Allowing for obvious dissimilarities, if my bride and I were
to play in a remake of Lethal Weapon, she’d be the Danny Glover character and
I’d be Mel Gibson. She’s the rational,
sane one and I’m…well…not.
The sort of devotion that made Woodrow Call carry Augustus
McCrae’s body all the way back to Texas, doesn’t spring up out of nowhere—and
the hardship and adventure that builds that kind of relationship makes for a
great story.
A quick review of my
novels will tell you I love to write about the bond of strong friendship—and
I’m blessed to have incredible friends on whom to base the stories. Over the years, I have been fortunate to work
with some of the finest men and women on the planet, often under austere and
dangerous conditions.
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| At US Marshals HQ, just before I retired |
The U.S. Marshals training academy is a tough endeavor.
There’s a certain amount of constitutional law, intensive interview training,
and other practical exercises designed to emulate the real world of federal law
enforcement. But the physical stuff is
what weeds people out. There’s a heck of a lot of running, fighting, shooting,
weight lifting… more fighting, and grass-drills that are affectionately known
as “Marshals’ Beach”—where the instructors sit in deck chairs with zinc oxide
on their noses while Basic Deputies do hours of calisthenics. When my class
went through a couple of decades ago, we had a defensive tactics instructor
named Bob Natzke. The man was a martial arts legend and seemed to enjoy pitting
us against one another in full-contact fights. Incredibly fit, he expected all
of us to be as well, leading us through hours of exercise he liked to call
“push and puke.” One morning, while the class endured seven slooooooow pushups,
stretched over an hour and a half (that’s right, I said “7”), Mr. Natske
scuttled back and forth between us, himself in pushup position, screaming in
our faces as we trembled in various stages of up and down, about how we were
all bound to be stabbed to death on the street if we didn’t get our crap
together. I once saw a deputy drop her tray of food in the cafeteria when
someone jokingly said, “Here comes Mr. Natske.” He retired soon after I
graduated. But the cadre of deputy marshals in our class shares a common bond
because of the blood and sweat that guy got out of us. He made us better and
safer deputies. We love him for it and wouldn’t trade the nightmare for
anything.
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| My friend, Gladys on right, stuffing the guy in a patrol car |
People who’ve served in the military know even better than
I, but there is a bond between those who work together under hardship and
danger. I’ve written a couple of essays about scrapping. The men and women who
were involved with me in making those arrests and fighting the worst of those
bad guys will always be my brothers and sisters. I still keep in touch with one of my captains
from the police department where I started thirty years ago. She was my
sergeant when I was a rookie, and took me under her wing. We fought some mean folks
over the years, side by side, and I grew to trust her with my life. We once arrested
a guy who was so disturbed he’d followed the Biblical admonition to pluck his
own eye out because it offended him. He’d broken a ketchup bottle in a café and
was threatening the patrons with the jagged glass when we rolled up. There
happened to be a photographer nearby while we were wrestling the guy down. I
don’t remember it being all that fun, but in the picture, we looked like we
were having a grand old time. I have the photo from the newspaper in my
scrapbook.
Fights,
wrecks, midnight surveillances, protracted fugitive hunts for evil men, horrible
bosses all add to the bond. Old buds never meet after a long absence and grab each other in the backslapping, brotherhood handshake to say: “Man, remember when we had to walk through that field of posies?” No, we want to reminisce about the time we walked barefoot over broken glass—as a team, with a common objective.
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| Me and Ty, in younger days... |
My friend
Ty Cunningham, a ninth degree black belt in jujitsu, helps me work through most
every fight in my books. We’ve been friends for twenty years and every time I
see him, I can’t help but remember the rough adventures we’ve had together.
We’ve camped in fifty-below weather, tracked bad outlaws and even had a run in
with a mama grizzly. There has never been a time that he didn’t have my back. I
once found myself in a bit of a jam with a couple of outlaw biker types at a
nearby lake. We were locked in a little staring match and I seriously thought
things might go to guns. Ty had been at the other end of the park, playing
catch with his sons but apparently saw what was happening. I was not in a
position to turn around, but could tell by the look in the bikers’ eyes that Ty
had covered the distance in a flash and now stood behind me, ready to follow me
into whatever scrap I’d gotten myself into. There were no questions, only
instant resolve—and friendship.
So, when I
write about partners like Trap O’Shannon and Clay Madsen in my Westerns or
Jericho Quinn and Jacques Thibodaux in my Thrillers, I know from where I speak.
There is a synergy that comes from two strong people working together,
completely devoted to each other. There are a couple of people I know I could
call, even if I was wrong, who would come a runnin’, with no questions asked.
And those people know I would do the same for them. That’s the sort of friendship
I like to give the buddies in my books.
My bride and I share that same
relationship. We’ve been through all sorts
of hellacious adventures over the last thirty years. Poverty, on the job
injuries, long months of separation, the death of a child, cancer, the
struggles associated with raising three kids—all just add to the glue.
Like Danny Glover’s character felt
about Mel Gibson, my wife wasn’t too fond of me when we first met. It took us a
while to get there, but she came around to my quirky ways. I hope she knows by now
that if some bad guy ever puts a bomb under her toilet, I’d stay right there with
her like Mel did for Danny. And, if I ever get blood poisoning and have to get my leg cut off and then ask her to
take my body back to Texas to be buried, I have no doubt that she'll just saddle her mule and head south. You see, we’re just that kind
of friends.
Marc Cameron is a retired Chief Deputy US Marshal and 29-year law enforcement veteran. His short stories have appeared in BOYS’ LIFE Magazine and the Saturday Evening Post. He's published ten novels, six of them Westerns (several as a ghost writer and two under his pen name, Mark Henry).
TIME OF ATTACK fourth in his USA Today Bestselling Jericho Quinn Thriller series, is the newest release from Kensington February of 2014.
Marc lives in Alaska with his beautiful bride and BMW motorcycle.
Visit him at:
www.marccameronbooks.com
http://www.facebook.com/MarcCameronAuthor
