to see this beautiful country. The scenery, the adrenaline, my car snapped out of cruise control. My best memory was the sudden twisty descent into Glenwood Canyon on I-70. I studied the desert skies.Īfter he returned my papers, I made to leave. I handed them to him, then he disappeared.
#REMEMBER THAT NIGHT WE WENT FOR A DRIVE LICENSE#
“Officer, don’t you want to see my license and registration?” I asked. I knew that he disliked my stupid facial movement, because his own face formed a scowl. Should I ask again why he’d stopped me? Or was it a mistake to have asked? My mouth became so dry that I kept sucking my cheeks as though to plumb them for saliva. When I said, “Officer, any problem?” he asked where I was going, his eyes searching my car. I scrambled to lower the window and greeted him. Worse, his eerie reflection made it seem as though he had two heads. It startled me, because I didn’t expect him there. The cop, a white man, appeared on the passenger side and knocked on the window. The wind was warm and dry, as if I were being sprayed with fine sand. Afraid, I rolled down my window, switched on the interior light, and sat like a stone. Yet the car pulled up behind me in some California or Nevada city whose name I no longer remember. Thinking that it must be chasing an emergency ahead, I moved over and slowed down. Suddenly, my rearview mirror sparkled with the flashers of a police car.
I was so thrilled that I considered cruising past my exit. As someone who loves to drive at night, I was quietly enjoying the hum of the engine against the steady purr of tires on the tarmac, and relishing the contrast with Michigan, where I’d been living, as well as with my home state of Akwa Ibom, in southern Nigeria. I was a fellow at the Black Mountain Institute, at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. I was returning to Las Vegas in my silver Saab S.U.V., having taken a break from my writing to go for a drive. It was in the small hours of a morning in early 2011. The moon made I-15 look special as it cut through a ghostly desert and distant hills.
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